So true. I just recently bought a Pioneer DVR-108 drive at the local electronics store. Really nice drive, and I'm very pleased with it. It's exactly the same as the NEC drives, with 4x DL burning and 16x -+R burning. But, I have yet to see *ANY* -+R media that burns faster than 8x, and DVD+R9 media here is approximately 1200-1500 Yen (about $10-14 USD).
Ok, I seem to have stumbled into another product that is similar to this Ximeta NDAS enclosure when I was browsing at the local shopping center today. It's called the Kuro-Box, and it looks like it could be MUCH more Linux friendly (as it's running kernel 2.4.17...):D
You know what the hardest part of this is? Getting those computer-illiterate people who you support to use Firefox.
I've been trying to get my dad to use it (with threats like, "when the russian mafia gets your credit card because you were using IE, don't complain to me"...) but it doesn't work. And he's not terribly illiterate. I can't imagine trying to explain to my girlfriend's grandparents, "Ok, Don't click on the blue E anymore... click on the icon that looks like an orange fox"... they would never do it.
As nice as Firefox is, it's going to be an uphill battle to get those illiterate folks to switch.
Valenti said: "Nobody can allow their rights to be stolen because, if you can't retrieve your investment, you're out of the movie business,
"I don't think there's really a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that if you don't combat piracy, it will devour you in the future."
I've seen this happen so many times that it's the norm for me. A group of my friends used to pirate movies/music/apps/games/etc back in our early days of college. While it is true that there were many things we didn't buy, there were also many things that we DID buy. my DVD collection grew greatly during this period, as did my CD collection and the number of games that I owned. I mean hell, I had a pirated copy of Warcraft III, yet I forked over the $80 to get the special edition of the game when it came out. Yes, there are those assholes who decide that they will never buy anything, but most pirates will pay for things that they really enjoy. Thus, in my experience, Valenti's assertion that piracy is the downfall of the industry is wrong. If they produced something that everyone wants to see or own and sold it at a reasonable price, then even the pirates would go out and buy it.
you know, seeing integrated wifi that works with linux would be a real plus on a laptop like this. Especially if it were a non-centrino wifi card built in.
I have a Gateway 450SX non-centrino, and it runs linux really well. Everything works perfectly (except for the 56K modem, of course), but sadly I don't have internal wireless. My external WaveLAN card works great under any distro though. Rock stable laptop, not terribly expensive and everything runs great under any distro (I've tried Fedora Core 1, Gentoo and Debian).
Is it just me that sees the irony of this statement?
Like everything else, fansubbing groups are not black and white either. While there are groups who do respect licensing and US contracts, there are plenty of others who do not. And we're not just talking about AJ here (although, they're dead so can't release anymore), but there are others out there who do the same things. There are also cases where legit groups will leak releases (especially for series that got licensed before the last episode), etc. Aand since the pool of people who can actually do the fansubbing is reasonably limited, you see them moving between groups and projects pretty freely. Pretty much, fansubbing is a spectrum from those who are strict about licenses, to those who enjoy fansubbing licensed series to anger the companies.
The North American companies actually do try to "do" something about fansubbing groups. Last summer, Bandai contacted many groups about the fansubbing of Wolf's Rain, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Gundam Seed. All three were series that had previously been unannounced (except for maybe GitS), and Bandai squashed fansubbing of the series shortly after announcement. The same goes for Funimation and Full Metal Alchemist. The companies are well aware of the fansubbing community and are completely willing to use their lawyers.
As for the market, as anime and manga are becoming mainstream, there's less of a need for the translation services of fansubbing. Many North American companies have said that most new anime shows airing in Japan are licensed (usually in agreements before they even begin airing). Manga is pretty well marketed and pretty accessible at bookstores across the nation. The argument that "fansubbing creates more of a market" is much less valid now than it used to be, and many believe that the fansubbing community is a dinosaur that will soon be extinct.
'...the best thing for IBM to do would be to print out every single version as requested and send the resultant 20 tonnes or so of paper to SCO. That would keep them quiet for a while'
-- Wouldn't that be a bad thing? I mean, SCO obviously has no qualms about suing major corporations for their use of Linux even though their copyright clames haven't been proven. If the trial gets delayed, it'll just give them more time to spread their FUD and scare companies, not to mention extending the "wait and see" attitude of companies that are thinking of embracing Linux.
You could probably do something long the lines of what BitTorrent does. Use pieces from different clients on the network to aggregate your total bandwidth.
The easiest place to find a large number of Linux desktops in your local city is to visit your local college/university. Most CS departments run Linux on many desktops. I know that my University has labs full of Linux boxes.
Freedom of choice includes not paying an arm and a leg for a desktop system. I personally think it's a complete ripoff to spend $4000 on the top of the line Apple system. (but that's just me) That, and if you look at Mac gaming, you are limited by what Apple gives you. If you have a Rage 128 Pro in that G4 tower of yours, that's basically your only choice (3dfx is starting to change this, but they have been having problems as a company, so who knows what will happen). I like having the choice between a Geforce2 GTS, Voodoo5-5500, G400 Dualhead, ATi Rage 128 Pro or any of the video cards for PC's. ~ FrO
From what I've seen, people who like Apple are those who started out with it. I personally started out with an XT, so my roots are firmly in the x86 arena. But, as for those who really love Macintoshes, from what I've seen, the loyalties come from the Operating System, and not the hardware (and thus, extra microsoft-bashing from the Mac community). Those are just my observations on the subject. FrO
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errr, doesn't windows itself cost more than $100?
Does that mean Microsoft will start giving away PC hardware free?
(heh, I wish)
Then all we need are some giant fighting robots, and our future will be complete!
So true. I just recently bought a Pioneer DVR-108 drive at the local electronics store. Really nice drive, and I'm very pleased with it. It's exactly the same as the NEC drives, with 4x DL burning and 16x -+R burning. But, I have yet to see *ANY* -+R media that burns faster than 8x, and DVD+R9 media here is approximately 1200-1500 Yen (about $10-14 USD).
Ok, I seem to have stumbled into another product that is similar to this Ximeta NDAS enclosure when I was browsing at the local shopping center today. It's called the Kuro-Box, and it looks like it could be MUCH more Linux friendly (as it's running kernel 2.4.17...) :D
r o-boxfset.html
http://www.kuroutoshikou.com/products/kuro-box/ku
(btw, it's in Japanese... anyone who could translate would be really helpful... don't ask me, as I'm an illiterate assistant language teacher... lol)
What the hell are we supposed to do when this company seeks an injunction against Microsoft's Windows Update?
lots of people will be royally f*cked...
yeah, I've been thinking of doing something like this... but with my dad, he'll notice immediately and then yell at me for switching him like that...
You know what the hardest part of this is? Getting those computer-illiterate people who you support to use Firefox.
I've been trying to get my dad to use it (with threats like, "when the russian mafia gets your credit card because you were using IE, don't complain to me"...) but it doesn't work. And he's not terribly illiterate. I can't imagine trying to explain to my girlfriend's grandparents, "Ok, Don't click on the blue E anymore... click on the icon that looks like an orange fox"... they would never do it.
As nice as Firefox is, it's going to be an uphill battle to get those illiterate folks to switch.
Valenti said: "Nobody can allow their rights to be stolen because, if you can't retrieve your investment, you're out of the movie business,
"I don't think there's really a single actor or director in the world who does not believe that if you don't combat piracy, it will devour you in the future."
I've seen this happen so many times that it's the norm for me. A group of my friends used to pirate movies/music/apps/games/etc back in our early days of college. While it is true that there were many things we didn't buy, there were also many things that we DID buy. my DVD collection grew greatly during this period, as did my CD collection and the number of games that I owned. I mean hell, I had a pirated copy of Warcraft III, yet I forked over the $80 to get the special edition of the game when it came out. Yes, there are those assholes who decide that they will never buy anything, but most pirates will pay for things that they really enjoy. Thus, in my experience, Valenti's assertion that piracy is the downfall of the industry is wrong. If they produced something that everyone wants to see or own and sold it at a reasonable price, then even the pirates would go out and buy it.
Can you hook up 4 monitors to this badass configuration?
you know, seeing integrated wifi that works with linux would be a real plus on a laptop like this. Especially if it were a non-centrino wifi card built in.
I have a Gateway 450SX non-centrino, and it runs linux really well. Everything works perfectly (except for the 56K modem, of course), but sadly I don't have internal wireless. My external WaveLAN card works great under any distro though. Rock stable laptop, not terribly expensive and everything runs great under any distro (I've tried Fedora Core 1, Gentoo and Debian).
"I know you think in black and white"
Is it just me that sees the irony of this statement?
Like everything else, fansubbing groups are not black and white either. While there are groups who do respect licensing and US contracts, there are plenty of others who do not. And we're not just talking about AJ here (although, they're dead so can't release anymore), but there are others out there who do the same things. There are also cases where legit groups will leak releases (especially for series that got licensed before the last episode), etc. Aand since the pool of people who can actually do the fansubbing is reasonably limited, you see them moving between groups and projects pretty freely. Pretty much, fansubbing is a spectrum from those who are strict about licenses, to those who enjoy fansubbing licensed series to anger the companies.
The North American companies actually do try to "do" something about fansubbing groups. Last summer, Bandai contacted many groups about the fansubbing of Wolf's Rain, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Gundam Seed. All three were series that had previously been unannounced (except for maybe GitS), and Bandai squashed fansubbing of the series shortly after announcement. The same goes for Funimation and Full Metal Alchemist. The companies are well aware of the fansubbing community and are completely willing to use their lawyers.
As for the market, as anime and manga are becoming mainstream, there's less of a need for the translation services of fansubbing. Many North American companies have said that most new anime shows airing in Japan are licensed (usually in agreements before they even begin airing). Manga is pretty well marketed and pretty accessible at bookstores across the nation. The argument that "fansubbing creates more of a market" is much less valid now than it used to be, and many believe that the fansubbing community is a dinosaur that will soon be extinct.
That's what I wanna know.
I haven't seen a single 3rd party decoder/encoder for VC-9, even though it is supposedly an "open standard"...
'...the best thing for IBM to do would be to print out every single version as requested and send the resultant 20 tonnes or so of paper to SCO. That would keep them quiet for a while'
-- Wouldn't that be a bad thing? I mean, SCO obviously has no qualms about suing major corporations for their use of Linux even though their copyright clames haven't been proven. If the trial gets delayed, it'll just give them more time to spread their FUD and scare companies, not to mention extending the "wait and see" attitude of companies that are thinking of embracing Linux.
You could probably do something long the lines of what BitTorrent does. Use pieces from different clients on the network to aggregate your total bandwidth.
Do you actually get decent performance out of mini-itx computers?
I've been toying with the idea of making a HTPC-ish box, but the performance questions stop me from buying anything.
The easiest place to find a large number of Linux desktops in your local city is to visit your local college/university. Most CS departments run Linux on many desktops. I know that my University has labs full of Linux boxes.
Freedom of choice includes not paying an arm and a leg for a desktop system. I personally think it's a complete ripoff to spend $4000 on the top of the line Apple system. (but that's just me) That, and if you look at Mac gaming, you are limited by what Apple gives you. If you have a Rage 128 Pro in that G4 tower of yours, that's basically your only choice (3dfx is starting to change this, but they have been having problems as a company, so who knows what will happen). I like having the choice between a Geforce2 GTS, Voodoo5-5500, G400 Dualhead, ATi Rage 128 Pro or any of the video cards for PC's.
~ FrO
From what I've seen, people who like Apple are those who started out with it. I personally started out with an XT, so my roots are firmly in the x86 arena. But, as for those who really love Macintoshes, from what I've seen, the loyalties come from the Operating System, and not the hardware (and thus, extra microsoft-bashing from the Mac community). Those are just my observations on the subject. FrO