Don't you see: this should be called the pr0n-camera. The mpeg4 compression means it's ready to be posted to the website without recompression, and the recording time is... just about standard for a "feature". Anyway, now that I'm getting older, it's more time than I would need.
The reviews disagree on some things, but every single one of them points out that ATi's drivers are far better and more mature than for the 5800FX. Get your head out of... the past. ATi's dirver's are stable, mature and optimized. NVidia would be lucky to catch up before ATi releases their next great card.
If you had looked at the benchmarks, you would have seen that this huge, loud overpriced card gets spanked by ATi's 9700Pro. This is terrible. We wanted a price war and we're about to get a massacre. ATi doesn't even have to worry about the "next gen Radeon" if the six-month-old Radeon is beating NVidia's 1.5 lb roaring monster which is not even released yet.
Somewhere in Canada there is a lot of high-fiving going on today. Plans for reducing the price of the 9700Pro are being scrapped. Due to recent NVidia incompetence, the ATi profittaking is about to begin... which means we the customers lose.
Some kind person, please link a.pgn file. My Google search failed miserably.
Boring game of slop that sucked.
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 1
I was rooting for TB, but even I thought the game was stupid. As far as game quality goes, Super Bowls are a mismatch 4/5 times. This is definitely one of them. Last week, both games were much better.
Re:Not to be a troll here but...
on
Superbowl XXXVII
·
· Score: 1
It is by far and away not the greatest sporting event all year. Compared even to lowly European soccer club championships, the viewership of the super bowl is paltry. Compared to the Euro Cup and the World Cup... ha! So get a sense of scale. Nobody cares about the stupid super bowl except the US-Americans.
I think you guys are pretty confused about MD5s. It is not true that every file has a unique MD5. Billions of crap files have exactly the same MD5 as your favorite Brittney MP3. This is because (duh) the MD5 is much shorter than the file itself. If it really were unique, and no other file could have that MD5, you would be able to figure out what the original file was just from the MD5, and you would have discovered super-compression. But of course, that's silly.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a program already where you input an MD5 and the program generates several junk files, each of which has the very same MD5. You can bet that the RIAA would have enough sense to use such a program, and writing it would be pretty trivial.
In greatest danger from this are programs like eDonkey and Kaaza where you download the segments of a file from many different users. If the RIAA were serving junk segments with the same MD5 as good segments, the program wouldn't notice. But at the end of your download, that one RIAA chunk would screw up your whole file. What's worse, chances are that you probably would have uploaded that bad chunk to someone else, thinking it was innocent because it passed MD5... so the bad chunks would propagate. As you know, you only need one bad chunk in an AVI file to make it unplayable.
Yeah, I think there is hope in banning their IPs. People who run servers for eDonkey or DirectConnect can already ban IPs from connecting. As soon as an RIAA occupied IP address is found by someone, they could propagate word to other server maintainers that they should not allow that IP to connect.
Of course, the RIAA could abuse such a system by falsely reporting that some generous filesharer with a big drive and serious bandwidth is actually an RIAA mole. That would basically remove the user from the network, and that would suck. So, mole reports could not be accepted from just anyone, but only trusted, proven sources (other server admins, for example).
Another problem is that the RIAA could be very mobile. At first, they'll probably use their own domain as a source, and they'll be easily discovered, but as the battle escalates, I'm sure they'll just commandeer dynamic AOL IP addresses and switch every few hours. That way, tracking them by IP would get complicated.
Well, it makes sense, and don't anybody go acting surprised. It's become a mantra that Xbox competitors have more games. A normal company would respond to that by trying to offer more games themselves, but MS doesn't have to play that way. They have the luxury of saying "Hey, we won't increase the number of Xbox titles--instead, we'll take some games away from PS2 and Nintendo. Sure, the customer loses, but Redmond wins!" Wow, I couldn't script a better villian!
Yes, thank you! I've been shaking my head the whole time. I mean, a retractable screen is so much less stupid than this window! I mean, you pull something over the window to stop light from passing through, and then you pull down the screen. You don't even need to be ultra-rich to do it (if you are, you can have all this automatized). The picture quality will surely be better because you are projecting on a proper screen, your neighbors won't see what you're watching, it's backwards compatible with all windows and future projectors, and you won't see glare and the stupid window frames!
I bet you this company makes computer-controlled auto-ass-wiping toilets, targeted at the same neuvo-riche customers. I just hope they don't run Windows...
This doesn't seem right, because I think we will be using every band from now on. Sure, we may not be using it for music radio, but we would be stupid to just leave those bands empty--and I don't expect that we ever will, even if we discover something like Star Trek's silly "sub-space" for sending signals through. Even if sub-space bandwith is unlimited, it will be overkill for most simple devices like remote controls. That's why I think they and many other simple things will transmit in EM bands forever. I really can't imagine a reason why we would vacate an EM frequency band, no matter what we might possibly discover.
I think that the death of AM was a good thing, because there is some interesting and funny stuff going on in those bands. In any case, it's certainly eclectic. As I was driving the other day, listened to a show on AM called "Fear the Lord", whose premise was that we aren't afraid enough of the wrath of God. I'm serious! It was funny as all hell.
Anyway, I hope that the death of FM will mean that reserving a band will become cheaper, and so more weird and interesting shit will start happening on FM. I want like 3 channels of NPR, because though most of their original content is awesome, some of the filler is too dumb to listen to. And really, how expensive is it to record and rebroadcast interviews with interesting people? That's the sort of stuff NPR does well, and they are the only reason why I would ever turn on the radio at home. I hope that some non-publically-funded radio would try to compete with NPR for this sort of turf (like the Discovery and History Channels on cable compete with PBS) but before that happens, the barriers to entry have to be lower. That's why I'm praying for the day that music gets removed from FM and space opens up for real interesting stuff.
The lead-in to this post mentions a published article about how people don't read many primary articles, about how they will often cite an article when they're confident they have the gist of it from somewhere.
Then, we are not told to read this article, but are instead referred to a New Scientist (!) blurb that gives you the gist of it. If this irony is intentional then it's pretty clever! In any case, I think an interesting point has been made.
I agree. Music has had some pretty awesome centuries without a "recording industry." As I think harder about these issues, I find myself wishing that what the RIAA says really is true--that the recording industry really will die as a result of filesharing. Maybe it should die. I don't see one redeeming thing about it. It's not that atrists will stop making studio recordings--these will still be useful as ads and for broadcast--but their money will be made from performances, merchandise, etc. I also think music will get better if the recording industry dies, because with it, the huge advertising machine that delivers us crappy artists and obscures the good ones will die too.
I think what pisses me off about the dupes is just that they show the editors don't give a shit when they do their job. If they did, they'd at least be able to check the links and their own homepage...
I don't mind lazy workers when they take money from 'Da Man, but these jerks are wasting resources that should be going into Sourceforge and other admirable VA projects. They drone on about Free Market this-and-that, but if VA agreed with their sentiments, they'd be fired immediately and replaced by people who take their job seriously. I mean, Jesus, how hard it is to be a/. editor?
All I can say is: Try to watch all the Fireflys in order, and then watch some ST:TNG episodes... and you'll puke. I'm serious. I was a HUGE TNG fan, and my girlfriend and I recently got every single one of the Voyager episodes and we are watching them all in order. Anyway, this is good bonding time, and I want to keep doing it (we have it set up so we watch from bed), so I've strictly forbidden her from watching Firefly, because I am really scared that if she saw an episode, she'd think the whole Star Trek think is just really really stiff and stupid and preachy and ugly and very badly thought out and full of plot holes and bad acting.
Firefly is what Star Trek might have looked like if Roddenberry were a more intelligent and less prude man.
Unfortunately, this is not the time that Americans like to think of the world from an "outsider" perspective... you know, from the point of view of people opressed by a big and technologically advanced empire, people who are forced to rely on centuries-old technology to simply survive. Americans don't want to consider the notion that such people might be the good guys, because they are too much like the Afghanis and Iraquis that our empire is so busy trying to kill and demoralize.
I wouldn't be surprised if this political element played some role in the crappy timeslots, lack of advertising and eventual cancellation. Remember, FOX is pretty much the official news network of the Cheney/Rumsfeld administration.
While I agree with you that "Firefly" is a stupid show title, I vehemently disagree that the show was written badly. God damn. There has not been better writing on television ever. Ever! Maybe the Simpsons in their prime had tighter writing. Maybe occasional stretches of the Twilight Zone. Maybe Hitchcock. But in my opinion, no season of any show ever made has been as consistently well-written as the first season of Firefly. This is the sort of thing I might say when drunk, when I tend to exaggerate, but today I'm quite sober and still feel the same way.
Right, and besides, there have been endless rants written on how the warp drive is a totally stupid notion, and how the people who conceived it did not even have an undergraduate understanding of relativistic physics.
The thing you forgot to mention is that Firefly is not a superluminal ship. I've seen all the episodes (not the pilot) and there has been no mention that it can travel faster than light.
Though it does seem like they get from place to place pretty fast... maybe that's just a plot gap to keep the FOX executives happy.
Oh no... this Simpsons is my favorite show bar none, but I must say that I would rather see it die than to see Firefly canceled. The Simpsons is completely out of ideas, and for a real fan, watching an episode now is torture. For the last six years or so I've always had friends over for The Simpsons. They brought beer, I cooked and we were all great fans. Well, guess what... they're not invited anymore. The low quality of the new episodes usually leaves in such a foul mood that we now prefer to go out to drink and eat on Sunday night.
Firefly isn't like that. Each Firefly episode is better written/acted/produced than 80% of the movies from Hollywood. Believe me, I am incredibly picky about both technical and story details, but I can't find anything in Firefly to object to. And the episodes are interesting, funny and... just fucking good.
If Firefly were on SciFi, it would be by far their biggest and best show, because they would at least promote it right.
So what you're saying is: "Idiots do stupid things." Thank you, genius.
But then you also seem to be saying: just because a lot of idiots are doing some stupid thing like watching Just Shoot Me, that somehow makes it a better show than Firefly.
You have some funny ideas about the notion of "good." Lemme guess... You're American!
Thank you! At least one person is paying attention. I agree with the analysis in your comment, and further I think it shows just how much thought went into the making of Firefly. I find this premise a thousand times more interesting (and plausible) than Star Trek ("the navy with aliens who speak english") and other shows in the genere.
It's exactly because of idiots like you that this show, the best sci-fi show ever bar none, is getting canceled. What's staying? Enterprise? Gimme a fucking break. Talk about "hard to believe..."
You know, all those palm functions would be nice, but what I really want from a thing I wear on my wrist is the ability to know at a glance what time it is. If this thing tells you about all your meetings at 11:30, 2 and 4 without telling you what time is now, I'll laugh. An ordinary watch is still a pretty good personal organizer if you ask me.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't you see: this should be called the pr0n-camera. The mpeg4 compression means it's ready to be posted to the website without recompression, and the recording time is ... just about standard for a "feature". Anyway, now that I'm getting older, it's more time than I would need.
Yes! Thank you! I'm glad there are still people here who know how to read.
The reviews disagree on some things, but every single one of them points out that ATi's drivers are far better and more mature than for the 5800FX. Get your head out of ... the past. ATi's dirver's are stable, mature and optimized. NVidia would be lucky to catch up before ATi releases their next great card.
Somewhere in Canada there is a lot of high-fiving going on today. Plans for reducing the price of the 9700Pro are being scrapped. Due to recent NVidia incompetence, the ATi profittaking is about to begin... which means we the customers lose.
Some kind person, please link a .pgn file. My Google search failed miserably.
I was rooting for TB, but even I thought the game was stupid. As far as game quality goes, Super Bowls are a mismatch 4/5 times. This is definitely one of them. Last week, both games were much better.
It is by far and away not the greatest sporting event all year. Compared even to lowly European soccer club championships, the viewership of the super bowl is paltry. Compared to the Euro Cup and the World Cup... ha! So get a sense of scale. Nobody cares about the stupid super bowl except the US-Americans.
Well, this is good news. I learned something today! Thanks for the expl.
I wouldn't be surprised if there were a program already where you input an MD5 and the program generates several junk files, each of which has the very same MD5. You can bet that the RIAA would have enough sense to use such a program, and writing it would be pretty trivial.
In greatest danger from this are programs like eDonkey and Kaaza where you download the segments of a file from many different users. If the RIAA were serving junk segments with the same MD5 as good segments, the program wouldn't notice. But at the end of your download, that one RIAA chunk would screw up your whole file. What's worse, chances are that you probably would have uploaded that bad chunk to someone else, thinking it was innocent because it passed MD5... so the bad chunks would propagate. As you know, you only need one bad chunk in an AVI file to make it unplayable.
Of course, the RIAA could abuse such a system by falsely reporting that some generous filesharer with a big drive and serious bandwidth is actually an RIAA mole. That would basically remove the user from the network, and that would suck. So, mole reports could not be accepted from just anyone, but only trusted, proven sources (other server admins, for example).
Another problem is that the RIAA could be very mobile. At first, they'll probably use their own domain as a source, and they'll be easily discovered, but as the battle escalates, I'm sure they'll just commandeer dynamic AOL IP addresses and switch every few hours. That way, tracking them by IP would get complicated.
Well, it makes sense, and don't anybody go acting surprised. It's become a mantra that Xbox competitors have more games. A normal company would respond to that by trying to offer more games themselves, but MS doesn't have to play that way. They have the luxury of saying "Hey, we won't increase the number of Xbox titles--instead, we'll take some games away from PS2 and Nintendo. Sure, the customer loses, but Redmond wins!" Wow, I couldn't script a better villian!
I bet you this company makes computer-controlled auto-ass-wiping toilets, targeted at the same neuvo-riche customers. I just hope they don't run Windows...
This doesn't seem right, because I think we will be using every band from now on. Sure, we may not be using it for music radio, but we would be stupid to just leave those bands empty--and I don't expect that we ever will, even if we discover something like Star Trek's silly "sub-space" for sending signals through. Even if sub-space bandwith is unlimited, it will be overkill for most simple devices like remote controls. That's why I think they and many other simple things will transmit in EM bands forever. I really can't imagine a reason why we would vacate an EM frequency band, no matter what we might possibly discover.
Anyway, I hope that the death of FM will mean that reserving a band will become cheaper, and so more weird and interesting shit will start happening on FM. I want like 3 channels of NPR, because though most of their original content is awesome, some of the filler is too dumb to listen to. And really, how expensive is it to record and rebroadcast interviews with interesting people? That's the sort of stuff NPR does well, and they are the only reason why I would ever turn on the radio at home. I hope that some non-publically-funded radio would try to compete with NPR for this sort of turf (like the Discovery and History Channels on cable compete with PBS) but before that happens, the barriers to entry have to be lower. That's why I'm praying for the day that music gets removed from FM and space opens up for real interesting stuff.
Until then, at least there's college radio!
Then, we are not told to read this article, but are instead referred to a New Scientist (!) blurb that gives you the gist of it. If this irony is intentional then it's pretty clever! In any case, I think an interesting point has been made.
I agree. Music has had some pretty awesome centuries without a "recording industry." As I think harder about these issues, I find myself wishing that what the RIAA says really is true--that the recording industry really will die as a result of filesharing. Maybe it should die. I don't see one redeeming thing about it. It's not that atrists will stop making studio recordings--these will still be useful as ads and for broadcast--but their money will be made from performances, merchandise, etc. I also think music will get better if the recording industry dies, because with it, the huge advertising machine that delivers us crappy artists and obscures the good ones will die too.
I don't mind lazy workers when they take money from 'Da Man, but these jerks are wasting resources that should be going into Sourceforge and other admirable VA projects. They drone on about Free Market this-and-that, but if VA agreed with their sentiments, they'd be fired immediately and replaced by people who take their job seriously. I mean, Jesus, how hard it is to be a /. editor?
Firefly is what Star Trek might have looked like if Roddenberry were a more intelligent and less prude man.
Unfortunately, this is not the time that Americans like to think of the world from an "outsider" perspective... you know, from the point of view of people opressed by a big and technologically advanced empire, people who are forced to rely on centuries-old technology to simply survive. Americans don't want to consider the notion that such people might be the good guys, because they are too much like the Afghanis and Iraquis that our empire is so busy trying to kill and demoralize.
I wouldn't be surprised if this political element played some role in the crappy timeslots, lack of advertising and eventual cancellation. Remember, FOX is pretty much the official news network of the Cheney/Rumsfeld administration.
Goddamn it! I wanna see more episodes!!!
The thing you forgot to mention is that Firefly is not a superluminal ship. I've seen all the episodes (not the pilot) and there has been no mention that it can travel faster than light.
Though it does seem like they get from place to place pretty fast... maybe that's just a plot gap to keep the FOX executives happy.
Firefly isn't like that. Each Firefly episode is better written/acted/produced than 80% of the movies from Hollywood. Believe me, I am incredibly picky about both technical and story details, but I can't find anything in Firefly to object to. And the episodes are interesting, funny and ... just fucking good.
If Firefly were on SciFi, it would be by far their biggest and best show, because they would at least promote it right.
But then you also seem to be saying: just because a lot of idiots are doing some stupid thing like watching Just Shoot Me, that somehow makes it a better show than Firefly.
You have some funny ideas about the notion of "good." Lemme guess... You're American!
Thank you! At least one person is paying attention. I agree with the analysis in your comment, and further I think it shows just how much thought went into the making of Firefly. I find this premise a thousand times more interesting (and plausible) than Star Trek ("the navy with aliens who speak english") and other shows in the genere.
It's exactly because of idiots like you that this show, the best sci-fi show ever bar none, is getting canceled. What's staying? Enterprise? Gimme a fucking break. Talk about "hard to believe..."
You know, all those palm functions would be nice, but what I really want from a thing I wear on my wrist is the ability to know at a glance what time it is. If this thing tells you about all your meetings at 11:30, 2 and 4 without telling you what time is now, I'll laugh. An ordinary watch is still a pretty good personal organizer if you ask me.