I went to see "American Pie" last week with my girlfriend and her nephew. The nephew is 14. We get up to the ticket counter and ask for 3 for American Pie, and the wench behind the counter gets all snippy. "This isn't a movie for kids!!" she screams at my girlfriend. Taken aback, my s.o. replies, "Well, his father took him to see South Park the other day, so this should be nothing!" The woman behind the counter continued to argue with my girlfriend, as I stood there dumbfounded that this idiotic person thinks she can dictate what my girlfriend's nephew -- whom she'd never seen before -- can and can't see -- DESPITE the fact that all parties involved agreed to let him see it. She said she was going to get security, for god's sake!
We just went into the movie and laughed our asses off. Believe me, there's nothing in that movie a 14-year-old hasn't seen before. I bet the jackass censors who make these rules had a stack of playboys by the time they were 14. I mean, come on, in the age of the internet, do you really think there's anybody who can't get their hands on a boatload of porn within minutes? It's ridiculous, the arbitrariness of the entire system.
No, I don't think American Pie was a kid's movie, but what is it going to hurt for them to see it? I mean, really, they are going to know that people have sex? Gee, the foundation for all (mammalian, at least) life... nonono, they can't see that!!
I always thought it was odd that the day before I turn 17 I can't see these movies, and the day after, I can. Like there is some kind of magical transformation that turns me from some innocent child to a "mature" adult.
How aggravating this is.
I take it you've never heard of Ferengi...
on
Beaming Money
·
· Score: 1
In my econ class in HS we learned that the reason you see so many ads for cars offering "$1500 cash back," instead of "On sale! $1500 off!" is because most americans associate lower price with lower quality. Ie, if they're slashing prices, it must suck.
So maybe this has something to do with that. Maybe, to be taken seriously, they have to price things way out there. Just a guess. Of course, I'm sure they don't mind the extra money.
Ok, let me revise my remarks on GoLive. After speaking with someone at Adobe I discovered that it was not the program that sucked, but my computer. My poor PM7300/180 with 32 mb ram wasn't up to snuff and was giving me the bizarre zero-file-length errors. After trying it on a nice Lime iMac, it worked great.
I thought the Slashdot feed was kind of corny actually. I mean, if I want Slashdot, I'll just go here. But it seems like a real sign that they're gearing up to be a competitor with Slashdot as a "portal site." The thing is, I don't see anything interesting on their site that would make them a portal. Everything seems to be internal information. If this is what their final portal is going to be, it really stinks.
What is a portal, anyway? A site that gets a lot of people visit, or a site that a lot of people visit regularly? I mean, if millions of people go there one time, it's not going to be a portal. They'll need to add some news or something that actually changes on a daily/hourly basis if they want to attract hits. I mean, I don't think Microsoft.com or Apple.com is a portal.
I would assume that this is because the entire world downloads Acrobat Reader, but I don't see why anybody would want to have a "My Adobe" account. Why would they put world news up on a site like that? I mean, thousands of people going to the site to download acrobat and they're going to actually try to clog up the site with completely irrelevant information that makes it harder to navigate? Where's the logic in that?
And Adobe isn't really a consumer-oriented company, and won't be as long as its good programs are like $500. Maybe they're going to have a "graphics-artist-only portal".
As for GoLive being the preferred product on the Mac, I've gotta say that it really sucks. Maybe I have a bum copy or something, but I tried it out a couple of days ago and it saved every HTML file with 0 bytes. Even the crappy documentation files that came with the program: blank. Luckily I had backup copies...
I really think it would be a terrible disaster if domain name registration was free of charge. I mean, you see the amount of squatting that's going on now, and now you actually have to pay $70. If it were free, what would stop me, you, anybody from going around and buying thousands and thousands of names every day? Wired had a story a couple of months ago about some geek club in Europe who registered 75,000 (using a cgi script or something) of the remaining 4 letter domain names with no intention of purchasing them. I think what should be done is a $15 charge should be levied upon domain registration. ICANN should get NONE of this money. It should all be donated to charity or something worthwhile. Not lining Esther Dyson's pockets. Also, if payment is not received within a week or something, it should automatically go back into the pool. I still think squatting will be a huge problem under "my" system, but not as bad as it would be under the free-registration system. I thought for a minute that the government was making a good move getting domain name registration out of the hands of NSI, but they put it into the inept hands of ICANN, or as they should be known, I CAN'T. I don't see why the government didn't just take over if they wanted there to be no charge. I mean, if they gave NSI the monopoly, why not just take it back? If they are so concerned about costing people money to register, why don't THEY just give out the names on a First-come-first-served basis? I just don't get it. I don't understand what the point of ICANN was, is, or ever will be.
On CNN, a friend of the Kennedy family said on Tuesday that Kennedy "was the icon, the moral leader for the next generation of young Americans." This theme was repeated throughout the weekend, on TV, in newspapers, and on discussion groups on the Web. On MSNBC, Kennedy was described as "the flower of his generation, the inspiration for young America."
What? The moral leader of a generation? The inspiration for young America? What are these people talking about? JFK2 was a nice guy, a rich guy, and if you believe People, a good looking guy. But to make him into some kind of hero is nuts. Maybe I am too young to be part of this generation that supposedly idolized jfk, but I've never heard anybody ever say he was their idol. Moral leadership? He was just some guy who had a famous name and some money and wanted to be left alone and be recognized as more than just his father's son. A great guy, I'm sure, but he was nobody's hero.
Maybe I am just too young to see what the big deal is with all this kennedy stuff. I mean, Jackie was pretty hot in her day, and JFK was the president, and he got assassinated, and he was young, and then there are all the other relatives in politics; but I never understood this whole "Camelot" notion that people tried to push. I mean, they were just rich. I guess these days that's all that the British royalty are, but still, Camelot Schmamelot. Everyone tries to make it out like they are all the perfect Americans or something and I really don't see how the Kennedys are any different from any other rich family, except that they've got a lot of family members in politics.
These people saying that JFK was some kind of moral figure or idol are really crazy. Like, certifiably insane, as far as I'm concerned. He was really just some guy. Maybe they are remembering that kid saluting the casket or something, but even then, he's just a kid, not some kind of superhuman figure.
As for this:
"It's like John Kennedy being assassinated all over again," wrote a Chicago woman in an AOL chat room devoted to the plane crash all weekend. "A black shroud has come over all of us."
How utterly dumb. When JFK was assassinated, it was the leader of the free world killed by a maniac in an era of Soviets and Nuclear fear. That was also 35 years ago (+/-). This is not the president of the United States we are talking about today. This is his son. And he seems to have done his best to distance himself from his father's image. The fate of the free world is not resting on his shoulders, and is not thrown into doubt because of his death. He was, in fact, "just some guy." Imagine for a second that Hinckley had succeeded and Reagan had been killed (I will restrain my Reagan comments for the moment). Yeah yeah yeah, the entire course of history would have been changed, but let's just say that it was his daughter that had died last week. Do you think there would be such an outpouring of "grief," as it seems to be called now? Would Patti Davis be "The moral leader of her generation," the "inspiration to all the young americans"? No, of course not, and neither should Kennedy.
CNN had a poll on their site, something to the effect of "Media coverage of JFK's death has been: A) Excessive B) Adequate C) Not enough," and about 80% said Excessive. CNN's top story, every day since then, has still been JFK. I mean, the families have already started to move on. Do we really need minute by minute coverage of his mass? What morons are running the show around here that think people actually care? Or, more to the point, who are the morons that really do care? He's gone. He was a nice guy. Idol? No. Moral Leader? No. We should all just be glad it wasn't our kid. There are much worse things to cry over than this. Deal.
This is not for you, mr professional, this is designed solely for the school market. I'll post the ibook faq now and you can check out all the features and see for yourself that this is, in fact, the perfect school computer. Wireless networking, durable (ie, for backpack carrying), no removable stuff to get stolen... look for the post towards the bottom.
I heard it needs all kinds of enablers even to run the full mac os 8.6. Since linux doesn't have any kind of power saving stuff (afaik), I would imagine it would really suck having to recharge every hour or whatever.
30% more expensive than anything on the market? Have you checked Toshiba's prices for a computer that matches the 400's features? Also, it's not $4100, it's $3500; or $2500 for the 333.
How do they plan to keep Mr x, who downloaded a $.99 song, from sending it to everybody he knows?
I don't really understand why everybody seems to think downloadable music is such a great thing. Maybe when MP3 sound quality improves (like, to CD quality), and the portable players can hold a reasonable amount (at least 300 MB) for a reasonable price (sub $200), it'll be great. But for now I really see it as "the way to listen to songs you don't like enough to actually buy."
Honestly, I've bought more CDs since I started listening to MP3s than I ever did before. Download a song, find out you love it, download a couple more from the album, love them too, buy the whole album.
From what I understand, the amount of money the artists make off radio plays is insignificant; it's all about the publicity. In that regard, MP3s can just be the new radio. Let everybody download the new single for free in 96 khz, then if they like it, they can just go buy the cd for the regular ridiculous price.
But what do I know. I know I have 5 more problems to do solving recurrences for my Algorithms class, and it's due at 11 am, and it's 4:30am right now. Sigh. What a slacker I am.
I thought it was a great movie. Since I had no idea what the movie was about, when the truth became evident, my jaw dropped completely to the floor and my eyes bugged right out.
But as someone below said, there isn't really anything they could do, prequel/sequel-wise that would be as great. If they did a prequel, what would they do? Show how Morpheus came to know "the truth"? That seems like it would be almost the exact same story, except with Morpheus in Neo's role.
Or they could go over Neo's childhood and show how he sensed disturbances in the Matrix from a very young age. That would surely suck.
Maybe they could show how that old lady, the "first one" came to know the truth... starring Salma Hayek.... drool... That would be nice I guess, if they did it right.
As for sequels, I guess they could show Neo trying to help all of humanity, which would really drag the Jesus themes out even more than they were in the original. He would probably even "die for our sins." I guess this could be a decent movie if they did it right also, but it would easily suck. The slow-mo / fast-mo effects are no longer new to us and so will not provide the same sense of awe as when we first saw them.
But I think this will fall prey to sequel-syndrome. The studio will make a formulaic sequel simply to make money, not to make a cool movie, as must have been at least part of the motive behind the first one. So the sequel will suck, yet make millions of dollars.
So I guess it really be our generation's Star Wars. Cause, IMHO, The Phantom Menace was the worst movie I've seen in years; and I had no preconceived notions about how good/bad it would be.
Anyway, we can only hope for a better fate for Matrix -1, -2, 2, and 3.
The SDMI strategy, as well as I can understand it, is to get SDMI included in all the new MP3 players -- the new Rios and whatever. So of course, people are going to want to buy the player that supports the new "official" format. I mean, it still supports MP3.
But then they will have some kind of a self-destruct device installed for the MP3 part, so that when you upgrade to "SDMI Phase-II", MP3s no longer play.
I have no idea why any developer would want to include SDMI in their player, especially if they are marketing it as an MP3 player. I guess we'll have to read the fine print. Something along the lines of:
*MP3 files will not be compatible with this player after 6/7/00
Anyway, that's the plan, as far as I can tell. It would be a decent strategy, except for the fact that nobody but the RIAA wants SDMI.
I remember the old days, downloading stuff to my XT, there was a compression format that was way better than PKZIP. It was called ARJ, or something like that. Anyway, when's the last time you saw a file compressed in ARJ format? Believe me, formats get entrenched.
Of course, you're talking about audio. So what about VQF? Didn't VQF have better sound quality, compress faster, and smaller file sizes (so I heard)? Sure, you had to pay for a VQF player, but you're probably going to have to pay for an SDMI player too.
Believe me, MP3 is definitely "established". As people get more and more bandwidth, MP3s will get encoded at higher and higher bitrates, and the quality will get better and better (well, to a point).
But what do I know. I can still tell the difference between a CD version and a 256 kbps mp3... hence I will never revert to only "online" music. I treasure my tunes too much.
Anyone who's seen cars for most of his life will be able to pick a Beetle out of a lineup of cars. Who would be so dumb as to make a "clone" of the beetle and actually think VW would stand by and let that happen?
Such is the case (no pun intended) with iMac. The computer looks so much different from anything before it that it sticks in people's minds. That somebody would try and make a computer that's a blatant ripoff of the design simply boggles my mind. How stupid can they be? Did they really think Apple would sit by and let them do this?
One of the things I see that disturbs me the most is the people who have such pent-up hatred for Mac that they think any position Apple takes is wrong. This is much like the rabid Linux users who think anything Bill Gates does must be evil because they just don't like Windows. I mean, somebody commented that Rob was becoming like Bill Gates because they both decided to donate money to charity, and that shows some kind of "disturbing parallel" or some other BS.
I wish people would lose the mindset that "since company X makes products Y and Z, which we hate, we must now hate every decision made by company X, and adopt the opposite position in every matter."
On another note, it is truly sad that the company could not come up with a case design of its own. To claim that the similarities are just coincidental suggests such unbelievable stupidity on Daewoo's part that one wonders if the company has even a single brain among its entire workforce.
Why could they not have simply done the same research Apple had and come up with a machine that filled the same niche but was not such an obvious ripoff? I mean, if they had done a square box case, without the exact same five colors, it would be functionally identical, would appeal to the same market, and would not be a ripoff.
I think Daewoo ought to get some serious punitive damages in this case for being so stupid.
Yeah, it would really suck if Bill Gates inspired people to help each other. God forbid he do anything un-Satanlike. Your "connection" is pretty nutty. I think bill is giving away his stuff because he is realizing he has more money than he'll ever be able to spend. Rob & co are doing it because they like the charities and feel they're worthwhile, etc.
God forbid anybody say anything that goes against the popular belief!
Don't want to start this again, but...
on
RMS Responds
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· Score: 0
RMS seems to just take complete credit for Linux. Unless he's talking about some other free version of Unix. He says they've been working "for 15 years to develop a free replacement for Unix," but Linux isn't that old.
It seems that he worked for 15 years to develop a free Unix and has nothing to show for it, while Linus simply said, "hey, I'm going to make a free version of Unix" and then proceeded to do so. While the FSF may have developed a large chunk of Linux (I think I saw an estimate that said 10%), It's misleading for them to say they "developed" Linux.
I love Gnu tools, but I really get sick of RMS taking credit for something he didn't do. At least he didn't mention the term GNU/Linux or any of its other ridiculous synonyms.
Of course, if he was referring to a different free Unix, all of these comments are pretty off topic.
Imagine that, trying to get every ounce of performance out of NT when it's about to compete with its biggest rival/threat. What a bunch of fraidy-cats.
I'm sure every boxer trains as hard as possible when going up against a tough contender. It doesn't make them "afraid" of their opponent.
Slashdot Mirror
I went to see "American Pie" last week with my girlfriend and her nephew. The nephew is 14. We get up to the ticket counter and ask for 3 for American Pie, and the wench behind the counter gets all snippy. "This isn't a movie for kids!!" she screams at my girlfriend. Taken aback, my s.o. replies, "Well, his father took him to see South Park the other day, so this should be nothing!" The woman behind the counter continued to argue with my girlfriend, as I stood there dumbfounded that this idiotic person thinks she can dictate what my girlfriend's nephew -- whom she'd never seen before -- can and can't see -- DESPITE the fact that all parties involved agreed to let him see it. She said she was going to get security, for god's sake!
We just went into the movie and laughed our asses off. Believe me, there's nothing in that movie a 14-year-old hasn't seen before. I bet the jackass censors who make these rules had a stack of playboys by the time they were 14. I mean, come on, in the age of the internet, do you really think there's anybody who can't get their hands on a boatload of porn within minutes? It's ridiculous, the arbitrariness of the entire system.
No, I don't think American Pie was a kid's movie, but what is it going to hurt for them to see it? I mean, really, they are going to know that people have sex? Gee, the foundation for all (mammalian, at least) life... nonono, they can't see that!!
I always thought it was odd that the day before I turn 17 I can't see these movies, and the day after, I can. Like there is some kind of magical transformation that turns me from some innocent child to a "mature" adult.
How aggravating this is.
(see subject)
In my econ class in HS we learned that the reason you see so many ads for cars offering "$1500 cash back," instead of "On sale! $1500 off!" is because most americans associate lower price with lower quality. Ie, if they're slashing prices, it must suck.
So maybe this has something to do with that. Maybe, to be taken seriously, they have to price things way out there. Just a guess. Of course, I'm sure they don't mind the extra money.
Ok, let me revise my remarks on GoLive. After speaking with someone at Adobe I discovered that it was not the program that sucked, but my computer. My poor PM7300/180 with 32 mb ram wasn't up to snuff and was giving me the bizarre zero-file-length errors. After trying it on a nice Lime iMac, it worked great.
I thought the Slashdot feed was kind of corny actually. I mean, if I want Slashdot, I'll just go here. But it seems like a real sign that they're gearing up to be a competitor with Slashdot as a "portal site." The thing is, I don't see anything interesting on their site that would make them a portal. Everything seems to be internal information. If this is what their final portal is going to be, it really stinks.
What is a portal, anyway? A site that gets a lot of people visit, or a site that a lot of people visit regularly? I mean, if millions of people go there one time, it's not going to be a portal. They'll need to add some news or something that actually changes on a daily/hourly basis if they want to attract hits. I mean, I don't think Microsoft.com or Apple.com is a portal.
I would assume that this is because the entire world downloads Acrobat Reader, but I don't see why anybody would want to have a "My Adobe" account. Why would they put world news up on a site like that? I mean, thousands of people going to the site to download acrobat and they're going to actually try to clog up the site with completely irrelevant information that makes it harder to navigate? Where's the logic in that?
And Adobe isn't really a consumer-oriented company, and won't be as long as its good programs are like $500. Maybe they're going to have a "graphics-artist-only portal".
As for GoLive being the preferred product on the Mac, I've gotta say that it really sucks. Maybe I have a bum copy or something, but I tried it out a couple of days ago and it saved every HTML file with 0 bytes. Even the crappy documentation files that came with the program: blank. Luckily I had backup copies...
I really think it would be a terrible disaster if domain name registration was free of charge. I mean, you see the amount of squatting that's going on now, and now you actually have to pay $70. If it were free, what would stop me, you, anybody from going around and buying thousands and thousands of names every day? Wired had a story a couple of months ago about some geek club in Europe who registered 75,000 (using a cgi script or something) of the remaining 4 letter domain names with no intention of purchasing them. I think what should be done is a $15 charge should be levied upon domain registration. ICANN should get NONE of this money. It should all be donated to charity or something worthwhile. Not lining Esther Dyson's pockets. Also, if payment is not received within a week or something, it should automatically go back into the pool. I still think squatting will be a huge problem under "my" system, but not as bad as it would be under the free-registration system. I thought for a minute that the government was making a good move getting domain name registration out of the hands of NSI, but they put it into the inept hands of ICANN, or as they should be known, I CAN'T. I don't see why the government didn't just take over if they wanted there to be no charge. I mean, if they gave NSI the monopoly, why not just take it back? If they are so concerned about costing people money to register, why don't THEY just give out the names on a First-come-first-served basis? I just don't get it. I don't understand what the point of ICANN was, is, or ever will be.
What? The moral leader of a generation? The inspiration for young America? What are these people talking about? JFK2 was a nice guy, a rich guy, and if you believe People, a good looking guy. But to make him into some kind of hero is nuts. Maybe I am too young to be part of this generation that supposedly idolized jfk, but I've never heard anybody ever say he was their idol. Moral leadership? He was just some guy who had a famous name and some money and wanted to be left alone and be recognized as more than just his father's son. A great guy, I'm sure, but he was nobody's hero.
Maybe I am just too young to see what the big deal is with all this kennedy stuff. I mean, Jackie was pretty hot in her day, and JFK was the president, and he got assassinated, and he was young, and then there are all the other relatives in politics; but I never understood this whole "Camelot" notion that people tried to push. I mean, they were just rich. I guess these days that's all that the British royalty are, but still, Camelot Schmamelot. Everyone tries to make it out like they are all the perfect Americans or something and I really don't see how the Kennedys are any different from any other rich family, except that they've got a lot of family members in politics.
These people saying that JFK was some kind of moral figure or idol are really crazy. Like, certifiably insane, as far as I'm concerned. He was really just some guy. Maybe they are remembering that kid saluting the casket or something, but even then, he's just a kid, not some kind of superhuman figure.
As for this:
How utterly dumb. When JFK was assassinated, it was the leader of the free world killed by a maniac in an era of Soviets and Nuclear fear. That was also 35 years ago (+/-). This is not the president of the United States we are talking about today. This is his son. And he seems to have done his best to distance himself from his father's image. The fate of the free world is not resting on his shoulders, and is not thrown into doubt because of his death. He was, in fact, "just some guy." Imagine for a second that Hinckley had succeeded and Reagan had been killed (I will restrain my Reagan comments for the moment). Yeah yeah yeah, the entire course of history would have been changed, but let's just say that it was his daughter that had died last week. Do you think there would be such an outpouring of "grief," as it seems to be called now? Would Patti Davis be "The moral leader of her generation," the "inspiration to all the young americans"? No, of course not, and neither should Kennedy.
CNN had a poll on their site, something to the effect of "Media coverage of JFK's death has been: A) Excessive B) Adequate C) Not enough," and about 80% said Excessive. CNN's top story, every day since then, has still been JFK. I mean, the families have already started to move on. Do we really need minute by minute coverage of his mass? What morons are running the show around here that think people actually care? Or, more to the point, who are the morons that really do care? He's gone. He was a nice guy. Idol? No. Moral Leader? No. We should all just be glad it wasn't our kid. There are much worse things to cry over than this. Deal.
This is not for you, mr professional, this is designed solely for the school market. I'll post the ibook faq now and you can check out all the features and see for yourself that this is, in fact, the perfect school computer. Wireless networking, durable (ie, for backpack carrying), no removable stuff to get stolen... look for the post towards the bottom.
I heard it needs all kinds of enablers even to run the full mac os 8.6. Since linux doesn't have any kind of power saving stuff (afaik), I would imagine it would really suck having to recharge every hour or whatever.
30% more expensive than anything on the market? Have you checked Toshiba's prices for a computer that matches the 400's features? Also, it's not $4100, it's $3500; or $2500 for the 333.
Or something around there. Like, 2 months ago. I mean, come on guys.
How do they plan to keep Mr x, who downloaded a $.99 song, from sending it to everybody he knows?
I don't really understand why everybody seems to think downloadable music is such a great thing. Maybe when MP3 sound quality improves (like, to CD quality), and the portable players can hold a reasonable amount (at least 300 MB) for a reasonable price (sub $200), it'll be great. But for now I really see it as "the way to listen to songs you don't like enough to actually buy."
Honestly, I've bought more CDs since I started listening to MP3s than I ever did before. Download a song, find out you love it, download a couple more from the album, love them too, buy the whole album.
From what I understand, the amount of money the artists make off radio plays is insignificant; it's all about the publicity. In that regard, MP3s can just be the new radio. Let everybody download the new single for free in 96 khz, then if they like it, they can just go buy the cd for the regular ridiculous price.
But what do I know. I know I have 5 more problems to do solving recurrences for my Algorithms class, and it's due at 11 am, and it's 4:30am right now. Sigh. What a slacker I am.
Looks just like a Gameboy. The translusence reminds me of iMacs as well. Farewell to black?
I thought it was a great movie. Since I had no idea what the movie was about, when the truth became evident, my jaw dropped completely to the floor and my eyes bugged right out.
But as someone below said, there isn't really anything they could do, prequel/sequel-wise that would be as great. If they did a prequel, what would they do? Show how Morpheus came to know "the truth"? That seems like it would be almost the exact same story, except with Morpheus in Neo's role.
Or they could go over Neo's childhood and show how he sensed disturbances in the Matrix from a very young age. That would surely suck.
Maybe they could show how that old lady, the "first one" came to know the truth... starring Salma Hayek.... drool... That would be nice I guess, if they did it right.
As for sequels, I guess they could show Neo trying to help all of humanity, which would really drag the Jesus themes out even more than they were in the original. He would probably even "die for our sins." I guess this could be a decent movie if they did it right also, but it would easily suck. The slow-mo / fast-mo effects are no longer new to us and so will not provide the same sense of awe as when we first saw them.
But I think this will fall prey to sequel-syndrome. The studio will make a formulaic sequel simply to make money, not to make a cool movie, as must have been at least part of the motive behind the first one. So the sequel will suck, yet make millions of dollars.
So I guess it really be our generation's Star Wars. Cause, IMHO, The Phantom Menace was the worst movie I've seen in years; and I had no preconceived notions about how good/bad it would be.
Anyway, we can only hope for a better fate for Matrix -1, -2, 2, and 3.
But then they will have some kind of a self-destruct device installed for the MP3 part, so that when you upgrade to "SDMI Phase-II", MP3s no longer play.
I have no idea why any developer would want to include SDMI in their player, especially if they are marketing it as an MP3 player. I guess we'll have to read the fine print. Something along the lines of:
Anyway, that's the plan, as far as I can tell. It would be a decent strategy, except for the fact that nobody but the RIAA wants SDMI.
I remember the old days, downloading stuff to my XT, there was a compression format that was way better than PKZIP. It was called ARJ, or something like that. Anyway, when's the last time you saw a file compressed in ARJ format? Believe me, formats get entrenched.
Of course, you're talking about audio. So what about VQF? Didn't VQF have better sound quality, compress faster, and smaller file sizes (so I heard)? Sure, you had to pay for a VQF player, but you're probably going to have to pay for an SDMI player too.
Believe me, MP3 is definitely "established". As people get more and more bandwidth, MP3s will get encoded at higher and higher bitrates, and the quality will get better and better (well, to a point).
But what do I know. I can still tell the difference between a CD version and a 256 kbps mp3... hence I will never revert to only "online" music. I treasure my tunes too much.
I wonder, out of all the programs that have "copied" "their feature," why did they choose Corel to sue?
Anyone who's seen cars for most of his life will be able to pick a Beetle out of a lineup of cars. Who would be so dumb as to make a "clone" of the beetle and actually think VW would stand by and let that happen?
Such is the case (no pun intended) with iMac. The computer looks so much different from anything before it that it sticks in people's minds. That somebody would try and make a computer that's a blatant ripoff of the design simply boggles my mind. How stupid can they be? Did they really think Apple would sit by and let them do this?
One of the things I see that disturbs me the most is the people who have such pent-up hatred for Mac that they think any position Apple takes is wrong. This is much like the rabid Linux users who think anything Bill Gates does must be evil because they just don't like Windows. I mean, somebody commented that Rob was becoming like Bill Gates because they both decided to donate money to charity, and that shows some kind of "disturbing parallel" or some other BS.
I wish people would lose the mindset that "since company X makes products Y and Z, which we hate, we must now hate every decision made by company X, and adopt the opposite position in every matter."
On another note, it is truly sad that the company could not come up with a case design of its own. To claim that the similarities are just coincidental suggests such unbelievable stupidity on Daewoo's part that one wonders if the company has even a single brain among its entire workforce.
Why could they not have simply done the same research Apple had and come up with a machine that filled the same niche but was not such an obvious ripoff? I mean, if they had done a square box case, without the exact same five colors, it would be functionally identical, would appeal to the same market, and would not be a ripoff.
I think Daewoo ought to get some serious punitive damages in this case for being so stupid.
Wired's got an interview with CmdrTaco regarding the sale of Slashdot. It's right over here
Yeah, it would really suck if Bill Gates inspired people to help each other. God forbid he do anything un-Satanlike. Your "connection" is pretty nutty. I think bill is giving away his stuff because he is realizing he has more money than he'll ever be able to spend. Rob & co are doing it because they like the charities and feel they're worthwhile, etc.
But who cares about the reason? A gift is a gift.
God forbid anybody say anything that goes against the popular belief!
RMS seems to just take complete credit for Linux. Unless he's talking about some other free version of Unix. He says they've been working "for 15 years to develop a free replacement for Unix," but Linux isn't that old.
It seems that he worked for 15 years to develop a free Unix and has nothing to show for it, while Linus simply said, "hey, I'm going to make a free version of Unix" and then proceeded to do so. While the FSF may have developed a large chunk of Linux (I think I saw an estimate that said 10%), It's misleading for them to say they "developed" Linux.
I love Gnu tools, but I really get sick of RMS taking credit for something he didn't do. At least he didn't mention the term GNU/Linux or any of its other ridiculous synonyms.
Of course, if he was referring to a different free Unix, all of these comments are pretty off topic.
I'm sure every boxer trains as hard as possible when going up against a tough contender. It doesn't make them "afraid" of their opponent.
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