That, my friend is why they have sold more music to more customers than any other online pay service COMBINED, and it only took them two weeks.
Yes, indeed. And they did it with a platform that only has 2 to 4% of the market (depending on who you believe). AND they've announced that they're porting iTunes to Windows. Imagine how many songs they would've sold if their store was available for the other 90% of the market.
Something tells me it's brown trousers time in Redmond.
Re:FYI incaseof /. fx
on
I, Spammer
·
· Score: 5, Funny
"I'm probably the most hated person in this room," said an unapologetic Scelson
An impressive claim, considering that he was testifying before Congress.
Even at $.99 per track the credit card costs on a transaction are going to be high.
Most likely they're counting on people buying many tracks (a safe bet from what I've seen), then billing them for it all at once. That would get around the micropayment problem.
I guess my credit card bill will tell the tale of whether there's one lump payment for everything I bought, or several $0.99 payments.
You make a good point. On the other hand, I'd really rather hear about good books rather than books that suck. There's no way I can read even a tiny fraction of a percent of the books that are published. A negative review isn't necessary to convince me not to read a particular book; that's my default action anyway (and that of everyone else).
While I enjoy a good slagging as much as the next person, positive reviews are ultimately more helpful to me in wading through the torrent of books emanating from the publishing industry.
I guess the exception would be when a sucky book/CD/movie/game gets overly hyped. In that case, a negative review could be very useful.
I'm glad someone else had the points to mod you up. I saw this and immediately regretted that I'd blown my last couple of points earlier today.
Bravo.
Although you did leave out Dennis Ritchie, Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, and the guy who invented the abacus.:-)
Personally, I'm happy with a listing in the About box and a credits.txt file in the source code for my projects. If someone really cares who wrote the code, chances are they know where to look.
I hate software that makes you sit through a credits splash screen every time you start it up. Even if it's just killing time while the rest of the code loads, it starts to get pretty annoying the five hundredth time you see it. Rather than admiring Joe Hacker for porting the flux frobnicator module to INTERCAL, you begin to detest the sight of his name.
(I used to put splash screens to projects, but I got better)
I'm not quite sure why this is, perhaps the market for comics is not as highly populated by mainstream stuff, leaving a lot of space for indy works, or perhaps the taste of comicbook fans is generally much more diverse? Who knows.
I would guess that one of the historical reasons behind this is that every podunk town has several printers, while few of them had record pressing plants. Musicians had no choice but to deal with the big boys in California or New York, but the comics guys could just go down to the local mom and pop print shop.
With recordable CDs and first-rate PC audio editing software this has changed, of course.
Distribution is a whole different kettle of fish. The Internet will change that, if only the artists can figure out how to make a living using it.:-)
Oh, they'd *definitely* notice. After I switched my wife over to Linux, it took her hardly any time at all to realize that she wasn't getting those pretty blue screens any more.:-)
Absolutely. OS X is wonderful. I never even considered owning a Mac before, but now I have an OS X machine right next to my Linux box and my (generally started only for games) Windows machine.
Absolutely. I did this a while back myself, and it really works. We still get one or two card solicitations every month, but it's a far cry from the dozens we were getting before.
So, you think disinfo.com is a reliable source, do you? Most of us prefer to get our hard news from sites that don't have special "aliens", "conspiracies", "mind control", and "drugs" links in the sidebar.
but why should the internet be diffent then mail order
Mail order doesn't have to pay sales tax. Ever notice that when you order something from a catalog it says something like "$STATE residents must pay $PERCENTAGE sales tax", where $STATE is the state where the busines is located?
Out of state residents pay nothing. In theory they're supposed to submit a report and pay taxes to their own state. In practice, no one ever does this.
But the *reverse* has never happened (documented). Nobody has ever had a desease which allowed them to live to say 500.
On the other hand, no rat has ever had a disease that enabled it to understand calculus, yet human beings can do it just fine. What's different? The genome.
Mayflies live only a day (in their adult phase). Humans can live for a century. What's different? The genome.
Problem is, with Brainbench and other testing groups online, you're not proving you KNOW the material--just that you're able to do a quick Google search.
As an employer, what difference would it make? If I can hire one guy who can get the answer in 5 minutes with a Google search, or another guy who can figure it out in a couple of days on his own, which one should I hire?
Being able to look up answers (and evaluate whether those answers are right, a tougher proposition) is a very valuable skill.
Your CAVE uses polarization? The one that I've used uses LCD shutter glasses.
Polarization would certainly cut down on the expense of the glasses (despite the cheap ones you get with some consumer video cards, GOOD LCD glasses are expensive) with the disadvantage, as you note, of increasing the screen cost.
By "active" and "passive" stereo are you drawing a distinction between, say, LCD glasses and polarized glasses?
Diffuse reflection does destroy polarization, for the most part. That's why polarized sunglasses are good for reducing glare. The diffuse image passes through with no problem, while the specular reflections from things like the surface of water tends to be polarized. Orient the polarization of the glasses in the opposite sense and voila! No glare.
You need special screens with a specular or "somewhat specular" surface to get good 3D using polarization.
These aren't that hard to find, though. They have higher "gain" than a normal diffuse screen, which makes the image brighter. The disadvantage is that the viewing angle is somewhat restricted (no free lunch).
I suspect that's also why these guys specify DLP projectors rather than LCD. The light from LCD projectors (or screens) tends to polarized in its own right, which would mess things up unless you took special precautions.
The CAVE system I've used uses LCD shutter glasses rather than polarized glasses, and will thus work with LCD projectors.
The moral code YOU apparently believe in was created by a band of savage goat herders in the Middle East thousands of years ago, not by some spook. The spook part is just to delude the ignorant.
If you want to see the consequence of applying the moral code of savage Middle Eastern goat herders to the modern world, I direct you to Ground Zero, New York, New York.
You think Christanity or Judaism are any better? Try actually READING your Bible, rather than thumping it. Start with Numbers Chapter 31.
It may give you a whole different perspective on the presumed raping, killing, and murdering that you allege will be committed by nonbelievers.
Your moral code sucks. It was designed for ignorant savages. If you adhere to it, that makes YOU an ignorant savage.
Re:I wonder how long it will be...
on
Rat Mind Control
·
· Score: 2
Also "rat king" in English. One of these is a major feature in the very disturbing SF story "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats" by James Tiptree, Jr.
the magnets required to keep a train aloft would be gigantic.
Not really. Google on "halbach magnet" and "inductrack". It can be done with quite modest permanent magnets (comparatively speaking). No superconductors or electric power needed!
Re:Why do interviewers use "riddles"?
on
Tech-Interview Riddles
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The "official" answer (which Microsoft was still using as recently as a couple of years ago, according to some friends of mine who interviewed there) is so the covers won't fall through the hole.
This answer fails on at least two levels:
1) There are plenty of manhole covers (or manhole-cover-like-objects) that aren't round. If you've been observant enough to notice this, you fail.
2) There are plenty of other curves of constant width; an infinite number, in fact. The old Wankel rotary engine used such a shape. Though a circle is the only curve of constant *radius*, that's not the issue. If you know enough math to realize this, you fail.
Another possible answer is that it makes it easier to roll a heavy cover out of the way. Again, one of the other curves of constant width would do just about as well.
The REAL answer is that no one knows.
Personally, I think Microsoft would be better off asking people why using fixed-sized buffers for user input is a bad idea, but hey.....
Slashdot Mirror
That, my friend is why they have sold more music to more customers than any other online pay service COMBINED, and it only took them two weeks.
Yes, indeed. And they did it with a platform that only has 2 to 4% of the market (depending on who you believe). AND they've announced that they're porting iTunes to Windows. Imagine how many songs they would've sold if their store was available for the other 90% of the market.
Something tells me it's brown trousers time in Redmond.
"I'm probably the most hated person in this room," said an unapologetic Scelson
An impressive claim, considering that he was testifying before Congress.
So if these are like drag races, would walking disk drives be the equivalent of a tractor pull/monster truck event?
Even at $.99 per track the credit card costs on a transaction are going to be high.
Most likely they're counting on people buying many tracks (a safe bet from what I've seen), then billing them for it all at once. That would get around the micropayment problem.
I guess my credit card bill will tell the tale of whether there's one lump payment for everything I bought, or several $0.99 payments.
You make a good point. On the other hand, I'd really rather hear about good books rather than books that suck. There's no way I can read even a tiny fraction of a percent of the books that are published. A negative review isn't necessary to convince me not to read a particular book; that's my default action anyway (and that of everyone else).
While I enjoy a good slagging as much as the next person, positive reviews are ultimately more helpful to me in wading through the torrent of books emanating from the publishing industry.
I guess the exception would be when a sucky book/CD/movie/game gets overly hyped. In that case, a negative review could be very useful.
I'm glad someone else had the points to mod you up. I saw this and immediately regretted that I'd blown my last couple of points earlier today.
:-)
Bravo.
Although you did leave out Dennis Ritchie, Alan Turing, Charles Babbage, and the guy who invented the abacus.
Personally, I'm happy with a listing in the About box and a credits.txt file in the source code for my projects. If someone really cares who wrote the code, chances are they know where to look.
I hate software that makes you sit through a credits splash screen every time you start it up. Even if it's just killing time while the rest of the code loads, it starts to get pretty annoying the five hundredth time you see it. Rather than admiring Joe Hacker for porting the flux frobnicator module to INTERCAL, you begin to detest the sight of his name.
(I used to put splash screens to projects, but I got better)
He might want to take a look at these records before deciding to take on IBM in court.
41 feet of paper!
I'm not quite sure why this is, perhaps the market for comics is not as highly populated by mainstream stuff, leaving a lot of space for indy works, or perhaps the taste of comicbook fans is generally much more diverse? Who knows.
:-)
I would guess that one of the historical reasons behind this is that every podunk town has several printers, while few of them had record pressing plants. Musicians had no choice but to deal with the big boys in California or New York, but the comics guys could just go down to the local mom and pop print shop.
With recordable CDs and first-rate PC audio editing software this has changed, of course.
Distribution is a whole different kettle of fish. The Internet will change that, if only the artists can figure out how to make a living using it.
and they *wouldn't notice*.
:-)
Oh, they'd *definitely* notice. After I switched my wife over to Linux, it took her hardly any time at all to realize that she wasn't getting those pretty blue screens any more.
She's a solid convert now.
Absolutely. OS X is wonderful. I never even considered owning a Mac before, but now I have an OS X machine right next to my Linux box and my (generally started only for games) Windows machine.
Absolutely. I did this a while back myself, and it really works. We still get one or two card solicitations every month, but it's a far cry from the dozens we were getting before.
It's definitely worth taking the time for this.
So, you think disinfo.com is a reliable source, do you? Most of us prefer to get our hard news from sites that don't have special "aliens", "conspiracies", "mind control", and "drugs" links in the sidebar.
but the US FDA resists this simple and absolutely necessary step to halt the progress of the perfect pathogen throughout the United States.
Err... you're a little behind the times. The FDA banned mammalian protein in livestock feed way back in 1997.
but why should the internet be diffent then mail order
Mail order doesn't have to pay sales tax. Ever notice that when you order something from a catalog it says something like "$STATE residents must pay $PERCENTAGE sales tax", where $STATE is the state where the busines is located?
Out of state residents pay nothing. In theory they're supposed to submit a report and pay taxes to their own state. In practice, no one ever does this.
. It might even be cheaper to build a superconducting system after all.
Google on "Halbach magnets". You don't need superconductors or any kind of electromagnets to make something like this work.
But the *reverse* has never happened (documented). Nobody has ever had a desease which allowed them to live to say 500.
On the other hand, no rat has ever had a disease that enabled it to understand calculus, yet human beings can do it just fine. What's different? The genome.
Mayflies live only a day (in their adult phase). Humans can live for a century. What's different? The genome.
Problem is, with Brainbench and other testing groups online, you're not proving you KNOW the material--just that you're able to do a quick Google search.
As an employer, what difference would it make? If I can hire one guy who can get the answer in 5 minutes with a Google search, or another guy who can figure it out in a couple of days on his own, which one should I hire?
Being able to look up answers (and evaluate whether those answers are right, a tougher proposition) is a very valuable skill.
Absolutely. When the sewer got stopped up at my old apartment building, they used their "Sewer Cam" to find out what was wrong.
(that preserve polizaration, not an easy trick)
Your CAVE uses polarization? The one that I've used uses LCD shutter glasses.
Polarization would certainly cut down on the expense of the glasses (despite the cheap ones you get with some consumer video cards, GOOD LCD glasses are expensive) with the disadvantage, as you note, of increasing the screen cost.
By "active" and "passive" stereo are you drawing a distinction between, say, LCD glasses and polarized glasses?
Diffuse reflection does destroy polarization, for the most part. That's why polarized sunglasses are good for reducing glare. The diffuse image passes through with no problem, while the specular reflections from things like the surface of water tends to be polarized. Orient the polarization of the glasses in the opposite sense and voila! No glare.
You need special screens with a specular or "somewhat specular" surface to get good 3D using polarization.
These aren't that hard to find, though. They have higher "gain" than a normal diffuse screen, which makes the image brighter. The disadvantage is that the viewing angle is somewhat restricted (no free lunch).
I suspect that's also why these guys specify DLP projectors rather than LCD. The light from LCD projectors (or screens) tends to polarized in its own right, which would mess things up unless you took special precautions.
The CAVE system I've used uses LCD shutter glasses rather than polarized glasses, and will thus work with LCD projectors.
No morals, no absolute truth; no right or wrong.
Wrong. Morals are created by human beings.
The moral code YOU apparently believe in was created by a band of savage goat herders in the Middle East thousands of years ago, not by some spook. The spook part is just to delude the ignorant.
If you want to see the consequence of applying the moral code of savage Middle Eastern goat herders to the modern world, I direct you to Ground Zero, New York, New York.
You think Christanity or Judaism are any better? Try actually READING your Bible, rather than thumping it. Start with Numbers Chapter 31.
It may give you a whole different perspective on the presumed raping, killing, and murdering that you allege will be committed by nonbelievers.
Your moral code sucks. It was designed for ignorant savages. If you adhere to it, that makes YOU an ignorant savage.
Also "rat king" in English. One of these is a major feature in the very disturbing SF story "The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats" by James Tiptree, Jr.
the magnets required to keep a train aloft would be gigantic.
Not really. Google on "halbach magnet" and "inductrack". It can be done with quite modest permanent magnets (comparatively speaking). No superconductors or electric power needed!
I'll bet he gets there by the shortest path.
The "official" answer (which Microsoft was still using as recently as a couple of years ago, according to some friends of mine who interviewed there) is so the covers won't fall through the hole.
This answer fails on at least two levels:
1) There are plenty of manhole covers (or manhole-cover-like-objects) that aren't round. If you've been observant enough to notice this, you fail.
2) There are plenty of other curves of constant width; an infinite number, in fact. The old Wankel rotary engine used such a shape. Though a circle is the only curve of constant *radius*, that's not the issue. If you know enough math to realize this, you fail.
Another possible answer is that it makes it easier to roll a heavy cover out of the way. Again, one of the other curves of constant width would do just about as well.
The REAL answer is that no one knows.
Personally, I think Microsoft would be better off asking people why using fixed-sized buffers for user input is a bad idea, but hey.....