does the RIAA actually do anything for artists anyway? (have they ever, really)
The RIAA doesn't actually have anything to do with the linked article. Honestly, the slashdot articles are starting to sound like the paranoid rantings of Charles Manson:
We have to find ourselves first, God second, and kind, k-i-n-d, come next. And that is all I was doing. I was working on cleaning up my house, something Nixon should have been doing. He should have been on the side of the road picking up his children. But he wasn't. He was in the White House sending them off to war. I don't know the different people that have got on the stand; one friend said I put a knife to his throat. I did. I put a knife to his throat. And he said I was responsible for all of these killings. I have done the best I know how, and I have given all I can give and I haven't got any guilt about anything because I have never been able to say any wrong. I never found any wrong. I looked at wrong, and it is all relative. Wrong is if you haven't got any money. Wrong is if your car payment is overdue. Wrong is if the TV breaks. Wrong is if President Kennedy gets killed. Wrong is, wrong is, wrong is you keep on, you pile it in your mind. you become belabored with it, and in your confusion...
Prohibition in the 1920s was actually very successful at preventing DVD playback on Linux, so I guess the thinking is that it's a pretty good model to go with.
I don't even use the "GNU/" prefix when I'm talking about Linux, but credit where credit is due. Stallman and other GNU participants have made a crapload of really good tools which are used in almost every flavor of *nix these days, including OS X.
Well, it does use a version of gcc and their terminal app has bash as the default shell, so it's a little strong to say it has "nothing" to do with RMS.
publishers will oftentimes revise and resubmit a game that was initially assigned an AO by raters in an effort to produce an M-rated game.
How is this any different from directors re-editing violent or sexually-explicit movies to avoid the NC-17 rating?
"AO" is understood to mean "pr0n" and therefore most retail outlets will refuse to carry any game with an AO stamped on it.
You can't reach the adult market, let alone the all-important teen market, if your games are "behind the beaded curain" along with the hentai cartoons and Penhouse videos. In the eyes of most consumers, including those who don't mind the sex and/or violence, it's as if the game doesn't even exist unless you can find it at Best Buy and Wal-Mart.
So of course a game which is fated to wear the Scarlet AO is going to be re-edited and re-submitted in hopes of being accepted as an "M" game. Designers would otherwise stand to lose millions of dollars over this.
/* This is my comment. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My comment is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My comment, without me, is useless. Without my comment, I am useless. I must author my comment true. I must write clearer than my code which is trying to obfuscate my efforts. I must comment in before it gets me fired. I WILL...
My comment and myself know that what counts in this job is not the lines we write, the size of our file, nor the time to compile it. We know that it is the completed change requests that count. WE WILL COMPLETE...
My comment is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its words, its letters, its punctuation and its opening & closing tags. I will ever guard it against the ravages of re-edits and cruft as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my comment clean and ready. We will become part of each other. WE WILL...
Before God, I swear this creed. My comment and myself are the defenders of my department. We are the masters of our code. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LIFE.
So be it, until the beta goes gold and there are no further patch requests, but sales!
Well, for hardware I'm using an old MOTO D/A 808 with it, which plugs in to the Firewire port. (I'm building a small mobile rack for the 808 and the mini together.)
For 90% of what I do, Garage Band actually cuts the mustard really well.
For live use, I just set all the channels to "monitor" and it's like having a modeling guitar amp (with effects), a bass amp, a vocal preamp, and a mixing board, all in one. I just run the line-outs from the 808 to my PA system, and plug all mics and instruments straight into it.
For recording, it does everything I need it to do, and is every bit as simple as a multi-track tape deck.
Were I a big MIDI freak, I'd probably pony up for some of the more high-buck options out there, but so far I'm pretty darn impressed with what GB2 can do for me.
Depends on what you mean by sufficient. The 1.42 mini with 1 GB of RAM did a fine job of playing back the HDTV signal, but did so at 540 lines of resolution instead of 1080 (not a problem for me, since my 720p projection system would automatically be rescaling a 1080i broadcast anyway.)
It did, however, occasionally drop a frame or two when there was a great deal of motion. For example, when watching the NCAA Finals on CBS last Spring, it would get a little choppy when the camera was panning to follow a fast break from one end of the court to the other. It's a problem which rarely came up, but still an annoyance.
When playing back media files, I found that it did a SUPERB job of playing back just about anything, if and only if I used a Quicktime-based player for full screen playback, such as EyeTV (or, more recently, iTunes.) Any attempt to play back the same media files with VLC or MPlayer yielded horrible results.
With the rise of x264 compression, I'm finding it not quite up to snuff. Frame loss becomes more of a factor when you ask that poor little G4 chip do to decompression on the fly like that... which is why I'm migrating to the G5 Tower. (Well, that and the fact that I got a sweetheard deal on a refurb. Were that not the case, I would have probably held out to see how the upcoming Intel-based mini fares.)
Of course you need to be proactive! It allows you to fully leverage your core competencies as you partner with stategic market movers to establish a more forward-thinking paradigm based on customer focus.
Likewise. The EyeTV 500 is a nice little HD tuner that lets the mini do the work of a PVR, along with all the other usual stuff.
Since I use a projection system and don't really need my media computer to be teeny-tiny, I'm actually replacing it this week with a refurb G5 tower. The mini is going into my music studio rack as a headless digital audio processor. Versitile little gadgets, those minis.
Let's assume for the moment that only physical matter exists. And also, let's assume (based on our current understanding of psychology and neurology) that our physical actions are caused by brain states. These brain states (as we understand them so far) are reducible to chemicals and electrical impulses. Chemistry is reducible to physics, and physics is reducible to math.
So MATH is to blame!
Burn down the University!!!
(No wonder there's no Nobel Prize for Mathematics!)
If that was the case, then why has this 'disorder' only become a problem in the last 20 years or so?
It's a myth that Americans suddenly got significantly fatter in the last 20 years. There were lots of fat people around in 1985.
What actually happened is, we abruptly re-defined what is considered a healthy BMI.
Also, average weights are up, but walk through any High School and it's absurdly obvious that Americans are taller and stronger, on average, than they were 20 years ago.
Better diets, bovine hormones in the milk, whatever the reason is, it was unusual and alarming to see a 5'10" girl when I was in college, and these days the school basketball team would ask her to play guard instead of center.
After that, you realize that you're just assembling commodity parts which were meant to be assembled together and running software which was written for it.
You're just doing the job of a Taiwanese laborer by putting the pieces together. It's about as '1337 as building a computer desk out of the pre-cut computer desk kits from Office Depot.
When Woz built the first Apple, that was cool. When Gates got Basic to run on the Altair, that was cool. When "Cap'n Crunch" figured out that he could generate a perfect 2600-cycle tone with a toy whistle and hack the phone system, that was pretty damn cool.
Building your own mini-ATX media players? Please. That's like saying you know how to make pizza in 30 minutes using a phone and a credit card. Nobody is impressed, and you could have saved a few bucks by just throwing a frozen one in the oven.
Slashdot Mirror
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Especially if they don't know how to use "its" and "it's" correctly.
1 51260
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169776&cid=14
No no no! You can't have a proper Anti-Hemp Conspiracy Theory without dragging Dow Chemical into it at some point!
Now stop bogarting that... uh... rope fiber.
The things you own end up owning you.
- Tyler Durden
I'd like to be owned by a big mansion, a yact, and a Lotus Esprit Turbo, please. Where do I post my "for sale" sign?
does the RIAA actually do anything for artists anyway? (have they ever, really)
The RIAA doesn't actually have anything to do with the linked article. Honestly, the slashdot articles are starting to sound like the paranoid rantings of Charles Manson:
We have to find ourselves first, God second, and kind, k-i-n-d, come next. And that is all I was doing. I was working on cleaning up my house, something Nixon should have been doing. He should have been on the side of the road picking up his children. But he wasn't. He was in the White House sending them off to war. I don't know the different people that have got on the stand; one friend said I put a knife to his throat. I did. I put a knife to his throat. And he said I was responsible for all of these killings. I have done the best I know how, and I have given all I can give and I haven't got any guilt about anything because I have never been able to say any wrong. I never found any wrong. I looked at wrong, and it is all relative. Wrong is if you haven't got any money. Wrong is if your car payment is overdue. Wrong is if the TV breaks. Wrong is if President Kennedy gets killed. Wrong is, wrong is, wrong is you keep on, you pile it in your mind. you become belabored with it, and in your confusion...
It's all connected man! MPAA RIAA CIA... A...
Prohibition in the 1920s was actually very successful at preventing DVD playback on Linux, so I guess the thinking is that it's a pretty good model to go with.
Unfortunately, it's kinda tricky:
Step One: Don't invent the DVD yet.
Step...
D'oh!
I'm told that Jobs recently appeard on "Charlie Rose" with Bill Gates.
Word is, he was quietly smirking to himself when Rose asked Gates about Dell's recently-stated desire to offer OS X 10.4 on their systems.
I don't even use the "GNU/" prefix when I'm talking about Linux, but credit where credit is due. Stallman and other GNU participants have made a crapload of really good tools which are used in almost every flavor of *nix these days, including OS X.
Well, it does use a version of gcc and their terminal app has bash as the default shell, so it's a little strong to say it has "nothing" to do with RMS.
... oh, they did? Before there were any exploits in the wild?
Never mind.publishers will oftentimes revise and resubmit a game that was initially assigned an AO by raters in an effort to produce an M-rated game.
How is this any different from directors re-editing violent or sexually-explicit movies to avoid the NC-17 rating?
"AO" is understood to mean "pr0n" and therefore most retail outlets will refuse to carry any game with an AO stamped on it.
You can't reach the adult market, let alone the all-important teen market, if your games are "behind the beaded curain" along with the hentai cartoons and Penhouse videos. In the eyes of most consumers, including those who don't mind the sex and/or violence, it's as if the game doesn't even exist unless you can find it at Best Buy and Wal-Mart.
So of course a game which is fated to wear the Scarlet AO is going to be re-edited and re-submitted in hopes of being accepted as an "M" game. Designers would otherwise stand to lose millions of dollars over this.
The rest of the Slashdot crowd is getting some serious navel-gazing done. Why does it seem that you are unable to carry your end of the log.
Attention, citizens! User 86786 has been found UNMUTUAL! UNMUTUAL!
// I guess I should have used one-liners.
/*
This is my comment. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My comment is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life.
My comment, without me, is useless. Without my comment, I am useless. I must author my comment true. I must write clearer than my code which is trying to obfuscate my efforts. I must comment in before it gets me fired. I WILL...
My comment and myself know that what counts in this job is not the lines we write, the size of our file, nor the time to compile it. We know that it is the completed change requests that count. WE WILL COMPLETE...
My comment is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strength, its words, its letters, its punctuation and its opening & closing tags. I will ever guard it against the ravages of re-edits and cruft as I will ever guard my legs, my arms, my eyes and my heart against damage. I will keep my comment clean and ready. We will become part of each other. WE WILL...
Before God, I swear this creed. My comment and myself are the defenders of my department. We are the masters of our code. WE ARE THE SAVIORS OF MY LIFE.
So be it, until the beta goes gold and there are no further patch requests, but sales!
The Family Media Guide 10 Most Violent Games of 2005.
Also Known as "My Amazon Wish List."
Oops... Typo.
That should be MOTU (and in Mark of the Unicorn), not MOTO.
Well, for hardware I'm using an old MOTO D/A 808 with it, which plugs in to the Firewire port. (I'm building a small mobile rack for the 808 and the mini together.)
For 90% of what I do, Garage Band actually cuts the mustard really well.
For live use, I just set all the channels to "monitor" and it's like having a modeling guitar amp (with effects), a bass amp, a vocal preamp, and a mixing board, all in one. I just run the line-outs from the 808 to my PA system, and plug all mics and instruments straight into it.
For recording, it does everything I need it to do, and is every bit as simple as a multi-track tape deck.
Were I a big MIDI freak, I'd probably pony up for some of the more high-buck options out there, but so far I'm pretty darn impressed with what GB2 can do for me.
Is it sufficient for HDTV?
Depends on what you mean by sufficient. The 1.42 mini with 1 GB of RAM did a fine job of playing back the HDTV signal, but did so at 540 lines of resolution instead of 1080 (not a problem for me, since my 720p projection system would automatically be rescaling a 1080i broadcast anyway.)
It did, however, occasionally drop a frame or two when there was a great deal of motion. For example, when watching the NCAA Finals on CBS last Spring, it would get a little choppy when the camera was panning to follow a fast break from one end of the court to the other. It's a problem which rarely came up, but still an annoyance.
When playing back media files, I found that it did a SUPERB job of playing back just about anything, if and only if I used a Quicktime-based player for full screen playback, such as EyeTV (or, more recently, iTunes.) Any attempt to play back the same media files with VLC or MPlayer yielded horrible results.
With the rise of x264 compression, I'm finding it not quite up to snuff. Frame loss becomes more of a factor when you ask that poor little G4 chip do to decompression on the fly like that... which is why I'm migrating to the G5 Tower. (Well, that and the fact that I got a sweetheard deal on a refurb. Were that not the case, I would have probably held out to see how the upcoming Intel-based mini fares.)
Proactive, eh?
Of course you need to be proactive! It allows you to fully leverage your core competencies as you partner with stategic market movers to establish a more forward-thinking paradigm based on customer focus.
Likewise. The EyeTV 500 is a nice little HD tuner that lets the mini do the work of a PVR, along with all the other usual stuff.
Since I use a projection system and don't really need my media computer to be teeny-tiny, I'm actually replacing it this week with a refurb G5 tower. The mini is going into my music studio rack as a headless digital audio processor. Versitile little gadgets, those minis.
Let's assume for the moment that only physical matter exists. And also, let's assume (based on our current understanding of psychology and neurology) that our physical actions are caused by brain states. These brain states (as we understand them so far) are reducible to chemicals and electrical impulses. Chemistry is reducible to physics, and physics is reducible to math.
So MATH is to blame!
Burn down the University!!!
(No wonder there's no Nobel Prize for Mathematics!)
I'd rather trust the Iraqi minister of propaganda than the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
What does that have to do with the University which released this report?
(Hint: NOT the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine)
If that was the case, then why has this 'disorder' only become a problem in the last 20 years or so?
It's a myth that Americans suddenly got significantly fatter in the last 20 years. There were lots of fat people around in 1985.
What actually happened is, we abruptly re-defined what is considered a healthy BMI.
Also, average weights are up, but walk through any High School and it's absurdly obvious that Americans are taller and stronger, on average, than they were 20 years ago.
Better diets, bovine hormones in the milk, whatever the reason is, it was unusual and alarming to see a 5'10" girl when I was in college, and these days the school basketball team would ask her to play guard instead of center.
"If it's easy, it isn't worth doing, unless (in the interest of pedantic accuracy) it's an activity that is required for your continued survival"
Sex is not difficult, and not required for your continued survival. Looks like you need to expand the axiom a bit further.
I am confused. Are you saying that both introverts and extroverts have dysfunctions?
You don't seem very confused at all; just lacking confidence in your reading comprehension skills.
They do it because it's COOL.
Maybe the first two or three times.
After that, you realize that you're just assembling commodity parts which were meant to be assembled together and running software which was written for it.
You're just doing the job of a Taiwanese laborer by putting the pieces together. It's about as '1337 as building a computer desk out of the pre-cut computer desk kits from Office Depot.
When Woz built the first Apple, that was cool. When Gates got Basic to run on the Altair, that was cool. When "Cap'n Crunch" figured out that he could generate a perfect 2600-cycle tone with a toy whistle and hack the phone system, that was pretty damn cool.
Building your own mini-ATX media players? Please. That's like saying you know how to make pizza in 30 minutes using a phone and a credit card. Nobody is impressed, and you could have saved a few bucks by just throwing a frozen one in the oven.