This is a non-story. The media made it sound interesting by using the word "hotwired".
Why is everyone acting like the kid must have been a child prodigy to know how to reconnect the wires? I'd guess the "electronics" under the hood consist of nothing more than battery-to-gas_pedal-to-motor, and the store owner probably did nothing more than disconnect one of the wires from the battery.
But that doesn't make much of a story, so unfortunately, lots of people are going to picture this boy genius defeating some kind of security system.
Sure, implied signatures are perfectly legal - even implied contracts. For example, when you use a vending machine, there is an implied contract - you will give the owner of the machine your $0.75, and in return the owner will give you your candy bar. IANAL, but this topic was covered in a Business Law course i took.
After all, when you buy a copy of Windows, you don't sign any contract saying you won't make copies for all your friends, but your first use of the product counts as your agreement to abide by the licensing terms.
"By the time our signature stabilizes," explains Miezkowsky, "so does our personality. Hence, a change in signature often signals a major shift in personality.
"Hence" usually implies a logical cause-and-effect relationship.
They won't listen to one person who doesn't own large quantities of stock, but how can they ignore a huge volume of people complaining? I mean, the Slashdot community is representative of the computer industry as a whole. If we all love the new logo, there's a good chance the majority of their customers and potential customers do as well. Businesses may sometimes seem out of touch, but they respond to floods of feedback.
Remember when Toshiba wouldn't release the IR specs for their laptops? We all told them why it would be a good idea for them to release the specs, and a few months later they did. See http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/24/112249.shtml and http://slashdot.org/articles/99/03/05/0745243.shtm l for more info.
Please take 30 seconds out of your busy day and send them a quick, "I miss the old logo!" email.
SGI has a feedback page at http://www.sgi.com/cgi-bin/feedback. I suggest we all go there and politely explain what we think of the new "g" and the old logo. If 50,000 people take the time to tell them they really liked the old logo, they may well listen. And it's not like they had a grand "throw the old logo away" ceremony - they can quietly slip it back onto their web page.
At this time, the aforementioned web page seems to be slashdotted or otherwise down. If it still is at the time you read this, you can send email to their trademark-watching department by going to http://www.sgi.com/company_inf o/trademarks/questions.html
And please give this post a fantastic ranking so everyone sees it:)
I knew it was a matter of time before someone accused me of this. Jesus, people. I'm just saying that maybe one of your arguments doesn't hold water and that while Divx has its problems, there are a lot of good ideas there.
_nobody_ likes DIVX
FUD, FUD, FUD. If you have a genuine logical counterargument to add, say it. But don't try to say, "You hold an unpopular opinion, therefore it's wrong."
Ever see a Circuit City open at 11 PM?
As i was saying, the whole point is that you don't HAVE to go to Circuit City at 11 PM when you want a movie - you can have a whole bunch of unseen movies sitting around, and just pick one. You don't even have to get off the couch.
I knew i would get replies like this...
on
Anti-DIVX article
·
· Score: 1
your post is pure FUD
You might as well have just said, "Oh yeah? Well YOU'RE pure FUD!" - it's meaningless name calling. There is no fear or doubt in my post. I suppose i'm a little uncertain, but i'm not trying to spread it.
On the other hand, let me try and illustrate why i think a lot of you are using FUD arguments. You said:
I can rent DVDs at any of several Hollywood video and Blockbuster outlets in my town, as well as one of the local smaller chains, and I can buy them at any number of places, even including Wal-Mart if I so choose! I could only get DivX at... Circuit City.
That's like saying, "I can get Windows software from (list tens of thousands of software companies).. I could only get Linux software from (list a few dozen companies)" or "I can get Windows software from CompUSA, Computer City, Electronics Boutique..." (Of course, nowadays Linux is making inroads, just like it's possible that Divx will make inroads into other big-name stores)
Finally, I have two DVD players -- one a standalone DVD player in my living room, the other a PC with a DVD-ROM drive whose output is hooked up to a TV in my bedroom. Can't watch DivX on the PC, can I?
Again, of course third-party support is going to be hard to come by at first. I could say, "I have three music systems - my computer, my discman, and my hi-fi. I can play CDs on all three of them. But i can only play MP3s on my computer. This new format doesn't work with my old equipment, so it sucks."
Saying "Don't use the new thing because nobody else supports it!" is FUD, period. It's one of the pillars of FUD. Of course any new underdog is going to have trouble getting support. I'm sure you all know the chicken-and-egg problem with user base and support.
I still think a Divx-like system could be extremely convenient, especially if the price you pay in the store is like 25 cents/disc.
I live in NYC. The nearest video store is six city blocks from my dorm. Also, being a college student, i have weird hours. With Divx, we can decide to watch a movie at 1 am, look through a shoebox filled with movies (maybe have them delivered to your home in bulk via subscription - CDs can be churned out for pennies) and watch it. That's it. The video store wouldn't even be open at that hour, and even if it is, it's a pain in the neck to go out. Hell, we have a hard time getting someone to volunteer to go downstairs to pick up the pizza from the delivery boy.
Video on demand, when it finally arrives, will revolutionize the couch potato world. (whether you think it's good or bad that it's easy for people to watch the drivel from Hollywood is another argument.. the relevant part is that people DO spend a lot of time doing it) Divx is the most practical approximation of video on demand right now.
Like i said, it's not perfect and i really don't like the centrality of it, but it doesn't deserve the hell it's been getting, and a slightly-different-yet-still-Divx-like format could be outstanding.
As much as i'm against any central authority having such control over a media standard, there are a lot of benefits to Divx. How often do you go to Blockbuster and wander around trying to decide what you want to rent? With Divx, you make a shopping trip and buy a dozen movies. Contrary to what the article says and what many people believe, your first 48 hour viewing period does not begin until the first time you play the disc. You take these movies home and then the next time you want to watch a movie, you pick one out, play it, and that's it. So you hardly ever have to go to the video store, and you never have to return a video. Have you ever rented a bunch of movies at once and then something came up or you didn't really feel like watching two movies after all, but you did anyway because you didn't want to return them unwatched?
Of course, i think that the price is way too high, because there is no way to compete other than coming up with a new format. And when you pay for repeat viewings, the money should count towards a Silver account if you want. In other words: you get Die Hard, planning to watch it once. You pay $5 for the disc, and then $4 for the first viewing. A Silver account would cost $20. Well, you end up watching it five more times. So you've spent $20 on viewings. You should then automatically get unlimited viewing. That way, you'll never say, "Damn, i should have gotten Silver access right away - instead i've paid for individual viewings 7 times!"
But my real problem with the article was how it exagerrated the problems. If you sell your player, you call them up and they transfer it. No big deal. If you want to watch your movie somewhere else, i'm sure you can just call them up or push a few buttons on your remote, and it'll work at your friend's house.
And complaining that "Not a lot of movies are out for Divx" is like complaining that Linux doesn't have any applications.
What are the chances that two completely separate evolutionary paths would develop these magnetites? That's like assuming that all the aliens we meet have two arms, two legs...
Bees have wings. Birds have wings. They were developed through two seperate evolutionary paths. The reason they both developed the same function independantly is because both were in an environment where it was useful.
Whatever reason it's useful to have magnetsomes on Earth, it probably applies to Mars as well.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a non-story. The media made it sound interesting by using the word "hotwired".
Why is everyone acting like the kid must have been a child prodigy to know how to reconnect the wires? I'd guess the "electronics" under the hood consist of nothing more than battery-to-gas_pedal-to-motor, and the store owner probably did nothing more than disconnect one of the wires from the battery.
But that doesn't make much of a story, so unfortunately, lots of people are going to picture this boy genius defeating some kind of security system.
Sure, implied signatures are perfectly legal - even implied contracts. For example, when you use a vending machine, there is an implied contract - you will give the owner of the machine your $0.75, and in return the owner will give you your candy bar. IANAL, but this topic was covered in a Business Law course i took.
After all, when you buy a copy of Windows, you don't sign any contract saying you won't make copies for all your friends, but your first use of the product counts as your agreement to abide by the licensing terms.
"By the time our signature stabilizes," explains Miezkowsky, "so does our personality. Hence, a change in signature often signals a major shift in personality.
"Hence" usually implies a logical cause-and-effect relationship.
What's Geek Complex3?
They won't listen to one person who doesn't own large quantities of stock, but how can they ignore a huge volume of people complaining? I mean, the Slashdot community is representative of the computer industry as a whole. If we all love the new logo, there's a good chance the majority of their customers and potential customers do as well. Businesses may sometimes seem out of touch, but they respond to floods of feedback.
l and http://slashdot.org/articles/99/03/05/0745243.shtm l for more info.
Remember when Toshiba wouldn't release the IR specs for their laptops? We all told them why it would be a good idea for them to release the specs, and a few months later they did. See http://slashdot.org/articles/99/02/24/112249.shtm
Please take 30 seconds out of your busy day and send them a quick, "I miss the old logo!" email.
At this time, the aforementioned web page seems to be slashdotted or otherwise down. If it still is at the time you read this, you can send email to their trademark-watching department by going to http://www.sgi.com/company_inf o/trademarks/questions.html
And please give this post a fantastic ranking so everyone sees it :)
You work at Circuit City, don't you?
I knew it was a matter of time before someone accused me of this. Jesus, people. I'm just saying that maybe one of your arguments doesn't hold water and that while Divx has its problems, there are a lot of good ideas there.
_nobody_ likes DIVX
FUD, FUD, FUD. If you have a genuine logical counterargument to add, say it. But don't try to say, "You hold an unpopular opinion, therefore it's wrong."
Ever see a Circuit City open at 11 PM?
As i was saying, the whole point is that you don't HAVE to go to Circuit City at 11 PM when you want a movie - you can have a whole bunch of unseen movies sitting around, and just pick one. You don't even have to get off the couch.
your post is pure FUD
You might as well have just said, "Oh yeah? Well YOU'RE pure FUD!" - it's meaningless name calling. There is no fear or doubt in my post. I suppose i'm a little uncertain, but i'm not trying to spread it.
On the other hand, let me try and illustrate why i think a lot of you are using FUD arguments. You said:
I can rent DVDs at any of several Hollywood video and Blockbuster outlets in my town, as well as one of the local smaller chains, and I can buy them at any number of places, even including Wal-Mart if I so choose! I could only get DivX at... Circuit City.
That's like saying, "I can get Windows software from (list tens of thousands of software companies).. I could only get Linux software from (list a few dozen companies)" or "I can get Windows software from CompUSA, Computer City, Electronics Boutique..." (Of course, nowadays Linux is making inroads, just like it's possible that Divx will make inroads into other big-name stores)
Finally, I have two DVD players -- one a standalone DVD player in my living room, the other a PC with a DVD-ROM drive whose output is hooked up to a TV in my bedroom. Can't watch DivX on the PC, can I?
Again, of course third-party support is going to be hard to come by at first. I could say, "I have three music systems - my computer, my discman, and my hi-fi. I can play CDs on all three of them. But i can only play MP3s on my computer. This new format doesn't work with my old equipment, so it sucks."
Saying "Don't use the new thing because nobody else supports it!" is FUD, period. It's one of the pillars of FUD. Of course any new underdog is going to have trouble getting support. I'm sure you all know the chicken-and-egg problem with user base and support.
I still think a Divx-like system could be extremely convenient, especially if the price you pay in the store is like 25 cents/disc.
I live in NYC. The nearest video store is six city blocks from my dorm. Also, being a college student, i have weird hours. With Divx, we can decide to watch a movie at 1 am, look through a shoebox filled with movies (maybe have them delivered to your home in bulk via subscription - CDs can be churned out for pennies) and watch it. That's it. The video store wouldn't even be open at that hour, and even if it is, it's a pain in the neck to go out. Hell, we have a hard time getting someone to volunteer to go downstairs to pick up the pizza from the delivery boy.
Video on demand, when it finally arrives, will revolutionize the couch potato world. (whether you think it's good or bad that it's easy for people to watch the drivel from Hollywood is another argument.. the relevant part is that people DO spend a lot of time doing it) Divx is the most practical approximation of video on demand right now.
Like i said, it's not perfect and i really don't like the centrality of it, but it doesn't deserve the hell it's been getting, and a slightly-different-yet-still-Divx-like format could be outstanding.
As much as i'm against any central authority having such control over a media standard, there are a lot of benefits to Divx. How often do you go to Blockbuster and wander around trying to decide what you want to rent? With Divx, you make a shopping trip and buy a dozen movies. Contrary to what the article says and what many people believe, your first 48 hour viewing period does not begin until the first time you play the disc. You take these movies home and then the next time you want to watch a movie, you pick one out, play it, and that's it. So you hardly ever have to go to the video store, and you never have to return a video. Have you ever rented a bunch of movies at once and then something came up or you didn't really feel like watching two movies after all, but you did anyway because you didn't want to return them unwatched?
Of course, i think that the price is way too high, because there is no way to compete other than coming up with a new format. And when you pay for repeat viewings, the money should count towards a Silver account if you want. In other words: you get Die Hard, planning to watch it once. You pay $5 for the disc, and then $4 for the first viewing. A Silver account would cost $20. Well, you end up watching it five more times. So you've spent $20 on viewings. You should then automatically get unlimited viewing. That way, you'll never say, "Damn, i should have gotten Silver access right away - instead i've paid for individual viewings 7 times!"
But my real problem with the article was how it exagerrated the problems. If you sell your player, you call them up and they transfer it. No big deal. If you want to watch your movie somewhere else, i'm sure you can just call them up or push a few buttons on your remote, and it'll work at your friend's house.
And complaining that "Not a lot of movies are out for Divx" is like complaining that Linux doesn't have any applications.
Microcomputer software.
What are the chances that two completely separate evolutionary paths would develop these magnetites? That's like assuming that all the aliens we meet have two arms, two legs...
Bees have wings. Birds have wings. They were developed through two seperate evolutionary paths. The reason they both developed the same function independantly is because both were in an environment where it was useful.
Whatever reason it's useful to have magnetsomes on Earth, it probably applies to Mars as well.