Anyone consider the possibility of doing the same, but targeting the people who we'd ALL love to get rid of? I'm talking about Spammers, of course. Email bug, non-malicious javascript coding that "phones home" and gives you information about Spammers, if the reply to address or postmaster sent @ spammer domain email is opened. Hmmm... Instead of freaking out over every exploit that pops up and scrambling to get patches, I wonder why people don't use it as an opportunity to their own benefit for the greater good.
You could just go to Radio Shack, buy a RF Modulator for $19.95 and use that to copy DVD's onto VHS. Whoops, didn't know THAT kind of product would let you do something like copy DVD's... Oops.
Interesting thing was, only reason I ended up getting one was because I needed to bypass a generation of hookups to play DVD's from my PC (MPEG decoder card) on my TV. My TV didn't have a composite input, and the card didn't have coax output. I tried using my VCR as a pass-through, and experienced one of the many copy protection artifacts: fading signal.
Any RF Modulator effectively removes the out-of-view sync and signal information. Watch the signal on an underscanned monitor and you'll see three fading in-and-out grey boxes below the last INTENDED viewable line. An example use of this area would be closed-captioning... except that it's usually placed at the top.
In any case, if you want to make nice, high-quality dubs from DVD to VHS... an RF Modulator will do the trick. Otherwise... you can just *ahems* use it for the legal reason that I do: To watch DVD's on my TV that doesn't have compsite inputs.
The thing that you probably don't realise is that the majority of all this spam that comes in use reply addresses that are fake or do not exist. By replying to any sort of spam, even if it includes a "remove" link at the bottom of the message... usually only ends up CONFIRMING that the spammers sent their email to a live address instead of doing what you want... that is, if the address is actually real.
The best way to avoid spam? Use an ISP that uses the blackhole service, use a separate free-email account for signing up on pages you DO want to get updates from, and delete all unwanted spam you do get.
Unfortunately... some ISP's don't seem to give a shit about people using their bandwidth or services to spam. I've given up on tracking, resolving IP addresses and mailservers. Too much work for something that may just end up getting deleted by tech support.
For those of you who run your own domains, etc... Here's something to consider: When I initially set up my domain, I had all non-account email sent to my pop address. A global forward for nonexisting users. I got spam constantly, usually to root, webmaster, postmaster, etc. Spammers find a new domain and just include the default usernames. Since I disabled the forwards for "webmaster", my spam has cut by more than 95%. I also created an alias for the links on my site, so if spambots ever overload that account, I can kill the alias, make a new one and change the links on the page. My reply-to address is the account itself, so if someone sends me email through the link from my site and I respond, then they know my true contact address.
Many ways to avoid getting spammed, but the best rule is to use common sense when you give out your email address. For web-based forms, etc... use a throwaway. You may also want to consider setting up aliases, using free accounts and personalities for mailing lists. I use a different email address for each mailing list I'm on... They all happen to forward to the same popbox. I know, for certain, some mailing lists were used to obtain addresses to spam.
It's amazing... I'm afraid I'd have to admit that I was a bit late to discover "Abuse", but in this day and age of overblown FPS, 3GHz minimum system requirements and whatnot... I stumbled upon Abuse in the clearance bins at Fry's Electronics. Only $10, why the hell not? This ended up becoming one of the BEST games I've ever played, for entertainment value alone. I've never had a game scare the shit out of me so bad. Quake3? *yawn* Abuse? Suspense will kill you if you play it in a dark room at 4am in the morning with your speakers close by and reciever cranked up.
Yeah, I bought Abuse long after Crack Dot Com closed its doors, but it's too bad the spirit of the company probably won't be kept alive when this domain finally changes hands.
It's been a long while since I bought Abuse, and it's still up there as one of the better games I've played in my life. Good job, boys.
First off... most people buy a laptop for that portability factor, not to mention desk space saving capabilities. You start adding stuff like this, you might as well just buy a whole desktop for the fraction of the total cost.
Then again, it helps if you're going to use it to do as much as you can with one single computer. Do *everything* on your laptop. Bring it along, do whatever, take it home, do everything else.
I would say the one saving grace of this unit is that it probably won't be limited to the laptop that you buy, like docking stations can be... and docking stations are close to the same price that unit is being sold for.
My question is whether or not he PCMCIA bandwidth could really handle everything I'd put in that tower. When you do what I do on my desktop... If everything was externally connected, even firewire wouldn't have sufficient bandwidth.
Most high end laptops usually come with SCSI ports built in, plus two serial (or just one), parallel and USB. Hard to imagine what else could possibly be added to the case that wouldn't normally be taken care of with a PCMCIA card. Take two cards, one ethernet, one scsi if one isn't built into your laptop... and you're close to about as capable as that thing is, save the hassle of numerous external power cords and units.
Suppose I wanted to stick my Voodoo3 card into that desktop unit, how would I keep the laptop from 'enabling' its own video card and expecting that to be used. Even docking stations don't add video capabilities, they just extend the plug that's already built into the lappy.
There also comes the concern that it'll all be through PCMCIA. What if you're a SCSI fiend like me? Nothing in that tower would be usable until after drivers are loaded (presumably), so how do you boot from SCSI on the desktop adaptor if that's your preference?
Sounds like a nifty fad-gadget to me, but what you could really stick on that system wouldn't be much more than extrataneous stuff that your laptop would probably most likely be capable of doing on its own.
My best guess would be you could just add a CD Recorder (and even then, internal laptop CDR drives are getting cheap), ethernet card (and if you take your laptop to work, chances are you ALREADY have a PCMCIA lan card), sound card (oh wait, they're already built in), uhh..er... another floppy drive? (Cheaper to buy an external floppy if your lappy doesn't come with a hot swappable drive bay)
Gee, it sounds like I can't really come up with too much use for this sucker. Just another neat-o expensive novelty item. Like an iOpener. (though the iopener was a bit cheaper.)
We're not yet over the hump on the
growth curve where the market takes off and the price drops as you've observed with CD-R's. Also, a portion of the
cost of most blank media goes to the RIAA megacorps through the federal government, because someone,
somewhere, will use some of that media to PIRATE THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
That's the whole irony of it all. the cost differences to manufacture a DVD versus a CD is insignificant, less than a buck difference from what I remember...
As far as the 'royalty' goes... kind of hard to fathom how much money the RIAA would actually get when buying a 50 pack spindle for $15 means each blank only costs $0.30 each. Then again, it probably adds up. Like someone else said, distribution/shipping probably makes up for more than the majority of the sale price of such blanks. I wonder if anyone has any information at all as to how much of each blank goes to where. From the looks of it, manufacturers are making very little profit nowadays if we're working it out to under a half a buck for each disc.
Consider how much pressed releases cost, it makes you wonder why they're so damn expensive. $15+ for a new release when a blank disc costs less than a buck. I've checked out manufacturing costs myself when I was considering having discs pressed up for a label release I was working on. For a small lot of 1000 copies, it was still less than a buck per disc, including jewel cases, 4 colour inserts, shrink wrapping, etc... Then again, we *ALL* know where all that extra money is going.
It was a long day at work for me... but AFAICR, only the "music only" blanks were supposenly subject to taxes/fees for royalty payments. The only difference between CDR's and Music Only CDR's is the digital copy protection bit. Personally, I see it more as a stupidity tax for buying a unit that requires proprietary discs over standard plain old blanks. There was also the infamous 'dat tax' that was passed a few years back... back when the music industry was really whining how cassette tape dubbing was killing sales and DAT is too good of quality to let just any ordinary home user get away with copying music. Now it's MP3's and Napster... but all along, record sales keep going up. Go figure. However, I know I'm just preaching to the congregation here.
Re the "burning" questions pun, purely unintentional, but amusing nonetheless.:)
Okay, I'm probably one of those (lucky/stupid as hell?) few folks who have had a CDR for more than 5 years. I bought my Sony 920S Spressa drive a while ago, and even for its now slow 2x burning speeds, the thing continues to perform. (knock on wood)
Back when I first got the thing, I was lucky enough to even find blank CDR's in stores, much worse... they usually came at a price of about $9.99 to $14.99 each.
Over the past 5 or so years... i've watched the prices of CDR's plummet. Yesterday at Staples, I bought a 50 pack spindle of 80 minute blanks for $14.98. My heart sank into my gut when I saw this. All I had to do was wait about a half decade for everything to literally be a fraction of what it cost me to begin with.
The point I wanted to bring up is that... now that CDR Drives and blanks are essentially dirt cheap, and the software is dumbed-down enough for just about anybody to use it... Why did they get so cheap? The big concern, I thought, was the fact that people could easily make digitally perfect copies for little to no cost.
Compare this to DVD writer blanks and recorders. They've existed for a little while now... In the first two years after I bought my CDR, the prices at least went down by half... To the point to where it was actually cost effective (gasp!) to burn copies.
At this point, the cost of DVD blanks are still high enough to reenforce the argument that DeCSS (while it can be used as a tool for such) wasn't made for piracy... after all, the equipment costs too much and blanks are still higher than the cost of buying the actual DVD release itself.
My question is... with so much concern about MP3's, duplicating CD's, why did the CDR media get so insanely cheap... and why is the DVD media continuing to be so expensive? By now, I expected DVD duplicating media to get cheaper.
At this point, it looks like nobody really cares about what we do with CD's. Even after the advent of MPEG4/DivX;-) compressing DVD films at reasonable quality small enough to fit on a single CDR. What the hell is going on here?
I can't really buy the argument that it costs more to make DVD blanks over CDR blanks. To manufacture DVD's is barely more expensive that CD's... and the scary thing is that I can typically find DVD movies on sale for LESS than music CD's on sale.
Okay, I've rambled on enough. Any other thoughts, folks?
Well, about a year and a half ago, I was working for Mindspring Technical Support, down in the suck-fest known as Atlanta. This essentially was my general 'desk' setup and atmosphere...
Typically there were two rows of double sided cubicle walls, each side handled 4 segments, for 16 total seats per row. Typically you just hoped your seat was open and that you could use the same PC as the day before. If not, you only hoped you were sent to a PC that was working. Every shift had to share a seat, so you had to be sure to get out of your seat quickly for the fellow taking over to be able to start work on time. Each row on each side typically had two halogen lamps near columns. So, it was cramped, always shared and typically darker than a goth club.
Personally, I didn't mind that, but I don't know how it is now... the smell was absolutely fucking atrotious... The floor rarely had adequete ventilaton. (You guessed it, one person comes in sick, nearly the entire row ended up calling in sick a few days later) You could also imagine the atmosphere (sound wise) with many people packed into one floor with the tight spaces of the cubicle rows. If there were enough calls going on at one moment, unless you had your head BURIED in between the headphones, the noise was actually sometimes defening. Actually more annoying than listening to white noise.
That was the last time I had any sort of office/cubicle desk work.
My own personal office environment preference would simply include better spacing, clean carpets and better isolation for each cubicle to help deal with noise. That is, if I had to work at Mindspring again.
To be fair... Mindspring was actually a rather fun (in between the headaches of various catasrophies) place to work, extremely laid back... which pretty much compenstated for the evironment at times, and is sure a hell of a lot better than your typical shirt-and-tie stuffy office environment. One fellow was apparently comfortable enough showing up to work wearing only a bathrobe (tightly tied closed, thank god) and slippers. *shrugs* Being able to relax and feel laid back at work does a lot more than anestetics and impressive architecture. I probably would go insane being in an office space that was designed more for looks rather than helping the employee settle in and get work done.
Why does the argument keep continuing that DeCSS is only ment for pirating/copying DVD's when the cost of copying a disc is much higher than buying the DVD itself? Doesn't seem to me that the MPAA and prosecuters are really thinking about this when it's cheaper for me to buy two DVD's than it is to copy one (provided I had already purchased a DVD Recorder).
My other question stems from the first... By the time DVD Recorders are cheap enough and blanks are cost effective, do you think maybe we'll have moved on to some other standard for video/audio?
Why does there seem to be no mention of other ways to copy a DVD, means that have been in use for a while now? A $15.95 radio shack RF Modulator enables you to copy a DVD to VHS, at quality just as good as buying a retail VHS copy of a movie. Rent, dub, return. Out of pocket expense? Maybe $5.
Suppose this case wins in favor of the MPAA. What do you think will happen then? Everyone and their grandmother knows it can be done, and the resources can be had. Aside from making a scene by suing the fuck out of everyone (even those remotely not not even involved with the creation of DeCSS), they're not accomplishing anything, IMHO.
If the defendants win this round, we can certainly expect to see many future rounds of appeals. Aside from scare tactics from the MPAA, what do you think we can come to expect from a victory in this case? New-and-improved DVD encryption implentation rendering all current models useless due to new means of 'protecting' their content? I'm wondering if anyone else thinks that changes would be made to further "prevent" from these sort of things happening again. Or can we just expect more money being wasted by the MPAA trying to get their Lawyers to find new ways to sue people?
All in all, do you think the ends justify the means? (yes, this is intended to be an incredibly inspecific question)
Uhm, slightly OT, but uhm, you have to be an idiot to be willing to pay to remove ads from websites when you can visit several places and download software that does this for FREE...
Both act as a proxy that allows you to enable or disable ad filtering. Banners, ad boxes, etc, just show up as a little broken image icon on your screen. I use Guidescope, and personally, I think it rocks.
The EasyBuy2000 (also known for their MPTrip MP3 discman) website has had flashable roms in carts (aka, the "Gameboy Back up System") for a while now. This link will take you there.
More information from their web site:
Download ROMS from the internet into a special cartridge and play it on your handheld Gameboy (color roms will play in color!).Also this unit will allow you to copy a Gb game directly. GB Xchanger (the device which programs the special GB cartridge).It plugs in the printer port. (via a cable) GB Genius card (32 Mb) can hold 40-100 games black&white or 2-8 color games. Software which allows the transfer of roms from the Pc to the cartridge.
Well... there's a lot that could be said, and obviously a lot of sides to every situation.
MP3's are favoured as a format because it gives you fairly decent sound quality for a small size. MP3's are despised as a format because the record labels are having a harder time to control the standard as they did with cassette tapes and CDR's.
Let's break that down. MP3's sound like crap at the typical bitrate they are sent out in (128k), but most people who aren't anal-retentive audiophiles like myself, don't give a shit. Record companies don't like this because they no longer truly have control. Did they ever really? I mean, it's *EASIER* to just have your friend burn a CDR copy than it is to deal with downloading MP3's on Napster... unless you have broadband, which I don't. Plus, relying on others puts you in the situation where you have to depend on them for a good source... and this rarely happens for several reasons: Bad CD ripping, using lousy MP3 encoders (Xing is a good example), or Napster showing incomplete downloads as available tracks. My personal favourite 'bad' MP3 file is the sort where dumbfuck kids use their sound cards to record something instead of trying to bypass it through ripping. What happened once was a kid left his mic plugged in, and it picked up everything he was doing while recording the track. He didn't bother to listen to the track. Let's just say I know what kind of porn he likes best.
I'm going to try to spare being redundant as much as possible, but there are some overall points that really make me wonder every time...
Record sales are up this year, despite the existance of MP3's, Napster and other sharing devices. Hmmm... that kind of speaks for itself. Let's also forget that one of the things FUELING the free-for-all MP3 sharing are the overwhelming prices at the record store. Unless you do online ordering with a slew of coupons for CDNow, etc... you're paying close to $18 a CD at Tower or HMV. Weren't the big-five record companies recently accused of unfair price fixing practices? Why haven't prices gone down since then?
Other people mainly use it as a form of shareware. Try before you buy. I think the record companies fear this idea as much as most record companies don't like releasing singles... because it cuts into sales. How's that? Well... when you buy a single, you pay $6 for one song that you want, plus some goodies, depending on what was put on the single. You would probably avoid buying the album because you have that ONE song you want... same for downloading the MP3. We are no longer restricted to buying entire albums full of filler just to get that one song we want.
People like to use the argument that we're hurting artists by not buying (if that's the case) their actual releases. Uhm, I'm sorry, if you ever saw Courtney Love's rant (and what a great one it was), or even know about the entertainment industry in general, some bands, or most, really don't make that much money off sales in general. Hard to imagine (not) that record companies make close to 70% of the sales on ALL records they sell. She made the very valid point that true artists are more concerned with appealing to their fans and just letting their work being heard, as opposed to making sure that they get every single goddamn dime off sales... (or penny, depending on how their contract screwed the over) After all, TLC, Toni Braxton are just two of the mega-selling artists who have had to file for BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION because of unfair contractual agreements. Everyone should know by now (even Metallica, those dickweeds) that record companies make more than half of the money on all record sales.
What is the issue here, really? Control. Artists have the option. If they don't mind working that 9 to 5 job while doing their music on their own time and giving it out for people to enjoy, then most do that. Punk bands like Dropkick Murphys tour for a living, they don't rely on record sales. (The band ENCOURAGES people to bootleg, HEAVILY)
It's just so hard to believe (sarcasm) that a record company that makes billions would just want to control the latest attempt in which they can be bypassed. Cassette tapes, CDR's, now MP3's. (And DeCss/DivX;-) for movies, VHS/Betamax) It's just so ironic that the artists that probably were lucky enough to get high yielding contracts are the ones complaining the loudest. Smaller-time bands (for the most part) don't care. All this is too petty for them... they won't take part in the billion dollar squabbling because IT DOESN'T INVOLVE THEM. They won't see a dime of all that money that is "lost" because someone downloaded the latest N'Sync MP3. They still play and create music because they want to. I just wonder if both the record companies and Selloutica realise that they're both fueling the fire by raising such a stink.
My mother was so adamant about not letting me buy a CDR a few years back... I had to explain to her exactly what a CDR was and what I could do with it. She thought all I was going to do was rent music at Blockbuster (shows you how much she knows about things like this) and copy everything. I explained to her that I mainly wanted to get a CDR so that I could put my 400+ piece vinyl collection onto CDR's... for backup. Her response? "But isn't that bootlegging?" Flash forward to the future. She learned about MP3's due to all the stories she kept seeing on major news sites. She read Metallica's venomous statements here and there. (Mind you, she's a pretty hip lady.:) After she started reading all the sides to this situation, she wanted me to help her install Napster so she could start downloading MP3's herself. (Her exact words: "Screw those greedy bastards!") If my own MOTHER could get turned off by the actions of the RIAA and others who protest, what could that say about other non-geekish folks who aren't accustomed to ripping apart their PC's and reading Slashdot every day?
But still, I just wish people would rip CD's properly...
Could it be that Intel is finally starting to realise how much impact AMD has had on its once monopolistic market? (not to mention their continuing monopolistic practices)
I've been a huge fan of AMD ever since their 386 DX/40's came out. AMD has done quite an impressive job trying to keep up with Intel, even though they're always doomed to be one step behind while Intel creates and pushes new standards all over the place just to bully their competitors.
I haven't bought a single Intel chip since '94, and I can't really say I've noticed any 'issues' at all with my AMD's.
Now, my question is this... why does Intel think it can continue to get away with such devious practices (remember the FP bugs, the P3 serials?) and extrememly high markups on their chips...when you might as well be paying for a chip that may just be a step below (remember how they marked pentiums based on highest stable clock speeds rather than manufacturing them all independently for a set speed?)... Quite frankly, I don't like what Intel does. At this point, I don't think Intel really has had much going for it other than name recognition.
A year or 2 ago, 50% of the cds I bought sucked and I had no way to find out until after i bought it; like buying a DVD only because of the trailer of the movie.
I just find the whole thing convienent, honestly. There's plenty of mom-and-pop video shops that rent VHS and DVD movies... usually they get their stock by simply going to the nearby Tower and buying the films as they are released.
This could probably be considered a worse thing solely for the reason that the shop is continuing to make money off a purchase (of which the studios don't see a dime of) by renting it... but it is common practice and widely "accepted". Of course, I use that term loosely.
In THIS case... Someone buys the CD, rips it to MP3 and gives it away for free to other users who download from them. I'm not even going to begin to get into the fair use laws, I'm sure everyone has them memorized by now.
Now, with this survey (which, no doubt, the results of which actually hold true for a LOT of us), they're saying that Napster sharing has increased sales by allowing people to preview what they were interested in.
I think the same could hold true for the video shops. Most people rent a movie once and forget about it. Okay, so, there's lost money here because the video shop is probably not quite doing things legally... However, if someone rents the video, likes it, buys it... nobody complains.
Apples and oranges, perhaps... but there are a lot of strong parallels here.
You can just go to hell, but be sure to bring back some souviners...
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone consider the possibility of doing the same, but targeting the people who we'd ALL love to get rid of? I'm talking about Spammers, of course. Email bug, non-malicious javascript coding that "phones home" and gives you information about Spammers, if the reply to address or postmaster sent @ spammer domain email is opened. Hmmm... Instead of freaking out over every exploit that pops up and scrambling to get patches, I wonder why people don't use it as an opportunity to their own benefit for the greater good.
OR...
You could just go to Radio Shack, buy a RF Modulator for $19.95 and use that to copy DVD's onto VHS. Whoops, didn't know THAT kind of product would let you do something like copy DVD's... Oops.
Interesting thing was, only reason I ended up getting one was because I needed to bypass a generation of hookups to play DVD's from my PC (MPEG decoder card) on my TV. My TV didn't have a composite input, and the card didn't have coax output. I tried using my VCR as a pass-through, and experienced one of the many copy protection artifacts: fading signal.
Any RF Modulator effectively removes the out-of-view sync and signal information. Watch the signal on an underscanned monitor and you'll see three fading in-and-out grey boxes below the last INTENDED viewable line. An example use of this area would be closed-captioning... except that it's usually placed at the top.
In any case, if you want to make nice, high-quality dubs from DVD to VHS... an RF Modulator will do the trick. Otherwise... you can just *ahems* use it for the legal reason that I do: To watch DVD's on my TV that doesn't have compsite inputs.
The thing that you probably don't realise is that the majority of all this spam that comes in use reply addresses that are fake or do not exist. By replying to any sort of spam, even if it includes a "remove" link at the bottom of the message... usually only ends up CONFIRMING that the spammers sent their email to a live address instead of doing what you want... that is, if the address is actually real.
The best way to avoid spam? Use an ISP that uses the blackhole service, use a separate free-email account for signing up on pages you DO want to get updates from, and delete all unwanted spam you do get.
Unfortunately... some ISP's don't seem to give a shit about people using their bandwidth or services to spam. I've given up on tracking, resolving IP addresses and mailservers. Too much work for something that may just end up getting deleted by tech support.
For those of you who run your own domains, etc... Here's something to consider: When I initially set up my domain, I had all non-account email sent to my pop address. A global forward for nonexisting users. I got spam constantly, usually to root, webmaster, postmaster, etc. Spammers find a new domain and just include the default usernames. Since I disabled the forwards for "webmaster", my spam has cut by more than 95%. I also created an alias for the links on my site, so if spambots ever overload that account, I can kill the alias, make a new one and change the links on the page. My reply-to address is the account itself, so if someone sends me email through the link from my site and I respond, then they know my true contact address.
Many ways to avoid getting spammed, but the best rule is to use common sense when you give out your email address. For web-based forms, etc... use a throwaway. You may also want to consider setting up aliases, using free accounts and personalities for mailing lists. I use a different email address for each mailing list I'm on... They all happen to forward to the same popbox. I know, for certain, some mailing lists were used to obtain addresses to spam.
Best defense is not letting them know you exist.
It's amazing... I'm afraid I'd have to admit that I was a bit late to discover "Abuse", but in this day and age of overblown FPS, 3GHz minimum system requirements and whatnot... I stumbled upon Abuse in the clearance bins at Fry's Electronics. Only $10, why the hell not? This ended up becoming one of the BEST games I've ever played, for entertainment value alone. I've never had a game scare the shit out of me so bad. Quake3? *yawn* Abuse? Suspense will kill you if you play it in a dark room at 4am in the morning with your speakers close by and reciever cranked up.
Yeah, I bought Abuse long after Crack Dot Com closed its doors, but it's too bad the spirit of the company probably won't be kept alive when this domain finally changes hands.
It's been a long while since I bought Abuse, and it's still up there as one of the better games I've played in my life. Good job, boys.
This product makes me say two things...
Hey! That's neat!
and
Hey! What a waste of money!
First off... most people buy a laptop for that portability factor, not to mention desk space saving capabilities. You start adding stuff like this, you might as well just buy a whole desktop for the fraction of the total cost.
Then again, it helps if you're going to use it to do as much as you can with one single computer. Do *everything* on your laptop. Bring it along, do whatever, take it home, do everything else.
I would say the one saving grace of this unit is that it probably won't be limited to the laptop that you buy, like docking stations can be... and docking stations are close to the same price that unit is being sold for.
My question is whether or not he PCMCIA bandwidth could really handle everything I'd put in that tower. When you do what I do on my desktop... If everything was externally connected, even firewire wouldn't have sufficient bandwidth.
Most high end laptops usually come with SCSI ports built in, plus two serial (or just one), parallel and USB. Hard to imagine what else could possibly be added to the case that wouldn't normally be taken care of with a PCMCIA card. Take two cards, one ethernet, one scsi if one isn't built into your laptop... and you're close to about as capable as that thing is, save the hassle of numerous external power cords and units.
Suppose I wanted to stick my Voodoo3 card into that desktop unit, how would I keep the laptop from 'enabling' its own video card and expecting that to be used. Even docking stations don't add video capabilities, they just extend the plug that's already built into the lappy.
There also comes the concern that it'll all be through PCMCIA. What if you're a SCSI fiend like me? Nothing in that tower would be usable until after drivers are loaded (presumably), so how do you boot from SCSI on the desktop adaptor if that's your preference?
Sounds like a nifty fad-gadget to me, but what you could really stick on that system wouldn't be much more than extrataneous stuff that your laptop would probably most likely be capable of doing on its own.
My best guess would be you could just add a CD Recorder (and even then, internal laptop CDR drives are getting cheap), ethernet card (and if you take your laptop to work, chances are you ALREADY have a PCMCIA lan card), sound card (oh wait, they're already built in), uhh..er... another floppy drive? (Cheaper to buy an external floppy if your lappy doesn't come with a hot swappable drive bay)
Gee, it sounds like I can't really come up with too much use for this sucker. Just another neat-o expensive novelty item. Like an iOpener. (though the iopener was a bit cheaper.)
Whee.
We're not yet over the hump on the growth curve where the market takes off and the price drops as you've observed with CD-R's. Also, a portion of the cost of most blank media goes to the RIAA megacorps through the federal government, because someone, somewhere, will use some of that media to PIRATE THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
:)
That's the whole irony of it all. the cost differences to manufacture a DVD versus a CD is insignificant, less than a buck difference from what I remember...
As far as the 'royalty' goes... kind of hard to fathom how much money the RIAA would actually get when buying a 50 pack spindle for $15 means each blank only costs $0.30 each. Then again, it probably adds up. Like someone else said, distribution/shipping probably makes up for more than the majority of the sale price of such blanks. I wonder if anyone has any information at all as to how much of each blank goes to where. From the looks of it, manufacturers are making very little profit nowadays if we're working it out to under a half a buck for each disc.
Consider how much pressed releases cost, it makes you wonder why they're so damn expensive. $15+ for a new release when a blank disc costs less than a buck. I've checked out manufacturing costs myself when I was considering having discs pressed up for a label release I was working on. For a small lot of 1000 copies, it was still less than a buck per disc, including jewel cases, 4 colour inserts, shrink wrapping, etc... Then again, we *ALL* know where all that extra money is going.
It was a long day at work for me... but AFAICR, only the "music only" blanks were supposenly subject to taxes/fees for royalty payments. The only difference between CDR's and Music Only CDR's is the digital copy protection bit. Personally, I see it more as a stupidity tax for buying a unit that requires proprietary discs over standard plain old blanks. There was also the infamous 'dat tax' that was passed a few years back... back when the music industry was really whining how cassette tape dubbing was killing sales and DAT is too good of quality to let just any ordinary home user get away with copying music. Now it's MP3's and Napster... but all along, record sales keep going up. Go figure. However, I know I'm just preaching to the congregation here.
Re the "burning" questions pun, purely unintentional, but amusing nonetheless.
Okay, I'm probably one of those (lucky/stupid as hell?) few folks who have had a CDR for more than 5 years. I bought my Sony 920S Spressa drive a while ago, and even for its now slow 2x burning speeds, the thing continues to perform. (knock on wood)
Back when I first got the thing, I was lucky enough to even find blank CDR's in stores, much worse... they usually came at a price of about $9.99 to $14.99 each.
Over the past 5 or so years... i've watched the prices of CDR's plummet. Yesterday at Staples, I bought a 50 pack spindle of 80 minute blanks for $14.98. My heart sank into my gut when I saw this. All I had to do was wait about a half decade for everything to literally be a fraction of what it cost me to begin with.
The point I wanted to bring up is that... now that CDR Drives and blanks are essentially dirt cheap, and the software is dumbed-down enough for just about anybody to use it... Why did they get so cheap? The big concern, I thought, was the fact that people could easily make digitally perfect copies for little to no cost.
Compare this to DVD writer blanks and recorders. They've existed for a little while now... In the first two years after I bought my CDR, the prices at least went down by half... To the point to where it was actually cost effective (gasp!) to burn copies.
At this point, the cost of DVD blanks are still high enough to reenforce the argument that DeCSS (while it can be used as a tool for such) wasn't made for piracy... after all, the equipment costs too much and blanks are still higher than the cost of buying the actual DVD release itself.
My question is... with so much concern about MP3's, duplicating CD's, why did the CDR media get so insanely cheap... and why is the DVD media continuing to be so expensive? By now, I expected DVD duplicating media to get cheaper.
At this point, it looks like nobody really cares about what we do with CD's. Even after the advent of MPEG4/DivX;-) compressing DVD films at reasonable quality small enough to fit on a single CDR. What the hell is going on here?
I can't really buy the argument that it costs more to make DVD blanks over CDR blanks. To manufacture DVD's is barely more expensive that CD's... and the scary thing is that I can typically find DVD movies on sale for LESS than music CD's on sale.
Okay, I've rambled on enough. Any other thoughts, folks?
Whee.
Buggy url's in a story about a buggy release. Go figure. :-)
Corrected URL's:
Bugzilla
and
Linux Newbie.
A more specific link for Bugzilla.
Whee.
I wonder what would happen to my server if, by chance, I could register slashdot.us...
Well, about a year and a half ago, I was working for Mindspring Technical Support, down in the suck-fest known as Atlanta. This essentially was my general 'desk' setup and atmosphere...
Typically there were two rows of double sided cubicle walls, each side handled 4 segments, for 16 total seats per row. Typically you just hoped your seat was open and that you could use the same PC as the day before. If not, you only hoped you were sent to a PC that was working. Every shift had to share a seat, so you had to be sure to get out of your seat quickly for the fellow taking over to be able to start work on time. Each row on each side typically had two halogen lamps near columns. So, it was cramped, always shared and typically darker than a goth club.
Personally, I didn't mind that, but I don't know how it is now... the smell was absolutely fucking atrotious... The floor rarely had adequete ventilaton. (You guessed it, one person comes in sick, nearly the entire row ended up calling in sick a few days later) You could also imagine the atmosphere (sound wise) with many people packed into one floor with the tight spaces of the cubicle rows. If there were enough calls going on at one moment, unless you had your head BURIED in between the headphones, the noise was actually sometimes defening. Actually more annoying than listening to white noise.
That was the last time I had any sort of office/cubicle desk work.
My own personal office environment preference would simply include better spacing, clean carpets and better isolation for each cubicle to help deal with noise. That is, if I had to work at Mindspring again.
To be fair... Mindspring was actually a rather fun (in between the headaches of various catasrophies) place to work, extremely laid back... which pretty much compenstated for the evironment at times, and is sure a hell of a lot better than your typical shirt-and-tie stuffy office environment. One fellow was apparently comfortable enough showing up to work wearing only a bathrobe (tightly tied closed, thank god) and slippers. *shrugs* Being able to relax and feel laid back at work does a lot more than anestetics and impressive architecture. I probably would go insane being in an office space that was designed more for looks rather than helping the employee settle in and get work done.
Insufficient funds, charging $3 fee. Insufficient funds...
Why does the argument keep continuing that DeCSS is only ment for pirating/copying DVD's when the cost of copying a disc is much higher than buying the DVD itself? Doesn't seem to me that the MPAA and prosecuters are really thinking about this when it's cheaper for me to buy two DVD's than it is to copy one (provided I had already purchased a DVD Recorder).
My other question stems from the first... By the time DVD Recorders are cheap enough and blanks are cost effective, do you think maybe we'll have moved on to some other standard for video/audio?
Why does there seem to be no mention of other ways to copy a DVD, means that have been in use for a while now? A $15.95 radio shack RF Modulator enables you to copy a DVD to VHS, at quality just as good as buying a retail VHS copy of a movie. Rent, dub, return. Out of pocket expense? Maybe $5.
Suppose this case wins in favor of the MPAA. What do you think will happen then? Everyone and their grandmother knows it can be done, and the resources can be had. Aside from making a scene by suing the fuck out of everyone (even those remotely not not even involved with the creation of DeCSS), they're not accomplishing anything, IMHO.
If the defendants win this round, we can certainly expect to see many future rounds of appeals. Aside from scare tactics from the MPAA, what do you think we can come to expect from a victory in this case? New-and-improved DVD encryption implentation rendering all current models useless due to new means of 'protecting' their content? I'm wondering if anyone else thinks that changes would be made to further "prevent" from these sort of things happening again. Or can we just expect more money being wasted by the MPAA trying to get their Lawyers to find new ways to sue people?
All in all, do you think the ends justify the means? (yes, this is intended to be an incredibly inspecific question)
if it ain't your ass, it's your elbow...
Uhm, slightly OT, but uhm, you have to be an idiot to be willing to pay to remove ads from websites when you can visit several places and download software that does this for FREE...
http://www.junkbuster.com/
and
http://www.guidescope.com
Both act as a proxy that allows you to enable or disable ad filtering. Banners, ad boxes, etc, just show up as a little broken image icon on your screen. I use Guidescope, and personally, I think it rocks.
The EasyBuy2000 (also known for their MPTrip MP3 discman) website has had flashable roms in carts (aka, the "Gameboy Back up System") for a while now. This link will take you there.
More information from their web site:
Download ROMS from the internet into a special cartridge and play it on your handheld Gameboy (color roms will play in color!).Also this unit will allow you to copy a Gb game directly.
GB Xchanger (the device which programs the special GB cartridge).It plugs in the printer port. (via a cable)
GB Genius card (32 Mb) can hold 40-100 games black&white or 2-8 color games.
Software which allows the transfer of roms from the Pc to the cartridge.
So, again, old news.
Well... there's a lot that could be said, and obviously a lot of sides to every situation.
;-) for movies, VHS/Betamax) It's just so ironic that the artists that probably were lucky enough to get high yielding contracts are the ones complaining the loudest. Smaller-time bands (for the most part) don't care. All this is too petty for them... they won't take part in the billion dollar squabbling because IT DOESN'T INVOLVE THEM. They won't see a dime of all that money that is "lost" because someone downloaded the latest N'Sync MP3. They still play and create music because they want to. I just wonder if both the record companies and Selloutica realise that they're both fueling the fire by raising such a stink.
:) After she started reading all the sides to this situation, she wanted me to help her install Napster so she could start downloading MP3's herself. (Her exact words: "Screw those greedy bastards!") If my own MOTHER could get turned off by the actions of the RIAA and others who protest, what could that say about other non-geekish folks who aren't accustomed to ripping apart their PC's and reading Slashdot every day?
MP3's are favoured as a format because it gives you fairly decent sound quality for a small size. MP3's are despised as a format because the record labels are having a harder time to control the standard as they did with cassette tapes and CDR's.
Let's break that down. MP3's sound like crap at the typical bitrate they are sent out in (128k), but most people who aren't anal-retentive audiophiles like myself, don't give a shit.
Record companies don't like this because they no longer truly have control. Did they ever really? I mean, it's *EASIER* to just have your friend burn a CDR copy than it is to deal with downloading MP3's on Napster... unless you have broadband, which I don't. Plus, relying on others puts you in the situation where you have to depend on them for a good source... and this rarely happens for several reasons: Bad CD ripping, using lousy MP3 encoders (Xing is a good example), or Napster showing incomplete downloads as available tracks. My personal favourite 'bad' MP3 file is the sort where dumbfuck kids use their sound cards to record something instead of trying to bypass it through ripping. What happened once was a kid left his mic plugged in, and it picked up everything he was doing while recording the track. He didn't bother to listen to the track. Let's just say I know what kind of porn he likes best.
I'm going to try to spare being redundant as much as possible, but there are some overall points that really make me wonder every time...
Record sales are up this year, despite the existance of MP3's, Napster and other sharing devices. Hmmm... that kind of speaks for itself. Let's also forget that one of the things FUELING the free-for-all MP3 sharing are the overwhelming prices at the record store. Unless you do online ordering with a slew of coupons for CDNow, etc... you're paying close to $18 a CD at Tower or HMV. Weren't the big-five record companies recently accused of unfair price fixing practices? Why haven't prices gone down since then?
Other people mainly use it as a form of shareware. Try before you buy. I think the record companies fear this idea as much as most record companies don't like releasing singles... because it cuts into sales. How's that? Well... when you buy a single, you pay $6 for one song that you want, plus some goodies, depending on what was put on the single. You would probably avoid buying the album because you have that ONE song you want... same for downloading the MP3. We are no longer restricted to buying entire albums full of filler just to get that one song we want.
People like to use the argument that we're hurting artists by not buying (if that's the case) their actual releases. Uhm, I'm sorry, if you ever saw Courtney Love's rant (and what a great one it was), or even know about the entertainment industry in general, some bands, or most, really don't make that much money off sales in general. Hard to imagine (not) that record companies make close to 70% of the sales on ALL records they sell. She made the very valid point that true artists are more concerned with appealing to their fans and just letting their work being heard, as opposed to making sure that they get every single goddamn dime off sales... (or penny, depending on how their contract screwed the over) After all, TLC, Toni Braxton are just two of the mega-selling artists who have had to file for BANKRUPTCY PROTECTION because of unfair contractual agreements. Everyone should know by now (even Metallica, those dickweeds) that record companies make more than half of the money on all record sales.
What is the issue here, really? Control. Artists have the option. If they don't mind working that 9 to 5 job while doing their music on their own time and giving it out for people to enjoy, then most do that. Punk bands like Dropkick Murphys tour for a living, they don't rely on record sales. (The band ENCOURAGES people to bootleg, HEAVILY)
It's just so hard to believe (sarcasm) that a record company that makes billions would just want to control the latest attempt in which they can be bypassed. Cassette tapes, CDR's, now MP3's. (And DeCss/DivX
My mother was so adamant about not letting me buy a CDR a few years back... I had to explain to her exactly what a CDR was and what I could do with it. She thought all I was going to do was rent music at Blockbuster (shows you how much she knows about things like this) and copy everything. I explained to her that I mainly wanted to get a CDR so that I could put my 400+ piece vinyl collection onto CDR's... for backup. Her response? "But isn't that bootlegging?" Flash forward to the future. She learned about MP3's due to all the stories she kept seeing on major news sites. She read Metallica's venomous statements here and there. (Mind you, she's a pretty hip lady.
But still, I just wish people would rip CD's properly...
Please insert thirty five cents to continue...
Could it be that Intel is finally starting to realise how much impact AMD has had on its once monopolistic market? (not to mention their continuing monopolistic practices)
I've been a huge fan of AMD ever since their 386 DX/40's came out. AMD has done quite an impressive job trying to keep up with Intel, even though they're always doomed to be one step behind while Intel creates and pushes new standards all over the place just to bully their competitors.
I haven't bought a single Intel chip since '94, and I can't really say I've noticed any 'issues' at all with my AMD's.
Now, my question is this... why does Intel think it can continue to get away with such devious practices (remember the FP bugs, the P3 serials?) and extrememly high markups on their chips...when you might as well be paying for a chip that may just be a step below (remember how they marked pentiums based on highest stable clock speeds rather than manufacturing them all independently for a set speed?)... Quite frankly, I don't like what Intel does. At this point, I don't think Intel really has had much going for it other than name recognition.
Click here to accomplish absolutely nothing...
A year or 2 ago, 50% of the cds I bought sucked and I had no way to find out until after i bought it; like buying a DVD only because of the trailer of the movie.
I just find the whole thing convienent, honestly. There's plenty of mom-and-pop video shops that rent VHS and DVD movies... usually they get their stock by simply going to the nearby Tower and buying the films as they are released.
This could probably be considered a worse thing solely for the reason that the shop is continuing to make money off a purchase (of which the studios don't see a dime of) by renting it... but it is common practice and widely "accepted". Of course, I use that term loosely.
In THIS case... Someone buys the CD, rips it to MP3 and gives it away for free to other users who download from them. I'm not even going to begin to get into the fair use laws, I'm sure everyone has them memorized by now.
Now, with this survey (which, no doubt, the results of which actually hold true for a LOT of us), they're saying that Napster sharing has increased sales by allowing people to preview what they were interested in.
I think the same could hold true for the video shops. Most people rent a movie once and forget about it. Okay, so, there's lost money here because the video shop is probably not quite doing things legally... However, if someone rents the video, likes it, buys it... nobody complains.
Apples and oranges, perhaps... but there are a lot of strong parallels here.
You can just go to hell, but be sure to bring back some souviners...