Of which my favourite is the commentary for (Kevin Smith movie) 'Chasing Amy' - recorded for the Criterion Laserdisc, and included on the Criterion DVD (which you should all buy, by the way)...
It's well summed up by the specially recorded new intro, in which Kevin Smith says 'and on the commentary you might hear someone who sounds a lot like me saying"fuck DVD" - I would like to go on the record as saying it wasn't me, I never said it, I love DVDs' in his usual dead-pan style.
Sure enough the commentary refers to the wonder that is Criterion Laserdisc, much better than DVD, etc:)
The 'threat' is that if you don't comply with the vital national security interest, you must therefore be a terrorist.
Everyone on here who thinks Bush shouldn't be allowed to open your mail and copy your bank statements clearly has something to hide, and so by definition is a threat to national security. And if you're upset about it, then you might be dangerous... So therefore a terrorist.
Good point, well made;) But at least point us at the story, and then the discussion. I'd rather have people whining 'the extra info link has no extra info' than have to click 3 times to get to the news itself...
Especially when I have 'BBC Tech News' in the sidebar, and can get there direct!
Of course, that requires an editor who does actually read the article, follow the links and decide what's right. Oddly, something similar seems to happen from time to time - this article has links to other sites with analysis... maybe because someone read Google News and aggregated all those links?:)
The CC company keeps increasing my limit, even when I've never had a large balance, ever. Actually, that should be 'The CC company keeps increasing my limit, because I've never had a large balance, ever'. (Which I'm sure you already know).
They don't make money if you pay off each month in full (well, they get the transaction fee, but that's it). The 18.8% APR interest is where the real money is made - and if you're living within your means, you'll never pay it.
So they up the limit, to try and tempt you to over spend... "Wow, I can buy a new car on my credit card!"
Don't forget, you can ask them not to increase the limit, or even reduce it. They shouldn't argue, since they're treading a thin line between enabling you to spend responsibly and luring you into debt!
I agree entirely with this sentiment: Children need to learn about cash flow and how loans make banks money but I wouldn't limit it to children. The number of ads I see, offering to 'get you out of debt' by spreading your existing high-interest payments over 20 years... 'Reduce your monthly payments' should come with a warning 'by paying three times as much over the next two decades!'...
As my brother post says, in the novel she listens to make herself feel connected (and is in fact asleep when ET calls)...
In the movie, they made it a more personal discovery - but if you look close, when she radios in screaming the co-ordinates, you can see on the PC on the desk a banner saying 'Candidate Signal Detected' flashing in front of a Fourier Transform of the Message...
One assumes they turned off the audible alarm 'cos they were getting too many false positives.
You're right - I did read all your post, and I only answered part of it. I didn't want to get drawn into a debate on the severity of the punishment because he's not been tried yet.
Whether I think 70 years in jail or daily beatings in Guantanamo are fair is not yet relevant - he's not been put on trial yet. All that's happened is that the US has asked the UK to release him to them, so that he can be tried.
Yes, the crime he's accused of is probably out of kilter with the maximum penalty - so his defence attorney should argue that, when he gets to trial. After all, the 9/11 '20th hijacker' didn't get the death penalty, which was a possibility.
And why shouldn't the UK hand him over to the US? He did the 'damage' in the US, from the UK. Are you saying Bin Laden should be tried in Afghanistan, because that's where he was when the 9/11 attacks took place? Saddam was tried in Iraq for crimes he committed there - because they were against the people of Iraq...
Mark
And PS, I'm British. I wouldn't want to be tried in the US as a terrorist - just one more reason not to muck about in US government computers...
OK, fair point. What would you do in the (admittedly over simplified) analogy of the house? Tell the local police? Maybe... Or maybe leave a note for the home owner...
Since the crackers who call themselves 'hackers' often try and use the defence 'our activities are only making security better' then that's a good idea. Once he got in, he knew he shouldn't have been there - whether the security was 'good enough' or not.
His defence was 'I didn't do any harm, I was looking for evidence the US government was hiding things' - I still wonder what he'd say if I was sat watching his DVD collection when he came home one night. Or viewing all his porn. 'It's cool dude, you didn't break anything'.
If I was walking down a street in London and saw a door marked "Ministry of Defence. Top Secret. UFO archive." I'd probably keep on walking - unless the door was wide open.
Actually a better analogy would be trying the closed door and discovering it was unlocked - then walking inside instead of raising the alarm.
It's still trespassing, and still a crime. How easy they make it for you doesn't really matter for the purposes of the trial.
I'm sure you'd ask the court to release someone who wandered into your house, read your personal information but didn't take any of it, right?
It's not about getting on to a flight with false ID, it's about getting identifying information from nothing more than a boarding pass.
As I understand it, the chain of events is this...
If you're a member of the BA loyalty club, you didn't used to have to go through the web site... probably still don't have to.
You could sign up by one of the handouts at airports, get your card and give the number (along with all the stuff the USA wants) to your travel agent, and never visit BA's website.
BA print the loyalty card number on your boarding pass, each time you check in.
So they took a discarded boarding pass stub, with the name and number on it, went to the BA site and said 'sign me up for online check in' - provided the identifying details and pretended to be him (incidentally buying a ticket with his name on). This should not have been possible without, say, confirming his address, or some other security measure. This is the 'hole' in BA's security that the article says is now fixed. From memory (and I am a little hazy on the details) when I signed up online they populated all the fields they could with the information from my loyalty card record.
I know this is the case, because I got a card without signing up online, many years ago - and then went to tie that number to an online account.
Once they were online, they could see all the stuff he'd previously told BA - address, passport number, etc - from there, they went to get his house price, phone number and a lot more information.
The moral of the story is (as many have said) - if it's information you wouldn't print on a t-shirt or tell a random stranger, don't throw it away.
I think he can really claim this is 'how it was' when it's 2.0 surround - that's the best that was available at the time. If he remixed it to 5.1 (even if he didn't insert comedy head-bumping effects this time) it'd still be an 'improvement'.
People asked for the original, that's what they're going to get. That said, I hope it's 'cleaned up' - remove artifacts and dust from the transfer...
I'm so glad I didn't buy the special edition DVDs now - I can retire my bootleg copies of the 'originals' and get this instead.
And not watch the special editions until they're re-released in 3D on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever:)
I know that was a facetious comment, but in Europe all iPods are volume-limited by law.
You can remove the hardcoded limit (it's a parameter in the Firmware, I believe) with this handy-dandy application.
Note that what Apple have just released is a user-settable max level, what I'm referring to is one that you would never know existed in normal operation (except that you can't hear things as well).
ALL scientific truths go through exactly three phases.
1. They are ridiculed
2. They are violently opposed
3. They are accepted as self-evident.
I find this applies to almost everything people believe.
I agree with your viewpoint - be open to new and contradictory ideas - but I have to disagree with your use of the above 'phases'.
They apply to Scientific Truths (as you said yourself) but you run the risk of being accused of faulty logic. If I say 'Pigs Can Fly' I will be ridiculed. If I keep posting it in every topic on Slashdot, I will be flamed sooner or later (the net's equivalent of violent opposition). But since it's not a scientific truth, it will never be accepted as self-evident.
Again, I know this isn't your point, but it's a pet peeve of mine - and I'm sure downstream someone's going to try and use it to prove a point falsely.
I'll leave you with some wise words: But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- Carl Sagan
I agree, there's a lot of people *cough*managers*cough* who get the top end, desktop replacement 'because their role demands it' and then lock it in the drawer at night when they go home. If that's how it's used, get a desktop.
I have a Thinkpad T42 - and I use the modem, built-in wireless, built-in network, PC-Card slots, both USB ports, headphone & mic sockets & CD/DVD drive almost daily.
The only things on this that I don't use are the PS/2 keyboard socket and parallel port. The CD-Writing is rarely used too, but has saved my bacon a couple of times on-site (if I had an external writer, Murphy tells me I'll leave it at home when I need it most).
So while a lot of people can work with a laptop with minimal features (or even a desktop) some of us really do use the 'desktop replacement' features to their utmost. Once I get back to the office, this laptop slips into the docking station and works seamlessly with a nice big external TFT, keyboard and mouse, USB hub, network connection, etc.
Not to say I wouldn't prefer it was lighter, but it's far from the one in the linked article!
Because if it had passed, we could also have insisted that all churches have to prefix their sermons with "not all theologians agree on which theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race, is correct".
Imagine seeing that in bright, red, 28 point text in the front of every bible, outside every church...
After all, only about 33% of the world's population is Christian... What proportion of scientists (and I don't mean the people who say they're scientists, but are just pushing a religious agenda) don't believe in Darwin? Is it more than 33%? More than 66%? No.
If the churches (and I know it's a vocal minority, not everyone who claims to be a 'believer') want to mess with science teaching, let's make sure we do the same to them. After all, kids are smart enough to make up their own minds, right?
Mark
PS Read the link, it explains how they come up with the estimate of 33%.
You make a fair point, but I would like to see the $599 laptop that also has:
Optical in and out
DVI/HDMI out
Bluetooth built in
802.11 G built in
and they're just the features I want - forget about 4 x USB 2.0, Firewire, up to 2GB RAM...
Personally I wish Apple had released a true 'appliance' - form factor of a DVD player with wireless, HD-out & DTS support which just ran Front Row to stream from other macs/PCs on the network and had a clever way of dealing with DVD & CD disks. For example, present the CD as a list of tracks retrieved from the net, and offer an option to rip to MP3 on the 'home' computer...
No need for a full OS X machine, make it a nice cheap DVD drive replacement with media streaming, for those of us who already have computers....
Mark
Re:The one feature that I'm looking forward to is.
on
Why Vista Won't Suck
·
· Score: 1
Right up until your parents call you to say 'we hear beeps whenever we get email, but we can't listen to music'.
"Turn the volume up."
"It's all the way up, whenever we get more spam *BEEP-BONG* the neighbours pound on the walls."
"No, the volume in Windows Media Player."
"Oh, OK - now everything's too loud."
"So turn the main volume down."
"Where's that again? Now I can't hear my MSN pinging...."
I can't be the only one who's already had to deal with people confused by the volume control in iTunes, the taskbar, the laptop itself (volume keys on the keyboard that don't link into the system volume? Thanks IBM^WLenovo) and the external speakers....
It starts by installing Ruby 1.8.4 without overwriting the system-installed Ruby (it puts the new version in/usr/local). That way, the default system works as expected for other users or programs already coded for the system-installed ruby.
Now if you'd asked why 1.8.4 might break things expecting 1.8.2, that's another question:)
I had a TV with built in 5.1 surround (including some lousy satellite speakers but no sub), but it didn't support DTS, and without a receiver of some sort I couldn't add additional inputs.
So I decided to buy a 5.1 receiver and speakers.
At the store, they had a 7.1 receiver which I'd read reviews of, and they said sounds like it cost well over £1000 but was only £300. They had it reduced to £250.
So I bought it. And a set of 7.1 speakers (the same price as an inferior 5.1 set) in which the rear 4 can be spliced together as pairs - reducing it to 5.1).
Since I have a small room, and no 7.1 source, I've left it as a 5.1 system, but it's nice to know if I ever get a larger room I can split up the rear speakers and properly fill in the rear channels.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that I'd not swap a 5.1 for a 7.1 system, if it cost more. I went from a sort of 5.1 to a real 5.1 for a sum I was happy to pay - and can now upgrade to 7.1 should it prove useful for the cost of two speaker stands.
If it were a Microsoft announcement it would be news too. It's hyping speculation about a rumour about some vapourware...
It's right up there with 'someone created a photoshop of what they want the Video iPod to look like, and Apple said they're going to announce something soon, so this might be it, right?'
I agree, there's a lot of speculative stuff posted on Slashdot now - I think the "editors" need to work out what they want this site to be. It's slower than most other tech sites are at reporting real news (to the extent I assume some articles are dupes, 'cos I know I read them days ago), speculates far too much, gives misleading write-ups of articles, and in my opinion is becoming less and less relevant.
The quality's still slightly higher than Digg.com in that completely illiterate articles tend not to get posted, but other than that it's starting to lag behind...
Slashdot is in danger of becoming irrelevant. And as someone who's been here since the beginning, that's sad.
f RIAA sells a media (a CD treated like a chair) then they have no FUCKIN right to tell me whether i resell it, rip it, or use it to wipe my ass if my toilet paper runs out. If they treat it as a license to listen to something (like Windows CDs), then they MUST replace a damaged CD.
They can't have it both ways.
Of course they can, you just have to think like they do. Luckily I had the decency bypass operation, so I'll clue you in.
You're buying the RIGHT to listen to the music, not the ABILITY. So when your CD gets scratched, stolen, chewed up by the dog, you are still just as ENTITLED to listen to it as you ever were... Easy! Of course, you're not allowed to back it up, so it becomes a little challenging, but that's hardly their fault, now is it?
Same thing with the copy protected CDs that won't work in cars, computers, some DVD players, some CD players, some parts of the house.... just because you're ENTITLED to play it, doesn't mean you actually CAN.
That's their logic, as far as I can tell.
So in that case, if my CD gets broken I can download it for free from the Internet, right? I already 'bought the license to listen'....
Slashdot Mirror
Of which my favourite is the commentary for (Kevin Smith movie) 'Chasing Amy' - recorded for the Criterion Laserdisc, and included on the Criterion DVD (which you should all buy, by the way)...
:)
It's well summed up by the specially recorded new intro, in which Kevin Smith says 'and on the commentary you might hear someone who sounds a lot like me saying"fuck DVD" - I would like to go on the record as saying it wasn't me, I never said it, I love DVDs' in his usual dead-pan style.
Sure enough the commentary refers to the wonder that is Criterion Laserdisc, much better than DVD, etc
Nice he didn't retcon it!
Mark
Yeah, but you just try going around sneezing on babies....
Mark
The 'threat' is that if you don't comply with the vital national security interest, you must therefore be a terrorist.
Everyone on here who thinks Bush shouldn't be allowed to open your mail and copy your bank statements clearly has something to hide, and so by definition is a threat to national security. And if you're upset about it, then you might be dangerous... So therefore a terrorist.
QED.
Yeah, after all I drive a Saab, not a Volvo...
:) for the humour impaired.
If you're going to make crass generalisations about Apple fans, at least get it right!
Mark
PS
Good point, well made ;) But at least point us at the story, and then the discussion. I'd rather have people whining 'the extra info link has no extra info' than have to click 3 times to get to the news itself...
Especially when I have 'BBC Tech News' in the sidebar, and can get there direct!
Mark
Why not do what other sites do: simply link to the original article, and provide a 'via' link to the posting submitted?
:)
For example:
The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group has expressed its concerns about the over protection caused by DRM blah blah blah.
More on this at BBC News & Lasting News.
Of course, that requires an editor who does actually read the article, follow the links and decide what's right. Oddly, something similar seems to happen from time to time - this article has links to other sites with analysis... maybe because someone read Google News and aggregated all those links?
Mark
The CC company keeps increasing my limit, even when I've never had a large balance, ever.
Actually, that should be 'The CC company keeps increasing my limit, because I've never had a large balance, ever'. (Which I'm sure you already know).
They don't make money if you pay off each month in full (well, they get the transaction fee, but that's it). The 18.8% APR interest is where the real money is made - and if you're living within your means, you'll never pay it.
So they up the limit, to try and tempt you to over spend... "Wow, I can buy a new car on my credit card!"
Don't forget, you can ask them not to increase the limit, or even reduce it. They shouldn't argue, since they're treading a thin line between enabling you to spend responsibly and luring you into debt!
I agree entirely with this sentiment: Children need to learn about cash flow and how loans make banks money but I wouldn't limit it to children. The number of ads I see, offering to 'get you out of debt' by spreading your existing high-interest payments over 20 years... 'Reduce your monthly payments' should come with a warning 'by paying three times as much over the next two decades!'...
Mark
This new learning fascinates me. Explain to me again how sheep's bladders may be used to prevent earthquakes...
Mark
As my brother post says, in the novel she listens to make herself feel connected (and is in fact asleep when ET calls)...
In the movie, they made it a more personal discovery - but if you look close, when she radios in screaming the co-ordinates, you can see on the PC on the desk a banner saying 'Candidate Signal Detected' flashing in front of a Fourier Transform of the Message...
One assumes they turned off the audible alarm 'cos they were getting too many false positives.
Mark
You're right - I did read all your post, and I only answered part of it. I didn't want to get drawn into a debate on the severity of the punishment because he's not been tried yet.
Whether I think 70 years in jail or daily beatings in Guantanamo are fair is not yet relevant - he's not been put on trial yet. All that's happened is that the US has asked the UK to release him to them, so that he can be tried.
Yes, the crime he's accused of is probably out of kilter with the maximum penalty - so his defence attorney should argue that, when he gets to trial. After all, the 9/11 '20th hijacker' didn't get the death penalty, which was a possibility.
And why shouldn't the UK hand him over to the US? He did the 'damage' in the US, from the UK. Are you saying Bin Laden should be tried in Afghanistan, because that's where he was when the 9/11 attacks took place? Saddam was tried in Iraq for crimes he committed there - because they were against the people of Iraq...
Mark
And PS, I'm British. I wouldn't want to be tried in the US as a terrorist - just one more reason not to muck about in US government computers...
OK, fair point. What would you do in the (admittedly over simplified) analogy of the house? Tell the local police? Maybe... Or maybe leave a note for the home owner...
Since the crackers who call themselves 'hackers' often try and use the defence 'our activities are only making security better' then that's a good idea. Once he got in, he knew he shouldn't have been there - whether the security was 'good enough' or not.
His defence was 'I didn't do any harm, I was looking for evidence the US government was hiding things' - I still wonder what he'd say if I was sat watching his DVD collection when he came home one night. Or viewing all his porn. 'It's cool dude, you didn't break anything'.
Mark
If I was walking down a street in London and saw a door marked "Ministry of Defence. Top Secret. UFO archive." I'd probably keep on walking - unless the door was wide open.
Actually a better analogy would be trying the closed door and discovering it was unlocked - then walking inside instead of raising the alarm.
It's still trespassing, and still a crime. How easy they make it for you doesn't really matter for the purposes of the trial.
I'm sure you'd ask the court to release someone who wandered into your house, read your personal information but didn't take any of it, right?
Mark
It's not about getting on to a flight with false ID, it's about getting identifying information from nothing more than a boarding pass.
As I understand it, the chain of events is this...
If you're a member of the BA loyalty club, you didn't used to have to go through the web site... probably still don't have to.
You could sign up by one of the handouts at airports, get your card and give the number (along with all the stuff the USA wants) to your travel agent, and never visit BA's website.
BA print the loyalty card number on your boarding pass, each time you check in.
So they took a discarded boarding pass stub, with the name and number on it, went to the BA site and said 'sign me up for online check in' - provided the identifying details and pretended to be him (incidentally buying a ticket with his name on). This should not have been possible without, say, confirming his address, or some other security measure. This is the 'hole' in BA's security that the article says is now fixed. From memory (and I am a little hazy on the details) when I signed up online they populated all the fields they could with the information from my loyalty card record.
I know this is the case, because I got a card without signing up online, many years ago - and then went to tie that number to an online account.
Once they were online, they could see all the stuff he'd previously told BA - address, passport number, etc - from there, they went to get his house price, phone number and a lot more information.
The moral of the story is (as many have said) - if it's information you wouldn't print on a t-shirt or tell a random stranger, don't throw it away.
Mark
I think he can really claim this is 'how it was' when it's 2.0 surround - that's the best that was available at the time. If he remixed it to 5.1 (even if he didn't insert comedy head-bumping effects this time) it'd still be an 'improvement'.
:)
People asked for the original, that's what they're going to get. That said, I hope it's 'cleaned up' - remove artifacts and dust from the transfer...
I'm so glad I didn't buy the special edition DVDs now - I can retire my bootleg copies of the 'originals' and get this instead.
And not watch the special editions until they're re-released in 3D on HD-DVD/Blu-Ray/whatever
Mark
I know that was a facetious comment, but in Europe all iPods are volume-limited by law.
You can remove the hardcoded limit (it's a parameter in the Firmware, I believe) with this handy-dandy application.
Note that what Apple have just released is a user-settable max level, what I'm referring to is one that you would never know existed in normal operation (except that you can't hear things as well).
Mark
ALL scientific truths go through exactly three phases.
1. They are ridiculed
2. They are violently opposed
3. They are accepted as self-evident.
I find this applies to almost everything people believe.
I agree with your viewpoint - be open to new and contradictory ideas - but I have to disagree with your use of the above 'phases'.
They apply to Scientific Truths (as you said yourself) but you run the risk of being accused of faulty logic. If I say 'Pigs Can Fly' I will be ridiculed. If I keep posting it in every topic on Slashdot, I will be flamed sooner or later (the net's equivalent of violent opposition). But since it's not a scientific truth, it will never be accepted as self-evident.
Again, I know this isn't your point, but it's a pet peeve of mine - and I'm sure downstream someone's going to try and use it to prove a point falsely.
I'll leave you with some wise words:
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan
Mark
Now that I look closer, it is an S-Video port.
:)
;)
Good job I have a USB mouse
I have a PS/2 keyboard in the office, but that's stuck into the docking station, which is why I confused the two.
Well spotted
Mark
I agree, there's a lot of people *cough*managers*cough* who get the top end, desktop replacement 'because their role demands it' and then lock it in the drawer at night when they go home. If that's how it's used, get a desktop.
I have a Thinkpad T42 - and I use the modem, built-in wireless, built-in network, PC-Card slots, both USB ports, headphone & mic sockets & CD/DVD drive almost daily.
The only things on this that I don't use are the PS/2 keyboard socket and parallel port. The CD-Writing is rarely used too, but has saved my bacon a couple of times on-site (if I had an external writer, Murphy tells me I'll leave it at home when I need it most).
So while a lot of people can work with a laptop with minimal features (or even a desktop) some of us really do use the 'desktop replacement' features to their utmost. Once I get back to the office, this laptop slips into the docking station and works seamlessly with a nice big external TFT, keyboard and mouse, USB hub, network connection, etc.
Not to say I wouldn't prefer it was lighter, but it's far from the one in the linked article!
Mark
Because if it had passed, we could also have insisted that all churches have to prefix their sermons with "not all theologians agree on which theory regarding the origins of life, or the origins or present state of the human race, is correct".
Imagine seeing that in bright, red, 28 point text in the front of every bible, outside every church...
After all, only about 33% of the world's population is Christian... What proportion of scientists (and I don't mean the people who say they're scientists, but are just pushing a religious agenda) don't believe in Darwin? Is it more than 33%? More than 66%? No.
If the churches (and I know it's a vocal minority, not everyone who claims to be a 'believer') want to mess with science teaching, let's make sure we do the same to them. After all, kids are smart enough to make up their own minds, right?
Mark
PS Read the link, it explains how they come up with the estimate of 33%.
and they're just the features I want - forget about 4 x USB 2.0, Firewire, up to 2GB RAM...
Personally I wish Apple had released a true 'appliance' - form factor of a DVD player with wireless, HD-out & DTS support which just ran Front Row to stream from other macs/PCs on the network and had a clever way of dealing with DVD & CD disks. For example, present the CD as a list of tracks retrieved from the net, and offer an option to rip to MP3 on the 'home' computer...
No need for a full OS X machine, make it a nice cheap DVD drive replacement with media streaming, for those of us who already have computers....
Mark
Right up until your parents call you to say 'we hear beeps whenever we get email, but we can't listen to music'.
"Turn the volume up."
"It's all the way up, whenever we get more spam *BEEP-BONG* the neighbours pound on the walls."
"No, the volume in Windows Media Player."
"Oh, OK - now everything's too loud."
"So turn the main volume down."
"Where's that again? Now I can't hear my MSN pinging...."
I can't be the only one who's already had to deal with people confused by the volume control in iTunes, the taskbar, the laptop itself (volume keys on the keyboard that don't link into the system volume? Thanks IBM^WLenovo) and the external speakers....
Mark
Because later in that same paragraph:
/usr/local). That way, the default system works as expected for other users or programs already coded for the system-installed ruby.
:)
It starts by installing Ruby 1.8.4 without overwriting the system-installed Ruby (it puts the new version in
Now if you'd asked why 1.8.4 might break things expecting 1.8.2, that's another question
Mark
And here's why.
I had a TV with built in 5.1 surround (including some lousy satellite speakers but no sub), but it didn't support DTS, and without a receiver of some sort I couldn't add additional inputs.
So I decided to buy a 5.1 receiver and speakers.
At the store, they had a 7.1 receiver which I'd read reviews of, and they said sounds like it cost well over £1000 but was only £300. They had it reduced to £250.
So I bought it. And a set of 7.1 speakers (the same price as an inferior 5.1 set) in which the rear 4 can be spliced together as pairs - reducing it to 5.1).
Since I have a small room, and no 7.1 source, I've left it as a 5.1 system, but it's nice to know if I ever get a larger room I can split up the rear speakers and properly fill in the rear channels.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly that I'd not swap a 5.1 for a 7.1 system, if it cost more. I went from a sort of 5.1 to a real 5.1 for a sum I was happy to pay - and can now upgrade to 7.1 should it prove useful for the cost of two speaker stands.
Mark
If it were a Microsoft announcement it would be news too. It's hyping speculation about a rumour about some vapourware...
It's right up there with 'someone created a photoshop of what they want the Video iPod to look like, and Apple said they're going to announce something soon, so this might be it, right?'
I agree, there's a lot of speculative stuff posted on Slashdot now - I think the "editors" need to work out what they want this site to be. It's slower than most other tech sites are at reporting real news (to the extent I assume some articles are dupes, 'cos I know I read them days ago), speculates far too much, gives misleading write-ups of articles, and in my opinion is becoming less and less relevant.
The quality's still slightly higher than Digg.com in that completely illiterate articles tend not to get posted, but other than that it's starting to lag behind...
Slashdot is in danger of becoming irrelevant. And as someone who's been here since the beginning, that's sad.
Mark
f RIAA sells a media (a CD treated like a chair) then they have no FUCKIN right to tell me whether i resell it, rip it, or use it to wipe my ass if my toilet paper runs out.
....
If they treat it as a license to listen to something (like Windows CDs), then they MUST replace a damaged CD.
They can't have it both ways.
Of course they can, you just have to think like they do. Luckily I had the decency bypass operation, so I'll clue you in.
You're buying the RIGHT to listen to the music, not the ABILITY. So when your CD gets scratched, stolen, chewed up by the dog, you are still just as ENTITLED to listen to it as you ever were... Easy! Of course, you're not allowed to back it up, so it becomes a little challenging, but that's hardly their fault, now is it?
Same thing with the copy protected CDs that won't work in cars, computers, some DVD players, some CD players, some parts of the house.... just because you're ENTITLED to play it, doesn't mean you actually CAN.
That's their logic, as far as I can tell.
So in that case, if my CD gets broken I can download it for free from the Internet, right? I already 'bought the license to listen'
Mark