Yeah, the more people supplying it the better. Not that there's much demand... I've had it out on Gnutella, Kazaa, and WinMX since around 3pm, and there's only been 9 files downloaded (one guy DLed all 5, and a couple people grabbed one or two random files each). This guy's mirror might be why. That's where I downloaded my copies @ 350K, and I just checked and I can still download @ 160K from him. Not bad, considering what large movie files and Slashdot links do to most servers...
After watching it, I can definitely say they got the poor acting and cheesy special effects right.:) Still, it's impressive for something done on their spare time with no external motivation ($$$, film school project, etc), and far better than I could do.
I'm now sharing all 5 files on the Gnutella and WinMX networks. In a minute I'll have them on Kazaa too. They're named starshipexeter_actone.mov, starshipexeter_acttwo.mov, etc. I'll leave them up until sometime tomorrow.
And once you've downloaded them, make sure you share them too (if your DL and shared directories aren't the same)!
You haven't used a Mac in years, have you? The 1 button thing is NOT a problem anymore. Just buy a mouse and plug it in, the drivers for multibutton mice are built in already. And the scroll bar thing was fixed in OS *8*.
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred last month, and now we're involved in a WAR and you're wasting your time on Slashdot????
Seriously, this troll is getting old. If you're serious (doubtful), try complaining offline somewhere, or at least not on Slashdot. In case your efforts over the past month haven't taught you anything, you're wasting your time here with us. We don't completely stop our lives and start living in fear of tomorrow just because a few lunatics want us to.
On a related note, where could you get new Atari controllers? Does anyone still make them (yeah, its a long shot, but maybe), or do I have to risk it on eBay? All mine are either broken or work intermittantly (halfway through a game it'll decide that I shouldn't go left anymore, or that firing isn't that important).
I think you're noticing the main problem with Slashdot: too many idiots. Roughly one-third to half of all comments seem to be trolls and flames. That, and there are moderators who like to moderate comments blindly, like yours was. This might sound like I'm spamming, but I'd recommend checking out kuro5hin.org. Their karma system's setup differently, so there's not much point in trolling for karma, so the signal to noise ratio is usually much better. Kinda like slashdot, except the idiots get punished.
Umm, you don't need any AOL clients on Windows PCs to use a Time Warner cable modem. If that was required, I'd still be using a dialup connection. At least in my area, all you need to do is set your computer to use DHCP.
My uploads are also capped at 304kbps, so apparently this 80kbps or worse thing doen't happen in my area.
No, it's not true because it was in a movie, it's true because it happened. Maybe "stole" isn't the best way to describe it, but Xerox PARC did come up with it first, and Apple did get information and a couple of engineers from PARC to develop the Lisa and the Mac. Just because it was in a movie doesn't necesarily mean it isn't true to some degree.
They don't reward innovation as much as they encourage other companies to innovate.
If one way of doing something gets popular (windowed GUIs, or gas powered cars, for instance), then every company will copy that way (Mac OS, Windows, X Windows on linux and bsd, did I miss anything?), since they're guaranteed to make some money. If that way of doing something was patented, then the other companies would either have to pay royalties or find a better way.
The other companies would have to find a way to "put a square peg into a round hole" because they'd have to, otherwise they would lose profits to the first company with the patent.
This works if patents are used decently. Companies who patent everything in sight, or patent the obvious (Amazon and Rambus) just hurt the industry by preventing companies from making or doing anything without paying royalties for the patents.
The time limit for technology patents does inhibit the industry. Someone can file an obvious patent, some moronic patenter signs it, not really knowing what it is or means, and an entire section of the industry is paralyzed for 20 years. 1 or 2 years should be the maximum.
Imagine if the first windowing display system for computers had been patented. Most people I hear give credit for this to Mac, but not being a strong computer historian, I don't know.
I'd give credit to Xerox PARC. IIRC, Jobs stole the GUI from Xerox, and Bill stole it from Jobs.
It's almost too bad the windowing display system idea wasn't patented. I'd like to see what sort of alternative UIs might be created. Now it seems the main innovation in UI's is packing more widgits into a window's title bar or putting more crap into a Windoze-like start menu or system tray (or whatever that gray bar with the stop menu is called).
I'd like to see someone come up with a simple, fairly useful UI that doesn't use a window or a command line.
That would be why I don't remember this. I didn't even have a net connection then! And I didn't read newspapers too much then, either.
Thanks for posting the link!
I'm from Minnesota, and I don't remember this ever happening. Maybe some backbone connection was fried, but I find it hard to believe an entire state's packets all went through a single line.
Would be interesting if this was true... Anybody know anything more about this or have any links? (I'm too lazy to find them myself:)
Hmm. "no complete recount"? I thought that according to Florida's laws an automatic recount had to be made in an election this close. I figured that included all the counties. Wasn't that why their state results were delayed a couple of days (before everyone started sueing for more recounts)?
I think Gore is wasting time, since Bush is leading by a margin less than the margin for error in counting. That would mean that sometimes he will win a recount and sometimes he will lose, dependinding on how big the error rate is (yeah, there shouldn't even be an error rate, but there seems to be one. If there wasn't any errors in counting, why recount?).
I personally think Gore should have won, but if both sides suing to only get recounts that benefit them (note that neither Bush nor Gore want a complete, fair recount of everything, just a recount in a couple of counties), that's a waste of time. Every vote should be "fully evaluated and categorized in one way or another," but the way Bush and Gore are going about doing that in their partial-recount ways is wrong and wasting time getting a flawed result.
And before anyone brings up Gore's (narrow) win of the popular vote, the Electoral College exists for a very important purpose: to prevent small areas with dense populations to be able to run a tyranny over the rest of the people.
So sparsely populated areas should run a tyranny over more populous cities? I'd say whoever gets the most votes wins, rather than say "you won the vote by a landslide, but since everyone lives in this one city, you can't be president." (Obviously not referring to this election)
That vote map that had Gore winning only in the biggest metro areas was striking.
Yes, it is striking that rural and urban conditions are different and can cause a person to vote differently. IIRC, most Democrats are poorer than most Republicans, and more poor people live in cites than elsewhere, so therfore densely populated areas vote Democrat. I don't see what is so "striking" about that.
The only striking thing I see is that Gore refuses to give up. One recount is fine, two is pushing it, but more than that is just a waste of time.
Give up, Gore. You lost (barely, though). If you stop being an ass about it, maybe someone'll vote for you in 2004.
Shouldn't a national election be held on national rules?
Yes, it should be. Even if computerized voting wasn't mandated (so the technophobes would still vote), the voting system should be standardized on something, be it punchcards or optical "color in the circle" ballots (whichever is the most accurate). We spend how many billions of dollars on weapons that we rarely use (or replace that reference with how much we spend on some other large project if you think we need a bigger military), so I think we could spare a few million to update and standardize the voting systems. They're all going to eventually fail and be replaced anyway, so why not replace and standardize them all at once?
So, are you saying there's absolutely no margin of error? A difference of less than 1000 votes out of 5 million is statistically insignificant. They are basically tied, and whoever sues for the most recounts (which usually will benefit the candidate suing) wins the plurality by a margin of votes smaller than the margin for error. Sad this election's being decided by lawyers, but true.
Unfortunately, the Constitution probably wouldn't be amended in time. And I doubt something like allowing a revote would be ratified. Maybe an abolishment of the electoral college in the next elections...
Even if there is a mass protest of CD prices and 50% (a very optimistic percentage) of buyers boycott the RIAA, it still wouldn't work. They'll just blame/sue their lost profits on Napster, Scour, Rio, internet radio stations, etc. (basically their new compettition in the music distribution business). Then, since all those lawsuits will cost money, they'll have a (flimsy) excuse to raise CD prices and/or keep them high. Apparently the RIAA seems to think they deserve a virtual monopoly on whatever they want.
Somebody had better tell the RIAA that they're not God.
Yeah, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway? I doubt 99% of CDRs are used for burning illegal music. There are a lot of people who use a CD's decent-sized capacity to backup data or send 1.4+MB files to people. Or burning their own music CDs from several of their own legitimate CDs.
Yes, piracy is wrong, but this seems kind of like taxing pens and copy machines because they could be used to copy copyrighted books, or taxing VCRs because they could be used to copy movies, or taxing cassette tape recorders because they could be used to copy music, or removable disk drives because they could be used to copy software (Maybe those things are taxed already. If they are, maybe this isn't such an outrageous tax. Anybody know?).
You seem to forget how much some people like hunting (animals, not humans) and shooting at a range. I personally don't like doing those things, but I'm fine with a perfectly sane, reasonable individual using a gun in a relatively safe manner (like shooting at a paper target in a shooting range, not robbing a bank). Access to guns should be controlled, but not banned entirely. And if only law enforcement officers had them you might get problems of too much government/state power and no way to reverse it (not too likely, but still possible). "The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government" -Thomas Jefferson (Thanks to whoever posted that quote elsewhere in this discussion)
Slashdot Mirror
About halfway down the downloads page there's a link to his mp3.com page.
Yeah, the more people supplying it the better. Not that there's much demand... I've had it out on Gnutella, Kazaa, and WinMX since around 3pm, and there's only been 9 files downloaded (one guy DLed all 5, and a couple people grabbed one or two random files each). This guy's mirror might be why. That's where I downloaded my copies @ 350K, and I just checked and I can still download @ 160K from him. Not bad, considering what large movie files and Slashdot links do to most servers...
:) Still, it's impressive for something done on their spare time with no external motivation ($$$, film school project, etc), and far better than I could do.
After watching it, I can definitely say they got the poor acting and cheesy special effects right.
I'm now sharing all 5 files on the Gnutella and WinMX networks. In a minute I'll have them on Kazaa too. They're named starshipexeter_actone.mov, starshipexeter_acttwo.mov, etc. I'll leave them up until sometime tomorrow.
And once you've downloaded them, make sure you share them too (if your DL and shared directories aren't the same)!
You haven't used a Mac in years, have you? The 1 button thing is NOT a problem anymore. Just buy a mouse and plug it in, the drivers for multibutton mice are built in already. And the scroll bar thing was fixed in OS *8*.
The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred last month, and now we're involved in a WAR and you're wasting your time on Slashdot????
Seriously, this troll is getting old. If you're serious (doubtful), try complaining offline somewhere, or at least not on Slashdot. In case your efforts over the past month haven't taught you anything, you're wasting your time here with us. We don't completely stop our lives and start living in fear of tomorrow just because a few lunatics want us to.
We probably slashdotted his email server... Hehehe. He deserves it.
On a related note, where could you get new Atari controllers? Does anyone still make them (yeah, its a long shot, but maybe), or do I have to risk it on eBay? All mine are either broken or work intermittantly (halfway through a game it'll decide that I shouldn't go left anymore, or that firing isn't that important).
won't go throgh posting it, :)
OK, you're forgiven
I think you're noticing the main problem with Slashdot: too many idiots. Roughly one-third to half of all comments seem to be trolls and flames. That, and there are moderators who like to moderate comments blindly, like yours was. This might sound like I'm spamming, but I'd recommend checking out kuro5hin.org. Their karma system's setup differently, so there's not much point in trolling for karma, so the signal to noise ratio is usually much better. Kinda like slashdot, except the idiots get punished.
Umm, you don't need any AOL clients on Windows PCs to use a Time Warner cable modem. If that was required, I'd still be using a dialup connection. At least in my area, all you need to do is set your computer to use DHCP.
My uploads are also capped at 304kbps, so apparently this 80kbps or worse thing doen't happen in my area.
No, it's not true because it was in a movie, it's true because it happened. Maybe "stole" isn't the best way to describe it, but Xerox PARC did come up with it first, and Apple did get information and a couple of engineers from PARC to develop the Lisa and the Mac. Just because it was in a movie doesn't necesarily mean it isn't true to some degree.
They don't reward innovation as much as they encourage other companies to innovate.
If one way of doing something gets popular (windowed GUIs, or gas powered cars, for instance), then every company will copy that way (Mac OS, Windows, X Windows on linux and bsd, did I miss anything?), since they're guaranteed to make some money. If that way of doing something was patented, then the other companies would either have to pay royalties or find a better way.
The other companies would have to find a way to "put a square peg into a round hole" because they'd have to, otherwise they would lose profits to the first company with the patent.
This works if patents are used decently. Companies who patent everything in sight, or patent the obvious (Amazon and Rambus) just hurt the industry by preventing companies from making or doing anything without paying royalties for the patents.
The time limit for technology patents does inhibit the industry. Someone can file an obvious patent, some moronic patenter signs it, not really knowing what it is or means, and an entire section of the industry is paralyzed for 20 years. 1 or 2 years should be the maximum.
Imagine if the first windowing display system for computers had been patented. Most people I hear give credit for this to Mac, but not being a strong computer historian, I don't know.
I'd give credit to Xerox PARC. IIRC, Jobs stole the GUI from Xerox, and Bill stole it from Jobs.
It's almost too bad the windowing display system idea wasn't patented. I'd like to see what sort of alternative UIs might be created. Now it seems the main innovation in UI's is packing more widgits into a window's title bar or putting more crap into a Windoze-like start menu or system tray (or whatever that gray bar with the stop menu is called).
I'd like to see someone come up with a simple, fairly useful UI that doesn't use a window or a command line.
That would be why I don't remember this. I didn't even have a net connection then! And I didn't read newspapers too much then, either.
Thanks for posting the link!
I'm from Minnesota, and I don't remember this ever happening. Maybe some backbone connection was fried, but I find it hard to believe an entire state's packets all went through a single line.
:)
Would be interesting if this was true... Anybody know anything more about this or have any links? (I'm too lazy to find them myself
I personally think Gore should have won
Let me rephrase that. I voted for Gore, but I don't think we can tell whether Gore should have won or not by the current evidence.
Hmm. "no complete recount"? I thought that according to Florida's laws an automatic recount had to be made in an election this close. I figured that included all the counties. Wasn't that why their state results were delayed a couple of days (before everyone started sueing for more recounts)?
I think Gore is wasting time, since Bush is leading by a margin less than the margin for error in counting. That would mean that sometimes he will win a recount and sometimes he will lose, dependinding on how big the error rate is (yeah, there shouldn't even be an error rate, but there seems to be one. If there wasn't any errors in counting, why recount?).
I personally think Gore should have won, but if both sides suing to only get recounts that benefit them (note that neither Bush nor Gore want a complete, fair recount of everything, just a recount in a couple of counties), that's a waste of time. Every vote should be "fully evaluated and categorized in one way or another," but the way Bush and Gore are going about doing that in their partial-recount ways is wrong and wasting time getting a flawed result.
500 comments in about 2 hours? Slashdot must be getting a ton of money from ad hits from this.
And before anyone brings up Gore's (narrow) win of the popular vote, the Electoral College exists for a very important purpose: to prevent small areas with dense populations to be able to run a tyranny over the rest of the people.
So sparsely populated areas should run a tyranny over more populous cities? I'd say whoever gets the most votes wins, rather than say "you won the vote by a landslide, but since everyone lives in this one city, you can't be president." (Obviously not referring to this election)
That vote map that had Gore winning only in the biggest metro areas was striking.
Yes, it is striking that rural and urban conditions are different and can cause a person to vote differently. IIRC, most Democrats are poorer than most Republicans, and more poor people live in cites than elsewhere, so therfore densely populated areas vote Democrat. I don't see what is so "striking" about that.
The only striking thing I see is that Gore refuses to give up. One recount is fine, two is pushing it, but more than that is just a waste of time.
Give up, Gore. You lost (barely, though). If you stop being an ass about it, maybe someone'll vote for you in 2004.
Shouldn't a national election be held on national rules?
Yes, it should be. Even if computerized voting wasn't mandated (so the technophobes would still vote), the voting system should be standardized on something, be it punchcards or optical "color in the circle" ballots (whichever is the most accurate). We spend how many billions of dollars on weapons that we rarely use (or replace that reference with how much we spend on some other large project if you think we need a bigger military), so I think we could spare a few million to update and standardize the voting systems. They're all going to eventually fail and be replaced anyway, so why not replace and standardize them all at once?
So, are you saying there's absolutely no margin of error? A difference of less than 1000 votes out of 5 million is statistically insignificant. They are basically tied, and whoever sues for the most recounts (which usually will benefit the candidate suing) wins the plurality by a margin of votes smaller than the margin for error. Sad this election's being decided by lawyers, but true.
Unfortunately, the Constitution probably wouldn't be amended in time. And I doubt something like allowing a revote would be ratified. Maybe an abolishment of the electoral college in the next elections...
Then we'd have someone hack a CD burner so that it will burn its current location onto a CDR while it's within German borders. Or something like that.
Even if there is a mass protest of CD prices and 50% (a very optimistic percentage) of buyers boycott the RIAA, it still wouldn't work. They'll just blame/sue their lost profits on Napster, Scour, Rio, internet radio stations, etc. (basically their new compettition in the music distribution business). Then, since all those lawsuits will cost money, they'll have a (flimsy) excuse to raise CD prices and/or keep them high. Apparently the RIAA seems to think they deserve a virtual monopoly on whatever they want.
Somebody had better tell the RIAA that they're not God.
Yeah, what are 99% of CD-RW's used for anyway? I doubt 99% of CDRs are used for burning illegal music. There are a lot of people who use a CD's decent-sized capacity to backup data or send 1.4+MB files to people. Or burning their own music CDs from several of their own legitimate CDs.
Yes, piracy is wrong, but this seems kind of like taxing pens and copy machines because they could be used to copy copyrighted books, or taxing VCRs because they could be used to copy movies, or taxing cassette tape recorders because they could be used to copy music, or removable disk drives because they could be used to copy software (Maybe those things are taxed already. If they are, maybe this isn't such an outrageous tax. Anybody know?).
You seem to forget how much some people like hunting (animals, not humans) and shooting at a range. I personally don't like doing those things, but I'm fine with a perfectly sane, reasonable individual using a gun in a relatively safe manner (like shooting at a paper target in a shooting range, not robbing a bank). Access to guns should be controlled, but not banned entirely. And if only law enforcement officers had them you might get problems of too much government/state power and no way to reverse it (not too likely, but still possible). "The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government" -Thomas Jefferson (Thanks to whoever posted that quote elsewhere in this discussion)