Stuff like this worries me about how much longer I'll be able to hear my favorite music, because I listen to less popular stuff. The CDs are allways more expensive than CDs from the popular groups because fewer are sold. If pirating music becomes wide spread, then I'll have to pay even more for my CDs. Musicians like Ian Boody and Ron Boots might have trouble finding the money to continue making their music. Quite bad if it happens. I worry that if certain copies of music that are not paid for are made legal, musicans who practice thier artistry and talent in lesser popular varieties of music will have to find jobs elsewhere.
I have no trouble paying for music because I want the muscians I like to continue to make music. So, I don't allow people to copy my CDs, and I don't give away any MPEG files I make from my CDs.
I can't belive that companies will willingly allow people to make negative comments in IRC like places if the people identify themselves. Companies will take this as far as they can to silence those who speak against them. They'll distort anonymity as far as they can. Maybe telling people your name, mailing address and phone number over IRC will still leave you legally anonymous because it cannot be proven. That can be stretched to include email, news & web postings, the whole internet. They'll take it to the point that we'll need registered PIII like IDs to avoid being anonymous. Since there is no registration of the ID's now, no one can prove online the ID belongs to them, so everyone could be considered anonymous online now (save for some PGP use maybe) and thus could be censored by corporations from making negative comments about them. We might not even be able to say that graphics card X has lacking performance.
This, of course, is an extreme example of what it could become. Lets stop it now before it gets much further.
The idea of using optics to place magnetic heads isn't new. Sometime around 1991 there was a drive called the floptical for sale. It used optics to place magnetic heads on special floppy disks. Hardly a new concept, so I wonder what kept it from being used in hard drives for so long, especially since there was a working drive using the technology on the market about 8 years ago.
All the marketing of toys and hype might be more attributable to marketing execs than Lucas. Its quite probable that Lucas cannot escape them with anything to do with Star Wars. I have seen an interview where he states that the film is over-hyped and cannot live up to the hyped expectations.
As for the publicity that directly surrounds him, that's not surprising at all.
We could use some more people like you, Talisman! Its great to know there are some people with the means and the will to stand up to the jocks at their own game. Unfortunately, not all of us can.
I was fortunate enough to know a couple people who did the same kind of stuff in high school. A real fun bunch! They would've helped me out if I had any jocks bothering me, but I somehow avoided that trouble for the most part. Not sure why -- I'm sometimes called Stickman, and thats an acurate description.
You know, none of those "corporate tools of profit" would exist if they didn't make profit, so someone must like that stuff. If there wasn't a market for it, all those things would have quietly come and gone.
Some people are succsessful at selling these items you despise because of two reasons:
There are people who enjoy the items
The people who make the stuff understand the people of enjoy it
Its certainly not impossible that commercial products could be made that genuinely express the views of a culture, rather than create or define the culture. Your argument assumes that is a false statement and does not try to disprove it.
I was in a school system (Volusia County, Florida) where the policy was that the intelligent kids should, to some degree, be put in with the kids that don't do as well. The idea is that the intelligent ones will help the others. That couldn't be more wrong since the kids that need the help don't want it. That evil policy kept me from advancing quicker through math, and assured that 7th grade was *really* boring -- it covered nothing I hadn't already learned.
BTW: Volusia county in Florida has a really messed up school system. It seems that one side of the county is favored -- it gets more money and its students can win the science fair. The other side, the Deltona end where I was, is shunned. My science fair projects on a C++ event driven GUI and on VR (complete with power glove & shutter glasses) always lost to a program that only lists data (real basic stuff) thats on a periodic table.
There is a public school in North Carolina that is similar to the one in Toronto. Its a magnet school that houses the students, so only the chosen students attend. Its curiculum is rich on the science and math end of things. The school is in the resarch triangle area, where a lot of money can be found, along with Duke U.
Of course, this won't stop jocks from harasing geeks. I think the only thing that will is strict punishment against them, and anyone else, for harrasing other students. Such a policy can make it difficult to avoid giving punishment to a student who is only defending him/her self.
Is this problem a characteristic of having too few academically advanced students in a school?
I ask because I had a group of friends who were similarly inteligent and didn't have much trouble with alienation and rejection from the normals in high school. My friends weren't as interested in computers, but we still understood each other and had various intellectual coversations. Because of our academic abilities, we were grouped together for most of our classes. But even when I did meet the normals, there usually wasn't much trouble unless they were freshmen.
Middle School was much worse for me. The school wouldn't put me in the academically advanced gifted classes for some reason, and I was board most of the time. A lot other students didn't seem to appreciate me, save for the students in the gifted classes.
So, maybe the problem could be reduced by grouping students with other students of similar academic ability. Of course, this won't solve the problem. It'll probably allow the problem to continue.
I'd like to know what makes the masses of the school lash out against the most intelligent of the students. Maybe its the "attack what is not understood" syndrome.
If access providers state that their users may not spam, then they ought to sue their users who do! This sounds like a great policy to me! I hope most ISP's adopt this kind of policy to save their own bandwith.
So what if its digital. Analog works fine, too. In some cases, analog is even better than digital, and its usually cheaper.
For instance, active noise cancellation was achived during World War II using analog electronics and worked quite well. In fact, it was so simple, people refused to belive it would work. Today, active noise cancellation can be done digitally, but it requires A/D conveters, D/A converters, and either a complex controlling circut or a microcontroller (plenty complex, too). But since analog is simpler and works just fine . ..
Digital stuffs are just tools to solve a problem. Use them where they work well. Do NOT insist digital stuff be used everywhere because digital stuffs are not inherently better at all tasks.
Katz seems to be making sense here, even if he offers no great insight. Its been common knowlege to real computer users/controllers that Bill Gates has no vision. Its been stated the one original thing MS did was Bob -- a total failure. And now MS faces lots of competition thats sooo much better that people beyond computer geeks are giving non-MS stuff a chance.
Sounds like its time for Bill Gates an MS to step aside. Being a good business person can only get someone so far, and Bill Gates reached that limit.
. . . What?!? This whole thing isn't about Mega Weapon? Well, Mega Weapon is still cool! You can't take that away from him! He was the best character in "Warrior of the Lost World".
Was there ever a Windows developmen package for the PlayStation?
It seems that support for UNIX, given the high end graphics available for it (in past, PCs have mostly caught up), makes sense. The UNIX workstations are still very nice for the task with some nifty hardware, like body tracking equipment, that isn't supported on PCs. So, Sony problably was going to support a UNIX anyway.
Maybe they thought a cheaper development platform to bring down development costs would stimulate game development. Seems like an odd argument -- its still pretty costly to make a game. A Linux port would be far easer than a Windows port if UNIX was already supported.
This makes sense to me, because then supporting Linux is logical economically. Sony wouldn't support Linux because its cool. Money has to be involved here somewhere . . .
Does anyone think MS is just trying to brush off the DOJ? Or was this planned before the DOJ trobles? Seems like it might not be a stunt for the DOJ seeing their defiant attitude, but I'm not sure.
When I get an MPEG player into my car, I'm planning on using an object database to store the music information. The database will allow me to store arbitrary fields with each recording and piece.
This way, I can make up a new category for music and rate everything on a 4 or 8 bit scale of how well it matches that category. Plus, I can store comments on the stuff, prefered track orderings (force several tracks to be played in a given order), volume and equilizer settings, etc . . .
Of course, a database like this will include many fields that different people will customize differently, but it will also include common info, like who made the music (multiple artists should/can be supported). It'll be far more useful than CDDB.
Now I just need a free object database and some time . . .
For all of you messing with the idea of what is about money and what isn't, read Karl Marx's "The Jewish Question" (its about money, not Jews). He has some fascinating insights into the matter. Naturally, they're disquiteing to anyone who thinks capitolism is *THE* way to run an economy, but those people are mostly westerners, and they seem to hold ancient Greece as the birthplace of western civilization, and Socrates did mention that those who do not question do not live.
So expand your horizions and give Marx's ideas a look over. I'm not saying that he's right, I'm just saying that his ideas are worth being familiar with. They may challenge your own ideas -- see how well your's stand up and improve your understanding. Its healthly.
So, to make these people who can't survive a little bruse happy, we'll need to moderate all newsgroups, ban personal web pages, censor email, etc . . . The costs would kill the internet.
I think the internet is already too far along to be killed.
I think the best thing about the internet is not what its done for computers, but what it will do for society -- force the issue of free speech. Hopefully free speech will eventually be brought to the entire world, accelerated by the internet.
I agree. It seems that vilifying the internet is about the same as vilifying free speech.
It takes responsibility to properly use free speech. There will always be those who abuse it, and we'll all have to deal with it -- that's once price of being able to say what we want to.
I frown upon those who are quick to state "There should be a law against that."
If you meet up with one of those gloating ones again, tell them to read "The Jewish Question" by Karl Marx. If they understand it, they'll see that by worrying so much about money they have made themselves insignificant pawns of the economy.
Intresting. I was using style sheets in 1992 with AmiPro, a word processor from Lotus. In fact, I still use that very same word processor -- it works great. I always use style sheets with it now. I made some six years ago.
So this is new technology? This is worth patenting? MS probably wants me to think so, but I'm not brain dead. I just wish the patent office would quit awarding patents for concepts, since thats not what patents are for!
I think we should deregulate morality now! I'll not have the government dictate to me what moral standards I should have when those standards pose no threat to society. So, I'll agree that killing is bad, but I will decide what I think is decent. I will avoid what I think is indecent. I will not attempt to remove that which I think is indecent. I will not limit another's choices to my own standards.
Slashdot Mirror
Stuff like this worries me about how much longer I'll be able to hear my favorite music, because I listen to less popular stuff. The CDs are allways more expensive than CDs from the popular groups because fewer are sold. If pirating music becomes wide spread, then I'll have to pay even more for my CDs. Musicians like Ian Boody and Ron Boots might have trouble finding the money to continue making their music. Quite bad if it happens. I worry that if certain copies of music that are not paid for are made legal, musicans who practice thier artistry and talent in lesser popular varieties of music will have to find jobs elsewhere.
I have no trouble paying for music because I want the muscians I like to continue to make music. So, I don't allow people to copy my CDs, and I don't give away any MPEG files I make from my CDs.
I can't belive that companies will willingly allow people to make negative comments in IRC like places if the people identify themselves.
Companies will take this as far as they can to silence those who speak against them. They'll distort anonymity as far as they can. Maybe telling people your name, mailing address and phone number over IRC will still leave you legally anonymous because it cannot be proven. That can be stretched to include email, news & web postings, the whole internet. They'll take it to the point that we'll need registered PIII like IDs to avoid being anonymous. Since there is no registration of the ID's now, no one can prove online the ID belongs to them, so everyone could be considered anonymous online now (save for some PGP use maybe) and thus could be censored by corporations from making negative comments about them. We might not even be able to say that graphics card X has lacking performance.
This, of course, is an extreme example of what it could become. Lets stop it now before it gets much further.
The idea of using optics to place magnetic heads isn't new. Sometime around 1991 there was a drive called the floptical for sale. It used optics to place magnetic heads on special floppy disks. Hardly a new concept, so I wonder what kept it from being used in hard drives for so long, especially since there was a working drive using the technology on the market about 8 years ago.
All the marketing of toys and hype might be more attributable to marketing execs than Lucas. Its quite probable that Lucas cannot escape them with anything to do with Star Wars. I have seen an interview where he states that the film is over-hyped and cannot live up to the hyped expectations.
As for the publicity that directly surrounds him, that's not surprising at all.
We could use some more people like you, Talisman! Its great to know there are some people with the means and the will to stand up to the jocks at their own game. Unfortunately, not all of us can.
I was fortunate enough to know a couple people who did the same kind of stuff in high school. A real fun bunch! They would've helped me out if I had any jocks bothering me, but I somehow avoided that trouble for the most part. Not sure why -- I'm sometimes called Stickman, and thats an acurate description.
Have fun!
Some people are succsessful at selling these items you despise because of two reasons:
- There are people who enjoy the items
- The people who make the stuff understand the people of enjoy it
Its certainly not impossible that commercial products could be made that genuinely express the views of a culture, rather than create or define the culture. Your argument assumes that is a false statement and does not try to disprove it.Try again.
I was in a school system (Volusia County, Florida) where the policy was that the intelligent kids should, to some degree, be put in with the kids that don't do as well. The idea is that the intelligent ones will help the others. That couldn't be more wrong since the kids that need the help don't want it. That evil policy kept me from advancing quicker through math, and assured that 7th grade was *really* boring -- it covered nothing I hadn't already learned.
BTW: Volusia county in Florida has a really messed up school system. It seems that one side of the county is favored -- it gets more money and its students can win the science fair. The other side, the Deltona end where I was, is shunned. My science fair projects on a C++ event driven GUI and on VR (complete with power glove & shutter glasses) always lost to a program that only lists data (real basic stuff) thats on a periodic table.
There is a public school in North Carolina that is similar to the one in Toronto. Its a magnet school that houses the students, so only the chosen students attend. Its curiculum is rich on the science and math end of things. The school is in the resarch triangle area, where a lot of money can be found, along with Duke U.
Of course, this won't stop jocks from harasing geeks. I think the only thing that will is strict punishment against them, and anyone else, for harrasing other students. Such a policy can make it difficult to avoid giving punishment to a student who is only defending him/her self.
Is this problem a characteristic of having too few academically advanced students in a school?
/.'ers here think?
I ask because I had a group of friends who were similarly inteligent and didn't have much trouble with alienation and rejection from the normals in high school. My friends weren't as interested in computers, but we still understood each other and had various intellectual coversations. Because of our academic abilities, we were grouped together for most of our classes. But even when I did meet the normals, there usually wasn't much trouble unless they were freshmen.
Middle School was much worse for me. The school wouldn't put me in the academically advanced gifted classes for some reason, and I was board most of the time. A lot other students didn't seem to appreciate me, save for the students in the gifted classes.
So, maybe the problem could be reduced by grouping students with other students of similar academic ability. Of course, this won't solve the problem. It'll probably allow the problem to continue.
I'd like to know what makes the masses of the school lash out against the most intelligent of the students. Maybe its the "attack what is not understood" syndrome.
What do the
If access providers state that their users may not spam, then they ought to sue their users who do! This sounds like a great policy to me! I hope most ISP's adopt this kind of policy to save their own bandwith.
So what if its digital. Analog works fine, too. In some cases, analog is even better than digital, and its usually cheaper.
For instance, active noise cancellation was achived during World War II using analog electronics and worked quite well. In fact, it was so simple, people refused to belive it would work. Today, active noise cancellation can be done digitally, but it requires A/D conveters, D/A converters, and either a complex controlling circut or a microcontroller (plenty complex, too). But since analog is simpler and works just fine . .
Digital stuffs are just tools to solve a problem. Use them where they work well. Do NOT insist digital stuff be used everywhere because digital stuffs are not inherently better at all tasks.
Katz seems to be making sense here, even if he offers no great insight. Its been common knowlege to real computer users/controllers that Bill Gates has no vision. Its been stated the one original thing MS did was Bob -- a total failure. And now MS faces lots of competition thats sooo much better that people beyond computer geeks are giving non-MS stuff a chance.
Sounds like its time for Bill Gates an MS to step aside. Being a good business person can only get someone so far, and Bill Gates reached that limit.
Mega Weapon! Mega Weapon! Mega Weapon!
He the greatest!
. . . What?!? This whole thing isn't about Mega Weapon? Well, Mega Weapon is still cool! You can't take that away from him! He was the best character in "Warrior of the Lost World".
Was there ever a Windows developmen package for the PlayStation?
It seems that support for UNIX, given the high end graphics available for it (in past, PCs have mostly caught up), makes sense. The UNIX workstations are still very nice for the task with some nifty hardware, like body tracking equipment, that isn't supported on PCs. So, Sony problably was going to support a UNIX anyway.
Maybe they thought a cheaper development platform to bring down development costs would stimulate game development. Seems like an odd argument -- its still pretty costly to make a game. A Linux port would be far easer than a Windows port if UNIX was already supported.
This makes sense to me, because then supporting Linux is logical economically. Sony wouldn't support Linux because its cool. Money has to be involved here somewhere . . .
Does anyone think MS is just trying to brush off the DOJ? Or was this planned before the DOJ trobles? Seems like it might not be a stunt for the DOJ seeing their defiant attitude, but I'm not sure.
Thats why we need the bomb!
When I get an MPEG player into my car, I'm planning on using an object database to store the music information. The database will allow me to store arbitrary fields with each recording and piece.
This way, I can make up a new category for music and rate everything on a 4 or 8 bit scale of how well it matches that category. Plus, I can store comments on the stuff, prefered track orderings (force several tracks to be played in a given order), volume and equilizer settings, etc . . .
Of course, a database like this will include many fields that different people will customize differently, but it will also include common info, like who made the music (multiple artists should/can be supported). It'll be far more useful than CDDB.
Now I just need a free object database and some time . . .
A friend of mine made a web site called the necktie repository. Its useful for anyone who had trouble or doesn't know how to tie a necktie, like me.
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~jimes/necktie
For all of you messing with the idea of what is about money and what isn't, read Karl Marx's "The Jewish Question" (its about money, not Jews). He has some fascinating insights into the matter. Naturally, they're disquiteing to anyone who thinks capitolism is *THE* way to run an economy, but those people are mostly westerners, and they seem to hold ancient Greece as the birthplace of western civilization, and Socrates did mention that those who do not question do not live.
So expand your horizions and give Marx's ideas a look over. I'm not saying that he's right, I'm just saying that his ideas are worth being familiar with. They may challenge your own ideas -- see how well your's stand up and improve your understanding. Its healthly.
So, to make these people who can't survive a little bruse happy, we'll need to moderate all newsgroups, ban personal web pages, censor email, etc . . . The costs would kill the internet.
I think the internet is already too far along to be killed.
I think the best thing about the internet is not what its done for computers, but what it will do for society -- force the issue of free speech. Hopefully free speech will eventually be brought to the entire world, accelerated by the internet.
I agree. It seems that vilifying the internet is about the same as vilifying free speech.
It takes responsibility to properly use free speech. There will always be those who abuse it, and we'll all have to deal with it -- that's once price of being able to say what we want to.
I frown upon those who are quick to state "There should be a law against that."
I hope they're not all that bad.
If you meet up with one of those gloating ones again, tell them to read "The Jewish Question" by Karl Marx. If they understand it, they'll see that by worrying so much about money they have made themselves insignificant pawns of the economy.
Lets do it! The gene pool is screwed already, so maybe if we rescrew it, it'll get better!
Intresting. I was using style sheets in 1992 with AmiPro, a word processor from Lotus. In fact, I still use that very same word processor -- it works great. I always use style sheets with it now. I made some six years ago.
So this is new technology? This is worth patenting? MS probably wants me to think so, but I'm not brain dead. I just wish the patent office would quit awarding patents for concepts, since thats not what patents are for!
I think we should deregulate morality now! I'll not have the government dictate to me what moral standards I should have when those standards pose no threat to society. So, I'll agree that killing is bad, but I will decide what I think is decent. I will avoid what I think is indecent. I will not attempt to remove that which I think is indecent. I will not limit another's choices to my own standards.
I want FREEDOM!!