Then it goes on to say that surely the JVM can be extended if this proves to be a selling point for.NET (which is probably true, but it kind of makes you wonder why sun haven't already done it).
Probably because language neutrality is not really that big an advantage anyway. Java is a good enough language so that if you really need to use something else chances are you don't want the JVM anyway. The most common case where you might want to target something else at the JVM is scripting languages which appear to already be quite well supported.
Unlike like a television or a radio, software can be infinitely copied. I agree with the notion that what the BSA are doing is bullshit, but the people that say that software licenses are "absurd" just want something for nothing. (free as in beer).
That's no justification for software licenses. There is already adequate legal protection for software. It's called copyright.
What makes this story interesting, and why Paul reported it is because if the numbers had been reversed you would be assured that would be the headline of the day on slashdot, and if anybody questioned it they would be called Microsoftie apologists.
Funny, I don't remember seeing ANY stories on Slashdot reporting Windows to be less secure than Linux. I've seen at least a few like this one reporting Windows as more secure than Linux. There are fairly frequent stories on the more serious vulnerabilities/bugs/viruses/worms that show up for Windows but that's to be expected: most story submittors and most readers use Windows.
I don't know, I guess some of you people still believe Slashdot should be some sort of paragon of fairness. When are you going to realise that it's just a bunch of guys posting what they think is interesting? Fairness and accuracy have never come into it.
And look at the responses you see here. They're almost comical.
Pretty low calibre, I agree. 90% are redundant for a start.
Most of the TV shows you find on programs like Morpheus have the commercials edited out. I can only speculate on the reasoning, but my guess is that they are edited out to make the download time shorter.
I would have thought the reasoning was obvious - no one wants to see the ads.
Provide streaming content from their website.
Maybe I'm alone in this but IMO streaming sucks. I've never been able to successfully stream anything of decent size/quality (not even just audio), even with cable. I won't look at movie trailers if there isn't a download version and I'll certainly never pay for streaming content.
Simon Travaglia (who came up with the BOFH) was a Unix admin at the university I went to when I was there. He wasn't unusually grumpy for a Unix admin.
It's not hard to calculate just what sort of mass you can safely lift given the mass of the cable. Infact you could just send ever larger chucks of mass to the cable's center of mass to build up the anchor rather than trying to grab an asteroid or something.
The idea would be to send mining and manufacturing equipment and set up some sort of mars base. Once you've got everything right on Mars then you look at building one on Earth.
No, you don't need a counterweight. If the cable is long enough so that the center of mass is in geostationary orbit it will just hang there by itself.
Mars is a much better place to experiment with spacehooks like this. It's easier to build them there, they don't need to be as big, and there wouldn't be the same disasterous consequences if and when something goes wrong. Larry Niven's written a fair amount about it, see for example The Barsoom Project.
Spacehooks (elevators etc) are the most efficient way of getting into orbit by far and that's the trickiest part of space travel. Once you're in orbit it's fairly cheap to get elsewhere. The trouble with an elevator is not the efficiency it's the engineering requirements and disaster scenarios.
You're right, but it's not that people don't need or want to change the way they watch TV, it's that they don't know how much better it could be. The sort of people who sit down and channel surf for an hour are the ones who would get the most out of Tivo. Never again would they flick through 60 channels and complain about nothing being on. Tivo means that when you want to watch TV there is something for you to watch.
A VCR costs about $100 and can play the stack of tapes I have sitting next to my TV. If I want to record something I buy a six hour tape for $2 and I'm good to go.
No you're not. You also have to program the video and hope that the scheduling doesn't change. Tivo represents a revolution because you tell it what to do, not how to do it. If I had a Tivo I wouldn't throw my VCR away but I'd never buy another one either. Actually maybe I would throw the VCR away, I've got a DVD for pre-recorded stuff.
I watch a fair amount of television, but I've only used my VCR twice in the last year. Once was to tape Buffy while I was at a concert, and the other time was to tape some CNN footage on Sept 11.
I find that networks have the nasty habit of putting the best shows up against one another, so my video gets a bit more of a workout than yours.
Probably because any potential action's not based in copyright, but in trademark.
I'm not sure it is. I wasn't able to find a live trademark for Goldfinger as a movie title on the USPTO site, and I haven't seen the TM designation used with Goldfinger on any of the MGM sites I've been to. More likely it's a violation of MPAA rules, which are probably legally enforced through contracts with the studios (I'm guessing). Certainly the MPAA appears to be involved (see here).
In the places I've seen, mainly around Strathfield, DVDs where a couple of bucks more. Cost-wise DVDs are cheaper than videos, but only because of the decision this case has returned. Manufacturing costs have never come into it. The price of videos sold to the rental market are inflated because they aren't available to the public at the same time, but retail DVD sales are already higher than retail video sales so they can't get away with that tactic. If this case had of gone the distributors way they would have had their cake and eaten it too - kept the early release to the public but charged more to the rental stores.
Unfortunately it is not possible to keep a huge number of extra copies around due to the cost of buying those copies (and the risk of not being able to recoup that cost). So most places seem to have fairly limited numbers of spares and keeping them out of covers probably contributes to the scratching problems. The best solution would be for the distributors to replace damage discs, but I can't see that happening unless it becomes a big PR issue. More likely the rental places will try to charge people returning damaged discs.
The original poster has a point, he just chose to
word it poorly.
Well I thought it was fairly clear that I was talking about the rental situation. And that's where people just don't care enough to be careful with the discs. I was never claiming that DVDs are worse than video if properly looked after (I have never bought video precisely because of the deterioration factor).
"DVDs have better quality content so people will pay
more."
Depends on what it is. How well the overall job was done (sound,video,layout).
I haven't seen many widescreen videos in rental outlets, so if you're a fan of widescreen DVDs have an edge. Generally the picture quality is noticably better, especially compared to a video that's seen a lot of viewings. Then there's the extras, which are often worthless, but sometimes worth a look. Are you seriously claiming that DVDs don't have a quality edge over video?
There's a protective film that can overlay both CD & DVDs. Get damaged (within reason), replace the film.
Hopefully it'll catch on with rental outlets. So far I haven't seen it used and have had trouble with scratches on rental DVDs.
"DVDs are still catching on, people who own players tend to be wealthier and therefore less likely to be concerned about the higher cost."
I disagree. The price of DVD players has come down to about what one would pay for a VCR.
Sure, but a DVD serves much the same purpose as a VCR but doesn't have the recording capability. Most people would buy a VCR first then a DVD when they can afford it. This trend is changing but at the moment it still tends to be younger, higher income people who own DVD players. The same market that will be less likely to balk at the rental cost difference.
Nope, it's Austrlian Consumers: 1, Video Rental Business: 1, DVD Movie Distributors: 0. If Warner have of been allowed to charge double for "rental version" DVDs the rental stores would have had to pass that cost onto the consumer. This decision means the consumer will not see an immediate price increase in rental DVDs.
As for the price disparity between rental DVDs and videos:
DVDs have better quality content so people will pay more.
DVDs are more prone to deterioration (being very vulnerable to scratches) and so will not allow as many rentals before requiring replacement.
DVDs are still catching on, people who own players tend to be wealthier and therefore less likely to be concerned about the higher cost.
The moderators should mod up interesting discussions, not mod down those that don't fit their agenda.
Agenda's got little to do with it. This sort of comment may have been interesting and worth discussing the first 50 times it appeared on/., but now it's rather old.
That'd be fine if the ISPs would charge reasonable amounts for traffic, but the don't. Example: until recently I lived in Sydney. For AU$70 per month I had unlimited volume at 512kbps download. After a year or so the ISP (Telstra) decided that "a few people were ruining the experience for everyone" (a complete fiction given that most people were bandwidth limited anyhow, but that's beside the point). Their solution - if you wanted more than 4GB you'd have to pay by volume: AU$0.20 per MEGABYTE, i.e. AU$200 per GB. That's ridiculously expensive, and IMO unjustifiable. If they had of charged reasonably I wouldn't have had a problem with it.
Slashdot Mirror
1 x President
1 x CEO
1 x CFO
1 x CTO
1 x Director of Sales
1 x Director of Marketing
1 x Poor sap who does all the work.
I don't know, I guess some of you people still believe Slashdot should be some sort of paragon of fairness. When are you going to realise that it's just a bunch of guys posting what they think is interesting? Fairness and accuracy have never come into it.
Pretty low calibre, I agree. 90% are redundant for a start.It may well be - I'm in New Zealand (and Australia before that was just as bad). I haven't had much luck with local stuff either though.
Sounds like the architecture you're planning is quite close to FreeCiv's. You might want to take a look at that.
Simon Travaglia (who came up with the BOFH) was a Unix admin at the university I went to when I was there. He wasn't unusually grumpy for a Unix admin.
Was Rainbow Mars the one he wrote with the space elevator trees?
It's not hard to calculate just what sort of mass you can safely lift given the mass of the cable. Infact you could just send ever larger chucks of mass to the cable's center of mass to build up the anchor rather than trying to grab an asteroid or something.
The idea would be to send mining and manufacturing equipment and set up some sort of mars base. Once you've got everything right on Mars then you look at building one on Earth.
No, you don't need a counterweight. If the cable is long enough so that the center of mass is in geostationary orbit it will just hang there by itself.
Mars is a much better place to experiment with spacehooks like this. It's easier to build them there, they don't need to be as big, and there wouldn't be the same disasterous consequences if and when something goes wrong. Larry Niven's written a fair amount about it, see for example The Barsoom Project.
Spacehooks (elevators etc) are the most efficient way of getting into orbit by far and that's the trickiest part of space travel. Once you're in orbit it's fairly cheap to get elsewhere. The trouble with an elevator is not the efficiency it's the engineering requirements and disaster scenarios.
You're right, but it's not that people don't need or want to change the way they watch TV, it's that they don't know how much better it could be. The sort of people who sit down and channel surf for an hour are the ones who would get the most out of Tivo. Never again would they flick through 60 channels and complain about nothing being on. Tivo means that when you want to watch TV there is something for you to watch.
But I live in New Zealand, so no PVR for me.
Unfortunately it is not possible to keep a huge number of extra copies around due to the cost of buying those copies (and the risk of not being able to recoup that cost). So most places seem to have fairly limited numbers of spares and keeping them out of covers probably contributes to the scratching problems. The best solution would be for the distributors to replace damage discs, but I can't see that happening unless it becomes a big PR issue. More likely the rental places will try to charge people returning damaged discs.
As for the price disparity between rental DVDs and videos:
That'd be fine if the ISPs would charge reasonable amounts for traffic, but the don't. Example: until recently I lived in Sydney. For AU$70 per month I had unlimited volume at 512kbps download. After a year or so the ISP (Telstra) decided that "a few people were ruining the experience for everyone" (a complete fiction given that most people were bandwidth limited anyhow, but that's beside the point). Their solution - if you wanted more than 4GB you'd have to pay by volume: AU$0.20 per MEGABYTE, i.e. AU$200 per GB. That's ridiculously expensive, and IMO unjustifiable. If they had of charged reasonably I wouldn't have had a problem with it.