The way I see it, I can buy a DVD that gives me a 2 hour movie, hours of behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, alternate versions, multiple commentary, languages, subtitles, easter eggs, DVD-ROM features, background information on the cast, crew, etc, etc, etc.. All of this in unique cases, layouts, booklets, etc.. And how much does it cost me? As little as $15 (CDN), and rarely more than $35. What does a CD cost me, which has MAYBE 50 minutes of music on it, if I'm lucky a creative set of liner notes, and a "secret" track tacked on at the end? Anywhere from $10-$30.
I was never a BIG CD buyer to begin with, but over the past 5 years I've bought maybe 4 or 5 CDs total, because NOTHING out there interests me, not because I'm a rampantly pirating. I've been shoring up my jazz collection mostly, which involves a lot of Coltrane, Getz, Peterson, Powell, and the like, nothing new. Just about everything out there is made to be enjoyable for a couple months of casual listening and then you're sick of it. When someone like Alicia Keyes is touted as a "piano prodigy" I want to be sick. The fact is that the recording industry is offering us nothing worthwhile.
To compare music to movies is an apples and oranges situation. One utilizes one of our senses and is often limited in what it's capable of offering as a bonus (the odd enhanced CD notwhithstanding), the other is being thought of while main production is occuring. Filmmakers look towards the DVD market now so that NO scenes get thrown out, interviews and commentaries are lined up in contracts, and the consumer gets something worthwhile. I don't feel bad about being short $30 for a double-disc DVD of a movie I can watch time and again and still say "Hey, I haven't checked out the commentary of the visual effects supervisor."
In short, DVDs cater to their market far, FAR better than CDs do. That's why one market is exploding and the other is dying. Piracy plays such a small role. I know just as many people who download DiVX movies as mp3s.
Then consider yourself lucky. I've seen some pretty strange errors posted. But Soundblasters have always had a hard time playing nice with other hardware.
Most Audigy users that have looked at any of the sound card forums out there have already discovered their claims are false.
Creative seems to have really dropped the ball with the Audigy line. A look at any audio forums (Creative's own even) will show a large contingent of unhappy customers. Audiophiles that think it's a piece of crap sound-wise, gamers who are pissed off with its driver performance. Calls for people to return their Audigies and get a Game Theatre or Santa Cruz.
Compatibility issues with different hardware configurations, WinXP, etc.. are also popping up. The biggest seems to be an issue where the EEPROM on the card gets scrambled, disabling the rear speakers, and causing the card to be recognized as EMU10K instead of an Audigy, thereby making proper software/driver upgrades impossible for it. The only known solution for this so far is to get the card replaced and hope the new one doesn't get FUBAR as well. There are a lot of very annoyed Audigy owners out there.
Where I'm working (large financial institution) they're starting to look into AI as a means of predicting market movement and trends. One could see this as becoming key in other areas as well. Any field that tries to predict chaos or long-term trends could potentially be looking into this.
Of course, there's the danger you'll invent a supercomputer that takes of the world and sends killer robots back in time to kill the leader of the resistance. This naturally would lead to his psychotic mother trying to kill you and you ultimately sacrificing yourself to save the future. Something to think about.
Interesting idea in there - that perhaps the music companies should have negotiated with Napster, found some way to change the "rules". The example he gives is that in order to download, you have to upload. Would this have worked? Obviously what you upload in a P2P system is partially dependent on people actually taking stuff FROM you. But could they have said "If you want to download, you need to have at least 1/5 of your d/l amount available for others." Might have kept the leeches away. Reminds me of the BBS days, and the U/D ratios many had.
Photoquantigraphic Lightspace Paintball, played by Steve Mann and his "cyborgs" at the University of Toronto. Wearcomps and flashguns to paint the Univeristy and the players in their own mediated reality. Fun, fun, fun.
On June 12th, Bell Sympatico here in Canada is implementing a cap as well. 5GB/month @ $44.95 (CAD), and then $7.95 per Gig over the limit (in 100MB increments). The plan seems to be to add tiers later on.
The point about morale is a good one. Each of these games employs the "mindless zombie" ideas. Send in a swarm of grunts, a fleet of ships, whatever, and they'll fight until they win or all of them are destroyed. If your soldiers start getting wiped out, then some should scatter, or become target dummies from the shock of seeing their comrades die in front of them. The more losses you suffer, the worse your armies should fight, and vice-versa.
Ships should retreat when they're badly damaged, and that damage should be realistic. If you decide to retreat and your soliders or vehicles are near destroyed, then most shouldn't make it very far due to their injuries/damage. Seeing a battlecruiser crash during a retreat because it was too badly damaged would definately change dynamics. At the very least, the speed you could retreat or attack should be reduced proportionally to the damage inflicted upon you.
The comment made earlier about a Sims-like situation isn't bad either. Soldiers get hungry, miss home, get bored, scared, etc... Yes, it would be ridiculous to have each solider's needs have to met individually, but squad levels would probably work.
These kinds of changes would drastically change the way people play. You couldn't send in a blitz if it would scatter once it started taking heavly losses. You couldn't send wave after suicide wave because they'd become less effective after each battle. You couldn't have a group of medics/technicians waiting in a safe haven for you army to return to if it was taking a beating. You'd have to pick and choose your battles, weaken your enemies' own morale before wiping them out.
POWs wouldn't be a bad idea either - squad gets massacred, survivors surrender.
When I was working on my Comp Eng degree, there was ample opportunity in our last year to work in teams. In fact, all my major assignments were done with a team. it fell to the group itself to dictate who was responsible for what, and regular reports indicated this. Add to that the fact that if one person didn't complete their section, the whole project was delayed, and it was rare that anybody slacked.
Along with this, it was generally accepted that with the heavy workload we all had in 4th year that there would be collaboration. As long as you referenced anybody you borrowed from or shared with, all was well. There were a few "individual" assignments that I worked on with friends and we all had answers that had the disclaimer "this question was worked on with [student name]", and it was always accepted. Generally, it's better to have a student learn how to solve a problem from a friend than be afraid of asking because their answers may be too similar.
This seemed to be better preparation for the real world than slaving away at 3am trying to debug an assignment that you aren't even sure you interpreted correctly. If I have a problem, I turn to a co-worker and ask if they know how to solve it, or go searching for the answer online. It's no different than the arguement of "Why should I have to memorize this formula? In the real world, I'd have the book on hand if I didn't know it."
It's possible to limit access to the glasses. Whether it's by providing a list of allowed people or simply disconnecting from anything but a local network. Of course, you can always take the glasses off.
When I was taking one of Prof. Mann's courses, I was tempted to try and hack his glasses and display a starfield simulation while throwing PVC pellets at him:).
*SMACK!* That's the sound of reality hitting you in the face. The open source model (and Free software, and the GPL, etc, etc, etc) works NOW because of the limited base of users and developers. It's along the same lines of "Why should I pay for it when I get it free?" As GPL'd code becomes more popular, eventually there will be a large number of people who use programs, code fragments, etc, for their own uses, then close the source.
People, on the whole, are greedy. Sure, someone who buys into the the Free concept will gladly share modifications and bug fixes with everyone else. But if someone less ethical finds a program that does what they need to do, what's stopping them from altering it so the interface isn't recognizable, adding a few more customizations, and closing the source and claiming it's theirs? The GPL? Once it's got a major court victory under its belt, maybe. But in order for someone to discover GPL'd code has been used, they'd have to have access to the code, or reverse engineer the program. Both of which would be illegal, and a countersuit would be brought. In today's justice system, most judges would side with the well known copyright laws as opposed to the virtually unknown (outside the community) licensing agreement
As good an idea as Free software is, I really don't think the majority of humankind is ready to adopt it yet. Just a small minority (and yes, it IS a minority) of idealisitic developers.
I love how the Slashdot community rallies around the "protecting patents is bad" standard. This isn't a patent on some obvious idea, like one-click shopping or breathing, it's a patent on a unique product/process this company developed. And it's had a significant effect on the world of electronics. They've approached the companies in question and warned them, and they were rebuffed. If Phillips and Samsung don't want to pay for the right to use a patented material, then they should come up with their own, not steal someone else's.
What I do find interesting is that companies like Best Buy and Circuit City are being sued, since as far as I knew, they were distributors, not producers. Sure, they may put together their own systems, but they don't manufacture the parts. Even the arguement of "they're selling stolen goods" falls flat to my ears.
Steve Mann has been using a system like this for years with his wearable computer systems. It creates what he's termed "mediated reality", which is just a cute term to describe the overlay of data onto reality as opposed to full virtual reality. It's pretty impressive, and fairly intimidating at first when you think about shining a laser directly into your eye.
The other form of mediated reality (and more commonly used as he only has a couple laser eyetaps) is similar to the standard LCD concept. Except, instead of displaying the data on an LCD screen that blocks out reality, the data is overlayed on a image of reality. The light rays that are reflected on the eye are colinear with what would normally be seen, so minimal distortion occurs.
It's pretty cool to see this sort of thing coming to market.
You never know when you could be attacked by fireball-hurling imps, or deranged sargents, running cybernetic eyeballs, skaarj commanders, UNATCO agents, nazi robots or Japanese businessmen who desperately want an ancient sword. Without my ultra-violent training simulat... uh I mean video games, how could I possibly fight back against an alien invasion?
First: Then he asked Thompson to write Carmack a letter, "just to let him know we're on his trail."... yah, because John Carmack is so hard to find, you need to be on his trail. It's so incredibly annoying to see people who have no clue what they're talking about become pundits and crusaders. It's right up there with hearing your parents talking in ebonics to try and communicate with your generation -- except more dangerous.
And I hope that every one of the parents involved in this lawsuit get their family's computers seized and searched, because I'd bet good money that one would find many "violent" video games on them. Yet, their kids didn't go on a shooting spree, even if they played these games AND watched The Basketball Diaries. Nope, their children were little angels, who did nothing remotely questionable. In fact, I bet their kids never even taunted, excluded, or attacked the shooters, nope they were innocents.
The size of the blinders put on by these people amazes me. How can anyone focus the blame for something like this onto one point? Doubtless the media played a role, it glorifies violence, be it in the form of movies, the 6 o'clock news, tabloid journalism, songs, and yes, even video games. However, MOST of the world's population can separate fantasy from reality, and see the depravity of violence and suffering in our society. Those that can't have problems, be it neglectful parenting or psychological disorders.
Regardless, the video game industry became a $20 billion a year industry because millions of people by millions of games, and out of those millions and millions, 10 people go nuts and kill/injure others. If this was any other product, it wouldn't be an issue. Even more murderers out there own cars, homes, pots and pans, refrigerators, ceramic mugs with witty cartoons. Most of them probably have drunk Coke, mineral water, or orange juice. What about whoever these kids get their guns from? Oh wait, the U.S. would NEVER bring out any real gun legistlation, because Americans have a right to own an AK-47, just in case the Queen decides to retake the old colony.
It's sad that not only do these people have no clue about who to blame (start by looking in the mirror), but they can't even grieve properly. A terrible thing has happened to these people, but instead of allowing themselves to heal and continue on with their lives, they prolong the pain for not only them, but the rest of the country, by filing lawsuits that have no chance of getting anywhere, assuming the judges involved have any wisdom.
What I find great about Scientology is that the whole thing was started on a bet (I think it was about $50, but it could have been substantially more). L. Ron Hubbard wrote the beginnings of Dianetics in a science fiction short story for a magazine. One of the characters followed its precepts, which he made up specifically for the story. Readers of the story started writing him saying that they had tried the few ideas presented and they found they worked for them, and asked if he could provide more information.
A friend of Hubbard found this funny (for obvious reasons), and Hubbard bet him that he could turn this into a religion, getting a good number of devout followers. His friend took him up on the bet, and Hubbard wrote the rest of Dianetics. Scientology was born, and the rest is history. {begin not getting sued by the church of scientology statement here} Or so I hear, I can't say I have to documentation handy. {end anti-litigation statement}
Regardless of its origins though, as long as a religion actually helps its followers in some way, and they truly believe in it, then who are we to judge it? I'm free to join or not join any cult or religion if I so choose. And I definately wouldn't join one that would sue me for talking about it's "trade secrets".
Computer Engineering is much more than hardware. I'm a Comp Eng who took the Software Engineering option (as opposed to the non-accredited CS software "engineering" option). I find that I'm able to assimiliate and use information much quicker than any comp sci I've ever run into. Given, out of school, CS students tend to have a broader programming background, and could whip me in Java or VB programming for the first couple months. But if I sit down and learn and use the languages, I'm running circles around them because I can evaluate what can be done instead of relying on procedures I've had driven into my head.
Simply put, Computer Engineering teaches you how to learn from practical experience in the real world. On top of that, there is a solid hardware background so that where a comp sci understands the programming, and possibly the programming theory, the comp eng understands just as much and then some. I find I walk into a group that is predominately comp scis and programmers and realize that they tend to have limitations that I don't perceive in myself and other engineers.
Wow, was that ever an arrogant ERTW rant... sorry. Comp Sci is a perfectly legitimate field, if you want to deal solely in software (not necessarily programming, but you don't go much deeper than the code level of any application). If you want a richer foundation, I'd suggest Comp Eng. The higher pay is nice too:).
You know, 10 years ago (hell, 5 years ago) the RIAA's claims would have gone unchallenged. The problem with old media is that they can't come to grips with the dissemination of information that the Internet provides. They still claim they're making no money, that revenues are down, and they try to use the Internet as a scapegoat, when in reality it's their own reluctance to change. We still occasionally hear that movie companies, record labels, television station, etc., are either losing money or just breaking even. This worked years ago when nobody could check they numbers or question them. It always seemed odd that a CD cost $20, 10 millions copies sold, a tour sold out across the world with tickets costing $50 a pop, everybody was wearing the band's t-shirt, and every station was playing their latest single 20 times a day, and yet the label wasn't making money. Same goes for the movies that grossed $300 million.
Now, the numbers are easily accessed, and the companies try to put use the same rhetoric. "We're broke, sales are down, blah, blah, blah", but nobody believes them because the numbers are there, and people can add. Now, if you're pulling in $14.6 billion in revenues, what possible reason would there be to raise prices? Could it be greed? The mentality is skewed. They assume that by charging more, they can sell the same amount and therefore make more money. Do these people not realize that if I have the option of buying a Dave Matthews Band CD for $15 instead of $25, I'll choose the $15 one? And if the cheaper option is taken away, then I won't buy it at all. Disposable income isn't infinite. If they would lower the prices (like we were told would happen once CD became an accepted medium), then they would sell possibly millions more, and increase their revenues to even more ridiculous heights.
But no, the media companies still rely on lies and deceit to cover their collective asses. I had nothing but respect for BMG, saying "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and hooking up with Napster, realizing the possibilities. And now I have even more after the "it wasn't a good music year" quote. Honesty is a refreshing change of pace in this industry.
However, the Napster arguement is unfounded from both sides. To say that it's hurting sales is ridiculous when sales are up. To say it's helping sales is just as ludicrous when there's nothing to prove causation between the numbers. Sales are more likely up due to the mega-pop-stars of the last couple years, Britney Spears, N-Sync, Backstreet Boys, etc.. These groups are some of the only people who can sell out 60,000 seat arenas and sell millions of albums in their first week. Manufactured fame is pulling in a lot more money that real talent these days.
However, the RIAA has every right to be scared. True, Napster isn't hurting them today, but if they continue to refuse to embrace emerging technologies, continue to raise prices, and continue to rip off their artists, then it will eventually hurt them. Look at many European countries (especially Russia and former soviet states), piracy there makes North America look like we're just making copies of a friend's tape. Billions are legitimately lost to bootlegs and pirated copies of music in these places. The RIAA's fear is that the U.S., their most important market, will follow suit in the coming years. What they don't realize is that they are driving this market away with their own greed and short-sightedness.
In an ideal world, people would use Napster to download rare singles, covers, live concerts, and other material not readily available. Fanning's creation would be used to get that song I just heard on the radio, check out a couple other titles from the band, and then I'd go out and buy their CD for $10. (Or better yet, DOWNLOAD IT FROM THE LABEL'S SITE for $7 + s&h for the actual disc). However, this isn't an ideal world, and while a good number of Napster users do exactly this (minus the CD only costing $10), many others use it for free music. Maybe this is due to cost, maybe it's just due to the fact that many people have the "why pay for it if I don't have to?" mentality. But it's my opinion that having a good-sized CD collection is a bit of a status symbol, and that the money spent by the people who use Napster to sample bands outweighs any revenue lost due to the people who download the whole album and burn it to a CD.
Besides, everyone knows that the real money comes from merchandise sales and concert attendance. Both of which Napster use can only increase.
That's not that uncommon a low actually. Here in Ontario, liquor stores (which are all government-run) were closed on Sundays until a few years ago. It was a fairly big thing the first Sunday they were open. By the same token, there was no Sunday shopping either.
Obviously, these types of laws are in place due to religious influences when the Catholic church had more political stroke in North America. It's the same deal in Utah, where Mormons have a lot of influence. The difference is that Ontario (specifically southern Ontario and Ottawa) is a very multicultural province. With this multiculturalism comes a vast array of religious beliefs. It was finally realized there were a lot of Jews who held Saturday as the Sabbath, not Sunday, and Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Atheists, Wiccans, and followers of every other religion, who had differing beliefs. So, by catering to the cries of one religion, the government was not being impartial, and ignoring a large, and growing section of the population. Hence, the laws were repealed. (True, it was more likely for economic purposes, but this works as a more PC reason).
This won't happen anytime soon in Utah, or anywhere across the Bible Belt, because of the strength of Mormons and other religious groups. As long as someone can get voted out of office because they want to change a law most vocal group in the state supports, they will refuse to change that law. Regardless of whether it makes sense or not.
Yah, it pisses off the Americans, but it makes it that much more appealing to the rest of the World. Just watch as us Canucks flock to open-source software now because it isn't American (just like us).
On top of this, it screams "Screw the rest of the world, this isn't the American Way, it's wrong!" Wonder how all of M$'s international customers will feel realizing how highly M$ thinks of them. Can Billy really have hired this many clueless people?
So, the quote is:
The first invention is a method of compressing text stored in binary form, which expresses information as a series of noughts and ones, by comparing each word with its predecessor and recording only the differences between words. This compresses the data to an eighth of its normal size.
Now, does it compress the text while it's in text form or in binary form? ie.- "words" as in the text, or "words" as in a preset amount of bits? If it's doing it with the text, then isn't this just Lempel-Ziv encoding? Setting up a table of patterns that are encountered and storing the reference to these patterns instead of the patterns themselves? And if this is the case, then only highly repetitive data would compress well. For example, some of the best compression found with Lempel-Ziv is found with Dr. Seuss books due to the fact every other word rhymes.
If however, they're compressing the binary representation, the repetitiveness might be higher, especially since it sound like they'd be using words. However, you'd have to ensure that the table references are smaller than the words you're replacing. And then there would have to be some sort of further encoding (ie.- Huffman) to actually compress the data. Regardless, this isn't a new invention by any means. Not that that's stopped anybody else from patenting.
On top of that, this would then be essentially a compressed drive. Even with no moving parts to physically slow it down, the decompression would reduce speed.
Finally, this sounds like it could only hold 10.8 terabytes of TEXT. Not very useful outside of e-libraries and basic data storage.
Please, using a PDA is no different than telling your secretary to remind you of your appointments for the day, or keeping numbers in a rolodex, or even having your secretary keep numbers in a rolodex. "Ms. Smith, please get Mr. Brown on the phone". I'm sure any programmer with a PDA can remember the syntax of all the commonly used C commands, regardless of whether they know their mother's phone number. I think that's a much more impressive feat of memory.
However, there is some relevance here. As we rely more on technology, we become more interested in things getting done, and not how they get done. For instance, many grade schools now allow calculators to be used in grade 2 to add and subtract. Only a couple lessons are spent on multiplying or division, and then it's simply plugged into the calculators. What this results in is that students get their homework done faster, and with fewer calculation mistakes, but they have NO idea why it works. When these same students hit calculus, algebra, etc, they become lost, because they don't have the basic mathematical foundations to understand the more complex ones -- they just know the calculator can do it. Society ends up with people pulling out a pocket calculator to figure out how much the tax on their big mac meal is going to be because they can't add 5% in their heads. This ignorance simply perpetuates itself. Instead of understanding how a mathematical simulation of a complex model works, it's taken for granted that some programmer correctly entered the formula they were handed. The answer pops up, it looks right, so we continue on, and then boom, a nuclear bomb goes off in Iowa.
Someone with solid basic math skills could probably make a killing by adding an extra percent to grocery, restraunt, or shopping bills, because just about anybody who checked their bills wouldn't have a clue that they were being overcharged.
Slashdot Mirror
The way I see it, I can buy a DVD that gives me a 2 hour movie, hours of behind-the-scenes footage, deleted scenes, alternate versions, multiple commentary, languages, subtitles, easter eggs, DVD-ROM features, background information on the cast, crew, etc, etc, etc.. All of this in unique cases, layouts, booklets, etc.. And how much does it cost me? As little as $15 (CDN), and rarely more than $35. What does a CD cost me, which has MAYBE 50 minutes of music on it, if I'm lucky a creative set of liner notes, and a "secret" track tacked on at the end? Anywhere from $10-$30.
I was never a BIG CD buyer to begin with, but over the past 5 years I've bought maybe 4 or 5 CDs total, because NOTHING out there interests me, not because I'm a rampantly pirating. I've been shoring up my jazz collection mostly, which involves a lot of Coltrane, Getz, Peterson, Powell, and the like, nothing new. Just about everything out there is made to be enjoyable for a couple months of casual listening and then you're sick of it. When someone like Alicia Keyes is touted as a "piano prodigy" I want to be sick. The fact is that the recording industry is offering us nothing worthwhile.
To compare music to movies is an apples and oranges situation. One utilizes one of our senses and is often limited in what it's capable of offering as a bonus (the odd enhanced CD notwhithstanding), the other is being thought of while main production is occuring. Filmmakers look towards the DVD market now so that NO scenes get thrown out, interviews and commentaries are lined up in contracts, and the consumer gets something worthwhile. I don't feel bad about being short $30 for a double-disc DVD of a movie I can watch time and again and still say "Hey, I haven't checked out the commentary of the visual effects supervisor."
In short, DVDs cater to their market far, FAR better than CDs do. That's why one market is exploding and the other is dying. Piracy plays such a small role. I know just as many people who download DiVX movies as mp3s.
Then consider yourself lucky. I've seen some pretty strange errors posted. But Soundblasters have always had a hard time playing nice with other hardware.
Most Audigy users that have looked at any of the sound card forums out there have already discovered their claims are false.
Creative seems to have really dropped the ball with the Audigy line. A look at any audio forums (Creative's own even) will show a large contingent of unhappy customers. Audiophiles that think it's a piece of crap sound-wise, gamers who are pissed off with its driver performance. Calls for people to return their Audigies and get a Game Theatre or Santa Cruz.
Compatibility issues with different hardware configurations, WinXP, etc.. are also popping up. The biggest seems to be an issue where the EEPROM on the card gets scrambled, disabling the rear speakers, and causing the card to be recognized as EMU10K instead of an Audigy, thereby making proper software/driver upgrades impossible for it. The only known solution for this so far is to get the card replaced and hope the new one doesn't get FUBAR as well. There are a lot of very annoyed Audigy owners out there.
Where I'm working (large financial institution) they're starting to look into AI as a means of predicting market movement and trends. One could see this as becoming key in other areas as well. Any field that tries to predict chaos or long-term trends could potentially be looking into this.
Of course, there's the danger you'll invent a supercomputer that takes of the world and sends killer robots back in time to kill the leader of the resistance. This naturally would lead to his psychotic mother trying to kill you and you ultimately sacrificing yourself to save the future. Something to think about.
Noticed something he said in there:
"While it's true that there's always been a balance, we don't know if it's been a particularly good or even balance."
So how is an uneven balance a balance?
Interesting idea in there - that perhaps the music companies should have negotiated with Napster, found some way to change the "rules". The example he gives is that in order to download, you have to upload. Would this have worked? Obviously what you upload in a P2P system is partially dependent on people actually taking stuff FROM you. But could they have said "If you want to download, you need to have at least 1/5 of your d/l amount available for others." Might have kept the leeches away. Reminds me of the BBS days, and the U/D ratios many had.
Photoquantigraphic Lightspace Paintball, played by Steve Mann and his "cyborgs" at the University of Toronto. Wearcomps and flashguns to paint the Univeristy and the players in their own mediated reality. Fun, fun, fun.
On June 12th, Bell Sympatico here in Canada is implementing a cap as well. 5GB/month @ $44.95 (CAD), and then $7.95 per Gig over the limit (in 100MB increments). The plan seems to be to add tiers later on.
"Basic" service - 128kbs, 1GB limit - $29.95
"Normal" - 1.2Mbs up, 250kbs down, 5GB limit - $44.95
"Ultra" - 3Mbs up, 650kbs down, 10GB limit - $69.95.
Raising quite the uproar here, as the only major alternative is Rogers Cable, which will be doing the same thing shortly.
Hamster Power
The point about morale is a good one. Each of these games employs the "mindless zombie" ideas. Send in a swarm of grunts, a fleet of ships, whatever, and they'll fight until they win or all of them are destroyed. If your soldiers start getting wiped out, then some should scatter, or become target dummies from the shock of seeing their comrades die in front of them. The more losses you suffer, the worse your armies should fight, and vice-versa.
Ships should retreat when they're badly damaged, and that damage should be realistic. If you decide to retreat and your soliders or vehicles are near destroyed, then most shouldn't make it very far due to their injuries/damage. Seeing a battlecruiser crash during a retreat because it was too badly damaged would definately change dynamics. At the very least, the speed you could retreat or attack should be reduced proportionally to the damage inflicted upon you.
The comment made earlier about a Sims-like situation isn't bad either. Soldiers get hungry, miss home, get bored, scared, etc... Yes, it would be ridiculous to have each solider's needs have to met individually, but squad levels would probably work.
These kinds of changes would drastically change the way people play. You couldn't send in a blitz if it would scatter once it started taking heavly losses. You couldn't send wave after suicide wave because they'd become less effective after each battle. You couldn't have a group of medics/technicians waiting in a safe haven for you army to return to if it was taking a beating. You'd have to pick and choose your battles, weaken your enemies' own morale before wiping them out.
POWs wouldn't be a bad idea either - squad gets massacred, survivors surrender.
When I was working on my Comp Eng degree, there was ample opportunity in our last year to work in teams. In fact, all my major assignments were done with a team. it fell to the group itself to dictate who was responsible for what, and regular reports indicated this. Add to that the fact that if one person didn't complete their section, the whole project was delayed, and it was rare that anybody slacked.
Along with this, it was generally accepted that with the heavy workload we all had in 4th year that there would be collaboration. As long as you referenced anybody you borrowed from or shared with, all was well. There were a few "individual" assignments that I worked on with friends and we all had answers that had the disclaimer "this question was worked on with [student name]", and it was always accepted. Generally, it's better to have a student learn how to solve a problem from a friend than be afraid of asking because their answers may be too similar.
This seemed to be better preparation for the real world than slaving away at 3am trying to debug an assignment that you aren't even sure you interpreted correctly. If I have a problem, I turn to a co-worker and ask if they know how to solve it, or go searching for the answer online. It's no different than the arguement of "Why should I have to memorize this formula? In the real world, I'd have the book on hand if I didn't know it."
Well, he has been doing it for 20 some-odd years now, he's used to it, even if most of the world isn't.
It's possible to limit access to the glasses. Whether it's by providing a list of allowed people or simply disconnecting from anything but a local network. Of course, you can always take the glasses off.
:).
When I was taking one of Prof. Mann's courses, I was tempted to try and hack his glasses and display a starfield simulation while throwing PVC pellets at him
*SMACK!* That's the sound of reality hitting you in the face. The open source model (and Free software, and the GPL, etc, etc, etc) works NOW because of the limited base of users and developers. It's along the same lines of "Why should I pay for it when I get it free?" As GPL'd code becomes more popular, eventually there will be a large number of people who use programs, code fragments, etc, for their own uses, then close the source.
People, on the whole, are greedy. Sure, someone who buys into the the Free concept will gladly share modifications and bug fixes with everyone else. But if someone less ethical finds a program that does what they need to do, what's stopping them from altering it so the interface isn't recognizable, adding a few more customizations, and closing the source and claiming it's theirs? The GPL? Once it's got a major court victory under its belt, maybe. But in order for someone to discover GPL'd code has been used, they'd have to have access to the code, or reverse engineer the program. Both of which would be illegal, and a countersuit would be brought. In today's justice system, most judges would side with the well known copyright laws as opposed to the virtually unknown (outside the community) licensing agreement
As good an idea as Free software is, I really don't think the majority of humankind is ready to adopt it yet. Just a small minority (and yes, it IS a minority) of idealisitic developers.
I love how the Slashdot community rallies around the "protecting patents is bad" standard. This isn't a patent on some obvious idea, like one-click shopping or breathing, it's a patent on a unique product/process this company developed. And it's had a significant effect on the world of electronics. They've approached the companies in question and warned them, and they were rebuffed. If Phillips and Samsung don't want to pay for the right to use a patented material, then they should come up with their own, not steal someone else's.
What I do find interesting is that companies like Best Buy and Circuit City are being sued, since as far as I knew, they were distributors, not producers. Sure, they may put together their own systems, but they don't manufacture the parts. Even the arguement of "they're selling stolen goods" falls flat to my ears.
Steve Mann has been using a system like this for years with his wearable computer systems. It creates what he's termed "mediated reality", which is just a cute term to describe the overlay of data onto reality as opposed to full virtual reality. It's pretty impressive, and fairly intimidating at first when you think about shining a laser directly into your eye.
The other form of mediated reality (and more commonly used as he only has a couple laser eyetaps) is similar to the standard LCD concept. Except, instead of displaying the data on an LCD screen that blocks out reality, the data is overlayed on a image of reality. The light rays that are reflected on the eye are colinear with what would normally be seen, so minimal distortion occurs.
It's pretty cool to see this sort of thing coming to market.
You never know when you could be attacked by fireball-hurling imps, or deranged sargents, running cybernetic eyeballs, skaarj commanders, UNATCO agents, nazi robots or Japanese businessmen who desperately want an ancient sword. Without my ultra-violent training simulat... uh I mean video games, how could I possibly fight back against an alien invasion?
First: Then he asked Thompson to write Carmack a letter, "just to let him know we're on his trail." ... yah, because John Carmack is so hard to find, you need to be on his trail. It's so incredibly annoying to see people who have no clue what they're talking about become pundits and crusaders. It's right up there with hearing your parents talking in ebonics to try and communicate with your generation -- except more dangerous.
And I hope that every one of the parents involved in this lawsuit get their family's computers seized and searched, because I'd bet good money that one would find many "violent" video games on them. Yet, their kids didn't go on a shooting spree, even if they played these games AND watched The Basketball Diaries. Nope, their children were little angels, who did nothing remotely questionable. In fact, I bet their kids never even taunted, excluded, or attacked the shooters, nope they were innocents.
The size of the blinders put on by these people amazes me. How can anyone focus the blame for something like this onto one point? Doubtless the media played a role, it glorifies violence, be it in the form of movies, the 6 o'clock news, tabloid journalism, songs, and yes, even video games. However, MOST of the world's population can separate fantasy from reality, and see the depravity of violence and suffering in our society. Those that can't have problems, be it neglectful parenting or psychological disorders.
Regardless, the video game industry became a $20 billion a year industry because millions of people by millions of games, and out of those millions and millions, 10 people go nuts and kill/injure others. If this was any other product, it wouldn't be an issue. Even more murderers out there own cars, homes, pots and pans, refrigerators, ceramic mugs with witty cartoons. Most of them probably have drunk Coke, mineral water, or orange juice. What about whoever these kids get their guns from? Oh wait, the U.S. would NEVER bring out any real gun legistlation, because Americans have a right to own an AK-47, just in case the Queen decides to retake the old colony.
It's sad that not only do these people have no clue about who to blame (start by looking in the mirror), but they can't even grieve properly. A terrible thing has happened to these people, but instead of allowing themselves to heal and continue on with their lives, they prolong the pain for not only them, but the rest of the country, by filing lawsuits that have no chance of getting anywhere, assuming the judges involved have any wisdom.
It makes me sick.
What I find great about Scientology is that the whole thing was started on a bet (I think it was about $50, but it could have been substantially more). L. Ron Hubbard wrote the beginnings of Dianetics in a science fiction short story for a magazine. One of the characters followed its precepts, which he made up specifically for the story. Readers of the story started writing him saying that they had tried the few ideas presented and they found they worked for them, and asked if he could provide more information.
A friend of Hubbard found this funny (for obvious reasons), and Hubbard bet him that he could turn this into a religion, getting a good number of devout followers. His friend took him up on the bet, and Hubbard wrote the rest of Dianetics. Scientology was born, and the rest is history. {begin not getting sued by the church of scientology statement here} Or so I hear, I can't say I have to documentation handy. {end anti-litigation statement}
Regardless of its origins though, as long as a religion actually helps its followers in some way, and they truly believe in it, then who are we to judge it? I'm free to join or not join any cult or religion if I so choose. And I definately wouldn't join one that would sue me for talking about it's "trade secrets".
Computer Engineering is much more than hardware. I'm a Comp Eng who took the Software Engineering option (as opposed to the non-accredited CS software "engineering" option). I find that I'm able to assimiliate and use information much quicker than any comp sci I've ever run into. Given, out of school, CS students tend to have a broader programming background, and could whip me in Java or VB programming for the first couple months. But if I sit down and learn and use the languages, I'm running circles around them because I can evaluate what can be done instead of relying on procedures I've had driven into my head.
Simply put, Computer Engineering teaches you how to learn from practical experience in the real world. On top of that, there is a solid hardware background so that where a comp sci understands the programming, and possibly the programming theory, the comp eng understands just as much and then some. I find I walk into a group that is predominately comp scis and programmers and realize that they tend to have limitations that I don't perceive in myself and other engineers.
Wow, was that ever an arrogant ERTW rant... sorry. Comp Sci is a perfectly legitimate field, if you want to deal solely in software (not necessarily programming, but you don't go much deeper than the code level of any application). If you want a richer foundation, I'd suggest Comp Eng. The higher pay is nice too :).
You know, 10 years ago (hell, 5 years ago) the RIAA's claims would have gone unchallenged. The problem with old media is that they can't come to grips with the dissemination of information that the Internet provides. They still claim they're making no money, that revenues are down, and they try to use the Internet as a scapegoat, when in reality it's their own reluctance to change. We still occasionally hear that movie companies, record labels, television station, etc., are either losing money or just breaking even. This worked years ago when nobody could check they numbers or question them. It always seemed odd that a CD cost $20, 10 millions copies sold, a tour sold out across the world with tickets costing $50 a pop, everybody was wearing the band's t-shirt, and every station was playing their latest single 20 times a day, and yet the label wasn't making money. Same goes for the movies that grossed $300 million.
Now, the numbers are easily accessed, and the companies try to put use the same rhetoric. "We're broke, sales are down, blah, blah, blah", but nobody believes them because the numbers are there, and people can add. Now, if you're pulling in $14.6 billion in revenues, what possible reason would there be to raise prices? Could it be greed? The mentality is skewed. They assume that by charging more, they can sell the same amount and therefore make more money. Do these people not realize that if I have the option of buying a Dave Matthews Band CD for $15 instead of $25, I'll choose the $15 one? And if the cheaper option is taken away, then I won't buy it at all. Disposable income isn't infinite. If they would lower the prices (like we were told would happen once CD became an accepted medium), then they would sell possibly millions more, and increase their revenues to even more ridiculous heights.
But no, the media companies still rely on lies and deceit to cover their collective asses. I had nothing but respect for BMG, saying "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and hooking up with Napster, realizing the possibilities. And now I have even more after the "it wasn't a good music year" quote. Honesty is a refreshing change of pace in this industry.
However, the Napster arguement is unfounded from both sides. To say that it's hurting sales is ridiculous when sales are up. To say it's helping sales is just as ludicrous when there's nothing to prove causation between the numbers. Sales are more likely up due to the mega-pop-stars of the last couple years, Britney Spears, N-Sync, Backstreet Boys, etc.. These groups are some of the only people who can sell out 60,000 seat arenas and sell millions of albums in their first week. Manufactured fame is pulling in a lot more money that real talent these days.
However, the RIAA has every right to be scared. True, Napster isn't hurting them today, but if they continue to refuse to embrace emerging technologies, continue to raise prices, and continue to rip off their artists, then it will eventually hurt them. Look at many European countries (especially Russia and former soviet states), piracy there makes North America look like we're just making copies of a friend's tape. Billions are legitimately lost to bootlegs and pirated copies of music in these places. The RIAA's fear is that the U.S., their most important market, will follow suit in the coming years. What they don't realize is that they are driving this market away with their own greed and short-sightedness.
In an ideal world, people would use Napster to download rare singles, covers, live concerts, and other material not readily available. Fanning's creation would be used to get that song I just heard on the radio, check out a couple other titles from the band, and then I'd go out and buy their CD for $10. (Or better yet, DOWNLOAD IT FROM THE LABEL'S SITE for $7 + s&h for the actual disc). However, this isn't an ideal world, and while a good number of Napster users do exactly this (minus the CD only costing $10), many others use it for free music. Maybe this is due to cost, maybe it's just due to the fact that many people have the "why pay for it if I don't have to?" mentality. But it's my opinion that having a good-sized CD collection is a bit of a status symbol, and that the money spent by the people who use Napster to sample bands outweighs any revenue lost due to the people who download the whole album and burn it to a CD.
Besides, everyone knows that the real money comes from merchandise sales and concert attendance. Both of which Napster use can only increase.
That's not that uncommon a low actually. Here in Ontario, liquor stores (which are all government-run) were closed on Sundays until a few years ago. It was a fairly big thing the first Sunday they were open. By the same token, there was no Sunday shopping either.
Obviously, these types of laws are in place due to religious influences when the Catholic church had more political stroke in North America. It's the same deal in Utah, where Mormons have a lot of influence. The difference is that Ontario (specifically southern Ontario and Ottawa) is a very multicultural province. With this multiculturalism comes a vast array of religious beliefs. It was finally realized there were a lot of Jews who held Saturday as the Sabbath, not Sunday, and Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Atheists, Wiccans, and followers of every other religion, who had differing beliefs. So, by catering to the cries of one religion, the government was not being impartial, and ignoring a large, and growing section of the population. Hence, the laws were repealed. (True, it was more likely for economic purposes, but this works as a more PC reason).
This won't happen anytime soon in Utah, or anywhere across the Bible Belt, because of the strength of Mormons and other religious groups. As long as someone can get voted out of office because they want to change a law most vocal group in the state supports, they will refuse to change that law. Regardless of whether it makes sense or not.
Yah, it pisses off the Americans, but it makes it that much more appealing to the rest of the World. Just watch as us Canucks flock to open-source software now because it isn't American (just like us).
On top of this, it screams "Screw the rest of the world, this isn't the American Way, it's wrong!" Wonder how all of M$'s international customers will feel realizing how highly M$ thinks of them. Can Billy really have hired this many clueless people?
Now, does it compress the text while it's in text form or in binary form? ie.- "words" as in the text, or "words" as in a preset amount of bits? If it's doing it with the text, then isn't this just Lempel-Ziv encoding? Setting up a table of patterns that are encountered and storing the reference to these patterns instead of the patterns themselves? And if this is the case, then only highly repetitive data would compress well. For example, some of the best compression found with Lempel-Ziv is found with Dr. Seuss books due to the fact every other word rhymes.
If however, they're compressing the binary representation, the repetitiveness might be higher, especially since it sound like they'd be using words. However, you'd have to ensure that the table references are smaller than the words you're replacing. And then there would have to be some sort of further encoding (ie.- Huffman) to actually compress the data. Regardless, this isn't a new invention by any means. Not that that's stopped anybody else from patenting.
On top of that, this would then be essentially a compressed drive. Even with no moving parts to physically slow it down, the decompression would reduce speed.
Finally, this sounds like it could only hold 10.8 terabytes of TEXT. Not very useful outside of e-libraries and basic data storage.
Please, using a PDA is no different than telling your secretary to remind you of your appointments for the day, or keeping numbers in a rolodex, or even having your secretary keep numbers in a rolodex. "Ms. Smith, please get Mr. Brown on the phone". I'm sure any programmer with a PDA can remember the syntax of all the commonly used C commands, regardless of whether they know their mother's phone number. I think that's a much more impressive feat of memory.
However, there is some relevance here. As we rely more on technology, we become more interested in things getting done, and not how they get done. For instance, many grade schools now allow calculators to be used in grade 2 to add and subtract. Only a couple lessons are spent on multiplying or division, and then it's simply plugged into the calculators. What this results in is that students get their homework done faster, and with fewer calculation mistakes, but they have NO idea why it works. When these same students hit calculus, algebra, etc, they become lost, because they don't have the basic mathematical foundations to understand the more complex ones -- they just know the calculator can do it. Society ends up with people pulling out a pocket calculator to figure out how much the tax on their big mac meal is going to be because they can't add 5% in their heads. This ignorance simply perpetuates itself. Instead of understanding how a mathematical simulation of a complex model works, it's taken for granted that some programmer correctly entered the formula they were handed. The answer pops up, it looks right, so we continue on, and then boom, a nuclear bomb goes off in Iowa.
Someone with solid basic math skills could probably make a killing by adding an extra percent to grocery, restraunt, or shopping bills, because just about anybody who checked their bills wouldn't have a clue that they were being overcharged.