It was funny, I used to work as a Radio Shack store clerk, and we were REQUIRED to get names. The computer would actually keep a log of how many names were gathered by each employee, and if your percentage of gathered names dropped below 90%, you would get a verbal warning. If they stayed below 90% for a month after the verbal warning, you would be fired.
Also, I remember when they put up the privacy policy in late 2000. It didn't seem to allay customers fears. Instead, I would tell them to just give me fake information
Please don't become "one of them". The reason why we don't wnat DRM in our files, is because copy protection in general has a nasty effect of not lasting. One of the great things about music is that it is almost timeless. If you've got a vinyl player, you can drop some al-green on and still have a listen. Try taht with DRM. If the company were to fail, you would end up with hundreds of songs you legally purchased without a way of playing them. there are privacy issues as well, and the inability to back up your own music that you purchased.
I would also like to remind you that even though Sega did it first, it was MODEM BASED! Because the Dreamcast came with a modem, some of the nice goodies offered by the X-box, like speech and updates et al couldn't be offered. Also, you had slight lag problems, but sega had some talented programmers to deal with those. later on, when the dreamcast was cracked, you also had a rash of cheaters on PSO and what not. Not to discount sega for doing it right first, but Microsoft if doing it righter/better (thats not even a word) and is not making the same mistakes.
Microsoft reverse engineered his media player and sold it on Cd/DVD whatever as media player software that could be loaded onto the hard drive. Once loaded, users could play whatever music they want all without modding their box. Thus dealing a blow to hacking the x-box, and modding the x-box. It would take all the fun out.
"Also I think Xbox live might make them more of a viable competitor,"
I definately agree with you on this one. As much as we like to bash Microsoft, they did well with X-box live. It has finally taken the online PC gaming experience and brought it over to consoles. However, I don't think it will be too succesful. Not always does the most technically superior devices win. I am speaking of X-box Live when I talk about this, because its nice and has loads of features, but is descriminating to a lot of users. This discrimination, mainly a broadband only, networked party is what I'm talking about and it is also what makes it so good. The truth is, not many PC users have broadband connections, and I"m willing to bet that even fewer still actually have their broadband networked. relying on networked broadband x-box users is a big step for Microsoft and they have a lot of balls for doing this. I for one would be the first to laugh at their f#ckups, but they stepped out and did it. They are innovating this time, by taking a big risk. Personally, I think its gonna fail miserably because there won't be enough support. Give it another 4 or 5 years for broadband and home networking to catch on before it really kicks off. HOwever, we won't actually be "there" in the next 5 years unless somebody starts.
So, DRM == copy protection. Anyone else remember where copy-protection went with games and everything for the first 15 years of commercial software? More and more annoying, until finally the companies gave up. Same thing will happen with DRM "unless the antagonists can learn from history."
I definately know what you are talking about. I have a few old 386 CGA games laying around now missing their instruction booklets. They used an odd printed color wheel with corresponding graphics on the screen as a way of keeping piracy down. Sadly, I am no longer able to enjoy those classics. Anyway, your not all right. WHile the industry gave up on copy protection, its making a comeback. Safedisc, Safedisc 2, secu-loc et al are being employed on games now that people are able to burn CD's and grab ISO's so quickly. I don't think the industry gave up, I just think they thought it was infeasible (it was) at the time to copy CD's, so controls were never implemented.
Erm no, it has more ram. It has less than the 64mb in the X-Box, but more than the PS2's 32mb. Its got 40mb total of ram, 16 being "A-memory", 81mhz D-Ram and 24mb of MoSys 1T-Sram. I'm sure it could be made to run Linux, but as of yet, nobody is known to have cracked the disc system. You can see the rest of the specs here.
The girls, you could argue, are just a distraction in James Bond films. The gadgets are the real stars, and time and time again, they save Bond's skin.
"Obviously written by a Nerd."
Not any of the nerds here. Obviously written by a homosexual is more like it.
Why do I still boot windows? Well, I've got three boxen, one a family machine that needs to be braindead. The rest of my family just learned about saving to disk, so I need to keep it easy and simple. This machine runs Win98 and is also my net surfing machine for when sites insist on using IE. I"m thinking about putting BeOS on this machine
My second box runs Smoothwall, and is my gateway server. I've got all my machines hooked up to this one and it routes my USB adsl modem to all the other computers.
My third box quad boots Mandrake 9.1, Suse 8.1, Windows 2000 and Windows 98. Windows 98 is a bit of a dead fish, but I keep it around due to laziness. Win 2k is there for work and games. I love PC games because of the bleeding edge graphics, the surround sound and the fact that 640x480 interlaced resolution stinks! My linux choices are purely a hobby. I keep em on and use the OS switch to pick OS. I keep it for the uber cool geekiness factor. d
"I think self-destructing DVDs are a great idea as long as I can pay for them with dollars printed with disappearing ink"
No... It works like this: I think self-destructing DVDs are a great idea as long as I can pay for them with cheques drafted and signed with disappearing ink.
At the risk of giving up my idea and possibly future fortune:), I have decided to divulge my idea on how to get independent music to the masses. Independent musicians need exposure, and the traditional means are usually too expensive. Broadcast via internet requires one to log into a site, and many listeners are passive converts to a style of music, usually developign the taste by listening to the radio as background music. My idea is to braoadcast the music from websites as background music. Bands who would want their music to get exposed would pay the website and submit the music. THe music would play in the background of the song, and the bandwidth that would be payed to constantly pipe the music would be payed by the fees for exposure. Furthermore, a new type of meta tag could be developed that would give a preference on whether a user wants to hear music at all, and if so, what type/genre of music. If a user hears a type of music they like, they can mod it up slashdot style, or buy that particular track or album via a link that refreshes in frame on the site along with the name of the song and band.
All my friends tell me that my room looks like the Nebuchadnezzar from the Matrix. Four shelves, one for each wall holding model rockets and action figures, wall 2 holding RC equipment, wall 3 holding computer and RC equipment and wall 4 holding computer equipment. I've got speakers on each wall, and a sub below my desk. A 233mhz gateway is in my closet powered by a deltech Powerite Pro 2 UPS. My main machine, a silver self built, runs a 19" dynaflat and has an AIW card in it, also connected to my TV. Connected to the AIW is my dreamcast, and the N64 is going straight to the TV. There is an old IBM thinkpad sitting around, and a very old Compaq 5528 planar PC that I'm hollowing out for a wicked casemod. There is an aquarium that i would like to one day store fish in, but it is full of power supplies keyboards and mice at the moment. My closed and shelf is full of Gundams and random models. Dilbert sits on my stereo reciever, and I've got a Shining Gundam Fighting Wing Gundam.
I"m a well rounded geek.
Re:200 mph? In their dreams!
on
Landshark
·
· Score: 1
Not necessarily so. There was an article last year in Roadt & Track that talked all about this very car. It is true that it only exists in clay scale model form, but it makes sense. The design idea he was going for was a tear drop shade, because a perfect teardrop is one of the most aerodynamically effective shapes you can have. By calculations, it should be able to do 200mph based on the shape and the amount of hp thrown at it. I don't believe it, but give the guy some credit.
"I think they need two channels... one in original Japanese + subtitles, and one in crummy dubbed format." Seriously, that would be fairly easy to do. Instead of wasting the extra money on buying another channel, they could simulcast the show in the original japanese track. Some tv stations use SAP (secondary audio programming) to dub their shows over in other languages. It would be very easy to carry the original show in Dub, to appeal to the masses, but broadcast the original japanese dialogue in SAP. For the subtitles, its a simple matter of using closed captioning. Have a little graphic come up at the beginning of the show on how you can go over to SAP mode for the original track, and you've pleased everybody.
Thats the easy part. My only hope is that they are able to broadcast uncut anime and not just become a 24 hour toonami.
One of those meteors will crash to earth and some invisible phantoms are going to emerge from it. They will ravage the earth for 35 years, people will seek refuge in "barrier cities" until a nicely animated, girl with hair from a shampoo ad saves us all. I read about it here
While the use of reflective materials could help to deflect some of the power of the laser, everyone forgot one thing. Conventional weapons. Adding a reflective coating to your normally camoflaged jeep or base to stop laser fire will easily be spotted by a pilot who will not hesitate to put a missile on the target. Also, it is a dead give-away for radar.
I'll have to disagree with you on some points. While I love the fact that Bank of America has a very well designed and easy to use sight that is relatively free of pop-ups and flash animations, I cannot agree with you on their browser acceptablity. I regularly use Opera 6.05 as my browser of choice, and unless I have Opera masquerade as Internet Explorer 5.0, Bank of America will refuse me. The site will give you a page that says that it requires the use of Internet Explorer 6.0 because it requires encryption. Lets just hope that with the recent integration of Opera into cell-phones, more websites will start taking my favorite browser more seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
*cough* *cough* Ed Felten *cough*
Also, I remember when they put up the privacy policy in late 2000. It didn't seem to allay customers fears. Instead, I would tell them to just give me fake information
In some cases you don't even have to do that. Thank god for digital outputs!
Please don't become "one of them". The reason why we don't wnat DRM in our files, is because copy protection in general has a nasty effect of not lasting. One of the great things about music is that it is almost timeless. If you've got a vinyl player, you can drop some al-green on and still have a listen. Try taht with DRM. If the company were to fail, you would end up with hundreds of songs you legally purchased without a way of playing them. there are privacy issues as well, and the inability to back up your own music that you purchased.
mod up
I would also like to remind you that even though Sega did it first, it was MODEM BASED! Because the Dreamcast came with a modem, some of the nice goodies offered by the X-box, like speech and updates et al couldn't be offered. Also, you had slight lag problems, but sega had some talented programmers to deal with those. later on, when the dreamcast was cracked, you also had a rash of cheaters on PSO and what not. Not to discount sega for doing it right first, but Microsoft if doing it righter/better (thats not even a word) and is not making the same mistakes.
Microsoft reverse engineered his media player and sold it on Cd/DVD whatever as media player software that could be loaded onto the hard drive. Once loaded, users could play whatever music they want all without modding their box. Thus dealing a blow to hacking the x-box, and modding the x-box. It would take all the fun out.
Kinda like the Linux based PS2
"Also I think Xbox live might make them more of a viable competitor,"
I definately agree with you on this one. As much as we like to bash Microsoft, they did well with X-box live. It has finally taken the online PC gaming experience and brought it over to consoles. However, I don't think it will be too succesful. Not always does the most technically superior devices win. I am speaking of X-box Live when I talk about this, because its nice and has loads of features, but is descriminating to a lot of users. This discrimination, mainly a broadband only, networked party is what I'm talking about and it is also what makes it so good. The truth is, not many PC users have broadband connections, and I"m willing to bet that even fewer still actually have their broadband networked. relying on networked broadband x-box users is a big step for Microsoft and they have a lot of balls for doing this. I for one would be the first to laugh at their f#ckups, but they stepped out and did it. They are innovating this time, by taking a big risk.
Personally, I think its gonna fail miserably because there won't be enough support. Give it another 4 or 5 years for broadband and home networking to catch on before it really kicks off. HOwever, we won't actually be "there" in the next 5 years unless somebody starts.
I looked at the headline and it looked like
"Quake Matter Blamed for Paired 1993 Seismic Events"
Man, they're blaming videogames for everything these days
So, DRM == copy protection. Anyone else remember where copy-protection went with games and everything for the first 15 years of commercial software? More and more annoying, until finally the companies gave up. Same thing will happen with DRM "unless the antagonists can learn from history."
I definately know what you are talking about. I have a few old 386 CGA games laying around now missing their instruction booklets. They used an odd printed color wheel with corresponding graphics on the screen as a way of keeping piracy down. Sadly, I am no longer able to enjoy those classics.
Anyway, your not all right. WHile the industry gave up on copy protection, its making a comeback. Safedisc, Safedisc 2, secu-loc et al are being employed on games now that people are able to burn CD's and grab ISO's so quickly. I don't think the industry gave up, I just think they thought it was infeasible (it was) at the time to copy CD's, so controls were never implemented.
Erm no, it has more ram. It has less than the 64mb in the X-Box, but more than the PS2's 32mb. Its got 40mb total of ram, 16 being "A-memory", 81mhz D-Ram and 24mb of MoSys 1T-Sram. I'm sure it could be made to run Linux, but as of yet, nobody is known to have cracked the disc system. You can see the rest of the specs here.
The girls, you could argue, are just a distraction in James Bond films. The gadgets are the real stars, and time and time again, they save Bond's skin.
"Obviously written by a Nerd."
Not any of the nerds here.
Obviously written by a homosexual is more like it.
Why do I still boot windows? Well, I've got three boxen, one a family machine that needs to be braindead. The rest of my family just learned about saving to disk, so I need to keep it easy and simple. This machine runs Win98 and is also my net surfing machine for when sites insist on using IE. I"m thinking about putting BeOS on this machine
My second box runs Smoothwall, and is my gateway server. I've got all my machines hooked up to this one and it routes my USB adsl modem to all the other computers.
My third box quad boots Mandrake 9.1, Suse 8.1, Windows 2000 and Windows 98. Windows 98 is a bit of a dead fish, but I keep it around due to laziness. Win 2k is there for work and games. I love PC games because of the bleeding edge graphics, the surround sound and the fact that 640x480 interlaced resolution stinks! My linux choices are purely a hobby. I keep em on and use the OS switch to pick OS. I keep it for the uber cool geekiness factor. d
"I think self-destructing DVDs are a great idea as long as I can pay for them with dollars printed with disappearing ink"
No... It works like this: I think self-destructing DVDs are a great idea as long as I can pay for them with cheques drafted and signed with disappearing ink.
At the risk of giving up my idea and possibly future fortune :), I have decided to divulge my idea on how to get independent music to the masses. Independent musicians need exposure, and the traditional means are usually too expensive. Broadcast via internet requires one to log into a site, and many listeners are passive converts to a style of music, usually developign the taste by listening to the radio as background music. My idea is to braoadcast the music from websites as background music. Bands who would want their music to get exposed would pay the website and submit the music. THe music would play in the background of the song, and the bandwidth that would be payed to constantly pipe the music would be payed by the fees for exposure. Furthermore, a new type of meta tag could be developed that would give a preference on whether a user wants to hear music at all, and if so, what type/genre of music. If a user hears a type of music they like, they can mod it up slashdot style, or buy that particular track or album via a link that refreshes in frame on the site along with the name of the song and band.
Hrm...whats my room like?
All my friends tell me that my room looks like the Nebuchadnezzar from the Matrix. Four shelves, one for each wall holding model rockets and action figures, wall 2 holding RC equipment, wall 3 holding computer and RC equipment and wall 4 holding computer equipment. I've got speakers on each wall, and a sub below my desk. A 233mhz gateway is in my closet powered by a deltech Powerite Pro 2 UPS. My main machine, a silver self built, runs a 19" dynaflat and has an AIW card in it, also connected to my TV. Connected to the AIW is my dreamcast, and the N64 is going straight to the TV. There is an old IBM thinkpad sitting around, and a very old Compaq 5528 planar PC that I'm hollowing out for a wicked casemod. There is an aquarium that i would like to one day store fish in, but it is full of power supplies keyboards and mice at the moment. My closed and shelf is full of Gundams and random models. Dilbert sits on my stereo reciever, and I've got a Shining Gundam Fighting Wing Gundam.
I"m a well rounded geek.
Not necessarily so. There was an article last year in Roadt & Track that talked all about this very car. It is true that it only exists in clay scale model form, but it makes sense. The design idea he was going for was a tear drop shade, because a perfect teardrop is one of the most aerodynamically effective shapes you can have. By calculations, it should be able to do 200mph based on the shape and the amount of hp thrown at it. I don't believe it, but give the guy some credit.
"I think they need two channels... one in original Japanese + subtitles, and one in crummy dubbed format."
Seriously, that would be fairly easy to do. Instead of wasting the extra money on buying another channel, they could simulcast the show in the original japanese track. Some tv stations use SAP (secondary audio programming) to dub their shows over in other languages. It would be very easy to carry the original show in Dub, to appeal to the masses, but broadcast the original japanese dialogue in SAP. For the subtitles, its a simple matter of using closed captioning. Have a little graphic come up at the beginning of the show on how you can go over to SAP mode for the original track, and you've pleased everybody.
Thats the easy part. My only hope is that they are able to broadcast uncut anime and not just become a 24 hour toonami.
One of those meteors will crash to earth and some invisible phantoms are going to emerge from it. They will ravage the earth for 35 years, people will seek refuge in "barrier cities" until a nicely animated, girl with hair from a shampoo ad saves us all. I read about it here
Insert Joisey-joke here.
"Does all of Jersey look like an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force? And do all guys act like Carl?
While the use of reflective materials could help to deflect some of the power of the laser, everyone forgot one thing. Conventional weapons. Adding a reflective coating to your normally camoflaged jeep or base to stop laser fire will easily be spotted by a pilot who will not hesitate to put a missile on the target. Also, it is a dead give-away for radar.
"would end up frying the electronics of the shooter, which would be annoying to the pilot."
Having your avionics system fried while flying at 900 knots over enemy territory would be a bit more than annoying don't you think?
This is late, its already been done here
your all wronge. Mike Ditka would win.
"Da Bears!"
I'll have to disagree with you on some points. While I love the fact that Bank of America has a very well designed and easy to use sight that is relatively free of pop-ups and flash animations, I cannot agree with you on their browser acceptablity. I regularly use Opera 6.05 as my browser of choice, and unless I have Opera masquerade as Internet Explorer 5.0, Bank of America will refuse me. The site will give you a page that says that it requires the use of Internet Explorer 6.0 because it requires encryption. Lets just hope that with the recent integration of Opera into cell-phones, more websites will start taking my favorite browser more seriously.