I just sent this email to John DeTar, Senior Vice President of Unicast:
30-seconds of pure video and expanded interactivity shown perfectly to every consumer every time.
I use a Mac running OS X. My browser is Apple Safari, and I have cookies enabled. Your demo page seems to disagree on my cookie capabilities, and won't download your demo ad. So does this mean I'm not a consumer?
Looks like you need to modify your marketing message to read "shown perfectly to most consumers, most of the time, as long as they don't yet know how to block content by MIME type and/or source IP address, and as long as they're not Mac, Linux, Unix or WebTV users, or using an old version of Windows, or viewing it from a smartphone."
Did you ever consider that users in many, many other countries pay their ISP per megabyte consumed? In New Zealand, scarce broadband services goes for 20 cents/MB. They never ask to download your ads, but they're going to have to wait for it and *pay* for it too?
You guys should hook up with Bell Labs, who just came up with a way to deliver advertising to cellphones based on short-range physical proximity. That way I can walk down the street and get bombarded with streaming video ads that I PAY to download! That'll REALLY make the world a better place! Or at least a more profitable one...
Why don't you quit and go find a way to make social responsibility as profitable as irresponsibility? We just might save capitalism before those damned anarchists take over from underneath. Ready, set, go!
While the features look good on paper, the unit has little to be desired.
If you were trying to say it's inadequate, I believe the proper phrase would have been "leaves a little to be desired". You don't want to imply that you don't desire anything from it because you're trying to say that you do...
My favorite quote? "The impact on the fly is difficult to exaggerate." You're damn right it is.
Damnit, Hemos, you misquoted, then misinterpreted, then misrepresented the Reuters article. Way to go!
If you'd read the article, it actually said (emphasis added):
"The impact
of the fly is difficult to exaggerate," said John Kabayo, regional coordinator for...
See, they sterilized the flies. They didn't mutate fly eggs. Nobody said anything about deleterious effects on the flies themselves, you fool. They said the effect of throwing them out there is difficult to exaggerate.
Idiot.
Re:Humor - all-night coding sessions are healthy?
on
Sleep Less, Live Longer
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Though I admit it would be very nice if caffeine actually did lengthen life (as opposed ot just making it seem to be lived faster)...
I realize you were joking, but it reminded me that I wish more people would realize that caffeine really is bad for you.
Look, IANAL (I not Like Being Anal, But I know I Anal...), but if the service was marketed as being without such bandwidth limits, it sounds like there are a few possibilities for legal recourse, such as false advertising (if they marketed it as "unlimited"), and/or the old bait-and-switch (if you can prove that).
Your agreement almost definitely states that they can change the agreement at any time for any reason, but depending upon the circumstances you might find they're on the wrong side of the law on this one.
Just a thought from a graduate of the Slashdot School of Business Law. Hope it helps.
Brings a tear to your eye...
on
The Ultimate S.U.V.
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Did you read the specs page? It's got redundant GPS mapping with tiebreaking dead-reconing and aviation nav systems, marine radar, satellite internet, tv, phone, computer-powered everything (some running QNX), xenon headlights, worklights, joystick-adjustable search lights, front-, side-, and rear-mounted remote pan/tilt/zoom/focus-able cameras, a power-driven mast on which you can raise all kinds of communication antennas, a remote-controlled camera dome, or a chair, displays in the cabin will tell you the distance between your bumpers and the nearest solid object, it's got a coffee maker, a fridge, a bathroom in the trailer (which has a command center accessible via what appears to be a Mac with dual 17" LCD monitors), if you want to see over a hilltop or something you can launch an electric recon plane and watch realtime wireless video with a 30-mile flight range, you can set up the zero-to-sixty-in-four-seconds jet boat and go up against four-foot white water rapids with, of course, full GPS navigation and forward-looking night-vision with GPS waypoint overlay, and if you get bored with this you can take the Beamer cycle off the back and go zipping through the countryside with high-resolution GPS and a sat-phone, packet modem, etc...
It's just freaking inspiring that someone with the resources to pull this thing off is going to get to go on adventures with it all over the world, which is obviously his life-long dream which, judging by the fact that he says the whole thing costs a bit less than a Boeing 777, is probably a well- deserved vacation from all the wealth-building he's been doing up until now to be able to afford not only the lifestyle of a free-roaming expeditionist, but a free-roaming expeditionist with the ultimate custom-built geek adventure vehicle of all freaking time.
...one of the most inventive and original movies I've seen in awhile.
In toto, it's disjointed.
Uh, dude...to the best of my knowledge, "in toto" is Latin for "in place of".
Obscure trivia time:
The band Toto was (is?) comprised of stand-in (backup) musicians for other popular bands. It could be said that their jobs were to play in toto the original guitarist, drummer, keyboardist, bassist, etc., anyway, they thought it would be cool to start jamming together when they weren't busy filling in for other musicians on tour, and thought it'd be clever and rather apropos to actually name their little band Toto. So they did. And they rock(ed).
I can listen to Africa all day and all night, non-stop. I don't know why. I also don't understand what the hell African rain has to do with anything they're singing about, but who the fsck cares, they're Toto!
It's just a coincidence that all those lazy poor people live in third world countries.
I got the intended sarcasm, but I thought the "digital divide" concept primarily described lower-class African-Americans in particular. At least "they" (prominent pro-African-American political/social institutions, as referenced in the Google search results from the above link) seem to have taken it on as part of the African-American socio-economic identity.
Forgive my ignorance (despite the obviousness of the application of that concept to Third World countries), but that's the only context in which I've ever encountered the phrase "digital divide" before today.
Second, Microsoft uses proxying for Internet-related stuff, which could make the multi-vote issue appear to be worse than it actually is, as many separate users would come from a single IP.
Uuh...but the article said the referer URLs to those votes included their usernames. They would therefore have no problem counting the per-person votes.
Seriously, people need to read the articles before posting.
Unless you want to pay $500/month for your cable modem, quit bitching that AT&T doesn't want you to saturate it with traffic 24 hours a day.
What?
Do I have to be running a server to download linux ISOs, pr0n videos and public domain (50-year-old) movies? Surely that would saturate my connection with traffic just as much as running a dreaded server, would it not?
I understand your point about overselling and network utilization, but the reason they don't want people running servers is because of the expected bandwidth requirements, regardless of the fact that my e-commerce web site, if I hosted it off my cable modem (which I don't), would draw about 1.5 GB of traffic/week, while my downloading habits (including daily automated backups to my linux box at home from the colo'd web server via SCP) sometimes exceeds that in a single day.
As has been said earlier, just give me my goddamn pipe, collect your bill, and shut the hell up.
S-Video is the name for that connector on the back of your DVD player that looks like an old-style Apple ADB keyboard/mouse port (mini-DIN 8 connector) that carries separated ("component") video signals rather than combined as in RCA cables ("composite"). It gives you better video signal quality, and you should use it whenever you have the capability. S-Video is presumably what CmdrTaco mean to say here.
S-VHS (Super-VHS) is a videotape standard like VHS, except it defines the use of different magnetic coatings and what-not for broadcast-quality resolution on Super-VHS tapes. In addition to the wildly-expensive professional rackmount broadcast equipment, you can buy stripped-down Super-VHS VCR's these days that are priced for prosumers. The resolution is similar to Hi-8mm.
Now, you'll find that just about any SVHS VCR has S-Video connectors on it in addition to composite RCA connectors, but S-Video connectors can also be found on lots of other things that are not related to Super VHS, like miniDV camcorders.
Sheah, due to the fact that a bunch of friggin jerks are TAKING PLANES OVER AND CRASHING THEM INTO BUILDINGS!
I personally don't think I'll be flying again for a while. Tell me what you will about the probability of getting struck by lightning, but at least people have a chance of actually surviving a lightning strike.
The ALS, I'm afraid, is going to have to wait until I'm told that Steven Seagall, Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Hulk Hogan, Jackie Chan, Jesse Ventura and Jet Li will all be on the same damn plane with me...
Who needs the background of a news broadcast on a low bitrate connection?
Uuh...actually, the background is marginal on any kind of connection because it doesn't move around a lot and therefore only gets sent when a shot changes or when there's a lot of foreground action covering and uncovering the background.
Most of the compression achieved by streaming codecs is already accomplished by only sending the pixels that moved (the "delta") between frames.
I'm very interested in seeing someone get a positive result replicating this, don't care much about negative results becuase it's probably fairly touchy, like semicondutors, superconductors, cold fusion, etc.
...and I'm sure some of us know exactly how touchy coldfusion is...
Jon Katz: Send that great story and analysis to every major newspaper out there. Go the bg time. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. Make that excellent piece of work heard by many more than us Slashdotters.
Yeah, Katz -- "Get on the wire! Tell everyone how to bring these things down..."
Zeitgeist n. (zeit-geist): the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.
1. "OMG, Wimbledon is on! I wonder if somebody's tits have ever fallen out during a match?"
2. "OMG, Paula Poundstone NO!! You're too funny to get stinky fingers from bubblegummers! Somebody please tell me it's not true!"
3. "OMG, Jack Lemmon died!!!!! But, but...but he's not supposed to be DEAD! I bet I can find him still alive somewhere online."
4. "OMG, I was going to fly out to meet Mr. goatse.cx! Surely the strike is over by now!?"
5. "OMG, I bet if I searched for Barbara Schett she would have sex with me!"
6. "OMG, Napster was shut down, wasn't it? Or was it! I want the new N-Sync single 'I wanna do it in your butt' on mp3!!! Where the hell is Napster???"
7. "OMG, I love catch phrases sooooooo much!!!!"
8. "OMG, people are racing bicycles again!!! There's no time for annual sales reports or gay pr0n when people are racing BICYCLES through le French countryside! C'est bon!"
9. "OMG, I like basketball and I've inexplicably found cause to use Google for my search engine. I'm sure glad my nerdy friend told me why it's supposed to be better than AOL's Internet, but I sure do miss all the pr0n...anyway, maybe they'll finally draft me into the NBA if I look it up online. I coulda made it..."
10. "OMG, Vicky Botwright is so awesome!!! Maybe she'll sleep with me if I look her up on the Internet. It is TOO a real sport, asshole! Squash has been around for EVER! PBBBBHT!!!!!"
Slashdot Mirror
--
Yeah, that sort of thing never happens here on
What's the deal with all the pseudo-latin branding in the tech industry lately? We've got ArsTechnica, ArsDigita, and apparently now DesignTechnica.
Honestly, what's next? DigitalArs(e)?
Damnit, Hemos, you misquoted, then misinterpreted, then misrepresented the Reuters article. Way to go!
If you'd read the article, it actually said (emphasis added):
See, they sterilized the flies. They didn't mutate fly eggs. Nobody said anything about deleterious effects on the flies themselves, you fool. They said the effect of throwing them out there is difficult to exaggerate.
Idiot.
Though I admit it would be very nice if caffeine actually did lengthen life (as opposed ot just making it seem to be lived faster) ...
I realize you were joking, but it reminded me that I wish more people would realize that caffeine really is bad for you.
But reading that didn't do it for me. It was after I read this account of an extreme case of caffeine withdrawal that I decided enough is enough.
Sorry for straying O/T. Um, yeah, sleep! Who needs it! Life's too short! Bah! (there).
You're assuming the government would ever GIVE a "virtual" world rights of any kind. It would never happen
Ahem...might I remind you of a certain mister Emperor Norton?
Class-action lawsuit, anyone?
Look, IANAL (I not Like Being Anal, But I know I Anal...), but if the service was marketed as being without such bandwidth limits, it sounds like there are a few possibilities for legal recourse, such as false advertising (if they marketed it as "unlimited"), and/or the old bait-and-switch (if you can prove that).
Your agreement almost definitely states that they can change the agreement at any time for any reason, but depending upon the circumstances you might find they're on the wrong side of the law on this one.
Just a thought from a graduate of the Slashdot School of Business Law. Hope it helps.
Did you read the specs page? It's got redundant GPS mapping with tiebreaking dead-reconing and aviation nav systems, marine radar, satellite internet, tv, phone, computer-powered everything (some running QNX), xenon headlights, worklights, joystick-adjustable search lights, front-, side-, and rear-mounted remote pan/tilt/zoom/focus-able cameras, a power-driven mast on which you can raise all kinds of communication antennas, a remote-controlled camera dome, or a chair, displays in the cabin will tell you the distance between your bumpers and the nearest solid object, it's got a coffee maker, a fridge, a bathroom in the trailer (which has a command center accessible via what appears to be a Mac with dual 17" LCD monitors), if you want to see over a hilltop or something you can launch an electric recon plane and watch realtime wireless video with a 30-mile flight range, you can set up the zero-to-sixty-in-four-seconds jet boat and go up against four-foot white water rapids with, of course, full GPS navigation and forward-looking night-vision with GPS waypoint overlay, and if you get bored with this you can take the Beamer cycle off the back and go zipping through the countryside with high-resolution GPS and a sat-phone, packet modem, etc...
It's just freaking inspiring that someone with the resources to pull this thing off is going to get to go on adventures with it all over the world, which is obviously his life-long dream which, judging by the fact that he says the whole thing costs a bit less than a Boeing 777, is probably a well- deserved vacation from all the wealth-building he's been doing up until now to be able to afford not only the lifestyle of a free-roaming expeditionist, but a free-roaming expeditionist with the ultimate custom-built geek adventure vehicle of all freaking time.
It almost brings a tear to your eye...::sniff::
Obscure trivia time:
The band Toto was (is?) comprised of stand-in (backup) musicians for other popular bands. It could be said that their jobs were to play in toto the original guitarist, drummer, keyboardist, bassist, etc., anyway, they thought it would be cool to start jamming together when they weren't busy filling in for other musicians on tour, and thought it'd be clever and rather apropos to actually name their little band Toto. So they did. And they rock(ed).
I can listen to Africa all day and all night, non-stop. I don't know why. I also don't understand what the hell African rain has to do with anything they're singing about, but who the fsck cares, they're Toto!
It's just a coincidence that all those lazy poor people live in third world countries.
I got the intended sarcasm, but I thought the "digital divide" concept primarily described lower-class African-Americans in particular. At least "they" (prominent pro-African-American political/social institutions, as referenced in the Google search results from the above link) seem to have taken it on as part of the African-American socio-economic identity.
Forgive my ignorance (despite the obviousness of the application of that concept to Third World countries), but that's the only context in which I've ever encountered the phrase "digital divide" before today.
Seriously, people need to read the articles before posting.
Do I have to be running a server to download linux ISOs, pr0n videos and public domain (50-year-old) movies? Surely that would saturate my connection with traffic just as much as running a dreaded server, would it not?
I understand your point about overselling and network utilization, but the reason they don't want people running servers is because of the expected bandwidth requirements, regardless of the fact that my e-commerce web site, if I hosted it off my cable modem (which I don't), would draw about 1.5 GB of traffic/week, while my downloading habits (including daily automated backups to my linux box at home from the colo'd web server via SCP) sometimes exceeds that in a single day.
As has been said earlier, just give me my goddamn pipe, collect your bill, and shut the hell up.
It has composite and S-VHS video outs
Okay, this is one of my little pet peeves...
S-Video is the name for that connector on the back of your DVD player that looks like an old-style Apple ADB keyboard/mouse port (mini-DIN 8 connector) that carries separated ("component") video signals rather than combined as in RCA cables ("composite"). It gives you better video signal quality, and you should use it whenever you have the capability. S-Video is presumably what CmdrTaco mean to say here.
S-VHS (Super-VHS) is a videotape standard like VHS, except it defines the use of different magnetic coatings and what-not for broadcast-quality resolution on Super-VHS tapes. In addition to the wildly-expensive professional rackmount broadcast equipment, you can buy stripped-down Super-VHS VCR's these days that are priced for prosumers. The resolution is similar to Hi-8mm.
Now, you'll find that just about any SVHS VCR has S-Video connectors on it in addition to composite RCA connectors, but S-Video connectors can also be found on lots of other things that are not related to Super VHS, like miniDV camcorders.
</rant>
If not, plane tickets are really cheap right now!
Sheah, due to the fact that a bunch of friggin jerks are TAKING PLANES OVER AND CRASHING THEM INTO BUILDINGS!
I personally don't think I'll be flying again for a while. Tell me what you will about the probability of getting struck by lightning, but at least people have a chance of actually surviving a lightning strike.
The ALS, I'm afraid, is going to have to wait until I'm told that Steven Seagall, Chuck Norris, Mr. T, Hulk Hogan, Jackie Chan, Jesse Ventura and Jet Li will all be on the same damn plane with me...
Cold fusion is a mixture of stupidity, incompetence, and fraud.
;-)
Ah, so you have used Allaire's fantastic product...
Uuh...actually, the background is marginal on any kind of connection because it doesn't move around a lot and therefore only gets sent when a shot changes or when there's a lot of foreground action covering and uncovering the background.
Most of the compression achieved by streaming codecs is already accomplished by only sending the pixels that moved (the "delta") between frames.
Wouldn't those be uncomfortable, considering how much harder silicon is than the silicone traditionally used in non-saline breast implants?
Jon Katz: Send that great story and analysis to every major newspaper out there. Go the bg time. NY Times, Washington Post, LA Times, etc. Make that excellent piece of work heard by many more than us Slashdotters.
Yeah, Katz -- "Get on the wire! Tell everyone how to bring these things down..."
(ID4 reference for the uninitiated)
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Huh? BBN -- a backbone ISP -- is in the military industrial R&D business? No, this can't be right...I've clearly had too much caffeine today...
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Zeitgeist n. (zeit-geist): the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.
1. "OMG, Wimbledon is on! I wonder if somebody's tits have ever fallen out during a match?"
2. "OMG, Paula Poundstone NO!! You're too funny to get stinky fingers from bubblegummers! Somebody please tell me it's not true!"
3. "OMG, Jack Lemmon died!!!!! But, but...but he's not supposed to be DEAD! I bet I can find him still alive somewhere online."
4. "OMG, I was going to fly out to meet Mr. goatse.cx! Surely the strike is over by now!?"
5. "OMG, I bet if I searched for Barbara Schett she would have sex with me!"
6. "OMG, Napster was shut down, wasn't it? Or was it! I want the new N-Sync single 'I wanna do it in your butt' on mp3!!! Where the hell is Napster???"
7. "OMG, I love catch phrases sooooooo much!!!!"
8. "OMG, people are racing bicycles again!!! There's no time for annual sales reports or gay pr0n when people are racing BICYCLES through le French countryside! C'est bon!"
9. "OMG, I like basketball and I've inexplicably found cause to use Google for my search engine. I'm sure glad my nerdy friend told me why it's supposed to be better than AOL's Internet, but I sure do miss all the pr0n...anyway, maybe they'll finally draft me into the NBA if I look it up online. I coulda made it..."
10. "OMG, Vicky Botwright is so awesome!!! Maybe she'll sleep with me if I look her up on the Internet. It is TOO a real sport, asshole! Squash has been around for EVER! PBBBBHT!!!!!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
Besides, who wants to see that stupid self-promoting "Kernel panic" message, anyway...all it does it hold up the boot process. Sometimes indefinitely!
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"