What happens when a Flex-CD gets a little dent in it, and that little dent hits my CD drive read head at 40x ?
Try reading the "article" (it's just the company's website). The floppy disk goes in an "adapter", a rigid plastic case that's like a real CD. The dent would be enclosed in the adapter, so unless you had a damaged adapter, that wouldn't happen.
Re:WMA 8 is the way
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
* Much better than OGG and MP3
* Picture perfect at 128 kbit/s
And what is this comment based on? These results have been pointed out in comments for previous articles, but I'd like to mention them again. ff123 has been conducting double blind tests comparing various audio codecs, and the results are here.
The following is from the page:
Comparisons in red below are true as a group with 95% confidence.
ogg is better than wma8
mpc is better than wma8
ogg is better than xing
mpc is better than xing
aac is better than wma8
aac is better than xing
lame is better than wma8
lame is better than xing
Looks to me like WMA8 got beat by pretty much everything... But hey, what good is statistical analysis anyways...
Re:Windows Media Format...
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I recently bought a Rio Volt MP3/WMA CD player, and compared WMA8 with VBR LAME, and LAME won hands down. Both encoders are set to come out around 128kbit, and while both of course have artifacts, the artifacts in WMA are MUCH more noticeable. I guess I'm just alot more sensitive to the type of artifacts WMA produces...
Maybe the Ogg Tarkin crew would be interested. I know they've talked about integrating VP3 and I'm sure any ideas or code that could be used from this codec would help the project.
I bought bleem for PC back when it was pretty new. I eagerly awaited new releases and followed bleem's progress for a while. But once they hadn't released any new updates for about a year, I kinda lost interest. But I did hear they finally released a new update a month or two ago, but I never downloaded it because I didn't have the time (nor did I really want to) register in order to download it. But now the only thing left on the site is that stupid picture, and I'm left wanting to download that final update I feel entitled to, being that I gave then $30 and never really got what I thought I was paying for. Do they have any plans to leave the updates available for download even for a little while?
I won an auction from Yahoo auctions a while back from a guy who had something like a 300 feedback rating. "Great!" I thought, "No chance of getting ripped off here!" I place my bid, win the auction, and then I notice, the guy had, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere between 80-100 negative feedbacks with about 400 or so positive feedbacks. he had ripped off 20-25% of his customers, but by sheer volume managed to obtain an incredibly high rating.
My auction was for a video card, and it was like, $35+$10 shipping. And my case wasn't all that bad, it was supposed to be "new in box" but it obviously wasn't. The box was cut up, will all UPC info, and even some of the specs cut off. The card was in an open static bag, and the "brand new" manual bad was taped back together. I complained, and the guy claimed he just opened it to make sure it worked ok, but it was obviously BS. But, the card did work, and it _was_ actually the right card and all, so I didn't bother filing any official complaints or anything.
Other people's auctions were things like "untested, as-is hard drives". Of course the guy had tested them, because among a lot of 10 or 20, not a single one would be good. The guy's responses to his negative feedback were things like "I said it's as-is, what do you expect?".
Here's another flawed aspect of auction feedback ratings though. I have a 118 positive feedback rating on ebay, with no neutrals or negatives. I have a 1 positive feedback rating on yahoo, 2 positive, 1 negative. What's my negative from? This guy. I, of course, left negative feedback, and the bad seller, in retailation, left negative feedback for me. I don't think I'd ever leave negative feedback for anyone on ebay, because I KNOW they'd leave negative feedback for me as retribution, and it would ruin my perfect reputation. That's a really crappy situation, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's dealt with it.
The title says it all, really. While Ogg definitely still has artifacts, they're much softer and less noticable than mp3 artifacts. The first time I sent an Ogg to a friend, I didn't really go into how much better it was, but his first words were "WOW, this sounds _alot_ better than mp3s". Add to that the fact that Monty's still working hard on tuning Ogg... remember, it's still only on RC2. And if you're into low bitrates, 64kbit is pretty damn good considering it's only 64kbit.
But in the end, you should probably just go by your own judgement. Try a double-blind test and see which one you prefer. Info on how to do that can be found over on the PCABX page. I think the software is for Windows only, but check it out anyways... there's lots of good info about the double-blind test in general.
I'm very curious to know of someone has bought one of these protected CDs and successfully returned it opened to the store with the reason being it wouldn't play in their computer. It kinda works against us if thousands of slashdot readers go out and pay $15-20 for this tripe and get stuck not being able to return it...
Quick follow-up: I've gotten RC2 and with a couple quick, preliminary tests, the quality is at least the same as b4, if not better (putting it far ahead of mp3), and the encoding speed is the same (55 seconds to encode a 3:01.wav on my Duron 850). Ogg Vorbis has definitely been worth the wait, considering there are even further improvements to be made.
I've noticed most of the posts here are saying how awful Vorbis sounds... I've been using it for quite a while now, and have done pretty extensive testing myself as well as reading what alot of other people have had to say. I don't have "Golden Ears" or $10k worth of stereo equipment, just a decent pair of headphones, but it's ALWAYS been my opinion that ogg sounds better than mp3. I sent one to a friend once, and his first reaction was, "WOW! This is ALOT better than mp3!". And that was with the beta 4 encoder. Even those crazy guys over on the r3mix.net forums have lots of praise for Ogg Vorbis.
Like the topic says, I haven't been able to get to RC2 yet, thanks to it being slashdotted, but I seriously doubt RC2 sounds worse than beta 4, and while encode times _are_ slower than mp3, they're nowhere near as slow as some people are saying. (I get about 3x speed on my Duron 850 with b4). Clicks and pops are likely a cause of a bad rip from the CD, not the encoder.
I've been using nothing but Ogg for my CDs for a while now, and have encouraged many friends to do the same. People really need to give Ogg a fair, unbiased try before they go saying it sucks, because it's most definitely at the very least, better than mp3 at the same bitrate. Check out PCABX for info on how to do a good double-blind listening test.
Congrats to Monty and the rest of the Ogg Vorbis team. Keep up the good work.
Re:is this something to be proud of?
on
Leisure Suit Unix
·
· Score: 1
I'm really happy to see this actually, being that there are Win32 binaries available. FreeSCI also does cool things like filtering and blending to at least attempt to make the games run better, not to mention the fact that the original games don't always run the way they're supposed to under Win98. I wish there were programs like this for a bunch of my older games...
I agree that anime is only a medium, and comes in many forms. Unfortunately, its new acceptance has come only in the form of faddish children's programming. And given the quality of the dubs and most of the series that are shown here, I don't really blame most people for that misconception. Most of the anime on TV is really terrible, or is made that way by the horrible American voice actors.
If anime had truly come into acceptance here, I think we would have seen a better turnout at Princess Mononoke during its short-lived theatrical release here in the US. I almost would rather have had people thought all I watched was animated porn than this tripe that is Americanized, mainstream anime. I won't even get started on the violence on TV issue... I hate people. Especially Americans.
Very recently (within the past few weeks) I had a reasonably intelligent friend say "Aren't AMD processors incompatible with stuff?" Granted, he hardly knows crap about computers, but this is the misconception most of the population has, and it's only perpetuated by idiot sales clerks at CompUSA and the like. I have personally overheard a CompUSA employee telling a customer that the "32x" on a cdrom box was the model number and that the 8x next to it was what they likely wanted. I wish I was kidding...
Actually, since most console hardware is sold at cost or for a loss, you might be doing the community a service by buying as many as you can and just not buying any games for them. $200-300 for an Athlon PC/DVD player? Sounds good to me.:)
I submitted this a week ago and it got rejected, but aside from that...
I read over on Zophar net (also about a week ago) that "According to Sega's legal people, they didn't license the titles out. Since this is only available mail order, purchasers could potentially be charged for buying stolen merchandise (if they live in the U.S.)". So, needless to say, I'd be a little more than cautious with my $249.99.
So could somebody explain to me who seriously reads this stuff anymore?
People who are just curious about what might be available a year or two from now. I don't think anyone tries to plan in detail their upgrade for two years from now, though it is nice to be able to see that maybe six months from now there will probably be a new feature available that makes it worth waiting the six months before upgrading to have (eg. DDR).
But even aside from that, people are just plain curious. I know I am. Reading it and finding out that there should be 2 GHz CPUs a year from now excites me. Imagining the power that could feasibly be available and affordable (I'm talking roadmaps in general, not necessarily Intel:) ) excites me. I am a PC enthusiast. I like roadmaps.
Besides, if noone read them, it would be AnandTech's problem, not yours. They wouldn't be getting their ad revenue, and would probably stop making roadmap articles pretty quick. There's always someone for just about every article here on Slashdot who says "What a worthless waste of time! Who cares?". Just because you may not, doesn't mean noone else does. So, in summary, lighten up.
Win2k IS much better than Win98, but the only problem with using Win2k over Win98 is alot of homebrew kind of programs like emulators and such call to Win98 specific libraries and things (forgive me, I'm no programming guru) and thus won't run on Win2k. I do dual-boot, so I can still run those things, but it's a huge inconvenience to reboot just to run one little program. Tell all the programmers you know to make their Win32 code Win2k compatible!
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like all games these days really push game length and complexity a bit too far. RPGs advertise "Over 100 hours of gameplay!". Don't they realise how long 100 hours really is? Even if I somehow managed to find 2 hours _every day_ to play the same game, it would take me almost 2 months to finish it. Sure you can probably speed through the game in "only" 60-80 hours, but who wants to be rushing the whole time either? I've bought lots of games that are sitting on my shelf still in their shrinkwrap because I haven't had time to finish the ones I bought before them. I really want to play them all, there just isn't time.
Complexity seems to be a huge selling point too. I don't want everything in my games to be like real life. Real life just isn't that much fun. Say I have to mow the lawn in some adventure game. I don't want to have to find the gas can, fill the mower up, try for 10 mins to get the thing started and manually walk the mower around the yard. That's work. Granted this is an extreme example, but it gets my point across.
Some of the absolutely best games I've played in recent years have been the ones that are the simplest. Parappa/Space Channel 5/DDR, and the other new music games, Intelligent Qube, Castlevania: SotN, Wipeout XL, and even Q3A falls into this category. Simple, innovative, intelligent, and above all, fun.
2. Warn customers that acquiring the PC "naked" and subsequently pirating the software is never a good option. Explain the risks: technical troubles, upgrade problems, viruses and the law. Politely decline to expose your buyers or their businesses to such troubles.
As if you WON'T have techinical troubles, upgrade problems and viruses (and maybe even legal trouble too:P) with a licenced copy. Politely decline to expose your buyers or their businesses to such troubles? "Sir, may I recommend an alternative OS with your PC?"
Re:Businesses don't corrupt politicians...
on
A Letter from 2020
·
· Score: 3
But what are the chances that joe blue-collar-worker when put in niles upper-management's place wouldn't do the same despicable things? What truly makes joe the more admirable of the two in this scenario? joe's values and politcal ideas are likely just as self-serving as niles' are, we just tend to side with joe because the niles already had his lucky break. His parents were millionaires, or his friend was in upper-management too.
I think Ted's point was more along the lines of "People, almost ALL people, are selfish and greedy, and aim only to make their own lives easier and more comfortable, while not giving a damn about anyone else."
For example, as I was driving home from class today, I noticed while I was stopped at a light that the median was COVERED with black gum spots. Who sincerely thought to themselves that throwing their chewed gum out the window was a viable alternative to wrapping it up in a piece of paper and throwing it in a garbage can later? A whole lot of people must have, because there was a whole lot of gum on that median. They somehow justified to themselves that throwing their crap out the window for someone else to deal with was OK. How? It made their life easier.
Do you honestly think that it was niles upper-management who was throwing his gum out the window? Nope, chances are it was joe.
While I know this is a very trivial example, I think it illustrates the spirit of Ted's comment quite well.
I pity you, o poor american cripples who are dependent on someone's translation to read german article...
According to the statistics here only 5.9% of the internet population's native language is German. Do you mean to say with your above quote that everyone in the world should be able to speak every language in existance just so we can read everything in the world without a translator? I think we all know that's a pretty ridiculous proposal.
Not that I defend the American tendency to be monolingual and proud of it, but I believe CmdrTaco made the following assumptions:
2) The people reading slashdot speak English, or else they'd have a pretty hard time understanding what all the news was about, unless of course, they were using babelfish to translate English in to their native language... maybe even German?
Given those two assumptions, it would be completely logical to conclude that most of the slashdot crowd will need a translation of some sort, one which babelfish can provide.
I believe at least one of the reasons I like anime is the same reason I find myself oddly attracted to foreign film; it represents a different culture, a different point of view, and is stylisticly different from American entertainment. I've spent my whole life in America, inundated with American media and I've become rather jaded with it. There are some exceptions; I do enjoy the Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, etc., but even those are distinctly American, and I enjoy a change from that. Compare Ranma 1/2 or Slayers (both comedies) to the aforementioned. They're just... different. Different cultures just have different ways of doing things. Compare Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai or Ran to say, Braveheart. I won't even start on how different they are.
Despite the disorganized, haphazard jumble of mess there, I think I got my point across.
I remember a Generic Windows project that was going on quite a while ago, but it seemed to have died a quiet death... anyone know what happened? I'm really surprised more clones like this haven't popped up sooner... they could have made quite a bit of progress by now...
Slashdot Mirror
What happens when a Flex-CD gets a little dent in it, and that little dent hits my CD drive read head at 40x ?
Try reading the "article" (it's just the company's website). The floppy disk goes in an "adapter", a rigid plastic case that's like a real CD. The dent would be enclosed in the adapter, so unless you had a damaged adapter, that wouldn't happen.
* Much better than OGG and MP3
* Picture perfect at 128 kbit/s
And what is this comment based on? These results have been pointed out in comments for previous articles, but I'd like to mention them again. ff123 has been conducting double blind tests comparing various audio codecs, and the results are here.
The following is from the page:
Comparisons in red below are true as a group with 95% confidence.
ogg is better than wma8
mpc is better than wma8
ogg is better than xing
mpc is better than xing
aac is better than wma8
aac is better than xing
lame is better than wma8
lame is better than xing
Looks to me like WMA8 got beat by pretty much everything... But hey, what good is statistical analysis anyways...
I recently bought a Rio Volt MP3/WMA CD player, and compared WMA8 with VBR LAME, and LAME won hands down. Both encoders are set to come out around 128kbit, and while both of course have artifacts, the artifacts in WMA are MUCH more noticeable. I guess I'm just alot more sensitive to the type of artifacts WMA produces...
I found this link to the demo using Google's cached pages of Introversion's webpage. It's a U.S. mirror, and it seems a bit slow, but it works.
Maybe the Ogg Tarkin crew would be interested. I know they've talked about integrating VP3 and I'm sure any ideas or code that could be used from this codec would help the project.
I bought bleem for PC back when it was pretty new. I eagerly awaited new releases and followed bleem's progress for a while. But once they hadn't released any new updates for about a year, I kinda lost interest. But I did hear they finally released a new update a month or two ago, but I never downloaded it because I didn't have the time (nor did I really want to) register in order to download it. But now the only thing left on the site is that stupid picture, and I'm left wanting to download that final update I feel entitled to, being that I gave then $30 and never really got what I thought I was paying for. Do they have any plans to leave the updates available for download even for a little while?
I won an auction from Yahoo auctions a while back from a guy who had something like a 300 feedback rating. "Great!" I thought, "No chance of getting ripped off here!" I place my bid, win the auction, and then I notice, the guy had, I don't remember exactly, but somewhere between 80-100 negative feedbacks with about 400 or so positive feedbacks. he had ripped off 20-25% of his customers, but by sheer volume managed to obtain an incredibly high rating.
My auction was for a video card, and it was like, $35+$10 shipping. And my case wasn't all that bad, it was supposed to be "new in box" but it obviously wasn't. The box was cut up, will all UPC info, and even some of the specs cut off. The card was in an open static bag, and the "brand new" manual bad was taped back together. I complained, and the guy claimed he just opened it to make sure it worked ok, but it was obviously BS. But, the card did work, and it _was_ actually the right card and all, so I didn't bother filing any official complaints or anything.
Other people's auctions were things like "untested, as-is hard drives". Of course the guy had tested them, because among a lot of 10 or 20, not a single one would be good. The guy's responses to his negative feedback were things like "I said it's as-is, what do you expect?".
Here's another flawed aspect of auction feedback ratings though. I have a 118 positive feedback rating on ebay, with no neutrals or negatives. I have a 1 positive feedback rating on yahoo, 2 positive, 1 negative. What's my negative from? This guy. I, of course, left negative feedback, and the bad seller, in retailation, left negative feedback for me. I don't think I'd ever leave negative feedback for anyone on ebay, because I KNOW they'd leave negative feedback for me as retribution, and it would ruin my perfect reputation. That's a really crappy situation, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's dealt with it.
The title says it all, really. While Ogg definitely still has artifacts, they're much softer and less noticable than mp3 artifacts. The first time I sent an Ogg to a friend, I didn't really go into how much better it was, but his first words were "WOW, this sounds _alot_ better than mp3s". Add to that the fact that Monty's still working hard on tuning Ogg... remember, it's still only on RC2. And if you're into low bitrates, 64kbit is pretty damn good considering it's only 64kbit.
But in the end, you should probably just go by your own judgement. Try a double-blind test and see which one you prefer. Info on how to do that can be found over on the PCABX page. I think the software is for Windows only, but check it out anyways... there's lots of good info about the double-blind test in general.
I'm very curious to know of someone has bought one of these protected CDs and successfully returned it opened to the store with the reason being it wouldn't play in their computer. It kinda works against us if thousands of slashdot readers go out and pay $15-20 for this tripe and get stuck not being able to return it...
Quick follow-up: I've gotten RC2 and with a couple quick, preliminary tests, the quality is at least the same as b4, if not better (putting it far ahead of mp3), and the encoding speed is the same (55 seconds to encode a 3:01 .wav on my Duron 850). Ogg Vorbis has definitely been worth the wait, considering there are even further improvements to be made.
I've noticed most of the posts here are saying how awful Vorbis sounds... I've been using it for quite a while now, and have done pretty extensive testing myself as well as reading what alot of other people have had to say. I don't have "Golden Ears" or $10k worth of stereo equipment, just a decent pair of headphones, but it's ALWAYS been my opinion that ogg sounds better than mp3. I sent one to a friend once, and his first reaction was, "WOW! This is ALOT better than mp3!". And that was with the beta 4 encoder. Even those crazy guys over on the r3mix.net forums have lots of praise for Ogg Vorbis.
Like the topic says, I haven't been able to get to RC2 yet, thanks to it being slashdotted, but I seriously doubt RC2 sounds worse than beta 4, and while encode times _are_ slower than mp3, they're nowhere near as slow as some people are saying. (I get about 3x speed on my Duron 850 with b4). Clicks and pops are likely a cause of a bad rip from the CD, not the encoder.
I've been using nothing but Ogg for my CDs for a while now, and have encouraged many friends to do the same. People really need to give Ogg a fair, unbiased try before they go saying it sucks, because it's most definitely at the very least, better than mp3 at the same bitrate. Check out PCABX for info on how to do a good double-blind listening test.
Congrats to Monty and the rest of the Ogg Vorbis team. Keep up the good work.
I'm really happy to see this actually, being that there are Win32 binaries available. FreeSCI also does cool things like filtering and blending to at least attempt to make the games run better, not to mention the fact that the original games don't always run the way they're supposed to under Win98. I wish there were programs like this for a bunch of my older games...
I agree that anime is only a medium, and comes in many forms. Unfortunately, its new acceptance has come only in the form of faddish children's programming. And given the quality of the dubs and most of the series that are shown here, I don't really blame most people for that misconception. Most of the anime on TV is really terrible, or is made that way by the horrible American voice actors.
If anime had truly come into acceptance here, I think we would have seen a better turnout at Princess Mononoke during its short-lived theatrical release here in the US. I almost would rather have had people thought all I watched was animated porn than this tripe that is Americanized, mainstream anime. I won't even get started on the violence on TV issue... I hate people. Especially Americans.
P.S. - I am an American. I suck too.
Very recently (within the past few weeks) I had a reasonably intelligent friend say "Aren't AMD processors incompatible with stuff?" Granted, he hardly knows crap about computers, but this is the misconception most of the population has, and it's only perpetuated by idiot sales clerks at CompUSA and the like. I have personally overheard a CompUSA employee telling a customer that the "32x" on a cdrom box was the model number and that the 8x next to it was what they likely wanted. I wish I was kidding...
Actually, since most console hardware is sold at cost or for a loss, you might be doing the community a service by buying as many as you can and just not buying any games for them. $200-300 for an Athlon PC/DVD player? Sounds good to me. :)
I submitted this a week ago and it got rejected, but aside from that...
I read over on Zophar net (also about a week ago) that "According to Sega's legal people, they didn't license the titles out. Since this is only available mail order, purchasers could potentially be charged for buying stolen merchandise (if they live in the U.S.)". So, needless to say, I'd be a little more than cautious with my $249.99.
So could somebody explain to me who seriously reads this stuff anymore?
:) ) excites me. I am a PC enthusiast. I like roadmaps.
People who are just curious about what might be available a year or two from now. I don't think anyone tries to plan in detail their upgrade for two years from now, though it is nice to be able to see that maybe six months from now there will probably be a new feature available that makes it worth waiting the six months before upgrading to have (eg. DDR).
But even aside from that, people are just plain curious. I know I am. Reading it and finding out that there should be 2 GHz CPUs a year from now excites me. Imagining the power that could feasibly be available and affordable (I'm talking roadmaps in general, not necessarily Intel
Besides, if noone read them, it would be AnandTech's problem, not yours. They wouldn't be getting their ad revenue, and would probably stop making roadmap articles pretty quick. There's always someone for just about every article here on Slashdot who says "What a worthless waste of time! Who cares?". Just because you may not, doesn't mean noone else does. So, in summary, lighten up.
Win2k IS much better than Win98, but the only problem with using Win2k over Win98 is alot of homebrew kind of programs like emulators and such call to Win98 specific libraries and things (forgive me, I'm no programming guru) and thus won't run on Win2k. I do dual-boot, so I can still run those things, but it's a huge inconvenience to reboot just to run one little program. Tell all the programmers you know to make their Win32 code Win2k compatible!
Maybe it's just me, but it seems like all games these days really push game length and complexity a bit too far. RPGs advertise "Over 100 hours of gameplay!". Don't they realise how long 100 hours really is? Even if I somehow managed to find 2 hours _every day_ to play the same game, it would take me almost 2 months to finish it. Sure you can probably speed through the game in "only" 60-80 hours, but who wants to be rushing the whole time either? I've bought lots of games that are sitting on my shelf still in their shrinkwrap because I haven't had time to finish the ones I bought before them. I really want to play them all, there just isn't time.
Complexity seems to be a huge selling point too. I don't want everything in my games to be like real life. Real life just isn't that much fun. Say I have to mow the lawn in some adventure game. I don't want to have to find the gas can, fill the mower up, try for 10 mins to get the thing started and manually walk the mower around the yard. That's work. Granted this is an extreme example, but it gets my point across.
Some of the absolutely best games I've played in recent years have been the ones that are the simplest. Parappa/Space Channel 5/DDR, and the other new music games, Intelligent Qube, Castlevania: SotN, Wipeout XL, and even Q3A falls into this category. Simple, innovative, intelligent, and above all, fun.
2. Warn customers that acquiring the PC "naked" and
:P) with a licenced copy. Politely decline to expose your buyers or their businesses to such troubles? "Sir, may I recommend an alternative OS with your PC?"
subsequently pirating the software is never a good option.
Explain the risks: technical troubles, upgrade problems,
viruses and the law. Politely decline to expose your buyers or
their businesses to such troubles.
As if you WON'T have techinical troubles, upgrade problems and viruses (and maybe even legal trouble too
Though Intel sure does want us to believe its incredible Pentium III can magically "enhance your Internet experience."
But what are the chances that joe blue-collar-worker when put in niles upper-management's place wouldn't do the same despicable things? What truly makes joe the more admirable of the two in this scenario? joe's values and politcal ideas are likely just as self-serving as niles' are, we just tend to side with joe because the niles already had his lucky break. His parents were millionaires, or his friend was in upper-management too.
I think Ted's point was more along the lines of "People, almost ALL people, are selfish and greedy, and aim only to make their own lives easier and more comfortable, while not giving a damn about anyone else."
For example, as I was driving home from class today, I noticed while I was stopped at a light that the median was COVERED with black gum spots. Who sincerely thought to themselves that throwing their chewed gum out the window was a viable alternative to wrapping it up in a piece of paper and throwing it in a garbage can later? A whole lot of people must have, because there was a whole lot of gum on that median. They somehow justified to themselves that throwing their crap out the window for someone else to deal with was OK. How? It made their life easier.
Do you honestly think that it was niles upper-management who was throwing his gum out the window? Nope, chances are it was joe.
While I know this is a very trivial example, I think it illustrates the spirit of Ted's comment quite well.
I pity you, o poor american cripples who are dependent on someone's translation to read german article... According to the statistics here only 5.9% of the internet population's native language is German. Do you mean to say with your above quote that everyone in the world should be able to speak every language in existance just so we can read everything in the world without a translator? I think we all know that's a pretty ridiculous proposal.
Not that I defend the American tendency to be monolingual and proud of it, but I believe CmdrTaco made the following assumptions:
2) The people reading slashdot speak English, or else they'd have a pretty hard time understanding what all the news was about, unless of course, they were using babelfish to translate English in to their native language... maybe even German?
Given those two assumptions, it would be completely logical to conclude that most of the slashdot crowd will need a translation of some sort, one which babelfish can provide.
I believe at least one of the reasons I like anime is the same reason I find myself oddly attracted to foreign film; it represents a different culture, a different point of view, and is stylisticly different from American entertainment. I've spent my whole life in America, inundated with American media and I've become rather jaded with it. There are some exceptions; I do enjoy the Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, etc., but even those are distinctly American, and I enjoy a change from that. Compare Ranma 1/2 or Slayers (both comedies) to the aforementioned. They're just... different. Different cultures just have different ways of doing things. Compare Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai or Ran to say, Braveheart. I won't even start on how different they are.
Despite the disorganized, haphazard jumble of mess there, I think I got my point across.
I remember a Generic Windows project that was going on quite a while ago, but it seemed to have died a quiet death... anyone know what happened? I'm really surprised more clones like this haven't popped up sooner... they could have made quite a bit of progress by now...