I know where you're coming from. I still have QIC-40 tape backups from one of my oldest PCs. Hell, I still have floppies *and cassettes* saved from my first Atari 1200. Here's my problem now:
The floppies and cassettes are so old as to have lost much of the data on them. (I confess I haven't stored them properly; but, even had I done so, there is still a good chance of data loss.) And the QIC tapes I have no device capable of reading now. I am quite certain there's some old letters, poems, songs, and other miscellaneous writings on those tapes written with a word processor that's no longer available. So, even if I had a device capable of reading the tapes and restoring the data, I still would need to find a way to get the data out of that old proprietary format and into a format I can use now.
You are correct about the painful part, too. I started throwing old crap away when I had an epiphany similar to yours. Even knowing I'm throwing away things I haven't touched in 20 years and if I did restore it and convert it to a usable format, I still probably would be either: (a) unimpressed; (b) underwhelmed; and/or, (c) embarrassed by it. It's still difficult letting go of it.
I'll take a crack at this. You might say I'm crazy, but... well, there it is.
Obliterate political parties...make it illegal to form one...all politicians must run as independents
Undo the ridiculous notion that money=speech
Disallow vote ticket "bundling"... President/Vice President are top two vote getters
Set up one fund for campaign contributions. Any person, corporation, lobbyist can contribute any dollar amount they like without limits. All candidates have equal access to funds.
Mandate voting
Mandate voter education
Make election days national holidays that businesses MUST allow employees to take off with pay and without fear of retribution
Make it illegal to pre-screen audiences for "town meetings" there can be security at the door to prevent people from bringing in weapons/bombs/etc. but no preselection of questions and whatnot
Mandate congressional term limits...I've heard the arguments against this and why it'll just give more power to lobbyists and blah blah blah...if the President is limited to two terms, then Congress-Critters can be too
Roll back about 80% of the federal legislation that oversteps the boundaries of the federal government and gets its fingers into all those pies it has no business being in because the Constitution never gave it those powers in the first place
Exhume the bodies of the Justices of The Supreme Court of The United States who, in 1886, decided corporation=person...and hang them...and most importantly: overrule their decision
???
Profit
Not all of my ideas are good...but many are. I myself would rather just live in an anarchosyndicalist commune. We could take it in turns to act as a sort-of executive officer for the week...
...factoring in its rating by censors (e.g. G, PG, R), strength of the cast, genre, competition from other films at the time of release, special effects, whether it is a sequel, and the number of theaters in which it will show."
Having the same size might allow to re-use some of the machines handling them in the factory
Not just the machines. Think of the boxes themselves and all the miriad of options from stacked reels to paper sleeves to jewel cases and robotic devices for handling/moving the discs around and everything else already out there "just working" because the disc is the same size. And retail shelf spaces are already designed for this size package. Imagine: a new size disc would require not only manufacturers and end-consumers to get new equipment, it would require every entity in between to redesign their processes and/or get new equipment as well. While it would be doable, there would need to be seriously compelling reasons for switching sizes and it would significantly slow uptake of the new format...which is one thing both BD and HD-DVD backers can't afford.
The only thing that could save them would be if it became illegal to publish and promote your own copyrighted music material online. And as much as I'm sure they'd like to have that happen, I can't imagine a majority in Congress coming up with a good enough excuse to do so.
In the name of stopping piracy, there is a strong likelihood that the U.S. Federal Government will enact legislation closing the analog hole and mandating that EVERY device capable of playing media MUST enforce the license of that media. I hope, however, saner thinking will win out in the end.
When (if?) this happens, in order for ANY device to play media, the media itself will have to be digitally "protected" with a key the device is capable of verifying. Independent artists will be virtually locked out from producing and distributing media themselves (to any kind of mass audience) and will be required to go through those holding the keys. Who will that be? The big boys: MPAA & RIAA members, etc.
Frankly, this is the only rational reason for the sound and fury these organizations produce in regards to piracy. The amount of money they claim they lose to piracy is a fictional number. They made it up. There is no true way to know how much they are losing due to piracy and there are contra-indicative numbers showing it leads to more sales, not less. But whether they really lose money to piracy or not is beside the point.
They will lose everything when they lose control of the media distribution channel. And that, folks, is the real reason for all the lobbying efforts. It ain't about losing some money today. It's about losing all of it tomorrow.
I wish we had solid numbers showing number of units sold, number of units in use, number of units w/ problems, etc. I am betting a full 2/3 of units sold up to now have been for Christmas gifts. Some of those may have already been opened and may already be in use. But I still think it's reasonable to expect a full 50% of units sold to date are unopened. Which means any problems reported thus far could easily double immediately after 25-Dec.
Funny (side note) thing for my kids this Christmas: they already have a PS2...bought it used a couple years ago...but it was having problems (the dreaded "disc read error" on everything) and was completely unusable up until about a week ago. We were trying to figure out if we should tell Grandma & Grandpa if they should buy PS2 games for Christmas and I called Sony. It's out of warranty and they wanted me to jump through WAY too many hoops and pay $50 or $75 (depending on the nature of the problem) to have it fixed. I googled the issue, opened it up, tried a few of the suggestions, ended up dipping a q-tip in rubbing alcohol and wiping off the lens. Now it plays like brand new. My kids are so freakin' happy about it, you'd think they got one of them thar new fangled XBoxes.
I don't know exactly how that would work, but it sounds awesome. You have a problem, you can sue and be awarded compensatory damages. Punitive damages go into the FOO fund. It would also be nice if the laws here would cap attorney's fees in class actions. It seems far too often a big class action award of some hundreds of millions of dollars gets distributed 80% to lawyers and 20% to members of the class.
While most of your rant is barely intelligible to me, I think you're onto something with this part:
What will become even worse is this Dec. 25th and the following days, I believe there will be many more unhappy folks once little Suzy and Tommy unwrap their shiny new Xbox 360 and it fails to operate or crashes continually or destroys their games...
I've been wondering since the first day there were reports of problems: how many XBox 360s are still in their original boxes, with stickers saying something akin to "do not open until X-Mas" on them? Whatever percentage of units sold are being reported problematic now, I expect that percentage to jump when the remainder of those boxes are opened and plugged in.
Re:Were they reviewing Spybot or not?
on
Antispyware Shootout
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Click the "Print Article" button on the first page and it will present the entire article to you in one long HTML page.
I know I am being redundant here; but, I agree with you 100%. The first thing I thought when I read this was: gee, I wonder how much ad revenue CNET NETWORKS, INC. receives annually from Symantec...
This review has got to be the biggest load of horse shit I've seen since...since...well, since the last ZDNet article I read.
Unless he can time travel, this is an impossible question to answer.
No, he can anser it. The question again, with emphasis added: "Do you believe your study would have been allowed to be published had the results turned out against them?"
That's a fairly simple question to answer. He need only say yes or no. It asks only about his personal belief, not about any factual matter.
Geesh, what world do people live on around here? If Microsoft funds a study, they have every right to bury those that they want to bury. Their are many mult-billion dollar competitors to Microsoft, as well as a huge open-source community, that already handles the anti-Microsoft study angle with gusto.
Agreed. If they bought it, they can choose to do with it what they wish. Which lends credence to the theory that any published study of Microsoft products that is paid for by Microsoft (substitute any organization paying for reviews/studies of its own products really) is by its very nature biased and untrustworthy.
It is remarkable how any study that finds Linux to be great, whether sponsored by RedHat, IBM, Novell, or whoever, is unimpeachable, but a study that finds in favour only has any merit at all if it's written by the hand of God.
It is not remarkable that a group of people would read a study that confirms the beliefs they already have and find it believable. It is to be expected that any study that does not conform to your personal experiences will be subjected to a great deal of cynicism.
However, we should all acknowledge that bias exists everywhere. I would no sooner believe a Red Hat funded study that concludes Red Hat Linux is superior to Windows at tasks X, Y, and/or Z than I would believe Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign. If I believe Linux (any distro) to be superior to Windows at X, Y, and/or Z, it is because I have personal experience that says so.
What I'd like to see is a "consumer's union" of technology whereby members can subscribe, pay to access white papers, studies, reviews, etc. and basically independently fund technology studies without any influence of corporations, vendors, manufacturers, etc. Sort of like a Consumer Reports for IT. Only better.
Do you think there is reasonable evidence of vote tampering in the 2004 US Presidential election? Do you think the current batch of Diebold machines in Ohio or other electronic voting machines in use for that election are trustworthy?
Slashdot Mirror
And who, pray tell, reads those?
I know where you're coming from. I still have QIC-40 tape backups from one of my oldest PCs. Hell, I still have floppies *and cassettes* saved from my first Atari 1200. Here's my problem now:
The floppies and cassettes are so old as to have lost much of the data on them. (I confess I haven't stored them properly; but, even had I done so, there is still a good chance of data loss.) And the QIC tapes I have no device capable of reading now. I am quite certain there's some old letters, poems, songs, and other miscellaneous writings on those tapes written with a word processor that's no longer available. So, even if I had a device capable of reading the tapes and restoring the data, I still would need to find a way to get the data out of that old proprietary format and into a format I can use now.
You are correct about the painful part, too. I started throwing old crap away when I had an epiphany similar to yours. Even knowing I'm throwing away things I haven't touched in 20 years and if I did restore it and convert it to a usable format, I still probably would be either: (a) unimpressed; (b) underwhelmed; and/or, (c) embarrassed by it. It's still difficult letting go of it.
I keed! I keed!! Long Live Linux!!!
- Obliterate political parties...make it illegal to form one...all politicians must run as independents
- Undo the ridiculous notion that money=speech
- Disallow vote ticket "bundling"
... President/Vice President are top two vote getters
- Set up one fund for campaign contributions. Any person, corporation, lobbyist can contribute any dollar amount they like without limits. All candidates have equal access to funds.
- Mandate voting
- Mandate voter education
- Make election days national holidays that businesses MUST allow employees to take off with pay and without fear of retribution
- Make it illegal to pre-screen audiences for "town meetings" there can be security at the door to prevent people from bringing in weapons/bombs/etc. but no preselection of questions and whatnot
- Mandate congressional term limits...I've heard the arguments against this and why it'll just give more power to lobbyists and blah blah blah...if the President is limited to two terms, then Congress-Critters can be too
- Roll back about 80% of the federal legislation that oversteps the boundaries of the federal government and gets its fingers into all those pies it has no business being in because the Constitution never gave it those powers in the first place
- Exhume the bodies of the Justices of The Supreme Court of The United States who, in 1886, decided corporation=person...and hang them...and most importantly: overrule their decision
- ???
- Profit
Not all of my ideas are good...but many are. I myself would rather just live in an anarchosyndicalist commune. We could take it in turns to act as a sort-of executive officer for the week...I am a meat popsicle.
... now I can't mod this discussion
sigh
What's this about Google having their own fiber?
The two statements are equally moot.
I can't get burned CDs to last very long at all. I store them all in a safe, dry place: on the dash of my car...burned side up. What am I doing wrong?
When (if?) this happens, in order for ANY device to play media, the media itself will have to be digitally "protected" with a key the device is capable of verifying. Independent artists will be virtually locked out from producing and distributing media themselves (to any kind of mass audience) and will be required to go through those holding the keys. Who will that be? The big boys: MPAA & RIAA members, etc.
Frankly, this is the only rational reason for the sound and fury these organizations produce in regards to piracy. The amount of money they claim they lose to piracy is a fictional number. They made it up. There is no true way to know how much they are losing due to piracy and there are contra-indicative numbers showing it leads to more sales, not less. But whether they really lose money to piracy or not is beside the point.
They will lose everything when they lose control of the media distribution channel. And that, folks, is the real reason for all the lobbying efforts. It ain't about losing some money today. It's about losing all of it tomorrow.
But you all knew that already, didn't you?
I wish we had solid numbers showing number of units sold, number of units in use, number of units w/ problems, etc. I am betting a full 2/3 of units sold up to now have been for Christmas gifts. Some of those may have already been opened and may already be in use. But I still think it's reasonable to expect a full 50% of units sold to date are unopened. Which means any problems reported thus far could easily double immediately after 25-Dec.
Funny (side note) thing for my kids this Christmas: they already have a PS2...bought it used a couple years ago...but it was having problems (the dreaded "disc read error" on everything) and was completely unusable up until about a week ago. We were trying to figure out if we should tell Grandma & Grandpa if they should buy PS2 games for Christmas and I called Sony. It's out of warranty and they wanted me to jump through WAY too many hoops and pay $50 or $75 (depending on the nature of the problem) to have it fixed. I googled the issue, opened it up, tried a few of the suggestions, ended up dipping a q-tip in rubbing alcohol and wiping off the lens. Now it plays like brand new. My kids are so freakin' happy about it, you'd think they got one of them thar new fangled XBoxes.
I don't know exactly how that would work, but it sounds awesome. You have a problem, you can sue and be awarded compensatory damages. Punitive damages go into the FOO fund. It would also be nice if the laws here would cap attorney's fees in class actions. It seems far too often a big class action award of some hundreds of millions of dollars gets distributed 80% to lawyers and 20% to members of the class.
Click the "Print Article" button on the first page and it will present the entire article to you in one long HTML page.
I know I am being redundant here; but, I agree with you 100%. The first thing I thought when I read this was: gee, I wonder how much ad revenue CNET NETWORKS, INC. receives annually from Symantec...
This review has got to be the biggest load of horse shit I've seen since...since...well, since the last ZDNet article I read.
yeah, but he said "good"
Yeah, but it's just one letter away from being a really cool acronym.
That's a fairly simple question to answer. He need only say yes or no. It asks only about his personal belief, not about any factual matter.
Agreed. If they bought it, they can choose to do with it what they wish. Which lends credence to the theory that any published study of Microsoft products that is paid for by Microsoft (substitute any organization paying for reviews/studies of its own products really) is by its very nature biased and untrustworthy.
It is not remarkable that a group of people would read a study that confirms the beliefs they already have and find it believable. It is to be expected that any study that does not conform to your personal experiences will be subjected to a great deal of cynicism.
However, we should all acknowledge that bias exists everywhere. I would no sooner believe a Red Hat funded study that concludes Red Hat Linux is superior to Windows at tasks X, Y, and/or Z than I would believe Microsoft's "Get The Facts" campaign. If I believe Linux (any distro) to be superior to Windows at X, Y, and/or Z, it is because I have personal experience that says so.
What I'd like to see is a "consumer's union" of technology whereby members can subscribe, pay to access white papers, studies, reviews, etc. and basically independently fund technology studies without any influence of corporations, vendors, manufacturers, etc. Sort of like a Consumer Reports for IT. Only better.
Crap. I don't know who Germaine is. I meant "germane". I suck at the Internet.
Do you think there is reasonable evidence of vote tampering in the 2004 US Presidential election? Do you think the current batch of Diebold machines in Ohio or other electronic voting machines in use for that election are trustworthy?
You must have never seen alt.barney.die.die.die