I see that you're an optimist. In my experience digital TV pictures are actually worse quality than traditional broadcast TV. Because the entire image is MPEG-2 encoded, even a tiny bit of interference can cause the screen to freeze or display brightly coloured artifacts. Because the signal is being squeezed into the absolute minimum possible bandwidth the overall quality comes out as being slightly below what I would expect from a bootleg VCD.
It sucks to be you. When I watch digital HDTV shows (eg CSI) it looks better than a DVD, and I don't have problems with interference.
I've heard so much about the programming practices at Microsoft and what not - and yet, ironically, these things keep cropping up so damn bloody often while some operating systems coded by a bunch of loosely connected hackers are way more robust and stable. Hmm, makes one wonder.
the openbsd people are united by an ideology. Microsoft employees are largely, though not exclusively, united simply by the desire for a paycheck.
I work in a Microsoft facility and let me tell ya, they aren't all smoking what Steve Ballmer is.
Is it any wonder that quality suffers when compared to a project that is a labor of love?
Or maybe my bad attitude is why I am a contractor and not full time there.:)
yes, I know about that, but the point is they took the *automatic* skipping feature away from us. My Replay skips commercials with NO buttons, if I like. You don't have that option and that is what sucks.
These two competitors have agreed on a completely arbitrary limit for recording PPV shows. Why?
Replay took away the ability to automatically skip commercials in their newest units? Why? Because they got their ass sued off over that feature. So they caved and took it out.
It doesn't matter if you are in the right if you can't afford to prove it.
Don't blame TiVo and Replay, blame the broadcasters who are really the ones who want to control what you do.
Also, the distractions caused by other human beings doing things around you are good. Embrace them, and it'll mean you're actually interacting with other _real_ human beings. That what life's about anyway. Community, family. Starbucks et al don't have that.
Is your Starbucks both operated and visited by soulless robots?
Learn to play an instrument. - I have hooks for hands.
Drink beer with friends. - I am a recovering alcoholic.
Read obscure books. - I can only read large-print books due to poor eyesight.
Learn a foreign language. - I already speak twelve of them. Zut alors!
Play with children. - I don't like children, plus the wheelchair and hook hands scare them.
Cook good food. - Due to being partially blind, in a wheelchair and having hooks for hands, I am depressed and I overeat. I just got stomach stapling surgery.
Run. - I could go for a roll in the chair, I guess.
It's got Macrovision built in! I told myself long ago I would not buy another computer until I could finally get one with video copy protection on board. That RULES.
If this enjoys wide-spread use, then a great many people will simply ditch CallerID.
I never bought into it, because it is EIGHT BUCKS A MONTH to get it on my land line. I'm not in the poorhouse, but it just isn't worth that much to me. For $2, I'd do it.
I always figured people who bought CID were the same folks who were happy spending $0.75/use for *69, or $1/use for premium directory information, etc.
I guess he didn't spend enough time explaining that afterall he did have to type out 204GB several times and count all his tracks in his music collection (44,190).
Whoa. I couldn't even get that far. I was skimming but I had to stop because I kept wanting to swallow my tongue and end it. Let's hear it for the weblog revolution!
44,190 music tracks? That is an awful lot of music to own legally. I am impressed.
Assuming that half that is legal freeware/PD music (like the stuff you used to be able to get from MP3.com, or stuff from your buddy's band), that still leaves a lot of music to buy. Or license. Whatever it is these days, I can't keep up.
Let's just say 21,000 non-freely-distributable music tracks... and a generous average of 15 tracks per album... That's about 1500 CDs to buy, and at a conservative cost of US$12 each we are talking about $18,000 in music.
I like music a lot, but not $18,000 worth.
I am more concerned with battery life and heat from the 400mhz XScale CPU.
This is the same CPU as in a Pocket PC. Heat isn't really a problem, that 400MHz isn't doing as much work (or making as much toast) as you would think. You can get a few solid hours out of a Pocket PC with a teensy battery, so if these things are bigger than a Pocket PC I would expect batterly life to be decent.
"A common misperception is that a scratch will be worse on a DVD than on a CD because of higher storage density and because video is heavily compressed. DVD data density is physically four times that of CD-ROM, so it's true that a scratch will affect more data. But DVD error correction is at least ten times better than CD-ROM error correction and more than makes up for the density increase."
And that came from Disney, so you can trust it 110%!
The IOC has negotiated special arrangements with at least some governments.
For example, in the US I don't think it is legally possible to sue them, at least not in certain areas.
I used to work for a company which published a game... the game's logo was 5 golden interlocking rings in a circle. The IOC lawyered us up and we had to change the logo; it was not possible to fight back, as the bossman explained it to us. Besides, we were a little company and even if we could fight, we'd lose more money than if we just caved in.
The game's logo really looked nothing like the Olympic logo, but they have some kind of magical kung fu lawyer grip on images made of linked rings.
As long as you are carrying that bag around, you may as well get a 15" or 17" laptop instead of that 12".
Meanwhile I will be carrying my PocketPC in, uh, my pocket, and Googling up product reviews while I am shopping. Sure, the browser sucks, but it gets the job done.
Ya know, Thomas Jefferson held church services in the Capitol building. By today's standards he would be a "theocrat" if you think Bush is. But you speak of the Founding Fathers like they knew what was going on. Which is it?
That thing sounds great, but it is a tech demo, not an app. If there is a way to make it speak an arbitrary text file and send it to me as an MP3, let me know. Otherwise it is pretty useless.
... we can break the publisher's grip on our "intellectual property" system, and start to have a reasonable hope of preserving a record of our culture.
OK, copyright lasts too long, and works that are not economically viable will not be sold, and because of copyright/DRM it will not be legal or possible to view out-of-print works. Things will disappear.
But if people want something, there is market demand, and it will be sold.
If enough people do not want something to make it worth selling, is it really an important part of our culture anyway?
"Culture" is a moving target. American culture seems to value the now over the past, and our content industry reflects that.
Hey, any way you look at it, we are screwed. Societies do not seem to become more free over time unless they get shaken up by a revolution. No one is going to take up arms for the right to use the tune to This Land Is My Land.
Slashdot Mirror
I see that you're an optimist. In my experience digital TV pictures are actually worse quality than traditional broadcast TV. Because the entire image is MPEG-2 encoded, even a tiny bit of interference can cause the screen to freeze or display brightly coloured artifacts. Because the signal is being squeezed into the absolute minimum possible bandwidth the overall quality comes out as being slightly below what I would expect from a bootleg VCD.
It sucks to be you. When I watch digital HDTV shows (eg CSI) it looks better than a DVD, and I don't have problems with interference.
I've heard so much about the programming practices at Microsoft and what not - and yet, ironically, these things keep cropping up so damn bloody often while some operating systems coded by a bunch of loosely connected hackers are way more robust and stable.
:)
Hmm, makes one wonder.
the openbsd people are united by an ideology. Microsoft employees are largely, though not exclusively, united simply by the desire for a paycheck.
I work in a Microsoft facility and let me tell ya, they aren't all smoking what Steve Ballmer is.
Is it any wonder that quality suffers when compared to a project that is a labor of love?
Or maybe my bad attitude is why I am a contractor and not full time there.
yes, I know about that, but the point is they took the *automatic* skipping feature away from us. My Replay skips commercials with NO buttons, if I like. You don't have that option and that is what sucks.
These two competitors have agreed on a completely arbitrary limit for recording PPV shows. Why?
Replay took away the ability to automatically skip commercials in their newest units? Why? Because they got their ass sued off over that feature. So they caved and took it out.
It doesn't matter if you are in the right if you can't afford to prove it.
Don't blame TiVo and Replay, blame the broadcasters who are really the ones who want to control what you do.
Before reading about the film's history I figured it was a Crimson Skies ripoff, like Underworld seemingly ripped off White Wolf's World o'Darkness.
Then again, maybe I am overestimating the impact that freakin' board games and RPGs have on Hollywood executives!
The only IT workers that I know of that earn hourly wages, and get OT pay as a result, are computer store employees.
There are a lot of temps here at Microsoft who are elibigle for OT.
... and my second oldest (8) wants to be a marine biologist ...
So did George Costanza.
If you have a good HRTF and a geometrical model of the space, you can recreate very accurate sound reproduction, with just two speakers/headphones.
While you are waiting for that technology to come to market, some of us will be playing games with surround sound anyway. Have fun sitting around.
Also, the distractions caused by other human beings doing things around you are good. Embrace them, and it'll mean you're actually interacting with other _real_ human beings. That what life's about anyway. Community, family. Starbucks et al don't have that.
Is your Starbucks both operated and visited by soulless robots?
That would be cool.
The FreeBSD link looks like some dude's pet project. Cool, but it is not the official method for distributing patches.
You insensitive clod!
Go hiking.
- I'm in a wheelchair.
Learn to play an instrument.
- I have hooks for hands.
Drink beer with friends.
- I am a recovering alcoholic.
Read obscure books.
- I can only read large-print books due to poor eyesight.
Learn a foreign language.
- I already speak twelve of them. Zut alors!
Play with children.
- I don't like children, plus the wheelchair and hook hands scare them.
Cook good food.
- Due to being partially blind, in a wheelchair and having hooks for hands, I am depressed and I overeat. I just got stomach stapling surgery.
Run.
- I could go for a roll in the chair, I guess.
It's got Macrovision built in! I told myself long ago I would not buy another computer until I could finally get one with video copy protection on board. That RULES.
If this enjoys wide-spread use, then a great many people will simply ditch CallerID.
I never bought into it, because it is EIGHT BUCKS A MONTH to get it on my land line. I'm not in the poorhouse, but it just isn't worth that much to me. For $2, I'd do it.
I always figured people who bought CID were the same folks who were happy spending $0.75/use for *69, or $1/use for premium directory information, etc.
I guess he didn't spend enough time explaining that afterall he did have to type out 204GB several times and count all his tracks in his music collection (44,190).
Whoa. I couldn't even get that far. I was skimming but I had to stop because I kept wanting to swallow my tongue and end it. Let's hear it for the weblog revolution!
44,190 music tracks? That is an awful lot of music to own legally. I am impressed.
Assuming that half that is legal freeware/PD music (like the stuff you used to be able to get from MP3.com, or stuff from your buddy's band), that still leaves a lot of music to buy. Or license. Whatever it is these days, I can't keep up.
Let's just say 21,000 non-freely-distributable music tracks... and a generous average of 15 tracks per album... That's about 1500 CDs to buy, and at a conservative cost of US$12 each we are talking about $18,000 in music.
I like music a lot, but not $18,000 worth.
I am more concerned with battery life and heat from the 400mhz XScale CPU.
This is the same CPU as in a Pocket PC. Heat isn't really a problem, that 400MHz isn't doing as much work (or making as much toast) as you would think. You can get a few solid hours out of a Pocket PC with a teensy battery, so if these things are bigger than a Pocket PC I would expect batterly life to be decent.
I've already heard plenty of complaints about a scratch destroying more info on a DVD than a CD due to density.
According to this site that's hooey.
"A common misperception is that a scratch will be worse on a DVD than on a CD because of higher storage density and because video is heavily compressed. DVD data density is physically four times that of CD-ROM, so it's true that a scratch will affect more data. But DVD error correction is at least ten times better than CD-ROM error correction and more than makes up for the density increase."
And that came from Disney, so you can trust it 110%!
Yep!
The IOC has negotiated special arrangements with at least some governments.
For example, in the US I don't think it is legally possible to sue them, at least not in certain areas.
I used to work for a company which published a game... the game's logo was 5 golden interlocking rings in a circle. The IOC lawyered us up and we had to change the logo; it was not possible to fight back, as the bossman explained it to us. Besides, we were a little company and even if we could fight, we'd lose more money than if we just caved in.
The game's logo really looked nothing like the Olympic logo, but they have some kind of magical kung fu lawyer grip on images made of linked rings.
The Olympics can get stuffed.
As long as you are carrying that bag around, you may as well get a 15" or 17" laptop instead of that 12".
Meanwhile I will be carrying my PocketPC in, uh, my pocket, and Googling up product reviews while I am shopping. Sure, the browser sucks, but it gets the job done.
Did I mention it fits in my pocket?
Ya know, Thomas Jefferson held church services in the Capitol building. By today's standards he would be a "theocrat" if you think Bush is. But you speak of the Founding Fathers like they knew what was going on. Which is it?
Fusion has been "15-20 years away" for something like 30 years now, hasn't it?
Which means that we have actually invented time travel.
That thing sounds great, but it is a tech demo, not an app. If there is a way to make it speak an arbitrary text file and send it to me as an MP3, let me know. Otherwise it is pretty useless.
Introducing Cracker, the "Fair Use Ferret"
weasels aren't rodents. they and ferrets (and marmots, minks, etc) are more like land otters.
and I believe there has never been a documented case of rabies in the domestic ferret.
To play devil's advocate...
... we can break the publisher's grip on our "intellectual property" system, and start to have a reasonable hope of preserving a record of our culture.
OK, copyright lasts too long, and works that are not economically viable will not be sold, and because of copyright/DRM it will not be legal or possible to view out-of-print works. Things will disappear.
But if people want something, there is market demand, and it will be sold.
If enough people do not want something to make it worth selling, is it really an important part of our culture anyway?
"Culture" is a moving target. American culture seems to value the now over the past, and our content industry reflects that.
Hey, any way you look at it, we are screwed. Societies do not seem to become more free over time unless they get shaken up by a revolution. No one is going to take up arms for the right to use the tune to This Land Is My Land.
this looks pretty normal to me.