Sure, the windows player has a $200 Windows tax. And a $200-$4000 PC tax ('cause hey, the files don't do much good if you don't have a PC), and even Linux comes with this tax.
Got a Mac? Guess there's an OSX tax there, along with the inflated hardware tax.
On Linux, you can use MPlayer to play wma files. Completely free. Except for the PC tax.
You can check their privacy policy. Basically, they say that they won't give out your information unless compelled to legally, or to member sites (like Google) who will have to abide by the same policy.
For covers, you have to get permission (and frequently license the music from) the owner. Parodies are protected speech. Sampling is clearly not parody, hence Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby giving writing credits to David Bowie.
But where should those verifiable facts be true? That's what this article asks. If I'm in a small town watching a Waco station and they say it's 20 below, does that mean that they are lying if everyone in their broadcast area isn't seeing temps of 20 below? Of course not, since we know (assume) that the place where it's 20 below is the same place that the broadcasting station is. What if it's less obvious, say a web radiocast. Is it a verifiable fact that it's 20 below if I'm listening to it on the web from Hawaii? It's not 20 below where I'm listening to it.
Most of the laws governing newscasts were written in a time before this sort of information dispersal was possible. The concept of being able to telecommute from Florida to Boston was simply unheard of. It's time to rethink the laws, rather than getting all up in arms about a guy telling BOSTON temperatures to a BOSTON audience from a BOSTON broadcaster, even though he's telecommuting from Florida.
There's a better way. Game and Watch Gallery 4 lets you unlock the original Zelda. However, it's the very last thing you unlock so it takes a good amount of time to get to it.
GBA SP: $100 (but really, I'd assume you already have this if we're talking about it, so -$100) G&WG4: $30 Hours and hours of your life down the drain unlocking a game you can buy for $20 or just freaking play on your console: priceless.
I'll admit, I've bought a few "rereleases" on the GBA. Mostly because they're terrific games with lots of replayability and they suit me to play in short burts while I travel. However, Nintendo won't be seeing a dime from me on these titles unless:
1) They cost less than $10. Not likely with the cost of making cartridges. Some people in the article seem to think that they will end up costing $20! Absurd, for games like Ice Climber. With Mario, at least they should include the Lost Levels!
or
2) Multiple games are included on a single $20 cart. It's not terribly hard to do and gives more value to the player.
Of course, if the carts are only ever available in Japan, I won't be buying any period. I'm not going to import (and pay the extra cost) Ice Climber. Even Zelda I just got on a Disc with 3 other games. I can play it on my Gamecube. I'm not jonesing for portability that badly.
I'm shocked that the Palm OS (or rather, its applications) don't support multitasking with the network application better than this. It seems almost useless if I can't switch between e-mail and my web browser without essentially losing the connection. Do you know if the same problem occurs when using the device with, say, a cell phone to connect to the internet? Would you actually have to hang up and re-dial in order to switch between email, web, ssh, etc? Absurd.
If all that you've said is true, this suddenly throws Pocket PCs a bone, in my opinion. I've been considering a new PDA for some time, and I've always had a peculiar affinity to Palm devices. To me, the interface is intuitive, and it works quite well in my opinion. But I'm at the point where I'd want better networking support than this. I'd always shied away from the thought of buying a Pocket PC because the battery life tended to be much shorter than Palms, but the newer offerings (Tungsten 3) and presumably future offerings seem to have almost the same battery life as the PPCs I'd so detested. If I'm going to have to wait for PalmOS6 to get something that networks well, and that device is going to have a battery life and other features similar to that of a PPC, I'm going with the one that's been around the block longer. We may not like Microsoft most of the time, but they've apparently been doing multitasking/networking longer than Palm has, and they've hopefully learned how to do it better.
It's sad really, but I guess one of the reasons Pocket PCs are better in this area is because Microsoft was coming from the world of Desktop machines and trying to cram that OS into the smaller package. The end result is that, while bloated, it actually will probably end up working better than PalmOS6, which evolved from code written from scratch for these devices.
Any law that cannot be fairly enforced to avoid false positives should not exist.
Guess it depends upon your definition of "fair." There are plenty of people in prison for crimes they did not commit. DNA evidence is proving this. But under our legal system, if the laws were changed so that these people had gone free, imagine the multitudes of murderers that would still be walking the streets.
And the point is that there are certain types of inattentiveness that you can easily take note of. Probably, this law should only include computer screens that are visible to the driver. Thus if a police officer can see the screen through the LCD, he should stop them. Otherwise, it's probably safe.
If it isn't possible to tell, in general, who is being inattentive and who isn't, then it shouldn't be a law. PERIOD.
Perhaps. In Texas, we have open container laws. If there's an open alcoholic beverage in the car when a police officer stops you, the driver will be fined and charged. This is because there is no way to tell whether or not the beverage was just handed off to someone else. This law isn't really a stretch from that, and to be honest, I don't mind open container laws one bit. It infringes only slightly on my rights as a passenger (if alcohol consumption can even really be called a right) but I imagine it goes a long way towards preventing accidents. People can no longer just hand the beer over to someone else in the car. And just like your example, the officer can't tell who actually had the beer, so the law was made to circumvent the fact that police officers aren't all-knowing. Is it overly broad? I don't think so, personally.
*snip your cell phone example*
If that's really how you act, then good for you I guess. I've heard of plenty of accidents where "I just took my eyes off the road to change the channel on my radio!" Accidents happen in the blink of an eye. You can look down and a kid can run into the street from behind a bush. One's attention should always be 100% on the road. If you can't change your radio station by feel (and some would say that even this is too much inattention) then you shouldn't be changing it. You want to know if the person is worth talking to? Get a cell phone that has personalized ringtones. You shouldn't be looking down to see who's calling any more than you should be reading or watching TV while driving.
Most of the actions you've stated as "dangerous" are hard to prove. It's easy to stop a car when the officer sees the lit LCD in the front seat. It's much harder to stop a car because the person is looking in their rearview mirror at their kids. Laws like this have their place, they just shouldn't be overly broad or improperly used.
ATI drivers really, really suck, if only for the fact that you have to install them in a precise order from a clean install to get them working.
Here is what a few friends (with AiWs) found out:
1) Uninstall everything ATI on your system. 2) Install the Catalyst video drivers. Do not reboot. 3) Install the Video Driver separate from MMC. Reboot. 4) Install the BDE drivers (first link on the MMC download page). Reboot. 5) (optional) install the DVD drivers. 6) Install the Multimedia Center software. Reboot.
If this doesn't work, wipe clean again and reverse steps 2 and 3 (sometimes they work in the opposite order, sometimes not.)
It's really absurd. Windows users are used to having to reboot a lot, but up to 5 times is a lot just to install one set of drivers/software from the SAME COMPANY. ATI should damned well have a unified driver+MMC software that actually works (there is a single driver on the website--never worked when I installed it).
Cleaning your ATI install and using the CD that came with your AiW is another option. Of course, you don't get the newest drivers, and when I upgraded from a CD install, it broke everything.
Oh, and someone mentioned MMC8.8. I tried it, and it flat out wouldn't display video in the TV app, even after going through all the hoops to get generic video capture working. I said "Screw it," and went back to MMC8.7, and even without all the hoops that time, it worked fine.
1) Most Apex models are hackable in some way. I think they almost all can receive firmware upgrades by burning the upgrade file to a CD.
2) I think playback is locked in the firmware of the drive. You would be able to/rip/ the DVD without issue, but playback may be problematic if the software makes standard calls to the drive in order to read. This tidbit comes from experience, although it is certainly possible that hacks have since come into place that allow regionless playback on Linux.
The (now grandparent) post is correct and important, but some DVD players can get around even this by reading the DVD region when the disc is inserted and automatically switching the region. Most of the Sampo models from overseas can do this fairly well, albeit with a firmware upgrade. It's possible that others do as well.
Releasing new code won't get SCO off of Linux's back. They claimed that the use of the bits of code that were stolen were integral in later parts of the Linux kernel..parts that had nothing to do with the code. And it's impossible to prove them wrong; it's only possible for a court to decide where the boundary is.
I've been wondering for some time (without putting out much effort searching) which phones out there play nicely with Bluetooth enabled Palm Pilots. i'd like to be able to use the Palm Pilot to access the web and email (SSH would also be handy, but is a secondary to the others). Anyone do this currently?
Media Player Classic (already mentioned) and Zoomplayer work great for me. Zoomplayer particularly is nice, as it is very customizeable wrt keyboard keys and mouse/mouse wheel. And it has a number of preset aspect ratio sizes in case you need to resize your video for some reason (happens more often than you might think). Lastly, if you purchase the Pro version, it will work as a front end to DVD filters, though you have to have another DVD player of some sort on your computer.
If you're going to scam a store, it's best to do it with cash. Then they can't even call you, and they certainly can't try to charge you for the device after-the-fact. I'm surprised that didn't happen in this case.
Slashdot Mirror
In (I think) the most recent CVS, using the -cache option with the appropriate URL should solve the problem...
Sure, the windows player has a $200 Windows tax. And a $200-$4000 PC tax ('cause hey, the files don't do much good if you don't have a PC), and even Linux comes with this tax.
Got a Mac? Guess there's an OSX tax there, along with the inflated hardware tax.
On Linux, you can use MPlayer to play wma files. Completely free. Except for the PC tax.
For some reason, your post reminded me of this.
Hope you don't mind the PC tax required to view that strip....
Of course, they still say:
The limitations set forth herein are approximations and may vary from time to time.
So it's not hard and fast.
You can check their privacy policy. Basically, they say that they won't give out your information unless compelled to legally, or to member sites (like Google) who will have to abide by the same policy.
For covers, you have to get permission (and frequently license the music from) the owner. Parodies are protected speech. Sampling is clearly not parody, hence Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby giving writing credits to David Bowie.
Isn't decrypting without a license still illegal under the DMCA (in the US)?
Wow, you misparsed, but you quoted it right :)
/to/ 10, 8 /of/ 10. As in, 80%.
Not 8
But most of the below posts say it uses Flash...so which is it, I wonder.
But where should those verifiable facts be true? That's what this article asks. If I'm in a small town watching a Waco station and they say it's 20 below, does that mean that they are lying if everyone in their broadcast area isn't seeing temps of 20 below? Of course not, since we know (assume) that the place where it's 20 below is the same place that the broadcasting station is. What if it's less obvious, say a web radiocast. Is it a verifiable fact that it's 20 below if I'm listening to it on the web from Hawaii? It's not 20 below where I'm listening to it.
Most of the laws governing newscasts were written in a time before this sort of information dispersal was possible. The concept of being able to telecommute from Florida to Boston was simply unheard of. It's time to rethink the laws, rather than getting all up in arms about a guy telling BOSTON temperatures to a BOSTON audience from a BOSTON broadcaster, even though he's telecommuting from Florida.
Well yes, but if you're talking about portability (sorta the whole point here) then that's out. :)
You'll notice that both the solutions above you involved the GBA, whereas yours only uses the GC.
The disc is awesome, incidentally, it's just not portable, if that's what a person happens to be looking for.
Modded Informative instead of Funny. How cute :)
There's a better way. Game and Watch Gallery 4 lets you unlock the original Zelda. However, it's the very last thing you unlock so it takes a good amount of time to get to it.
GBA SP: $100 (but really, I'd assume you already have this if we're talking about it, so -$100)
G&WG4: $30
Hours and hours of your life down the drain unlocking a game you can buy for $20 or just freaking play on your console: priceless.
I'll admit, I've bought a few "rereleases" on the GBA. Mostly because they're terrific games with lots of replayability and they suit me to play in short burts while I travel. However, Nintendo won't be seeing a dime from me on these titles unless:
1) They cost less than $10. Not likely with the cost of making cartridges. Some people in the article seem to think that they will end up costing $20! Absurd, for games like Ice Climber. With Mario, at least they should include the Lost Levels!
or
2) Multiple games are included on a single $20 cart. It's not terribly hard to do and gives more value to the player.
Of course, if the carts are only ever available in Japan, I won't be buying any period. I'm not going to import (and pay the extra cost) Ice Climber. Even Zelda I just got on a Disc with 3 other games. I can play it on my Gamecube. I'm not jonesing for portability that badly.
I'm shocked that the Palm OS (or rather, its applications) don't support multitasking with the network application better than this. It seems almost useless if I can't switch between e-mail and my web browser without essentially losing the connection. Do you know if the same problem occurs when using the device with, say, a cell phone to connect to the internet? Would you actually have to hang up and re-dial in order to switch between email, web, ssh, etc? Absurd.
If all that you've said is true, this suddenly throws Pocket PCs a bone, in my opinion. I've been considering a new PDA for some time, and I've always had a peculiar affinity to Palm devices. To me, the interface is intuitive, and it works quite well in my opinion. But I'm at the point where I'd want better networking support than this. I'd always shied away from the thought of buying a Pocket PC because the battery life tended to be much shorter than Palms, but the newer offerings (Tungsten 3) and presumably future offerings seem to have almost the same battery life as the PPCs I'd so detested. If I'm going to have to wait for PalmOS6 to get something that networks well, and that device is going to have a battery life and other features similar to that of a PPC, I'm going with the one that's been around the block longer. We may not like Microsoft most of the time, but they've apparently been doing multitasking/networking longer than Palm has, and they've hopefully learned how to do it better.
It's sad really, but I guess one of the reasons Pocket PCs are better in this area is because Microsoft was coming from the world of Desktop machines and trying to cram that OS into the smaller package. The end result is that, while bloated, it actually will probably end up working better than PalmOS6, which evolved from code written from scratch for these devices.
Any law that cannot be fairly enforced to avoid false positives should not exist.
Guess it depends upon your definition of "fair." There are plenty of people in prison for crimes they did not commit. DNA evidence is proving this. But under our legal system, if the laws were changed so that these people had gone free, imagine the multitudes of murderers that would still be walking the streets.
And the point is that there are certain types of inattentiveness that you can easily take note of. Probably, this law should only include computer screens that are visible to the driver. Thus if a police officer can see the screen through the LCD, he should stop them. Otherwise, it's probably safe.
If it isn't possible to tell, in general, who is being inattentive and who isn't, then it shouldn't be a law. PERIOD.
Perhaps.
In Texas, we have open container laws. If there's an open alcoholic beverage in the car when a police officer stops you, the driver will be fined and charged. This is because there is no way to tell whether or not the beverage was just handed off to someone else. This law isn't really a stretch from that, and to be honest, I don't mind open container laws one bit. It infringes only slightly on my rights as a passenger (if alcohol consumption can even really be called a right) but I imagine it goes a long way towards preventing accidents. People can no longer just hand the beer over to someone else in the car. And just like your example, the officer can't tell who actually had the beer, so the law was made to circumvent the fact that police officers aren't all-knowing.
Is it overly broad? I don't think so, personally.
*snip your cell phone example*
If that's really how you act, then good for you I guess. I've heard of plenty of accidents where "I just took my eyes off the road to change the channel on my radio!" Accidents happen in the blink of an eye. You can look down and a kid can run into the street from behind a bush. One's attention should always be 100% on the road. If you can't change your radio station by feel (and some would say that even this is too much inattention) then you shouldn't be changing it. You want to know if the person is worth talking to? Get a cell phone that has personalized ringtones. You shouldn't be looking down to see who's calling any more than you should be reading or watching TV while driving.
Most of the actions you've stated as "dangerous" are hard to prove. It's easy to stop a car when the officer sees the lit LCD in the front seat. It's much harder to stop a car because the person is looking in their rearview mirror at their kids. Laws like this have their place, they just shouldn't be overly broad or improperly used.
Of course, the actual article says "Net connections" in the title, and then later indicates that "Web users" also use other applications while online.
ATI drivers really, really suck, if only for the fact that you have to install them in a precise order from a clean install to get them working.
Here is what a few friends (with AiWs) found out:
1) Uninstall everything ATI on your system.
2) Install the Catalyst video drivers. Do not reboot.
3) Install the Video Driver separate from MMC. Reboot.
4) Install the BDE drivers (first link on the MMC download page). Reboot.
5) (optional) install the DVD drivers.
6) Install the Multimedia Center software. Reboot.
If this doesn't work, wipe clean again and reverse steps 2 and 3 (sometimes they work in the opposite order, sometimes not.)
It's really absurd. Windows users are used to having to reboot a lot, but up to 5 times is a lot just to install one set of drivers/software from the SAME COMPANY. ATI should damned well have a unified driver+MMC software that actually works (there is a single driver on the website--never worked when I installed it).
Cleaning your ATI install and using the CD that came with your AiW is another option. Of course, you don't get the newest drivers, and when I upgraded from a CD install, it broke everything.
Oh, and someone mentioned MMC8.8. I tried it, and it flat out wouldn't display video in the TV app, even after going through all the hoops to get generic video capture working. I said "Screw it," and went back to MMC8.7, and even without all the hoops that time, it worked fine.
The original trial judge said that, not the judge on in the appeal.
Sancho? Is that you?
:)
I don't think I know you, if that's what you're asking. I checked your profile on yahoo and I really don't know anyone in MI.
What's funny about this is, what got me started wanting a region-switching DVD player is the fact that Orgazmo is only available in region 2 DVD.
Ha! Same here! I actually received the nickname Sancho for a different reasons, but I also happen to love Orgazmo, so it was a pleasing coincidence.
They've been teasing us with a potential Region 1 release with lots of spiffy extras for some time now, but I don't suspect that it will happen.
1) Most Apex models are hackable in some way. I think they almost all can receive firmware upgrades by burning the upgrade file to a CD.
/rip/ the DVD without issue, but playback may be problematic if the software makes standard calls to the drive in order to read. This tidbit comes from experience, although it is certainly possible that hacks have since come into place that allow regionless playback on Linux.
2) I think playback is locked in the firmware of the drive. You would be able to
The (now grandparent) post is correct and important, but some DVD players can get around even this by reading the DVD region when the disc is inserted and automatically switching the region. Most of the Sampo models from overseas can do this fairly well, albeit with a firmware upgrade. It's possible that others do as well.
Releasing new code won't get SCO off of Linux's back. They claimed that the use of the bits of code that were stolen were integral in later parts of the Linux kernel..parts that had nothing to do with the code. And it's impossible to prove them wrong; it's only possible for a court to decide where the boundary is.
I've been wondering for some time (without putting out much effort searching) which phones out there play nicely with Bluetooth enabled Palm Pilots. i'd like to be able to use the Palm Pilot to access the web and email (SSH would also be handy, but is a secondary to the others). Anyone do this currently?
It's Linux, right? There must be some way to extract the image yourself by pulling the drive out and using dd to copy it.
Media Player Classic (already mentioned) and Zoomplayer work great for me. Zoomplayer particularly is nice, as it is very customizeable wrt keyboard keys and mouse/mouse wheel. And it has a number of preset aspect ratio sizes in case you need to resize your video for some reason (happens more often than you might think). Lastly, if you purchase the Pro version, it will work as a front end to DVD filters, though you have to have another DVD player of some sort on your computer.
If you're going to scam a store, it's best to do it with cash. Then they can't even call you, and they certainly can't try to charge you for the device after-the-fact. I'm surprised that didn't happen in this case.