I can't believe they are going to put caps on monthly BW. I am paying for 100Mb/s. Or... My ping times when everyone gets home and starts streaming netflix are terrible.
Too bad this didn't happen in China. Apple would be jumping to unlock the phone. I always shake my head when Apple gets on their soap box about encryption and how they stand up for freedom / privacy, yet will bend over when it comes down to impacting profits.
** Not saying that I think Apple should un-encrypt the phone, or that they shouldn't. I think it's more nuanced than that, but just hate the "Yay Apple" while in most situations its all about what will make them the most profit.
Yet another vote for McMaster. I bought quite a few pieces parts from them when I was building a oversozed go-kart dune buggy a couple years back.
baileynet.com/ is another good place for bearings, and flanges which can be combined to make most things mobile. They had the best prices when I was searching for AXLE bearings, and you have to sign up as a company (much like ordering from dell small business, uhh.. yeah. ALAN INC.).
There used to be some good surplus places which had old army surplus generators and the like, which may be scavenged, but I cant remember the site name.
My original post was somewhat tongue in cheek, but what you say is true...
The thing is, since the NSA or other agencies can legally get a tap without asking for 72 hours, how can AT&T be liable for anything? They just have to go along with whatever they are told because they dont know if the NSA is planning on actually getting a warrant or not.
Okay, so the EFF sues AT&T for letting them do the wiretapping. Lets just say they win. Do you really think they will stop tapping the phones? Instead the NSA has to move the wiretapping from easy (ie, AT&T handing them the keys) to a bit more covert (ie, splicing in somewhere remote) which will cost tons more to the taxpayer than the original plan.
I am sure they already do plenty of covert splices as it is now. When I was working for a major internet backbone provider a few years back, I always found it interesting that in the office right below where we did all the long haul network designs was an office for the Dept. of Defense. Anytime we were walking through the halls and one of their employees were punching in the code to gain entry, they'd "accidentally" punch in the wrong code. I did some research, but couldnt find any info on what was done in that office... So, by no real logic, that means it had to be the NSA and they were intercepting all of our network designs so that they could find a repeater in the middle of no where to attach their monitoring equipment. Its only logical...
I work for a historically black universty, and its amazing how many companies come to recruit our engineers (our engineering program is decent though) mostly because they are looking to fill a quota. The other university in town has a larger engineering dept and more status, but their job fairs don't bring in nearly the caliber of companies that ours do.
I worked on a project back in my undergrad days for a large government agency. At the end of the project, when the administrator was announcing to everyone that they had an opening for an engineer, I was politely told after the announcement that the opening was not for me because I wasn't a minority. I wasn't really interested in their peanuts anyway, but it kinda stuck with me.
Okay, here is my take on the whole music and video download thing.
The studios and **AA dumbasses are trying to sell a product at a premium price that is of far less value than the free alternatives. (legal or otherwise.)
Music
I can live with the itunes model, it allows for decent usage rights and the quality is about the same as what you would find on a p2p network. At the current pricing scheme the ease of use usually makes it worth just clicking a couple times to get what I want to hear.
TV
I was originally pretty excited to see tv shows added to the itunes faire, until the details came out. The companies behind this masterpiece expect viewers to be happy with paying $1.99 for a product that is far below the quality of the product available on the p2p networks. I can live with some simple DRM, but give me decent quality. I think most early adopters are geeks and such that have HDTVs or at least a quality monitor which will not look too hot with a 320x240 encoded clip. Why should I pay for a clip with that resolution, when I can get something with 4x the pixels for free on most tv sites?
Movies
Here we go again... I wouldn't have a problem paying sony $8 for a movie, if it was in HD with at least 5.1 channel audio. However, I don't expect that to be the case. I have tried the movielink service as well, and the banding and compression artifacts made the movie almost unwatchable. Why should I pay good money for a product that is of far less quality than what is readily available.
Come on studios, your getting beaten on a technical level by high school kids playing in their basements on their parents PCs. Hell, just hire a couple of these kids to do your encoding work for you.
I have also been hit by a couple ads lately and have decided to help the ad companies out by viewing their ads. I downloaded the new version of Opera, and every pop under ad I get gets opened in a new opera window with an automatic refresh of.25 seconds. I just want to do my part to help the ad companies make a couple bucks for finding new ways to annoy me.
I am glad someone is finally looking into this. Quite simply right now the record companies are getting royalties from both sides... Cd's that cant be copied as well as the media that you cant (well shouldnt, cause we all know how well these schemes work) copy the new cds too.
On another note I am still skeptical about the companies lowering cd prices, but if it happens I will feel as though we the people actually won something since we cant compete with the money thrown around by corporations on capitol hill.
Quite simply all the people I know who buy CD's dont read slashdot or even CNET. What we need is more mass market coverage of this issue. We need to get all the little Britney Spears and NSYNC fans all stirred up so they will start something.
If we had a nice website that explained the issue in pretty general and non-technical terms and then sent that link and some info to all the lil teen websites saying that the new CDs wont play in the car, computer or whatever. We could also send that along to local news and such. (I am currently somewhat homeless, or I'd do it)
I remember something a while back on one of the Hardware sites about not running some older IBM drives on a system with the PCI or FSB overclocked as this tended to kill the drives rather quickly. Could this be an issue with these drives as well? As most people I know overclock everything...
Prices for gas will go up for normal reasons due to this though... everyone is filling up, oil prices spiked today in trading around the world, and many refineries were shut down today making supply an issue. I know the ones in Baton Rouge were shut down, not sure if they are up and running again now.
The whole thing is that the agreement allows OEMS to remove IE from the machine. Removing MSN or Windows Media is not allowed. They already have the market share in Browsers so removing IE on a couple machines isnt gonna hurt anything. On the other hand, the AOL-MSN and Windows Media fronts haven't been won, which makes their removal a bit more troublesome for the company. Should we expect anything less?
Do these industry groups JEDEC and all the other ones get patents on things that they standardize? I see the need for a patent holder non profit org that is around only to hold patents that can freely be used. No licensing crap, no legal this and that, just free patents. The only reason the patent company would be around is to hold the patents so that other greedy companies couldn't come about to do the rambus shuffle. Is there such a thing in place, and if not, why not?
Actually the integer performance of the EE is supposedly about the same as a 486. All the emphasis was put on floating point. Of course I read this in a game mag a while back so its not necessarily fact.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't believe they are going to put caps on monthly BW. I am paying for 100Mb/s. Or... My ping times when everyone gets home and starts streaming netflix are terrible.
Too bad this didn't happen in China. Apple would be jumping to unlock the phone. I always shake my head when Apple gets on their soap box about encryption and how they stand up for freedom / privacy, yet will bend over when it comes down to impacting profits.
** Not saying that I think Apple should un-encrypt the phone, or that they shouldn't. I think it's more nuanced than that, but just hate the "Yay Apple" while in most situations its all about what will make them the most profit.
This seems like a perfect strategy for a group of musicians mad that apple / spotify / etc are all not making them enough money.
1. Start a streaming service
2. Release exclusive albums
3. Wait to be bought
4. PROFIT!
Yet another vote for McMaster. I bought quite a few pieces parts from them when I was building a oversozed go-kart dune buggy a couple years back.
baileynet.com/ is another good place for bearings, and flanges which can be combined to make most things mobile. They had the best prices when I was searching for AXLE bearings, and you have to sign up as a company (much like ordering from dell small business, uhh.. yeah. ALAN INC.).
There used to be some good surplus places which had old army surplus generators and the like, which may be scavenged, but I cant remember the site name.
My original post was somewhat tongue in cheek, but what you say is true...
The thing is, since the NSA or other agencies can legally get a tap without asking for 72 hours, how can AT&T be liable for anything? They just have to go along with whatever they are told because they dont know if the NSA is planning on actually getting a warrant or not.
Okay, so the EFF sues AT&T for letting them do the wiretapping. Lets just say they win. Do you really think they will stop tapping the phones? Instead the NSA has to move the wiretapping from easy (ie, AT&T handing them the keys) to a bit more covert (ie, splicing in somewhere remote) which will cost tons more to the taxpayer than the original plan.
I am sure they already do plenty of covert splices as it is now. When I was working for a major internet backbone provider a few years back, I always found it interesting that in the office right below where we did all the long haul network designs was an office for the Dept. of Defense. Anytime we were walking through the halls and one of their employees were punching in the code to gain entry, they'd "accidentally" punch in the wrong code. I did some research, but couldnt find any info on what was done in that office... So, by no real logic, that means it had to be the NSA and they were intercepting all of our network designs so that they could find a repeater in the middle of no where to attach their monitoring equipment. Its only logical...
I work for a historically black universty, and its amazing how many companies come to recruit our engineers (our engineering program is decent though) mostly because they are looking to fill a quota. The other university in town has a larger engineering dept and more status, but their job fairs don't bring in nearly the caliber of companies that ours do.
I worked on a project back in my undergrad days for a large government agency. At the end of the project, when the administrator was announcing to everyone that they had an opening for an engineer, I was politely told after the announcement that the opening was not for me because I wasn't a minority. I wasn't really interested in their peanuts anyway, but it kinda stuck with me.
Okay, here is my take on the whole music and video download thing.
The studios and **AA dumbasses are trying to sell a product at a premium price that is of far less value than the free alternatives. (legal or otherwise.)
Music
I can live with the itunes model, it allows for decent usage rights and the quality is about the same as what you would find on a p2p network. At the current pricing scheme the ease of use usually makes it worth just clicking a couple times to get what I want to hear.
TV
I was originally pretty excited to see tv shows added to the itunes faire, until the details came out. The companies behind this masterpiece expect viewers to be happy with paying $1.99 for a product that is far below the quality of the product available on the p2p networks. I can live with some simple DRM, but give me decent quality. I think most early adopters are geeks and such that have HDTVs or at least a quality monitor which will not look too hot with a 320x240 encoded clip. Why should I pay for a clip with that resolution, when I can get something with 4x the pixels for free on most tv sites?
Movies
Here we go again... I wouldn't have a problem paying sony $8 for a movie, if it was in HD with at least 5.1 channel audio. However, I don't expect that to be the case. I have tried the movielink service as well, and the banding and compression artifacts made the movie almost unwatchable. Why should I pay good money for a product that is of far less quality than what is readily available.
Come on studios, your getting beaten on a technical level by high school kids playing in their basements on their parents PCs. Hell, just hire a couple of these kids to do your encoding work for you.
And just to show I do care... I even signed up for a slashdot subscription.
I have also been hit by a couple ads lately and have decided to help the ad companies out by viewing their ads. I downloaded the new version of Opera, and every pop under ad I get gets opened in a new opera window with an automatic refresh of .25 seconds. I just want to do my part to help the ad companies make a couple bucks for finding new ways to annoy me.
I am glad someone is finally looking into this. Quite simply right now the record companies are getting royalties from both sides... Cd's that cant be copied as well as the media that you cant (well shouldnt, cause we all know how well these schemes work) copy the new cds too.
On another note I am still skeptical about the companies lowering cd prices, but if it happens I will feel as though we the people actually won something since we cant compete with the money thrown around by corporations on capitol hill.
Quite simply all the people I know who buy CD's dont read slashdot or even CNET. What we need is more mass market coverage of this issue. We need to get all the little Britney Spears and NSYNC fans all stirred up so they will start something.
If we had a nice website that explained the issue in pretty general and non-technical terms and then sent that link and some info to all the lil teen websites saying that the new CDs wont play in the car, computer or whatever. We could also send that along to local news and such. (I am currently somewhat homeless, or I'd do it)
I remember something a while back on one of the Hardware sites about not running some older IBM drives on a system with the PCI or FSB overclocked as this tended to kill the drives rather quickly. Could this be an issue with these drives as well? As most people I know overclock everything...
Prices for gas will go up for normal reasons due to this though... everyone is filling up, oil prices spiked today in trading around the world, and many refineries were shut down today making supply an issue. I know the ones in Baton Rouge were shut down, not sure if they are up and running again now.
The whole thing is that the agreement allows OEMS to remove IE from the machine. Removing MSN or Windows Media is not allowed. They already have the market share in Browsers so removing IE on a couple machines isnt gonna hurt anything. On the other hand, the AOL-MSN and Windows Media fronts haven't been won, which makes their removal a bit more troublesome for the company. Should we expect anything less?
Do these industry groups JEDEC and all the other ones get patents on things that they standardize? I see the need for a patent holder non profit org that is around only to hold patents that can freely be used. No licensing crap, no legal this and that, just free patents. The only reason the patent company would be around is to hold the patents so that other greedy companies couldn't come about to do the rambus shuffle. Is there such a thing in place, and if not, why not?
Actually the integer performance of the EE is supposedly about the same as a 486. All the emphasis was put on floating point. Of course I read this in a game mag a while back so its not necessarily fact.
I just hope that E.T. has a bigger role in the next one...