Re: music copying, I think it's a wider issue than bands putting out crap and CD's being overpriced. MP3's have today become so commonplace that even large electronics manufacturers encourage you to use the format, and since the hidden link in the chain is that anyone and his mother can find commercial music on the net to download for free, the value of the CD medium declined in the eyes of the public to around nil. Only after this happened did people start to criticize the bands - firstly because they could sample their stuff for free (illegally) before buying - so they had a greater choice - but also because even if the price of a CD was 2 dollars, many people I know simply wouldn't buy it because it's 2 dollars more than nothing.
It's a sad scenario in many ways, but it's here to stay.
PS. What's up with the 96Khz Super-CD's that were supposed to be coming out? That's a shot in the foot from the music industry if I ever saw one.
Under Windows, I am still using SyntaxIRC, a TCL script written for the bare-bones Xircon IRC. Development stopped on both Xircon and Syntax back in '97, but the features, configurability and speed of the two combined still kick ass five years on and are so far unsurpassed by any Win32 client IMO.
Want to hear the other side of the ICANN story? Vint Cerf will be attending a round-table conference in my home country of Luxembourg on Thursday July 4 at 2:30pm CET (time zone convertor here) (it's just down the road from me, but I won't be able to attend to put questions to him, gotta work!). A live webcast will be available here, so tune in then. Check out the conference info page for some good links and background on Cerf.
For more than 18 hours, I'd been unable to shake the image of the troll: stringy dark hair, cascading beard, hairy chest, bent back, small dick, paper-white skin.
Being stuck in sewage tunnels was clearly screwing with the reporters' minds BIG TIME.
Nice work with the map. However, I wonder why they didn't link each box to the site it refers to, to allow the users to conduct their own investigation easier.
Regarding the upcoming user-tracking features of Longhorn, Phil Greenspun was already waving this flag in 1997 in this essay. I quote from one of Greenspun's techno-utopia scenarios:
[Jane's] desktop machine knows that she's sent a bunch of e-mail today to friends asking for tips on places to visit in California. It can listen to her phone line and figure out that she has called 10 numbers in California today. You'd think that her desktop machine could put all of this together to say, "Jane, you should probably check out http://photo.net/ca/. I also note that you've been typing at the keyboard on this machine for an average of 11 hours every day for the last two weeks. You ought to relax tonight. I notice from your calendar program that you don't have any appointments. I notice from your Quicken database that you don't have any money so you probably shouldn't be going to the theater. I notice that Naked Gun is on cable tonight. I don't see any payments in your Quicken database to a cable TV vendor so I assume you aren't a Cable Achiever. I remember seeing some e-mail from your friend David two months ago containing the words "invite" and "cable TV" so I assume that David has cable. I see from watching your phone line's incoming caller line ID that he has called you twice in the last week from his home phone so I assume he is in town. Call him up and invite yourself over."
There is it in a nutshell: useful user-tracking - as opposed to tracking user prefs for marketing purposes. Greenspun's ideas seem so simple and realizeable but only now we're beginning to look into this direction. Why? Perhaps because MS has throttled development with its uninnovative OSs; perhaps because such technologies seem to suit the consumer first and Big Business second.
I hope that with Longhorn, Bill has finally caught on to the idea that technology - by definition - should either simplify what we can already do or enable us to do stuff we couldn't before. And that's all.
The low cost alternative to computers preloaded with Microsoft Windows. These PCs ship with an exciting new Linux based Operating System (OS) named Lindows. This exciting new OS delivers the stability of Linux with the ease of Windows and they include a trial membership to a library of over 1,000 software programs so they can be outfitted for any purpose whether business, home, or entertainment.
I don't see anything in there about running most MS software.
Most of the requested key features I've been reading here already seem to exist in today's cellphones. For example, all Nokia mid-range models and upwards have a good calendar function which allows you to share notes between calendars, sync with the PC, etc. Reminders, alarms, to-do lists are all there, and the T9 keyboard makes data input fast. Even voice recognition is being introduced in Nokia models (first for dialling numbers, but more and more features are getting added). It's not perfect, but it's getting better.
N.B. For reading e-mail, many GSM providers (at least here in Europe) offer an e-mail-to-SMS service so it's easy to forward all your mails to your cellphone.
Depends. I categorize music rather simplistically, into two groups: active and passive. When you listen to music actively you're pressing the headphones against your head and trying to understand the song. Here, chord structure, less repetition, buildups and fill-ins are important elements.
Passively, the music is just a mood enhancer - lyrics could be pretty much anything, mixing and production are less crucial, etc. [Of course there are grey areas and some pieces have elements of both, but you get the picture].
This 'lowercase music', Brian Eno, etc, for me qualifies as passive music in a very pure form. Perhaps you could sleep to it (Music for Airports put me to sleep anyway).
Quick point: the detrimental effect of piracy is compounded by the fact that warez kiddies pirate just because they can. As such I don't see any commercial solution to the problem.
The Open Content site just announces a list of intentions. Anyone can put this kind of info up. It looks to me like nothing has been achieved yet, making this not really news.
Technology has caught up. We now have (free) software-based synthesizers like Buzz that allow amateur musicians with modest talent to create a professional sound. Banging out sellable tracks in a home-made studio isn't possible yet for the mainstream because of education (what does it tell you about an artist if they don't know a thing about production?), but enough artists such as Alpha Conspiracy have already done it.
The real added value of the label is to provide the gloss and marketing which we could do without anyway. I hope the Kazaa-Verizon alliance (whatever it resembles) kicks the ass of a music industry that churns out little more than talentless garbage.
Selling a unique TLD for a premium price makes perfect business sense - it's already been done in every other market, why not domain names?
The requirement to prove that applicants are 'qualified professionals in good standing' is just marketing whitewash to inflate the added value of the service - anyone with 300$ will get a.pro domain. Means testing won't be much of an issue.
OK so you're moving away, but to what? I have been searching for a viable alternative to Outlook for a long time now and I can't find one. I need a straightforward but powerful client like Pine, but for Windows. PC-PINE doesn't support pop3 accounts without some hacking and workarounds.
... one wikked series. The characters and the storylines were so DEEP, containing sometimes genuinely haunting images - Starscream's delightfully two-faced antics to become Decepticon leader, Unicron's battered and severed head whirling through space at the of TF: The Movie, a half-dead Optimus Prime coming back to haunt those that disturbed his crypt in a post-Movie episode... bring them back, and quick!
Perhaps I'm missing something, but if spyware / distributed computing progs / whatever happens to be bundled with Kazaa, I think people should get over it. Anyone that claims to use Kazaa as an alternative to download.com and mp3.com isn't coming clean. Something for nothing and now with bells and whistles too?
If there's dubious stuff in your dubious software that you're probably using for dubious activities, well, what goes around comes around.
I believe that sites such as these deserve as much attention as possible by pointing out the underside of many mainstream media stories. This serves the very useful purpose of encouraging us all to THINK and to QUESTION what we think we know.
However, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Let's take Whatreallyhappened.com as an example.
Structure of the content: It seems like every newly posted announcement is fighting for the reader's attention. Important titles are blue, blue bold, sometimes red - it is not consistent. This gives the site a real 'student' feel and stops it from being taken seriously.
Tone of the writing on the site and in the linked articles: Swearing, hyped-up and excitable-sounding phrases and excessive use of punctuation make you feel like you're reading the Weekly World News or the National Enquirer.
And most importantly: BACK IT UP. Whatreallyhappened often seems to link to any site that disagrees with the mainstream. Just look at any of the links that appear on the main page to 'reputable' sites like rense.com or a host of local/hobbyist news sites.
Once again, I applaud what the owners of these sites are trying to do. But it needs to be done right if it's going to be taken seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a sad scenario in many ways, but it's here to stay.
PS. What's up with the 96Khz Super-CD's that were supposed to be coming out? That's a shot in the foot from the music industry if I ever saw one.
Under Windows, I am still using SyntaxIRC, a TCL script written for the bare-bones Xircon IRC. Development stopped on both Xircon and Syntax back in '97, but the features, configurability and speed of the two combined still kick ass five years on and are so far unsurpassed by any Win32 client IMO.
Want to hear the other side of the ICANN story? Vint Cerf will be attending a round-table conference in my home country of Luxembourg on Thursday July 4 at 2:30pm CET (time zone convertor here) (it's just down the road from me, but I won't be able to attend to put questions to him, gotta work!). A live webcast will be available here, so tune in then. Check out the conference info page for some good links and background on Cerf.
For more than 18 hours, I'd been unable to shake the image of the troll: stringy dark hair, cascading beard, hairy chest, bent back, small dick, paper-white skin.
Being stuck in sewage tunnels was clearly screwing with the reporters' minds BIG TIME.
Nice work with the map. However, I wonder why they didn't link each box to the site it refers to, to allow the users to conduct their own investigation easier.
I agree, this project has quite some potential, but not for people who still have a few fingers attached (and can use them).
Or for wearable computers that have a very limited set of keys, such as computer watches like the Seiko Ruputer.
Regarding the upcoming user-tracking features of Longhorn, Phil Greenspun was already waving this flag in 1997 in this essay. I quote from one of Greenspun's techno-utopia scenarios:
[Jane's] desktop machine knows that she's sent a bunch of e-mail today to friends asking for tips on places to visit in California. It can listen to her phone line and figure out that she has called 10 numbers in California today. You'd think that her desktop machine could put all of this together to say, "Jane, you should probably check out http://photo.net/ca/. I also note that you've been typing at the keyboard on this machine for an average of 11 hours every day for the last two weeks. You ought to relax tonight. I notice from your calendar program that you don't have any appointments. I notice from your Quicken database that you don't have any money so you probably shouldn't be going to the theater. I notice that Naked Gun is on cable tonight. I don't see any payments in your Quicken database to a cable TV vendor so I assume you aren't a Cable Achiever. I remember seeing some e-mail from your friend David two months ago containing the words "invite" and "cable TV" so I assume that David has cable. I see from watching your phone line's incoming caller line ID that he has called you twice in the last week from his home phone so I assume he is in town. Call him up and invite yourself over."
There is it in a nutshell: useful user-tracking - as opposed to tracking user prefs for marketing purposes. Greenspun's ideas seem so simple and realizeable but only now we're beginning to look into this direction. Why? Perhaps because MS has throttled development with its uninnovative OSs; perhaps because such technologies seem to suit the consumer first and Big Business second.
I hope that with Longhorn, Bill has finally caught on to the idea that technology - by definition - should either simplify what we can already do or enable us to do stuff we couldn't before. And that's all.
Er yes it has. To quote from the page in question,
The low cost alternative to computers preloaded with Microsoft Windows. These PCs ship with an exciting new Linux based Operating System (OS) named Lindows. This exciting new OS delivers the stability of Linux with the ease of Windows and they include a trial membership to a library of over 1,000 software programs so they can be outfitted for any purpose whether business, home, or entertainment.
I don't see anything in there about running most MS software.
Most of the requested key features I've been reading here already seem to exist in today's cellphones. For example, all Nokia mid-range models and upwards have a good calendar function which allows you to share notes between calendars, sync with the PC, etc. Reminders, alarms, to-do lists are all there, and the T9 keyboard makes data input fast. Even voice recognition is being introduced in Nokia models (first for dialling numbers, but more and more features are getting added). It's not perfect, but it's getting better.
Just check out the features of some of their models.
N.B. For reading e-mail, many GSM providers (at least here in Europe) offer an e-mail-to-SMS service so it's easy to forward all your mails to your cellphone.
here
Depends. I categorize music rather simplistically, into two groups: active and passive. When you listen to music actively you're pressing the headphones against your head and trying to understand the song. Here, chord structure, less repetition, buildups and fill-ins are important elements.
Passively, the music is just a mood enhancer - lyrics could be pretty much anything, mixing and production are less crucial, etc. [Of course there are grey areas and some pieces have elements of both, but you get the picture].
This 'lowercase music', Brian Eno, etc, for me qualifies as passive music in a very pure form. Perhaps you could sleep to it (Music for Airports put me to sleep anyway).
Here.
Quick point: the detrimental effect of piracy is compounded by the fact that warez kiddies pirate just because they can. As such I don't see any commercial solution to the problem.
The Open Content site just announces a list of intentions. Anyone can put this kind of info up. It looks to me like nothing has been achieved yet, making this not really news.
So use an alternative? There are tons of free web-mail sites out there, and they are all basically the same.
here and here.
Technology has caught up. We now have (free) software-based synthesizers like Buzz that allow amateur musicians with modest talent to create a professional sound. Banging out sellable tracks in a home-made studio isn't possible yet for the mainstream because of education (what does it tell you about an artist if they don't know a thing about production?), but enough artists such as Alpha Conspiracy have already done it.
The real added value of the label is to provide the gloss and marketing which we could do without anyway. I hope the Kazaa-Verizon alliance (whatever it resembles) kicks the ass of a music industry that churns out little more than talentless garbage.
Seems like they woke up and removed the page you're referring to:
/corpinfo.htm was not found on this server.
Not Found
The requested URL
Additionally, a 500 Internal Server Error error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
So they're obviously watching their traffic and paying attention.
Selling a unique TLD for a premium price makes perfect business sense - it's already been done in every other market, why not domain names?
.pro domain. Means testing won't be much of an issue.
The requirement to prove that applicants are 'qualified professionals in good standing' is just marketing whitewash to inflate the added value of the service - anyone with 300$ will get a
OK so you're moving away, but to what? I have been searching for a viable alternative to Outlook for a long time now and I can't find one. I need a straightforward but powerful client like Pine, but for Windows. PC-PINE doesn't support pop3 accounts without some hacking and workarounds.
... one wikked series. The characters and the storylines were so DEEP, containing sometimes genuinely haunting images - Starscream's delightfully two-faced antics to become Decepticon leader, Unicron's battered and severed head whirling through space at the of TF: The Movie, a half-dead Optimus Prime coming back to haunt those that disturbed his crypt in a post-Movie episode... bring them back, and quick!
... that I'm offered a free cellphone and $500 cash in two pop-up windows on loading Kazaalite.com.
I want it.
If there's dubious stuff in your dubious software that you're probably using for dubious activities, well, what goes around comes around.
However, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Let's take Whatreallyhappened.com as an example.
Structure of the content: It seems like every newly posted announcement is fighting for the reader's attention. Important titles are blue, blue bold, sometimes red - it is not consistent. This gives the site a real 'student' feel and stops it from being taken seriously.
Tone of the writing on the site and in the linked articles: Swearing, hyped-up and excitable-sounding phrases and excessive use of punctuation make you feel like you're reading the Weekly World News or the National Enquirer.
And most importantly: BACK IT UP. Whatreallyhappened often seems to link to any site that disagrees with the mainstream. Just look at any of the links that appear on the main page to 'reputable' sites like rense.com or a host of local/hobbyist news sites.
Once again, I applaud what the owners of these sites are trying to do. But it needs to be done right if it's going to be taken seriously.