"Celine Dion's album was fitted with copyright protection"
It's about time the music industry took steps to protect us from Celine. Preventing these discs from being played in so many CD players may be one of the smartest things they've ever done. I applaud their efforts to keep such crap from making it's way onto the Internet.
But seriously, I think it is high time that these powerful corporations start looking at the ever present "bottom line." I could easily, much more so than scouring P2P services, go to the record store and buy an album (if there were any I wanted to actually own). But the last time I checked, the average CD was about $18. I don't have a degree in business or ecomomics but I have been able to distill my budget down to two very important categories: things I need and things I don't need.
Things I need: food, shelter, warmth, etc... Things I don't need: $18 CD's.
It's really very simple, if the music industry wants to compete with the tidal wave of "piracy" that has come about b/c of this digital "revolution" then perhaps they need to do what I did and figure out what is important to them. I can't imagine for a minute that I'm going to run out and start patronizing an industry that has done nothing for the past two years but go to war on alienating their bread and butter by hiking prices and cavalierly snubbing their nose at honest, paying customers. I don't buy CD's, not b/c I can get the music online, I don't buy CD's b/c they're expensive, the new offerings are almost unilaterally bad and most importantly, the industry behind all of this has presented itself as nothing more than a large, evil, greedy monopoly absolutely bent upon parting people from their hard earned money by any means. Perhaps some will rise up and cry "capitalism" but to me it's just "stupid" particularly when their methods are so incredibly transparent.
What they fail to remember is that we all still have a choice. We can choose to purchase new music or we can go without. The mere presence of a product does not necessitate anything other the the mere presence of a product, period. I don't have to buy anything, especially if I don't need it. Over the past four years, I've purchased all of maybe two CD's, one from an independent label. I would think they would have started getting the message (as well as remembering the rules of supply and demand) but apparently costly legal bills, invasive and largely useless protection technology and price gouging are the smart ways to run a business.
why doesn't George Soros just go ahead write this?
on
Globalism Post 9/11
·
· Score: 1
Mmm, yes, so the point of this article is that George Soros just came out with a new book and Mr. Katz is quite in agreement with it. Fine. But that does little to illuminate the argument does it? I'm a perturbed by the whole fact that this is nothing more than a long-winded advertisement/book review for George Soros on Globalization? I'm not a Katz hater, anyone who creates as much ire and flaming in one place isn't necessarily bad thing. At least it gets people thinking.
However, the whole weight of this argument seems to be based on one-person's conclusions: Soros. My professors would have laughed me out of school if I had tried to construct an argument with one source. And Katz doesn't even really take a stand on the issue (though I think we all know how he feels about it) and what's the deal with the to be continued... crap? I find that annoying. Anyway, all flames aside, I agree with the majority of posts here, amazingly enough, the globalism argument has been beat to death, how many different ways can you find to say the same thing? It's time to either advance the subject or or let it go. I'd argue that Jon Katz is running away from his readers. I've seen nothing to indicate thus far that he even cares or acknowledges what others think. You can disregard the -1 trolls but some of us are genuinely interested in having a viable discussion on these topics, how technology affects them, how various cultures are coping, etc. I don't want to read some "author" who is apparently in love with everything he says. Talk about the media being narcissistic...
POP3 forwarding is a great perk to Yahoo mail. But it isn't necessary and for $19.99, well, I hate to see it go but there's no way I'm going to pay for it. Look at it this way, for $19.99 I can buy the services of an ISP complete with dial-up access, POP3, newgroups, etc... the point is that for $19.99 I can get a whole lot more than just a few perks that I may or may not use. I'm sorry Yahoo, but I put up with the ads at work anyway because I don't use POP3 there and I can certainly put up with them at home.
Yeah I agree, completely. There's a place for dark and brooding but it seems all the games that come out for PC are dark and brooding. The one game this year I did find a quiet peace in was The Longest Journey. It was quite touching. My choice in game consoles is Gamecube with PS2 a close second. Just for that fact, Nintendo conjures better memories for me than PC-type games - fun, colors and happy characters... that and I'm over 25.
If you read through the article, it points to several pictures where things went awry. One such example is where the superglue ran under the scotch tape onto the contacts and couldn't be scraped off.
Some superglue manufacturers offer a thicker type that doesn't run quite as eagerly as the liquid type. It is more the consistency of model airplane glue so you have more control as to where the glue actually goes. It can be found at hardware stores and any place that offers a decent selection of adhesives. This may be a better solution than hoping and preying that your masking job is adequate and liquid superglue does seem to have a mind of it own sometimes as my fingers will testify.
Dell has always been good at practicing what they preach, good customer service and tech support. But... getting them to replace a faulty part or component is like pulling teeth. When a certain OS was released in 1998, it had an undesirable effect upon my sound card's joystick port, namely it wouldn't work anymore, at all. The same thing happened to a friend of mine and many many people I read on new's groups and lists. Sufficed to say, the sound card was under warranty along with the rest of the computer and I certainly wasn't going to eat the cost of replacing it. After all, OS upgrades are an inevitable part of any computer's life. Your problem sounds like a serious design flaw and my intention would be to insist upon complete and total satisfaction. You paid for the laptop and it doesn't seem unreasonable to want to guarantee that it will work after it goes out of warranty. IMHO.
I had a well-rounded education. Now I know little bit about everything but not a whole hell of a lot about anything. I won't speak against being a well-adjusted person but these are skills I think should fall more squarely upon the shoulders of parents and peers rather than educators. Being forced to be well-rounded was the major feature of my high school education. There are simply people who don't care about math as there are people who hate English. And it didn't end there either. I can't tell you how many times I was getting my BA and I had to dilute my attention from my major program to attend to a general education requirement or part of a "core" cirriculum. Sure, I learned some interesting things in electives that I chose to take. But often there were required classes (such as Stats) that I just didn't care about. I've never seen an expert, specialist or genius for that matter who isn't the best in their particular field. I've never met a person with a well-rounded education who is an expert or a specialist. They may not even know they're a genius. Perhaps these things come with more education. Regardless, I'm one who wishes I had been allowed to pursue the things that interested me more and skip the things I didn't care about.
Yes yes yes, we all understand the implications and comparisons of and to Big Brother, Orwell, "1984," "We," "Anthem," "Brave New World" and any other dystopian novel or piece of rhetoric out of the mouths of the alarmists and into the minds of the gullible and naive. But does anyone honestly think it is possible for all of that to happen? Big Brother serves as a symbol rather than a specific person. This legend was propogated by ignorance and apathy and held in place by tyranny. I don't believe anyone who has read 1984 is any of these things and none of are about to let these things happen. I think that Bush's speech is more indicative of the fact of the fact that he is a nimrod (a national tragedy doesn't change that, sorry), doesn't know what to do and is finding out that gee gosh, it's hard being prezudent.
Luckily there are smart people in Washington who have raised an eyebrow or two about what is being proposed in his new policies. For one, Colin Powell, who seems the wisest of Bush's cabinet members isn't one for rushing out and conducting long drawn out conflicts without first weighing the consequences. This Big Brother argument, while compelling, only fuels more fears and suspicions, it is hardly the truth, in fact most of Big Brother arguments are based upon a work of fiction and while 1984 gives us all reason to pause, in any case, it is still just that.
There is an interesting article in the October issue of Red Herring about the bureaucratic nightmare that wireless companies face in trying to develop "next-generation wireless networks." I just thought you all would like to know.
Most industrialized nations with our type of technological infrastructures are years ahead of us in wireless technology. My opinion is that the stranglehold on potential 3g spectrums is part of the reason why the technological bust happened. Back in the late 90's (seems like a million years ago) when everyone was happy and rich (except me), wireless devices were supposed to be the next "big thing." Now they're all but a curiousity for most Americans where in Japan and Sweden they're a necessity. I think the tech sector would come around if the current administration opened more of these specrums up (but they'd have to get through the DOD first) for development. Something tells me, however, after September 11th, they'll be hell bent on preventing these technologies from spreading too quickly lest they be employed by terrorism.com.
what a predicament ...
on
Linux Turns 10
·
· Score: 5, Funny
What do you get for the kernel that already has everything?
Mozilla 0.9.3 = Netscape 6.1?
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
Okay my question is if this is a big stability upgrade to Netscape 6.0 and is based on the latest Mozilla release, why didn't they wait for the final Mozilla release or 1.0? If it is that important that they release an upgrade, why don't they just wait a bit longer? Is 6.2 just on the horizon then?
In my particular circle of friends, I am tech support. The reason is 9 out of 10 times is that those I associate with are just too lazy to empower themselves with the knowledge to solve their own problems. I don't get paid to do this, but they certainly expect me to have the answer. Most of the time, I have to RTFM or go look it up myself.
If we apply this same behavior to your average computer company, tech support is inundated with stupid questions... I'd say the average/. reader can't imagine not reading an FAQ or newsgroup postings pertaining to a particular piece of software before asking a question. I don't think, however, that most people are your average/. reader and I don't think they'll go through such a methodical troubleshooting method before bothering tech support.
The whole thing just makes me tired. The people I work with can't even put their dishes in the dishwasher (it's right next to the sink) how would I ever expect them to solve their own computer/software problems. It seems human behavior dictates that it's just easier to get someone else to do it.
*sigh*
In all the hype I've seen surrounding X, there's been very little mainstream talk about its Unix-based architecture. Oh sure if you dig a little or click on the right link, you'll find that type of information. But Steve Jobs isn't using it as a key-selling point.
This article stipulates that X is the next great thing because it's Unix but it's also a Mac. Wow, nifty. Sounds like typical Mac zealotry to me. Look, I don't think the majority of Apple's X target audience are going to buy it because it has Unix at its heart. They're going to buy it because it's pretty and it does pretty things and makes pretty noises and has pretty colors.
The same things can be done, with a little determination (and luck) on X Windows.
I don't think the majority of Linux converts leave the safe confines (key word) of their GUI based systems to have a command line they have to learn to bend to their will. I think they do it because quite frankly, other people's ideas of how our computers should look and perform generally suck. So the point that X is the Unix OS/GUI for the common man is a bunch of shit. He's just excited about it because he's a lazy schmuck.
Slashdot Mirror
"Celine Dion's album was fitted with copyright protection"
...
It's about time the music industry took steps to protect us from Celine. Preventing these discs from being played in so many CD players may be one of the smartest things they've ever done. I applaud their efforts to keep such crap from making it's way onto the Internet.
But seriously, I think it is high time that these powerful corporations start looking at the ever present "bottom line." I could easily, much more so than scouring P2P services, go to the record store and buy an album (if there were any I wanted to actually own). But the last time I checked, the average CD was about $18. I don't have a degree in business or ecomomics but I have been able to distill my budget down to two very important categories: things I need and things I don't need.
Things I need: food, shelter, warmth, etc
Things I don't need: $18 CD's.
It's really very simple, if the music industry wants to compete with the tidal wave of "piracy" that has come about b/c of this digital "revolution" then perhaps they need to do what I did and figure out what is important to them. I can't imagine for a minute that I'm going to run out and start patronizing an industry that has done nothing for the past two years but go to war on alienating their bread and butter by hiking prices and cavalierly snubbing their nose at honest, paying customers. I don't buy CD's, not b/c I can get the music online, I don't buy CD's b/c they're expensive, the new offerings are almost unilaterally bad and most importantly, the industry behind all of this has presented itself as nothing more than a large, evil, greedy monopoly absolutely bent upon parting people from their hard earned money by any means. Perhaps some will rise up and cry "capitalism" but to me it's just "stupid" particularly when their methods are so incredibly transparent.
What they fail to remember is that we all still have a choice. We can choose to purchase new music or we can go without. The mere presence of a product does not necessitate anything other the the mere presence of a product, period. I don't have to buy anything, especially if I don't need it. Over the past four years, I've purchased all of maybe two CD's, one from an independent label. I would think they would have started getting the message (as well as remembering the rules of supply and demand) but apparently costly legal bills, invasive and largely useless protection technology and price gouging are the smart ways to run a business.
Mmm, yes, so the point of this article is that George Soros just came out with a new book and Mr. Katz is quite in agreement with it. Fine. But that does little to illuminate the argument does it? I'm a perturbed by the whole fact that this is nothing more than a long-winded advertisement/book review for George Soros on Globalization? I'm not a Katz hater, anyone who creates as much ire and flaming in one place isn't necessarily bad thing. At least it gets people thinking.
However, the whole weight of this argument seems to be based on one-person's conclusions: Soros. My professors would have laughed me out of school if I had tried to construct an argument with one source. And Katz doesn't even really take a stand on the issue (though I think we all know how he feels about it) and what's the deal with the to be continuedPOP3 forwarding is a great perk to Yahoo mail. But it isn't necessary and for $19.99, well, I hate to see it go but there's no way I'm going to pay for it. Look at it this way, for $19.99 I can buy the services of an ISP complete with dial-up access, POP3, newgroups, etc ... the point is that for $19.99 I can get a whole lot more than just a few perks that I may or may not use. I'm sorry Yahoo, but I put up with the ads at work anyway because I don't use POP3 there and I can certainly put up with them at home.
13 nominations!! Wow can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of ... oh never mind.
Yeah I agree, completely. There's a place for dark and brooding but it seems all the games that come out for PC are dark and brooding. The one game this year I did find a quiet peace in was The Longest Journey. It was quite touching. My choice in game consoles is Gamecube with PS2 a close second. Just for that fact, Nintendo conjures better memories for me than PC-type games - fun, colors and happy characters ... that and I'm over 25.
Check the November issue of Technology Review. It has an accessible article about this very subject:
s p
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/nov01/voss.a
It's quite interesting.
If you read through the article, it points to several pictures where things went awry. One such example is where the superglue ran under the scotch tape onto the contacts and couldn't be scraped off.
Some superglue manufacturers offer a thicker type that doesn't run quite as eagerly as the liquid type. It is more the consistency of model airplane glue so you have more control as to where the glue actually goes. It can be found at hardware stores and any place that offers a decent selection of adhesives. This may be a better solution than hoping and preying that your masking job is adequate and liquid superglue does seem to have a mind of it own sometimes as my fingers will testify.
Or perhaps that was the worm wriggling off the hook ...
Dell has always been good at practicing what they preach, good customer service and tech support. But ... getting them to replace a faulty part or component is like pulling teeth. When a certain OS was released in 1998, it had an undesirable effect upon my sound card's joystick port, namely it wouldn't work anymore, at all. The same thing happened to a friend of mine and many many people I read on new's groups and lists. Sufficed to say, the sound card was under warranty along with the rest of the computer and I certainly wasn't going to eat the cost of replacing it. After all, OS upgrades are an inevitable part of any computer's life. Your problem sounds like a serious design flaw and my intention would be to insist upon complete and total satisfaction. You paid for the laptop and it doesn't seem unreasonable to want to guarantee that it will work after it goes out of warranty. IMHO.
Dear kids, downloading doesn't give you hairy palms and make you go blind ... oh, wait, I guess it depends on what you download.
If I'm really good and I turn in lots of bad, bad terrorists will the government bump me up to Platinum card status?
And if so, can I get mine with Pokemon or my favorite sport's team emblazoned across it?
I had a well-rounded education. Now I know little bit about everything but not a whole hell of a lot about anything. I won't speak against being a well-adjusted person but these are skills I think should fall more squarely upon the shoulders of parents and peers rather than educators. Being forced to be well-rounded was the major feature of my high school education. There are simply people who don't care about math as there are people who hate English. And it didn't end there either. I can't tell you how many times I was getting my BA and I had to dilute my attention from my major program to attend to a general education requirement or part of a "core" cirriculum. Sure, I learned some interesting things in electives that I chose to take. But often there were required classes (such as Stats) that I just didn't care about. I've never seen an expert, specialist or genius for that matter who isn't the best in their particular field. I've never met a person with a well-rounded education who is an expert or a specialist. They may not even know they're a genius. Perhaps these things come with more education. Regardless, I'm one who wishes I had been allowed to pursue the things that interested me more and skip the things I didn't care about.
Yes yes yes, we all understand the implications and comparisons of and to Big Brother, Orwell, "1984," "We," "Anthem," "Brave New World" and any other dystopian novel or piece of rhetoric out of the mouths of the alarmists and into the minds of the gullible and naive. But does anyone honestly think it is possible for all of that to happen? Big Brother serves as a symbol rather than a specific person. This legend was propogated by ignorance and apathy and held in place by tyranny. I don't believe anyone who has read 1984 is any of these things and none of are about to let these things happen. I think that Bush's speech is more indicative of the fact of the fact that he is a nimrod (a national tragedy doesn't change that, sorry), doesn't know what to do and is finding out that gee gosh, it's hard being prezudent.
Luckily there are smart people in Washington who have raised an eyebrow or two about what is being proposed in his new policies. For one, Colin Powell, who seems the wisest of Bush's cabinet members isn't one for rushing out and conducting long drawn out conflicts without first weighing the consequences. This Big Brother argument, while compelling, only fuels more fears and suspicions, it is hardly the truth, in fact most of Big Brother arguments are based upon a work of fiction and while 1984 gives us all reason to pause, in any case, it is still just that.
Ashcroft is the one who scares me.
There is an interesting article in the October issue of Red Herring about the bureaucratic nightmare that wireless companies face in trying to develop "next-generation wireless networks." I just thought you all would like to know.
Most industrialized nations with our type of technological infrastructures are years ahead of us in wireless technology. My opinion is that the stranglehold on potential 3g spectrums is part of the reason why the technological bust happened. Back in the late 90's (seems like a million years ago) when everyone was happy and rich (except me), wireless devices were supposed to be the next "big thing." Now they're all but a curiousity for most Americans where in Japan and Sweden they're a necessity. I think the tech sector would come around if the current administration opened more of these specrums up (but they'd have to get through the DOD first) for development. Something tells me, however, after September 11th, they'll be hell bent on preventing these technologies from spreading too quickly lest they be employed by terrorism.com.
What do you get for the kernel that already has everything?
Okay my question is if this is a big stability upgrade to Netscape 6.0 and is based on the latest Mozilla release, why didn't they wait for the final Mozilla release or 1.0? If it is that important that they release an upgrade, why don't they just wait a bit longer? Is 6.2 just on the horizon then?
I say the Indians draft it right away.
I thought Microsoft was the Matrix ...?
In my particular circle of friends, I am tech support. The reason is 9 out of 10 times is that those I associate with are just too lazy to empower themselves with the knowledge to solve their own problems. I don't get paid to do this, but they certainly expect me to have the answer. Most of the time, I have to RTFM or go look it up myself. If we apply this same behavior to your average computer company, tech support is inundated with stupid questions ... I'd say the average /. reader can't imagine not reading an FAQ or newsgroup postings pertaining to a particular piece of software before asking a question. I don't think, however, that most people are your average /. reader and I don't think they'll go through such a methodical troubleshooting method before bothering tech support.
The whole thing just makes me tired. The people I work with can't even put their dishes in the dishwasher (it's right next to the sink) how would I ever expect them to solve their own computer/software problems. It seems human behavior dictates that it's just easier to get someone else to do it.
*sigh*
In all the hype I've seen surrounding X, there's been very little mainstream talk about its Unix-based architecture. Oh sure if you dig a little or click on the right link, you'll find that type of information. But Steve Jobs isn't using it as a key-selling point. This article stipulates that X is the next great thing because it's Unix but it's also a Mac. Wow, nifty. Sounds like typical Mac zealotry to me. Look, I don't think the majority of Apple's X target audience are going to buy it because it has Unix at its heart. They're going to buy it because it's pretty and it does pretty things and makes pretty noises and has pretty colors. The same things can be done, with a little determination (and luck) on X Windows. I don't think the majority of Linux converts leave the safe confines (key word) of their GUI based systems to have a command line they have to learn to bend to their will. I think they do it because quite frankly, other people's ideas of how our computers should look and perform generally suck. So the point that X is the Unix OS/GUI for the common man is a bunch of shit. He's just excited about it because he's a lazy schmuck.