I thought Microsoft partnered up with MTV to make Urge. Are they going to have multiple subscription services? If so, will customers have to pay $5/mo or whatever for each? Or will one payment grant you access to the "Microsoft Music Network" that has Urge, Splurge, and whatever other music store they come up with in the future?
Upload all your images and other binary files, and use this as the bulk storage server for your website. Keep the PHP somewhere else, and use the free bandwidth offered by Google. Wonder what the cap on transfer/month is, or if there is a restriction on outside referals...
Remember back in the day when you could sniff your neighbohr's packets because all of the local cable modems shared the same segment? After all, the cable network at the lowest level is just a bunch of houses sharing the same copper line.
Wouldn't this be then an ideal solution to distributing broadcast content? It would be exactly like today's premium channels, where everyone receives the data, but only some can decrypt it.
I know that today, you can't sniff on the segment anymore, but I think that is due to the modem blocking out all other packets except yours, since the physical infrastructure of the cable system has not changed. AFAIK, it is still not point-to-point like the phone network, but I might be wrong.
What I meant by "no learning" was that you shouldnt get your morals and values from a game which is just meant to be fun. Sure, we always learn from every new experience, but I think it is unwise to learn such things as "if you work hard, you DESERVE compensation", which you should be learning from your real surroundings, not ficticious ones.
On the issue regarding the time spent vs the rewards, I believe the difference lies in that there are creative and non-creative skills/jobs. When designing a new chair, I would prefer a guy that does less work/hr, but produces better quality work. But when the product is ready for production, I want people who just pump them out, with only the minimal skill required to make said product.
This concept is very hard to create in a game, since there are usually very rigid game rules that need to be followed. For example, in most games that have crafting, you don't really have an unlimited range of things you can craft. Ultimately, you can only craft the things the game designers allow, the only skill required is clicking a button. Same goes for gathering items, etc.
Anyway, no one should be learning anything from WoW in the first place. It is a game. Like many others have said before, just enjoy it without looking for any deeper meaning.
Well, my reply is a few days late, but just in case anyone is reading this...
The only multichannel formats understood by home theater receivers nowadays are Dobly Digital (AC3) and DTS. When you playback that AAC file, it gets decoded by your computer into the 6 different tracks. The digital output from your soundcard is only stereo PCM, so it gets downmixed to that, and you get the stereo signal into the receiver.
The only way to get the full surround signal is to use 6 analog connections into your receiver (5.1 input). I also think a nVidia chipset had the capability of encoding AC3 in real time so that also would be an option, but it is not produced anymore. I think it was called Soundstorm.
So in summary, if you want surround sound from your PC into your home theater, you need a six channel input in your receiver and the proper connections from the soundcard.
I just want to focus on the idea that intellectual property (IP) is a conglomerate of many laws, such as copyright law and patent law. My belief is that IP goes far beyond any laws that we have right now. RMS thinks that all of these laws have very little in common, but I think otherwise.
IP is very simple. It is the right of whoever made something to have control over how that something is traded or used. This is very obvious with physical things because the issue remains simple as long as reproduction of an object is not trivial. One guy making tables can sell those tables, but if you want to compete with him you will have to make tables yourself, from scratch, just like he does. But what happens if you then copy his work, and make a factory where robots will do the work for you? You see, you are not paying for the table; you are paying for the work that went into the table.
You could have taken some milk crates and a piece of plywood and made your own table in 2 minutes, but you purchased one from this fellow because of the work and skill that went into the object. Same way you donâ(TM)t buy a music CD for the plastic disc, you buy it for the skill and work that went into the music. So what does this have to do with IP?
Well, as you can see, what has value in a product is not the product itself. This is true for most products. An exception for example is food. That has a value all of its own, plus the work that went into growing/preparing the food. But a glass vase or car have no intrinsic value beyond of what we give it. So my livelihood, the reason people give me money for work, is really for the stuff that I have in my head, and what I do with it. Anyone can learn how to play a guitar, but only some people play it well.
I think it is pretty obvious that my thoughts and ideas should be protected just like my physical properties are protected. In fact, they should be protected even more, since it is so easy to steal an idea. That leads me to what I think of theft. Theft has nothing to do with you removing something. People abuse the excuse that since the original owner still has the property (code, for example) then no theft was committed, and it is âoejust a copyright issueâ. But as I have tried to explain above, what has value is the code itself, and the coder was not compensated for that work that you are using.
It is all very simple. One person creates something. That person then decides how that something will be distributed, who can get it, and how can they use it. It is their right. Period. No way around it. If an artist tells you that you canâ(TM)t download their song, or you canâ(TM)t download their code, or you canâ(TM)t download their photograph, then you shouldnâ(TM)t. And if you do so, then you should accept the consequences of your actions.
This is a little something I wrote on HydrogenAudio last night...
First of all, Apple has around 250k songs in their collection right now... so...
5MB/song * 250,000 Songs = 1,250GB
Their collection is 1.25TeraBytes right now... you can build a server that handles that much for around $2,000 I think... anyway, moving along... they sold the million songs in a week... sooooo...
Now remember... that 66Mbps is an average. Most likely they were sending down data much faster than that... to satisfy consumers with a quick download... hell... I'm sure a single XServe with its Gigabit interface can handle all the file downloading... after all, it is just dumbly sending bits down a pipe... the account systems will take a lot more horsepower tho. But I think apple uses the already-established Akamai network... so that there is not one link to get saturated. BTW, the webpage says that a single XServe RAID will handle up to 2.52TB of data. About twice the size of their current collection.
How can someone say the "software industry" is dead?! After all, what the hell am I running on my computer? Is this the last version of every program I use?
Is it slowing down? Sure... but I liken it to the field of Physics. A few years ago, you threw a stone and studied gravity. Nowadays, you need supercolliders to study quantum gravity. Amateur physics has slowed down. A lot.
And apparently, so has amateur programming. We all see it every day. Some project starts up in SF that does one thing alright, but it never gets developed into a PRODUCT. A library and a command-line interface is just plain not enough. Not when you are competing against a billion-dollar company with hundreds of great programmers.
But then again, it is definetly not dead. There are still people trying to decipher nature using "non-professional" means. Astronomy is one such field. And software, professional and otherwise, will always continue. After all, the small projects could be considered practice. But most important, they are at the very least a hobby, at the most a passion. And those never die.
I'm replying to myself because I think it will display better than replying to each reply I got. --- Rand: AFAIK, 802.11b does not offer any "extra" features for lots of hosts sending data all on the same channel. Basically, the more people you have running in the same channel, the slower it will get for everyone. This also goes for the channels next to that one, since the frequencies overlap. --- Rich: Yes, the DO share the same frequency as long as they are on the same channel. Problem is, adjacent channels also share frequencies, therefore dragging the speed of that "block" down. There are only 3 blocks that do not overlap at all. And because of this, it is exactly like hubed ethernet... lots of collissions, lots of problems. That's why switches were invented.
About Mesh networks, pie in the sky. Read my reply to Wolf below. And about UWB, well that is harder to explain. Whenever you transmit something, you are putting energy into the system. UWB spreads the energy over a LOT of spectrum, so the signal itself is very small, but all over. This does not affect strong signals in the area. But it does raise the noise floor over the entire spectrum that it is using, which harms devices that are working on the edge of their capabilities. IMHO, it might work, but for a small range of applications. If you put UWB into everything, it harms us all, even itself. What happens when you have thousands of UWB devices all using up just a tiny bit of a 2GHz wide chunk? Their added power does not seem so little anymore eh? --- Wolf: Plenty of things CAN be done. Thing is, all of that requires time and effort, something Joe Consumer will not want to give. So the homogenous, automagicall network some people are proposing (nodes drop in and out, and it all magically works) is just fiction. If all Intel devices have WiFi, they will have omni antennas, not directional. --- All: Wireless is nice and all, but it has to be REGULATED. This is an example of an industry where we NEED government regulation (FCC). Why? Because the airwaves are a non-renewable resource, as the greenies call it. Once you dump too much energy into it, the noise floor goes thru the roof (heh) and nothing else will work. Thats why wired networks are so easy! Each wire is pretty much a whole frequency universe unto itself.
If everyone is going with WiFi (which I take to be just 802.11b), won't the freqency spectrum saturate in a short period of time?
Remember, there are only 3 (or 4 if you tolerate some overlap) channels available in the US that will work in close range to each other. Add more than that, and speeds start going down. Even more, and packets get lost.
To me, WiFi has a very specific application: Wireless LANs. As in LOCAL area networks. As in your private home or small-business network. I think trying to shoehorn WiFi into a WAN backet is foolish... but I've been wrong before. It might work for point-to-point connections over long distances using tight beams... but open those beams up and you start interferring with your neighbors. Now imagine every device in your house using the 2.4GHz band, and see all hell break loose.
When companies "fights back" with this kind of tactic, it does not bother me one bit. It is similar to what DirecTV does to the hackers. They try to compete in a match of minds, not litigation.
The hackers find ways around MS' defenses, and MS counterattacks by changing their board layout. Of course, MS is on the defensive, since it takes them a while to get the new board in the line, but when it happens, all the old attack methods are rendered ineffective. On the other hand, if they had a way to change software around on the cusomers' units...
I say bravo to MS, for not fighting this in the courts, but instead in the field.
TV and any other media source can survive without ads. Just look at HBO, which only has ads for other HBO shows. HBO also runs ads on other networks to bring people to them, but I guess that could be replaced by word-of-mouth and free trial periods.
What does have to change is mostly a salary issue with some of the people in the entertainment industry. Now, first of all lets make it clear that I appreciate and to an extent "love" these people. I grew up with the crew of A-Team, McGyver, etc... and quite honestly I can say that in a way, they were good role models.
Now we have shows like Friends for example. I don't watch TV all that often anymore, but I've seen quite a few episodes of Friends and I enjoyed them. But then later I find out that they get payed like 100K or 1M dollars for each episode or some other absurd amount of money. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but the question is, are WE willing to pay for it?
Right now we pay for TV in a myriad of different ways. The products we buy because we saw an ad on tv is one of them. The cable bill is another. The ads themelves do nothing to pay for TV, but they send money over to companies that will eventually trickle down to the studios. There is no way to say how much money the ads really make. I know a little economics, but when I took the class my freshman year of college, it seemed more like a whole lot of statistics and predictions on what people WOULD do, not what they really did. For example, if hamburgers cost half of what they do, people buy twice as many. Yeah right.
All of this leads to something similar to a pay-per-show system. Each episode of Farscape costs me $5, so for a month of new shows I would be paying $20 (for example, with one new episode a week) and then "free" replays of all the past episodes during the other days of the week. The question I have is this: For this model to work, how much would we have to pay?
It would be really informative if someone that knows how much each episode of Farscape costs. This means the salary for the actors, but also all the other stuff, like animators, catering, key grip boy and everyone that makes the show happen. Then divide by how many viewers the series has, and that should give you a number. I'm pretty sure it will be much more expensive that what we are all willing to pay. I guess this means that bad shows would just die off. But then, how would new shows get started? It's like any business I guess, and if the studio shares the equipment, would be much cheaper. It all comes down to the actors asking for insane amounts of money for doing what they do. Oh and not just the actors, but everyone in the chain. What amount of money should entertainers make? More than a doctor? Or an engineer? Or more... than a teacher? After all, Sesame Street taught me a lot, but I doubt they taught me more than any of my school teachers. Why are THEY not making 1,000,000 a year?
Hmm I guess after writting for a while, what I'm trying to say is that greed messes everything up. It is not enough to make enough money to live comfortably now. You always have to make more, and more. Money itself is not evil. It just represents goods, like apples and oranges. But when the pursuit of money becomes distorted, maybe because of an overgrown ego, a feeling of being so important that you actually convince yourself that you are worth an infinite amount of money, then societies crumble. It has happened time after time, and it will only continue to happen.
First of all let me just say that I support Gattaga being in the #2 slot.
I think that Plausibility above everything else should matter in a SciFi movie. It helps to suspend our disbelief, and truly get inmersed in the movie. For example, it is much easier to see myself, or my future children, living in a world like Gattaga rather than a world like Star Wars or Trek.
Of course, there are many other factors involved in that, and I would say that Vision/Futurism should be a very close second, with Adrenaline being the last. That does not mean that it is not important, just that I like movies that leave me thinking after I watch them.
Accuracy does not mean that bugs in the movie make it bad. It defines the movie as SCIENCE fiction, instead of just fiction/fantasy. That is the beauty of SciFi, the possibility that one day all the things and ideas presented in the movie will come to pass.
Reading the article, I notice that both of the main "problems" with OSS have nothing to do with the fact that it is open. They mention the fact that it is hard(er) to configure, and that there are fewer applications available. Well, for those 2 things, the fact that the OS source code is open is not relevant.
Lots of people say that OSS is basically software that you write to scratch an itch. Well, the problem is that most people that know how to code well enough to write an OS don't really need cute configuration dialogs and the latest in hardware dongles. They want a stable system that just works.
So really, there is nothing wrong with OSS, and it can be applied to anything, the OS, apps, games, etc. The fact is that [Linux|BSD|etc] are not really meant to be for the desktop. They are designed to be used in workstations, servers, and things of that nature. It does not really matter if you can see the code or not... we all know MacOSX is based on BSD, so we know it is possible to get a "pretty and easy to use" system on top of our open OS, but most of us just don't really need it.
PS - My desktop machine is running Win2K, and has been up for 6 months now without crashing. But I still prefer BSD for any sort of real, business server task.
The issue of Intellectual Property (IP) has been tossed around in this forum over and over again, with some people hating having copyrights and other controls over IP, and some people in favor. My personal thinking on the issue is that in the future, there will not be anything but IP. Here's why:
Someday, hopefuly, we will have machines that will generate any physical shape out of any physycal material. Things like matter recombiners, or replicators or whatever, will be commonplace. It won't be for a while, most likely I won't live to see this, but someday I hope it happens.
Now at this point, everything made of matter will be worthless. You will get a brand new 10karat diamond in 5:30minutes. A new Ferrari while you take a walk around the block. What then? You could say that at this point, money (and value) have no place in society, but as the evolved monkeys we are, there is always a need for a power structure, and this means money. I used to think that someday we could all "ascend" into another realm of conciousness where everyone will be equal and no one person would be "better" than anyone else. Sadly, I no longer believe in this.
So at this point, the only thing that you can trade, that can have value, that can define your usefulness to the world is your IP. That is, the contents of your mind will be the only thing that you can put a "price" to. This happens already today, for example engineers get paid for their designs, they don't actually have to MAKE anything, just tell someone else how to. This is also true of some of the fields of science, such as theoretical phycics.
And also, of some artists. In the "hardware" arts, such as painting, sculpting, etc. there is no question about what someone's work is, since there is an actual object there that represents their work. But what about the "software" artists, people that sing, or act? Their work is not tangible, and that leads people to think that it has no value, or very little value (monetary). So they feel it is ok to share and trade their songs (or acts) with others. Also, they mention that it is not stealing, since the person who bough the CD still has the CD.
What they fail to realize is that the theft is from the artist, not from the consumer. Why? Because you are sharing the contents of his or her mind, which have been expressed as music, to others, without respecting the wishes of that person to receive some sort of compensation for their work. Yes, there are big bad companies representing these people, but the fact of the matter is that most artists live off of their work, and therefore need some sort of REAL MONEY to get by. Most muscicians will agree that music should be free, and enjoyed. Some of them will work for free for a good cause, or jut for fun. But at the end of the day, when you have a mortgage paymend due, and you have to clothe your kids, good will does not cut it. Sharing art has its place, and if the artist is willing to give his art for free, then the better for everyone. But in the real world, these people have to actually live, not just spend 24/7 playing for pennies at a bar. Of course, the same thing applies to actors, and in the future, scupltors and painters as well.
Will the raping of IP ever stop? Doubtful. Again, we are just monkeys. We see a bannana on the ground, we take it. Hell, I take it... and I'd say that about half the MP3s I have are "stolen". The point is that when it comes time to educate the next generation (our kids) we should strive to make them better than ourselves. So the next time you like an artist, just go out and buy the CD, even if you have all their MP3s already. I have done this quite a few times with differents artists such as Ayreon and Saliva, just to name a few. I rarely listen to radio, or watch MTV, so the only exposure I have to new music is just randomly downloading MP3s from other people I know.
Hopefully, by the time we have technology to manipulate matter at will, we will have an intellect as advanced.
Why is this controller so horrible?
on
New Cube controller
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
...I mean really? It just a keyboard with a joystick on the left and some buttons on the right!
Do this: take your keyboard and put it in your lap. Then take your hands and place them at the left and right respectively. Is that so uncomfortable? Actually I think it feels great, specially for games where you have to type.
And of course you can hold it up in the air... but why? I mean, if you are going to type a lot, might as well just leave it on your lap! And we don't know how heavy it is yet!
Hell, if it's heavy, it'll be a good workout for those geeky arms you have! j/k
This laptop is GREAT! I got one with a P3-800, 256MB, 32GB and DVD for $2000 from the Dell Refurbished site. Works VERY well with Win2k and Linux. There is also a very good page at
http://www.envytech.co.uk/5000e/
with information on drivers for most OSs.
Regardless of what laptop you are going to buy, check the refurbished sites first, and also check for pages with info before you buy it! Good Luck!
Sony reported that they will be supporting Linux on the PS2 (at least in Japan). Now AOL says they are going to be adding support for the PS2. Of course, they could go out and make a whole new AOL-OS or something, but maybe they are just going to port everything to Linux, and use that? And since Mozilla already runs under linux, it wouldnt be much of a stretch to make sure it runs ok in the PS2 hardware.
How would this benefit the linux comunity? First of all, it will get mentioned more. If the AOL people are nice, they might even add a little linux icon somewhere during the boot sequence. Second, there will be development focused on linux. Meaning, maybe the AOL coders can fix some bugs in the kernel while porting their stuff, etc.
heh I know... but I don't want to wait for it to be shipped, and the local "cheaper" stores don't carry it, or most prog for that matter. Only Dream Theater...
... which is we would not need all this copyright/patent protection crap if people were honest to begin with.
I agree 100% with what Mr. Gilmore states, and I also fear what will happen in the [near] future now that our rights have begun to be striped away. Nonetheless, the problem still remains that people think they have extra rights which they don't.
For years I was part of the problem. Copying all kinds of software (games, songs, video) because...THE MAN... charges way to much. It should be cheaper I (we?) say, and in all honesty it should. But that does not give us the right to then steal the content. And it is because we do this, that the companies have tried to defend themselves against it. Sure, they are a bunch of greedy bitches (MS wants to stop piracy, even though they make A LOT of money who actually buy it?!) but that is THEIR RIGHT, and your rights stop when the other person's rights start.
Focusing on MP3s, the argument that newer/smaller bands benefit from the file sharing is complete hogwash. A friend of mine is a drummer for a small punk rock band. Since they also fear THE MAN, they have attempted to do all the work (CD mastering, advertising, etc) themselves, which is not a bad idea. So they got a computer with a CDr, burnt their own CDs, and shared their songs in Napster, with some information in the comments field on how to contact them for CDs etc. They were selling them cheap ($5+shipping) yet a few months have passed and less than 10 people have asked for CDs. Most of the people who email them ask for more songs to be shared, so we can assume that they dont suck. Why does this happen? Maybe they should have posted less quality rips (instead of 192Kb/s) or sell the CDs cheaper... but I doubt those were the reasons.
So what are musicians to do? Make music for the pure love of it, and eat whatever rats they find down the alley? Or maybe they can get a job doing something else, and after working 40+ hours a week feel nice and relaxed and then make some music? Please! Making music is like making a car. We need them both, and both should be compensated (greatly, if they deserve it) for their work. And the excuse that record labels take most of they money their artists generate goes nowhere, since if you don't buy it in the first place, they won't get their pennies-on-the-dollar.
This shit is not new. AFAIK its been going around, in recent times, since the 60s/70s, and I am sure that if we look back even more, we will find people copying someone's vase and selling it cheaper thousands of years ago. Sadly, it's all part of the human condition I guess. What do we do about it? Hope... that someday we can be honest. By teaching our children that taking something that does not belong to them is wrong. By not "stealing cable" because those damn premium channels cost too much. By not using the automated collect calling systems to send short messages back and forth. These things might seem trivial (because after all, those big companies still make lots of money, at least some of them) but they are an indicator of our morals (or ethics, whatever).
Oh, and BTW, I still use Napster. Recently I downloaded a few songs from "Spock's Beard", liked them and went out and bought one of their CDs. It was expensive (about $18) but it is worth it.
There is a use for free information, but if you take it too far it stops being free and starts being stolen.
I don't know much about this, but I thought people that had severe brain damage needed respirators and blood pumpers or they die. So, if you can convince a brain that the body dies, you may end up in the same situation (kinda like HALTing the brain).
Slashdot Mirror
I thought Microsoft partnered up with MTV to make Urge. Are they going to have multiple subscription services? If so, will customers have to pay $5/mo or whatever for each? Or will one payment grant you access to the "Microsoft Music Network" that has Urge, Splurge, and whatever other music store they come up with in the future?
Not really talking about space... most providers limit how many GB you can transfer per month, haven't seen if Google does or not.
Upload all your images and other binary files, and use this as the bulk storage server for your website. Keep the PHP somewhere else, and use the free bandwidth offered by Google. Wonder what the cap on transfer/month is, or if there is a restriction on outside referals...
Remember back in the day when you could sniff your neighbohr's packets because all of the local cable modems shared the same segment? After all, the cable network at the lowest level is just a bunch of houses sharing the same copper line.
Wouldn't this be then an ideal solution to distributing broadcast content? It would be exactly like today's premium channels, where everyone receives the data, but only some can decrypt it.
I know that today, you can't sniff on the segment anymore, but I think that is due to the modem blocking out all other packets except yours, since the physical infrastructure of the cable system has not changed. AFAIK, it is still not point-to-point like the phone network, but I might be wrong.
What I meant by "no learning" was that you shouldnt get your morals and values from a game which is just meant to be fun. Sure, we always learn from every new experience, but I think it is unwise to learn such things as "if you work hard, you DESERVE compensation", which you should be learning from your real surroundings, not ficticious ones.
On the issue regarding the time spent vs the rewards, I believe the difference lies in that there are creative and non-creative skills/jobs. When designing a new chair, I would prefer a guy that does less work/hr, but produces better quality work. But when the product is ready for production, I want people who just pump them out, with only the minimal skill required to make said product.
This concept is very hard to create in a game, since there are usually very rigid game rules that need to be followed. For example, in most games that have crafting, you don't really have an unlimited range of things you can craft. Ultimately, you can only craft the things the game designers allow, the only skill required is clicking a button. Same goes for gathering items, etc.
Anyway, no one should be learning anything from WoW in the first place. It is a game. Like many others have said before, just enjoy it without looking for any deeper meaning.
Well, my reply is a few days late, but just in case anyone is reading this...
The only multichannel formats understood by home theater receivers nowadays are Dobly Digital (AC3) and DTS. When you playback that AAC file, it gets decoded by your computer into the 6 different tracks. The digital output from your soundcard is only stereo PCM, so it gets downmixed to that, and you get the stereo signal into the receiver.
The only way to get the full surround signal is to use 6 analog connections into your receiver (5.1 input). I also think a nVidia chipset had the capability of encoding AC3 in real time so that also would be an option, but it is not produced anymore. I think it was called Soundstorm.
So in summary, if you want surround sound from your PC into your home theater, you need a six channel input in your receiver and the proper connections from the soundcard.
I just want to focus on the idea that intellectual property (IP) is a conglomerate of many laws, such as copyright law and patent law. My belief is that IP goes far beyond any laws that we have right now. RMS thinks that all of these laws have very little in common, but I think otherwise.
IP is very simple. It is the right of whoever made something to have control over how that something is traded or used. This is very obvious with physical things because the issue remains simple as long as reproduction of an object is not trivial. One guy making tables can sell those tables, but if you want to compete with him you will have to make tables yourself, from scratch, just like he does. But what happens if you then copy his work, and make a factory where robots will do the work for you? You see, you are not paying for the table; you are paying for the work that went into the table.
You could have taken some milk crates and a piece of plywood and made your own table in 2 minutes, but you purchased one from this fellow because of the work and skill that went into the object. Same way you donâ(TM)t buy a music CD for the plastic disc, you buy it for the skill and work that went into the music. So what does this have to do with IP?
Well, as you can see, what has value in a product is not the product itself. This is true for most products. An exception for example is food. That has a value all of its own, plus the work that went into growing/preparing the food. But a glass vase or car have no intrinsic value beyond of what we give it. So my livelihood, the reason people give me money for work, is really for the stuff that I have in my head, and what I do with it. Anyone can learn how to play a guitar, but only some people play it well.
I think it is pretty obvious that my thoughts and ideas should be protected just like my physical properties are protected. In fact, they should be protected even more, since it is so easy to steal an idea. That leads me to what I think of theft. Theft has nothing to do with you removing something. People abuse the excuse that since the original owner still has the property (code, for example) then no theft was committed, and it is âoejust a copyright issueâ. But as I have tried to explain above, what has value is the code itself, and the coder was not compensated for that work that you are using.
It is all very simple. One person creates something. That person then decides how that something will be distributed, who can get it, and how can they use it. It is their right. Period. No way around it. If an artist tells you that you canâ(TM)t download their song, or you canâ(TM)t download their code, or you canâ(TM)t download their photograph, then you shouldnâ(TM)t. And if you do so, then you should accept the consequences of your actions.
This is a little something I wrote on HydrogenAudio last night...
... so that there is not one link to get saturated. BTW, the webpage says that a single XServe RAID will handle up to 2.52TB of data. About twice the size of their current collection.
First of all, Apple has around 250k songs in their collection right now... so...
5MB/song * 250,000 Songs = 1,250GB
Their collection is 1.25TeraBytes right now... you can build a server that handles that much for around $2,000 I think... anyway, moving along... they sold the million songs in a week... sooooo...
5MB/song * 1 Million Songs = 5TB = 40Tb
60Sec/Min * 60Min/Hr * 24Hr/Day * 7Day/Wk = 604,800Sec/Wk
40Tb/Wk = 66Mb/sec
Now remember... that 66Mbps is an average. Most likely they were sending down data much faster than that... to satisfy consumers with a quick download... hell... I'm sure a single XServe with its Gigabit interface can handle all the file downloading... after all, it is just dumbly sending bits down a pipe... the account systems will take a lot more horsepower tho. But I think apple uses the already-established Akamai network
How can someone say the "software industry" is dead?! After all, what the hell am I running on my computer? Is this the last version of every program I use?
Is it slowing down? Sure... but I liken it to the field of Physics. A few years ago, you threw a stone and studied gravity. Nowadays, you need supercolliders to study quantum gravity. Amateur physics has slowed down. A lot.
And apparently, so has amateur programming. We all see it every day. Some project starts up in SF that does one thing alright, but it never gets developed into a PRODUCT. A library and a command-line interface is just plain not enough. Not when you are competing against a billion-dollar company with hundreds of great programmers.
But then again, it is definetly not dead. There are still people trying to decipher nature using "non-professional" means. Astronomy is one such field. And software, professional and otherwise, will always continue. After all, the small projects could be considered practice. But most important, they are at the very least a hobby, at the most a passion. And those never die.
I'm replying to myself because I think it will display better than replying to each reply I got.
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Rand: AFAIK, 802.11b does not offer any "extra" features for lots of hosts sending data all on the same channel. Basically, the more people you have running in the same channel, the slower it will get for everyone. This also goes for the channels next to that one, since the frequencies overlap.
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Rich: Yes, the DO share the same frequency as long as they are on the same channel. Problem is, adjacent channels also share frequencies, therefore dragging the speed of that "block" down. There are only 3 blocks that do not overlap at all. And because of this, it is exactly like hubed ethernet... lots of collissions, lots of problems. That's why switches were invented.
About Mesh networks, pie in the sky. Read my reply to Wolf below. And about UWB, well that is harder to explain. Whenever you transmit something, you are putting energy into the system. UWB spreads the energy over a LOT of spectrum, so the signal itself is very small, but all over. This does not affect strong signals in the area. But it does raise the noise floor over the entire spectrum that it is using, which harms devices that are working on the edge of their capabilities. IMHO, it might work, but for a small range of applications. If you put UWB into everything, it harms us all, even itself. What happens when you have thousands of UWB devices all using up just a tiny bit of a 2GHz wide chunk? Their added power does not seem so little anymore eh?
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Wolf:
Plenty of things CAN be done. Thing is, all of that requires time and effort, something Joe Consumer will not want to give. So the homogenous, automagicall network some people are proposing (nodes drop in and out, and it all magically works) is just fiction. If all Intel devices have WiFi, they will have omni antennas, not directional.
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All: Wireless is nice and all, but it has to be REGULATED. This is an example of an industry where we NEED government regulation (FCC). Why? Because the airwaves are a non-renewable resource, as the greenies call it. Once you dump too much energy into it, the noise floor goes thru the roof (heh) and nothing else will work. Thats why wired networks are so easy! Each wire is pretty much a whole frequency universe unto itself.
If everyone is going with WiFi (which I take to be just 802.11b), won't the freqency spectrum saturate in a short period of time?
Remember, there are only 3 (or 4 if you tolerate some overlap) channels available in the US that will work in close range to each other. Add more than that, and speeds start going down. Even more, and packets get lost.
To me, WiFi has a very specific application: Wireless LANs. As in LOCAL area networks. As in your private home or small-business network. I think trying to shoehorn WiFi into a WAN backet is foolish... but I've been wrong before. It might work for point-to-point connections over long distances using tight beams... but open those beams up and you start interferring with your neighbors. Now imagine every device in your house using the 2.4GHz band, and see all hell break loose.
When companies "fights back" with this kind of tactic, it does not bother me one bit. It is similar to what DirecTV does to the hackers. They try to compete in a match of minds, not litigation.
The hackers find ways around MS' defenses, and MS counterattacks by changing their board layout. Of course, MS is on the defensive, since it takes them a while to get the new board in the line, but when it happens, all the old attack methods are rendered ineffective. On the other hand, if they had a way to change software around on the cusomers' units...
I say bravo to MS, for not fighting this in the courts, but instead in the field.
TV and any other media source can survive without ads. Just look at HBO, which only has ads for other HBO shows. HBO also runs ads on other networks to bring people to them, but I guess that could be replaced by word-of-mouth and free trial periods.
What does have to change is mostly a salary issue with some of the people in the entertainment industry. Now, first of all lets make it clear that I appreciate and to an extent "love" these people. I grew up with the crew of A-Team, McGyver, etc... and quite honestly I can say that in a way, they were good role models.
Now we have shows like Friends for example. I don't watch TV all that often anymore, but I've seen quite a few episodes of Friends and I enjoyed them. But then later I find out that they get payed like 100K or 1M dollars for each episode or some other absurd amount of money. Well, that's all fine and dandy, but the question is, are WE willing to pay for it?
Right now we pay for TV in a myriad of different ways. The products we buy because we saw an ad on tv is one of them. The cable bill is another. The ads themelves do nothing to pay for TV, but they send money over to companies that will eventually trickle down to the studios. There is no way to say how much money the ads really make. I know a little economics, but when I took the class my freshman year of college, it seemed more like a whole lot of statistics and predictions on what people WOULD do, not what they really did. For example, if hamburgers cost half of what they do, people buy twice as many. Yeah right.
All of this leads to something similar to a pay-per-show system. Each episode of Farscape costs me $5, so for a month of new shows I would be paying $20 (for example, with one new episode a week) and then "free" replays of all the past episodes during the other days of the week. The question I have is this: For this model to work, how much would we have to pay?
It would be really informative if someone that knows how much each episode of Farscape costs. This means the salary for the actors, but also all the other stuff, like animators, catering, key grip boy and everyone that makes the show happen. Then divide by how many viewers the series has, and that should give you a number. I'm pretty sure it will be much more expensive that what we are all willing to pay. I guess this means that bad shows would just die off. But then, how would new shows get started? It's like any business I guess, and if the studio shares the equipment, would be much cheaper. It all comes down to the actors asking for insane amounts of money for doing what they do. Oh and not just the actors, but everyone in the chain. What amount of money should entertainers make? More than a doctor? Or an engineer? Or more... than a teacher? After all, Sesame Street taught me a lot, but I doubt they taught me more than any of my school teachers. Why are THEY not making 1,000,000 a year?
Hmm I guess after writting for a while, what I'm trying to say is that greed messes everything up. It is not enough to make enough money to live comfortably now. You always have to make more, and more. Money itself is not evil. It just represents goods, like apples and oranges. But when the pursuit of money becomes distorted, maybe because of an overgrown ego, a feeling of being so important that you actually convince yourself that you are worth an infinite amount of money, then societies crumble. It has happened time after time, and it will only continue to happen.
First of all let me just say that I support Gattaga being in the #2 slot.
I think that Plausibility above everything else should matter in a SciFi movie. It helps to suspend our disbelief, and truly get inmersed in the movie. For example, it is much easier to see myself, or my future children, living in a world like Gattaga rather than a world like Star Wars or Trek.
Of course, there are many other factors involved in that, and I would say that Vision/Futurism should be a very close second, with Adrenaline being the last. That does not mean that it is not important, just that I like movies that leave me thinking after I watch them.
Accuracy does not mean that bugs in the movie make it bad. It defines the movie as SCIENCE fiction, instead of just fiction/fantasy. That is the beauty of SciFi, the possibility that one day all the things and ideas presented in the movie will come to pass.
Reading the article, I notice that both of the main "problems" with OSS have nothing to do with the fact that it is open.
They mention the fact that it is hard(er) to configure, and that there are fewer applications available. Well, for those 2 things, the fact that the OS source code is open is not relevant.
Lots of people say that OSS is basically software that you write to scratch an itch. Well, the problem is that most people that know how to code well enough to write an OS don't really need cute configuration dialogs and the latest in hardware dongles. They want a stable system that just works.
So really, there is nothing wrong with OSS, and it can be applied to anything, the OS, apps, games, etc. The fact is that [Linux|BSD|etc] are not really meant to be for the desktop. They are designed to be used in workstations, servers, and things of that nature. It does not really matter if you can see the code or not... we all know MacOSX is based on BSD, so we know it is possible to get a "pretty and easy to use" system on top of our open OS, but most of us just don't really need it.
PS - My desktop machine is running Win2K, and has been up for 6 months now without crashing. But I still prefer BSD for any sort of real, business server task.
Damn! Sent to Troll Hell without even a single reply. Yeah, that's a good way to prove me wrong.
What a waste of my time...
The issue of Intellectual Property (IP) has been tossed around in this forum over and over again, with some people hating having copyrights and other controls over IP, and some people in favor. My personal thinking on the issue is that in the future, there will not be anything but IP. Here's why:
Someday, hopefuly, we will have machines that will generate any physical shape out of any physycal material. Things like matter recombiners, or replicators or whatever, will be commonplace. It won't be for a while, most likely I won't live to see this, but someday I hope it happens.
Now at this point, everything made of matter will be worthless. You will get a brand new 10karat diamond in 5:30minutes. A new Ferrari while you take a walk around the block. What then? You could say that at this point, money (and value) have no place in society, but as the evolved monkeys we are, there is always a need for a power structure, and this means money. I used to think that someday we could all "ascend" into another realm of conciousness where everyone will be equal and no one person would be "better" than anyone else. Sadly, I no longer believe in this.
So at this point, the only thing that you can trade, that can have value, that can define your usefulness to the world is your IP. That is, the contents of your mind will be the only thing that you can put a "price" to. This happens already today, for example engineers get paid for their designs, they don't actually have to MAKE anything, just tell someone else how to. This is also true of some of the fields of science, such as theoretical phycics.
And also, of some artists. In the "hardware" arts, such as painting, sculpting, etc. there is no question about what someone's work is, since there is an actual object there that represents their work. But what about the "software" artists, people that sing, or act? Their work is not tangible, and that leads people to think that it has no value, or very little value (monetary). So they feel it is ok to share and trade their songs (or acts) with others. Also, they mention that it is not stealing, since the person who bough the CD still has the CD.
What they fail to realize is that the theft is from the artist, not from the consumer. Why? Because you are sharing the contents of his or her mind, which have been expressed as music, to others, without respecting the wishes of that person to receive some sort of compensation for their work. Yes, there are big bad companies representing these people, but the fact of the matter is that most artists live off of their work, and therefore need some sort of REAL MONEY to get by. Most muscicians will agree that music should be free, and enjoyed. Some of them will work for free for a good cause, or jut for fun. But at the end of the day, when you have a mortgage paymend due, and you have to clothe your kids, good will does not cut it. Sharing art has its place, and if the artist is willing to give his art for free, then the better for everyone. But in the real world, these people have to actually live, not just spend 24/7 playing for pennies at a bar. Of course, the same thing applies to actors, and in the future, scupltors and painters as well.
Will the raping of IP ever stop? Doubtful. Again, we are just monkeys. We see a bannana on the ground, we take it. Hell, I take it... and I'd say that about half the MP3s I have are "stolen". The point is that when it comes time to educate the next generation (our kids) we should strive to make them better than ourselves. So the next time you like an artist, just go out and buy the CD, even if you have all their MP3s already. I have done this quite a few times with differents artists such as Ayreon and Saliva, just to name a few. I rarely listen to radio, or watch MTV, so the only exposure I have to new music is just randomly downloading MP3s from other people I know.
Hopefully, by the time we have technology to manipulate matter at will, we will have an intellect as advanced.
...I mean really? It just a keyboard with a joystick on the left and some buttons on the right!
Do this: take your keyboard and put it in your lap. Then take your hands and place them at the left and right respectively. Is that so uncomfortable? Actually I think it feels great, specially for games where you have to type.
And of course you can hold it up in the air... but why? I mean, if you are going to type a lot, might as well just leave it on your lap! And we don't know how heavy it is yet!
Hell, if it's heavy, it'll be a good workout for those geeky arms you have! j/k
This laptop is GREAT! I got one with a P3-800, 256MB, 32GB and DVD for $2000 from the Dell Refurbished site. Works VERY well with Win2k and Linux. There is also a very good page at
http://www.envytech.co.uk/5000e/
with information on drivers for most OSs.
Regardless of what laptop you are going to buy, check the refurbished sites first, and also check for pages with info before you buy it! Good Luck!
Sony reported that they will be supporting Linux on the PS2 (at least in Japan). Now AOL says they are going to be adding support for the PS2. Of course, they could go out and make a whole new AOL-OS or something, but maybe they are just going to port everything to Linux, and use that? And since Mozilla already runs under linux, it wouldnt be much of a stretch to make sure it runs ok in the PS2 hardware.
How would this benefit the linux comunity? First of all, it will get mentioned more. If the AOL people are nice, they might even add a little linux icon somewhere during the boot sequence. Second, there will be development focused on linux. Meaning, maybe the AOL coders can fix some bugs in the kernel while porting their stuff, etc.
just one quick thing...
witholding information from the competition because you are scared they are better than you is pretty stupid
heh I know... but I don't want to wait for it to be shipped, and the local "cheaper" stores don't carry it, or most prog for that matter. Only Dream Theater...
*sigh* oh well...
... which is we would not need all this copyright/patent protection crap if people were honest to begin with.
...THE MAN... charges way to much. It should be cheaper I (we?) say, and in all honesty it should. But that does not give us the right to then steal the content. And it is because we do this, that the companies have tried to defend themselves against it. Sure, they are a bunch of greedy bitches (MS wants to stop piracy, even though they make A LOT of money who actually buy it?!) but that is THEIR RIGHT, and your rights stop when the other person's rights start.
I agree 100% with what Mr. Gilmore states, and I also fear what will happen in the [near] future now that our rights have begun to be striped away. Nonetheless, the problem still remains that people think they have extra rights which they don't.
For years I was part of the problem. Copying all kinds of software (games, songs, video) because
Focusing on MP3s, the argument that newer/smaller bands benefit from the file sharing is complete hogwash. A friend of mine is a drummer for a small punk rock band. Since they also fear THE MAN, they have attempted to do all the work (CD mastering, advertising, etc) themselves, which is not a bad idea. So they got a computer with a CDr, burnt their own CDs, and shared their songs in Napster, with some information in the comments field on how to contact them for CDs etc. They were selling them cheap ($5+shipping) yet a few months have passed and less than 10 people have asked for CDs. Most of the people who email them ask for more songs to be shared, so we can assume that they dont suck. Why does this happen? Maybe they should have posted less quality rips (instead of 192Kb/s) or sell the CDs cheaper... but I doubt those were the reasons.
So what are musicians to do? Make music for the pure love of it, and eat whatever rats they find down the alley? Or maybe they can get a job doing something else, and after working 40+ hours a week feel nice and relaxed and then make some music? Please! Making music is like making a car. We need them both, and both should be compensated (greatly, if they deserve it) for their work. And the excuse that record labels take most of they money their artists generate goes nowhere, since if you don't buy it in the first place, they won't get their pennies-on-the-dollar.
This shit is not new. AFAIK its been going around, in recent times, since the 60s/70s, and I am sure that if we look back even more, we will find people copying someone's vase and selling it cheaper thousands of years ago. Sadly, it's all part of the human condition I guess. What do we do about it? Hope... that someday we can be honest. By teaching our children that taking something that does not belong to them is wrong. By not "stealing cable" because those damn premium channels cost too much. By not using the automated collect calling systems to send short messages back and forth. These things might seem trivial (because after all, those big companies still make lots of money, at least some of them) but they are an indicator of our morals (or ethics, whatever).
Oh, and BTW, I still use Napster. Recently I downloaded a few songs from "Spock's Beard", liked them and went out and bought one of their CDs. It was expensive (about $18) but it is worth it.
There is a use for free information, but if you take it too far it stops being free and starts being stolen.
I don't know much about this, but I thought people that had severe brain damage needed respirators and blood pumpers or they die. So, if you can convince a brain that the body dies, you may end up in the same situation (kinda like HALTing the brain).