Lots of people use MSN Plus! that has added logging to MSN for a long time.
MSN 6 (out soon) has logging. The beta got out and er, I may or may not have sampled it.
The ability to send someone a message if they are online is just great. The fact that AIM and MSN can not do this makes these two services quite frankly SUCK.
Actually AIM and MSN do let you send messages to people if they're online. Oh you meant offline?:D Yeah, I miss that from ICQ actually. Then again there's always email, and hotmail users on MSN get told when they have new email.. Still, it's not quite as elegant.
I've got a 6 digit UIN, and it was certaily much better in the old days. ICQ is FAR too bloated, and most people recognise that. Everyone I know in real life started using MSN, so I followed (who uses it, rather than features is the most important thing about IM).
It'd be nice if ICQ focused on the real things that matter, and try to recapture their old user base. Ther's too much crap that takes too long to load, that I'm sure nobody ever uses.
I'm sorry, but the scenes when Merry & Pippin are riding on the top of Treebeard, the special effects are awful. I hope there's not more of that, because it was simply shockingly bad.
The ents weren't too badly done overall though, but I wouldn't say the effects of the ents alone would be worth paying out for the extended edition. I haven't read the books (*ducks*), and I've read they're more important in the books though, so I suppose it could add a bit to the story if we get interesting scenes rather than extraneous special effects.
Your claim that artists are being cheated out of their revenue is more of a popular myth than anything else. The vast majority of musicians are dying to get contracts with record companies.
Sigh.
Of course they're dying to get contracts - it's the only viable way of making any money at all. They don't have a choice, if you want to make it big at the moment, you have to go through them.
Sure, artists on MP3.com may get an online following, but they're not exactly being played on Radio 1.
If Internet based music distribution really kicked off, maybe the MP3.com model could kick off some more. Music services will offer tracks from artists doing their own thing, as well as the big names, and they may get more recognition. When the record industry controls the music stations, the TV music shows, and the rest of the media, it's hard to get a break in the industry without their support. Artists aren't stupid. They'll go for it, even if they aren't happy with it, and it does not mean by any means that the revenue sharing is fair.
Perhaps the record labels had a problem with the streaming, and so Apple pulled it - expecting that someone would just hack their code to bring it back.
What with all the fuss about internet radio and royalty fees, it's not too far fetched that the record companies didn't like people legitimately streaming the songs they had legitimately purchased.
IIRC, Tivo & others have similar hidden features that the masses are unaware of that would probably annoy the TV companies if it were publicised.
Do what you can to support this. I may not be American, so there's nothing I can do, but what happens in America seems to roll over into the UK eventually. You had DMCA, it's looking like we'll end up with a European equivilent.
Did everyone spot this bit?
Prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from forcing companies that make or sell PCs or digital video products to include specific copy-protection technology in them.
Palladium requires the hardware to only allow trusted OSes to run. I seem to recall Microsoft wanting the government to force processors & motherboard manufactures to have the system built in. This bill would knock that idea on the head.
Lossy JPEG screenshots, piss-poor descriptions, terrible choice of videos to compress, no samples better/worse than DVD... How in the hell can you call it a codec comparison when you compare how they re-compress a lossy codec. It's like comparing Ogg to MPC based on how well they re-encode MP3s.
They are primarily concerned with ripping DVDs. It doesn't matter to them if a codec can do amazing things with sources far better than DVD, if it then falls over and looks horrible when you're using a DVD source.
The DVD may be a lossy source, but the significant thing is that it is far bigger in size (resolution and kbps) than what the codecs will be used to save. You're right, seeing how welL Ogg/MPC can do on a 128Kbps MP3 source is stupid, but since DVD has a much bigger bitrate than the divx (or whatever) that will be saved, it is still a useful comparison.
Yes, you can burn the AACs as plain audio onto a blank CD-R, and then re-rip and re-encode them as MP3s and then manually re-tag them, but as a file-conversion technique, this process takes a lot of time. And uses up an awful lot of plastic, too.
Let me introduce, the CD-RW! No need to waste a load of plastic doing this;)
I don't think the process sounds much longer than going from CD audio to MP3. Hell, back in the day MP3s took a LOT longer to encode than they do now. People still did it though. The extra stange of burning a cd when you're using a nice quick burner (40x+) isn't exactly an eternity.
I think it's been around for a while. We call them letters.
Re:The submitter of the article was an idiot
on
Looking at Longhorn
·
· Score: 1
Ack!
<2GB drive. Teach me not to preview.
Re:The submitter of the article was an idiot
on
Looking at Longhorn
·
· Score: 1
They are integrating the filesystem with their SQL engine so that files are easily searchable with the multiple GB hard drives everyone will have by the time 2005 rolls around.
You only have a 2GB hard drive?
I think you've been putting off that upgrade for a bit too long.
I appreciate that for most people "damn quiet" is good enough. Heck, even for me it is. But "completely silent" is an absolute, and it should be used that way.
I agree. I've seen reviews of heatsink/fan combos that are rated in the 40db(A) range sold as 'silent'.
Well damn, that is nothing like silent.
I've spent a lot of money on various fans, replacement heatsinks, fan controllers (A DigiDoc5 and Zalman ZM-MFC1), and some acoustic dampening material from Quiet PC. This gives me a quiet, powerful machine for regular use, and I can crank up the fans if I want to play some games. It's not quite silent - but it certainly is very, very quiet. I can't hear a thing at the moment, although I have the window open so I can hear the noise of the birds singing outside. I do only live in a village though, so it's not like the background noise is akin to being next door to a motorway..
Back to my point though - if something says 'silent' it should emit no noise at all. I shouldn't be able to hear a thing if I leave the PC on overnight for it to be silent in my mind.
I think the only way to achieve this is through using very large heatsinks and heatpipes to get the heat outside of the box. Then, the naturally cool air in the room (cool in comparison to the high temps inside the case) should be enough to keep everything cool enough.
Getting into quiet/silent computing can be dangerous though - you really notice the difference when you go back to noisy computers! If you use someone elses PC for example, or you're at a library/school and have to use the computer, it sounds incredibly loud and offputting.
Is the source code for the player and the text file available? I can't really make these available yet. I don't have as much time as I would like for support or questions on the applet or the text file. I do plan to make them available when they are complete.
The news post here even says that he doesn't want it to be available, but says that he has left the source 'wide-open'. Hmmm.
No wait, better - it comes from those companies who profit from the utilisation of bandwidth. People who sell email servers marketed as coping with massive volumes of email too. Oh, and lets not forget the people spam filters!
Considering how P4 3.06Ghz actually runs at 3Ghz and does much better at.....
Tell me, why is the fact it actually runs at 3Ghz important?
MHz is not a useful measure of performance.
Jesus. No wonder AMD implemented their 'marketing MHz' rating system - the average guy on the street thinks that's how you measure perfomance of CPUs, and even some/. readers seem to as well. Naive of me perhaps to think that/. readers would be more clued up, but hey.
I'd love to see the MHz rating be completely scrapped from how we rate CPUs in stores. Yes, it's useful to see that an AMD 2000+ is faster than a 1800+, but it's not so great when comparing with Intel chips. The trouble is that since AMDs are better at some things, and Intels better at others, a number of figures would have to be provided to make a fair and useful comparison. Too many numbers though I'm sure might confuse people, so I guess we'll be stuck with the MHz wars for a while yet.
Perhaps I missed something in the article, but I didn't see them cover this question at all. Ignoring all the nonsense people are arguing about ("Men and women are different, take advantage of our differences","Not all men or women fit these models, don't judge on gender"), I haven't seen anyone ask this question:
If women given larger, wider screens get the level of spatial awareness that men get on the smaller, narrower screens - what happens when their sample of men are let loose on the bigger screens? Is their response exactly the same as before, is there an improvement, but not as big as the one seen with women, are they still equal to women?
I only saw a comparison between men on small screens and women on large widescreens. Perhaps I missed them address this when I read the article, but it's something to consider.
I am sure there is something wise to be said here.
Indeed. I think your network needs a new net connection, seeing as I'm pulling 70k/s over my ADSL connection that is shared throughout my entire village!
My CDs are on average, 700mb, lets say 0.7Gb for convenience.
I probably have about.. 300gb total capacity over all of my network. That'd take me around 430 cds to cover all of that.
Now, if I had those 120GB disks, and we assumed that when they were affordable, they'd be as much use as my CD, I'd have approx 51600GB storage on my network!! Hmm.
I wonder if our growth in need for hard drive capacity is leveling off, and if not - when it will. I'm in no doubt it'll be a long time before it stops, since we always seem to manage to come up with some new space eating use for our computers. However, we're already seeing that for a lot of average users, they don't have a hope of filling a 40gb drive without the help of mp3s/movies.
Slashdot Mirror
Silly rabbits! ICQ > MSN, AOL, YIM
:D Yeah, I miss that from ICQ actually. Then again there's always email, and hotmail users on MSN get told when they have new email.. Still, it's not quite as elegant.
Why? Logging and Offline messages!
Lots of people use MSN Plus! that has added logging to MSN for a long time.
MSN 6 (out soon) has logging. The beta got out and er, I may or may not have sampled it.
The ability to send someone a message if they are online is just great. The fact that AIM and MSN can not do this makes these two services quite frankly SUCK.
Actually AIM and MSN do let you send messages to people if they're online. Oh you meant offline?
I've got a 6 digit UIN, and it was certaily much better in the old days. ICQ is FAR too bloated, and most people recognise that. Everyone I know in real life started using MSN, so I followed (who uses it, rather than features is the most important thing about IM).
It'd be nice if ICQ focused on the real things that matter, and try to recapture their old user base. Ther's too much crap that takes too long to load, that I'm sure nobody ever uses.
I'm sorry, but the scenes when Merry & Pippin are riding on the top of Treebeard, the special effects are awful. I hope there's not more of that, because it was simply shockingly bad.
The ents weren't too badly done overall though, but I wouldn't say the effects of the ents alone would be worth paying out for the extended edition. I haven't read the books (*ducks*), and I've read they're more important in the books though, so I suppose it could add a bit to the story if we get interesting scenes rather than extraneous special effects.
Your claim that artists are being cheated out of their revenue is more of a popular myth than anything else. The vast majority of musicians are dying to get contracts with record companies.
Sigh.
Of course they're dying to get contracts - it's the only viable way of making any money at all. They don't have a choice, if you want to make it big at the moment, you have to go through them.
Sure, artists on MP3.com may get an online following, but they're not exactly being played on Radio 1.
If Internet based music distribution really kicked off, maybe the MP3.com model could kick off some more. Music services will offer tracks from artists doing their own thing, as well as the big names, and they may get more recognition. When the record industry controls the music stations, the TV music shows, and the rest of the media, it's hard to get a break in the industry without their support. Artists aren't stupid. They'll go for it, even if they aren't happy with it, and it does not mean by any means that the revenue sharing is fair.
If you want to avoid going to jail, check ID. In other words...Opt-IN.
Heh, what a way to kill the moment.
Perhaps the record labels had a problem with the streaming, and so Apple pulled it - expecting that someone would just hack their code to bring it back.
What with all the fuss about internet radio and royalty fees, it's not too far fetched that the record companies didn't like people legitimately streaming the songs they had legitimately purchased.
IIRC, Tivo & others have similar hidden features that the masses are unaware of that would probably annoy the TV companies if it were publicised.
Do what you can to support this. I may not be American, so there's nothing I can do, but what happens in America seems to roll over into the UK eventually. You had DMCA, it's looking like we'll end up with a European equivilent.
Did everyone spot this bit?
Prohibits the Federal Communications Commission from forcing companies that make or sell PCs or digital video products to include specific copy-protection technology in them.
Palladium requires the hardware to only allow trusted OSes to run. I seem to recall Microsoft wanting the government to force processors & motherboard manufactures to have the system built in. This bill would knock that idea on the head.
For those who don't want to register to Gamespot, can't get there, and also can't hit planetquake3..
Mirror 1
Mirror 2
Mirror 3
Mirror 4
Mirror 5
And how is this brilliant user going to write code that utilizes said database?
How exactly do you propose said newbie would learn to write code to run in said database if they cannot test or experiment with the program?
Lossy JPEG screenshots, piss-poor descriptions, terrible choice of videos to compress, no samples better/worse than DVD... How in the hell can you call it a codec comparison when you compare how they re-compress a lossy codec. It's like comparing Ogg to MPC based on how well they re-encode MP3s.
They are primarily concerned with ripping DVDs. It doesn't matter to them if a codec can do amazing things with sources far better than DVD, if it then falls over and looks horrible when you're using a DVD source.
The DVD may be a lossy source, but the significant thing is that it is far bigger in size (resolution and kbps) than what the codecs will be used to save. You're right, seeing how welL Ogg/MPC can do on a 128Kbps MP3 source is stupid, but since DVD has a much bigger bitrate than the divx (or whatever) that will be saved, it is still a useful comparison.
Whirring is the key word. Hard disks have gotten bigger .... They haven't gotten quieter.
You haven't used a Seagate Barracuda IV have you?
Trust me, they have got a lot quieter than the 80s.
Yes, you can burn the AACs as plain audio onto a blank CD-R, and then re-rip and re-encode them as MP3s and then manually re-tag them, but as a file-conversion technique, this process takes a lot of time. And uses up an awful lot of plastic, too.
;)
Let me introduce, the CD-RW! No need to waste a load of plastic doing this
I don't think the process sounds much longer than going from CD audio to MP3. Hell, back in the day MP3s took a LOT longer to encode than they do now. People still did it though. The extra stange of burning a cd when you're using a nice quick burner (40x+) isn't exactly an eternity.
Introducing... delayed messaging!
I think it's been around for a while. We call them letters.
Ack!
<2GB drive. Teach me not to preview.
They are integrating the filesystem with their SQL engine so that files are easily searchable with the multiple GB hard drives everyone will have by the time 2005 rolls around.
You only have a 2GB hard drive?
I think you've been putting off that upgrade for a bit too long.
I appreciate that for most people "damn quiet" is good enough. Heck, even for me it is. But "completely silent" is an absolute, and it should be used that way.
I agree. I've seen reviews of heatsink/fan combos that are rated in the 40db(A) range sold as 'silent'.
Well damn, that is nothing like silent.
I've spent a lot of money on various fans, replacement heatsinks, fan controllers (A DigiDoc5 and Zalman ZM-MFC1), and some acoustic dampening material from Quiet PC. This gives me a quiet, powerful machine for regular use, and I can crank up the fans if I want to play some games. It's not quite silent - but it certainly is very, very quiet. I can't hear a thing at the moment, although I have the window open so I can hear the noise of the birds singing outside. I do only live in a village though, so it's not like the background noise is akin to being next door to a motorway..
Back to my point though - if something says 'silent' it should emit no noise at all. I shouldn't be able to hear a thing if I leave the PC on overnight for it to be silent in my mind.
I think the only way to achieve this is through using very large heatsinks and heatpipes to get the heat outside of the box. Then, the naturally cool air in the room (cool in comparison to the high temps inside the case) should be enough to keep everything cool enough.
Getting into quiet/silent computing can be dangerous though - you really notice the difference when you go back to noisy computers! If you use someone elses PC for example, or you're at a library/school and have to use the computer, it sounds incredibly loud and offputting.
From the FAQ:
Is the source code for the player and the text file available?
I can't really make these available yet. I don't have as much time as I would like for support or questions on the applet or the text file. I do plan to make them available when they are complete.
The news post here even says that he doesn't want it to be available, but says that he has left the source 'wide-open'. Hmmm.
Ack!
A clickable link for the lazy: The moist towelette theory
I couldn't let this opportunity go to share this link - 'The moist towelette theory' over at e2...
9 64
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=640
From those damn Spamers I'd guess.
:)
No wait, better - it comes from those companies who profit from the utilisation of bandwidth. People who sell email servers marketed as coping with massive volumes of email too. Oh, and lets not forget the people spam filters!
Cynical? Me?
Considering how P4 3.06Ghz actually runs at 3Ghz and does much better at .....
/. readers seem to as well. Naive of me perhaps to think that /. readers would be more clued up, but hey.
Tell me, why is the fact it actually runs at 3Ghz important?
MHz is not a useful measure of performance.
Jesus. No wonder AMD implemented their 'marketing MHz' rating system - the average guy on the street thinks that's how you measure perfomance of CPUs, and even some
I'd love to see the MHz rating be completely scrapped from how we rate CPUs in stores. Yes, it's useful to see that an AMD 2000+ is faster than a 1800+, but it's not so great when comparing with Intel chips. The trouble is that since AMDs are better at some things, and Intels better at others, a number of figures would have to be provided to make a fair and useful comparison. Too many numbers though I'm sure might confuse people, so I guess we'll be stuck with the MHz wars for a while yet.
Alrighty then, I'm an idiot. Thanks :)
Perhaps I missed something in the article, but I didn't see them cover this question at all. Ignoring all the nonsense people are arguing about ("Men and women are different, take advantage of our differences","Not all men or women fit these models, don't judge on gender"), I haven't seen anyone ask this question:
If women given larger, wider screens get the level of spatial awareness that men get on the smaller, narrower screens - what happens when their sample of men are let loose on the bigger screens? Is their response exactly the same as before, is there an improvement, but not as big as the one seen with women, are they still equal to women?
I only saw a comparison between men on small screens and women on large widescreens. Perhaps I missed them address this when I read the article, but it's something to consider.
I am sure there is something wise to be said here.
Indeed. I think your network needs a new net connection, seeing as I'm pulling 70k/s over my ADSL connection that is shared throughout my entire village!
[Over an 802.11b network, no less]
You're probably right. Then again, I wonder...
My CDs are on average, 700mb, lets say 0.7Gb for convenience.
I probably have about.. 300gb total capacity over all of my network. That'd take me around 430 cds to cover all of that.
Now, if I had those 120GB disks, and we assumed that when they were affordable, they'd be as much use as my CD, I'd have approx 51600GB storage on my network!! Hmm.
I wonder if our growth in need for hard drive capacity is leveling off, and if not - when it will. I'm in no doubt it'll be a long time before it stops, since we always seem to manage to come up with some new space eating use for our computers. However, we're already seeing that for a lot of average users, they don't have a hope of filling a 40gb drive without the help of mp3s/movies.
Wow, those 64-bit processors must be vapourware, sine I don't have one in my computer.
Oh, and mainframes. Don't have one of them either.
I think it's fair to say that since the product has actually been demonstrated, that yes - they do have a product to make & sell.