Why is it that nearly every press release or announcement about a digital music playing device describes the storage capacity in terms of the number of songs it can hold? Since when is a 'song' a standard unit of measure? I personally use high bitrate (VBR, 128kbps floor, 320kbps ceiling, LAME) mp3's for most of my music, leaving me at about 1.5MB per minute of music. This usually results in their estimates being completely different from what I'd actually be able to put on the device.
Another problem is that the bitrate can be dramatically different among the songs in someone's collection, ranging from 128kbps for some songs to a maximum 320kbps for others; yet these announcements completely ignore this! Are they afraid to tell us exactly how many MB or GB the device actually has? Or do they just seek to try and do simple math for us based on some predetermined 'common' bitrate?
I want real measurements, not arbitrary ones. I don't buy cars that get "three full drives per every tank of gas", and I don't buy music players that hold "xxx minutes of music".
Maybe people's anger at the RIAA has something to do with it.
Bullshit.
You think people are downloading music just to piss off the RIAA? That people say "Hey, I'll show them! Watch me download these Metallica songs!" They use it for the same reason they used Napster, to get free music quickly and easily; they couldn't care less who the music is published by.
Get off your idealistic high horse, and look at the reality of the situation.
I (for once) completely agree with what Katz is arguing/pointing out in this article. As a full-time CS college student I constantly feel pressured that I'm falling behind on everything. I came to college not intimately familiar with such things as Unix/Perl/programming, and have been working hard to try and reach the levels of some of my more advanced peers. In addition to keeping up with current events (social/technological), I constantly feel like there are so many things I have to get done: I've got huge list of books that I'd like to get around to reading, I want to play around with different programming languages, I want to learn how to work with movies on my computer, I want to be able to administer a Unix machine. Yet all of these things take time, a limited quantity in any life.
Sir Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." How many scientists have built on Newton's work? How high is the pyramid of giants upon whose shoulders today's scientists stand? It seems clear to me that the base of human knowledge is becoming extraordinarily large, and more and more of one's life must be spent just catching up to the state of current technology and knowledge.
Almost every time I've read an interview with John Carmack he speaks about how he doesn't really come up with new ideas so much as synthesize a lot of previously-thought-of approaches and ideas and make them work together and come to life on current technology. However, how much more background knowledge will the average 3d programmer need in 5 years than was needed 5 years ago? It seems that eventually we're going to get to the point that people need to spend maybe even tens of years studying their respective fields before being able to contribute anything new to them.
As an example, look at the modern Olympics: we've gotten to the point where almost all Olympic athletes spend their entire life prior preparing for these events; it's nigh-impossible to win or set new records otherwise.
What happens when the same applies to fields of research? Or jobs in general? Will we have to choose career paths during childhood so we have enough time to focus on learning everything we need to know for our chosen profession?
As society becomes more advanced, just about everything requires more background knowledge. As Olympic trainers have seemingly perfected their training techniques, one can only hope that our teaching techniques somehow keep up with the rapid advance of technology.
Although I am not personally an EverCrack addict, I've nearly lost a number of friends to the game. From what I've read, reselling characters, items, etc. outside of the game world is expressly prohibited by the Everquest EULA you agree to when you sign up for the service. Even the page linked in the story says as much: "They believe that the untried EULA gives them this right [to cause item auctions to be shut down]. We believe it does not."
These plaintiffs are not innocent victims who got stepped on by big corporations, they are power-gamers who hoped that Verant/Sony would sit by while they flagrantly violated the legal contract they had _agreed upon_ when they signed up for the _service_ provided by the EQ staff and servers.
As much as many Slashdotters seem to detest EULA's, these were a part of signing up to play the game online, and the people who knowingly agree to such rules deserve no sympathy when they get punished for breaking them. You only get what you play for.
Contrary to the submission, Red Faction does not use the Quake 3 engine. It uses its own in-house engine designed specifically for the game. The main advantage of Volition's engine is that Red Faction is the first game (AFAIK) to support real-time geometry modification...i.e. if someone's on the other side of a wall, you take some explosives (read: rocket launcher) and blow a hole through the wall. It should (hopefully) make for an interesting way to avoid the linear paths of most FPS games and allow people to truly choose their own path through a much more extensively modeled world.
Recently (well, in the past year) I've seen a number of articles on how great HBO's original shows (The Sopranos, Sex and the City, etc.) are, and how those shows are drawing in new subscriptions for the channel.
It seems likely that most of the major networks might find this an ideal way to maintain their income: rather than broadcasting to everyone, they would sell their broadcasting to the major TV-Recording companies (TiVo, Replay). If a network's show becomes incredibly popular for some reason, the network could increase the amount they charge for TiVo or Replay to have a 'subscription' to that network.
One impact of this is that a high enough 'subscription' fee might require TiVo/Replay to raise their customers' rates, possibly resulting at some point in something akin to a pay-per-view model for the consumer; if you watch the popular (and thus more expensive shows) you have to pay more. It wouldn't be a prohibitive increase, but enough that it would give networks incentive to make better quality shows.
Obviously this sort of dramatic change in revenue sources would require a large majority of the TV-watching public to own such black boxes, as 'closed' networks (the ones who 'sell' their broadcasting to TiVo/Replay) would lose nearly all advertising revenues from their former unlimited broadcast. However, it seems a distinct possibility for the future.
Diablo isn't a MMORPG since games are continually created (and ended) and the max. players per game is eight.
Unlike many MMORPG's, which offer each race/class in both sexes, Diablo's character classes specify whether you will be male or female. There is no 'sorceror' counterpart to the sorceress, so (assuming she was chosen for her spellcasting abilities) Taco probably just wanted to cast some kickass spells...
Though I've yet to get a copy of Diablo 2 (sold out too damn quick:), I played around with Far Stone Tech's Virtual Drive 2000 Personal Edition and found that it worked great for the original Diablo, which also reads nearly everything from the CD. I'd assume it will work just as well for Diablo2. Price for a single computer license is about $35.
Bear in mind that Catholics are not Christians since they worship the virgin whore rather than God. Those heathen sinners could do anything and it wouldn't suprise me, since they, like all who do not follow in the path of our Lord, are destined to Hell anyway.
I'm glad to see that you generalize about ALL Catholics (I'm a Catholic), and immediately condemn us. Wasn't there something in the bible about "Judge not lest ye be judged yourself"? Are all people who don't believe exactly the same things as you sinners also? Or just Catholics, since the Catholic Church committed so many atrocities in years gone by? Another note is that it was Christians (but not specifically Catholics) that were involved in the Salem Witch Trials and Nazi Germany (which were mentioned in the post you responded to); however, you immediately place the blame on the Catholic "heaten sinners".
And to correct your mistaken view on Catholic beliefs, Catholics do not worship Mary at all, we pray to her for help as we would pray to the saints. We ask for their help just like we might ask a friend to pray for us if we are going through a particularly trying ordeal. That should not be confused with worship, though it commonly is. (By that definition do I worship my close friends that are Catholic?:). I also don't think referring to the Mother of God as a "virgin whore" is a very Christian thing to do, regardless of denomination. (Side note: Isn't "virgin whore" an oxymoron? Or do you just use 'whore' as a general insult to apply to women?)
I think Genetic Engineering is going to challenge a lot of religious views, especially the question of when life begins. Many religions (Catholicism in particular) view conception/fertilization as the beginning of a life, and will fight tooth and nail to prevent the spread of situations such as that in Gattaca when the parents choose one of the four fertilized eggs to give birth to, and discard (read: abort) the rest.
DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to be a flame or flamebait in the least (though I'd question whether the previous post is due to the emphasis on insulting Catholics). I just wish to correct this common misconception about Catholics.
IIRC, the $.56 figure given by TLC on the show took into account the fact that they had to fund their own music videos, some of which (Waterfalls) were extremely expensive. Had they not made the videos, or at least not invested as much money in them, they would probably have made closer to the $1/CD that independent artists make.
The problem with this parallel is the difference between software and music/video. If someone wants Brand A software, but cannot get it for as low a price as he is willing to pay, he will probably find a similar program from Company B that is within his price range. Few people buy software based on the company that is producing it.
Music is not so easily replaced. Many people have a number of favorite bands, and will often rush out to purchase (or for some people download) the latest releases from their favorite artists, regardless of any possible reviews of said album. If you can only get that new Metallica CD for $25, which you consider unreasonable, you are probably not going to go find a band that sounds like Metallica and save money by purchasing their songs instead. The same holds true for movies: You're probably not going to go buy The 13th Floor because The Matrix was a bit too high-priced.
This is why the RIAA and MPAA are fighting so hard to secure their own intellectual property. As long as they remain the sole source of that particular band/movie/etc. then people will either pay for it, or do without.
While the idea of accentuating 'missed' porn sites would certainly keep current software from being completely successful, it would only encourage the censorware makers to be far less restrained when deciding what to block. If we don't point out false negatives, these software makers have no incentive to 'protect' valid sites from being added to the blacklists, so long as they stop 100% of the porn. Then we will be even worse off where than we are now, with far more false positives than the 5% that current software blocks.
The problem is not that Itanium will not run older programs, it's that it will not run them nearly as fast as similarly clocked Athlon- or Sledgehammer- based system. As he said in the previous paragraph:
So, for the Itanium, MS Office will run slowly, games will run slowly, etc. This will make the Itanium a very poor choice for both consumer and business desktops.
Slashdot Mirror
Another problem is that the bitrate can be dramatically different among the songs in someone's collection, ranging from 128kbps for some songs to a maximum 320kbps for others; yet these announcements completely ignore this! Are they afraid to tell us exactly how many MB or GB the device actually has? Or do they just seek to try and do simple math for us based on some predetermined 'common' bitrate?
I want real measurements, not arbitrary ones. I don't buy cars that get "three full drives per every tank of gas", and I don't buy music players that hold "xxx minutes of music".
-Angron
Bullshit.
You think people are downloading music just to piss off the RIAA? That people say "Hey, I'll show them! Watch me download these Metallica songs!" They use it for the same reason they used Napster, to get free music quickly and easily; they couldn't care less who the music is published by.
Get off your idealistic high horse, and look at the reality of the situation.
-Angron
-Angron
-Angron
from this? If you really want that much functionality, you might as well just go all-out and get a portable PC. -Angron
-Angron
I (for once) completely agree with what Katz is arguing/pointing out in this article. As a full-time CS college student I constantly feel pressured that I'm falling behind on everything. I came to college not intimately familiar with such things as Unix/Perl/programming, and have been working hard to try and reach the levels of some of my more advanced peers. In addition to keeping up with current events (social/technological), I constantly feel like there are so many things I have to get done: I've got huge list of books that I'd like to get around to reading, I want to play around with different programming languages, I want to learn how to work with movies on my computer, I want to be able to administer a Unix machine. Yet all of these things take time, a limited quantity in any life.
Sir Isaac Newton once said "If I have seen further, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants." How many scientists have built on Newton's work? How high is the pyramid of giants upon whose shoulders today's scientists stand? It seems clear to me that the base of human knowledge is becoming extraordinarily large, and more and more of one's life must be spent just catching up to the state of current technology and knowledge.
Almost every time I've read an interview with John Carmack he speaks about how he doesn't really come up with new ideas so much as synthesize a lot of previously-thought-of approaches and ideas and make them work together and come to life on current technology. However, how much more background knowledge will the average 3d programmer need in 5 years than was needed 5 years ago? It seems that eventually we're going to get to the point that people need to spend maybe even tens of years studying their respective fields before being able to contribute anything new to them.
As an example, look at the modern Olympics: we've gotten to the point where almost all Olympic athletes spend their entire life prior preparing for these events; it's nigh-impossible to win or set new records otherwise.
What happens when the same applies to fields of research? Or jobs in general? Will we have to choose career paths during childhood so we have enough time to focus on learning everything we need to know for our chosen profession?
As society becomes more advanced, just about everything requires more background knowledge. As Olympic trainers have seemingly perfected their training techniques, one can only hope that our teaching techniques somehow keep up with the rapid advance of technology.
-Angron
This sounds like what you're looking for.
Unless of course they have wireless in the dorms as well, which CMU still has yet to implement (grumble, grumble).
These plaintiffs are not innocent victims who got stepped on by big corporations, they are power-gamers who hoped that Verant/Sony would sit by while they flagrantly violated the legal contract they had _agreed upon_ when they signed up for the _service_ provided by the EQ staff and servers.
As much as many Slashdotters seem to detest EULA's, these were a part of signing up to play the game online, and the people who knowingly agree to such rules deserve no sympathy when they get punished for breaking them. You only get what you play for.
Angron
It seems likely that most of the major networks might find this an ideal way to maintain their income: rather than broadcasting to everyone, they would sell their broadcasting to the major TV-Recording companies (TiVo, Replay). If a network's show becomes incredibly popular for some reason, the network could increase the amount they charge for TiVo or Replay to have a 'subscription' to that network.
One impact of this is that a high enough 'subscription' fee might require TiVo/Replay to raise their customers' rates, possibly resulting at some point in something akin to a pay-per-view model for the consumer; if you watch the popular (and thus more expensive shows) you have to pay more. It wouldn't be a prohibitive increase, but enough that it would give networks incentive to make better quality shows.
Obviously this sort of dramatic change in revenue sources would require a large majority of the TV-watching public to own such black boxes, as 'closed' networks (the ones who 'sell' their broadcasting to TiVo/Replay) would lose nearly all advertising revenues from their former unlimited broadcast. However, it seems a distinct possibility for the future.
Just my $.02.
Unlike many MMORPG's, which offer each race/class in both sexes, Diablo's character classes specify whether you will be male or female. There is no 'sorceror' counterpart to the sorceress, so (assuming she was chosen for her spellcasting abilities) Taco probably just wanted to cast some kickass spells...
Though I've yet to get a copy of Diablo 2 (sold out too damn quick :), I played around with Far Stone Tech's Virtual Drive 2000 Personal Edition and found that it worked great for the original Diablo, which also reads nearly everything from the CD. I'd assume it will work just as well for Diablo2. Price for a single computer license is about $35.
I'm glad to see that you generalize about ALL Catholics (I'm a Catholic), and immediately condemn us. Wasn't there something in the bible about "Judge not lest ye be judged yourself"? Are all people who don't believe exactly the same things as you sinners also? Or just Catholics, since the Catholic Church committed so many atrocities in years gone by? Another note is that it was Christians (but not specifically Catholics) that were involved in the Salem Witch Trials and Nazi Germany (which were mentioned in the post you responded to); however, you immediately place the blame on the Catholic "heaten sinners".
And to correct your mistaken view on Catholic beliefs, Catholics do not worship Mary at all, we pray to her for help as we would pray to the saints. We ask for their help just like we might ask a friend to pray for us if we are going through a particularly trying ordeal. That should not be confused with worship, though it commonly is. (By that definition do I worship my close friends that are Catholic? :). I also don't think referring to the Mother of God as a "virgin whore" is a very Christian thing to do, regardless of denomination. (Side note: Isn't "virgin whore" an oxymoron? Or do you just use 'whore' as a general insult to apply to women?)
I think Genetic Engineering is going to challenge a lot of religious views, especially the question of when life begins. Many religions (Catholicism in particular) view conception/fertilization as the beginning of a life, and will fight tooth and nail to prevent the spread of situations such as that in Gattaca when the parents choose one of the four fertilized eggs to give birth to, and discard (read: abort) the rest.
DISCLAIMER: This post is not intended to be a flame or flamebait in the least (though I'd question whether the previous post is due to the emphasis on insulting Catholics). I just wish to correct this common misconception about Catholics.
So I guess now we know how Microsoft plans to keep making so much money :).
IIRC, the $.56 figure given by TLC on the show took into account the fact that they had to fund their own music videos, some of which (Waterfalls) were extremely expensive. Had they not made the videos, or at least not invested as much money in them, they would probably have made closer to the $1/CD that independent artists make.
Music is not so easily replaced. Many people have a number of favorite bands, and will often rush out to purchase (or for some people download) the latest releases from their favorite artists, regardless of any possible reviews of said album. If you can only get that new Metallica CD for $25, which you consider unreasonable, you are probably not going to go find a band that sounds like Metallica and save money by purchasing their songs instead. The same holds true for movies: You're probably not going to go buy The 13th Floor because The Matrix was a bit too high-priced.
This is why the RIAA and MPAA are fighting so hard to secure their own intellectual property. As long as they remain the sole source of that particular band/movie/etc. then people will either pay for it, or do without.
While the idea of accentuating 'missed' porn sites would certainly keep current software from being completely successful, it would only encourage the censorware makers to be far less restrained when deciding what to block. If we don't point out false negatives, these software makers have no incentive to 'protect' valid sites from being added to the blacklists, so long as they stop 100% of the porn. Then we will be even worse off where than we are now, with far more false positives than the 5% that current software blocks.