And that's a shame. Truth is, poor managers should not be CEOs. While there are more poor male managers in CEO positions than poor female managers in CEO positions, the females tend to stick out simply due to their gender difference. It's hard to be a really good CEO...and the best ones - male or female - rarely get any press.
I love 'em, but they've missed the boat.
on
TiVo to Offer SDK
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The cool things that you can do directly with TiVo, and all the really cool things you can do with hacks (and roll-your-own PVRs for that matter) are the things that the studios don't want you to do. TiVo has the bonus of being able to be operated by just about anyone. This MATTERS! I want something my wife is comfortable with, and is pretty darned stable. Moreover, if something goes wrong and her show gets missed, it damned well better no be my fault. This rules out anything but a consumer box in my house. The ability to let the tech savvy strip/rip/burn to their hearts content means the whole family can play.
I'm frustrated that TiVo lets their name be used on DirecTV sets, as the gap between the real TiVo and the locked-down, abandoned, ugly step-child of receiver they call DirecTiVo grows almost daily. I have one, and it does everything my old standalone did...four years ago. Yes, it's cheaper (no dialups to wory about). Yes it records two streams (a feature lacking in the SA). But if you look at the comparison of features on their own website, it pales in comparison to the new features of the SA models. And even the SAs are missing some key features (real transfers, real commercial skip, cut points for recording, etc.).
They're caught between a rock and a hard place - consumers who will leave them if they protect the content, and studios who will sue them into oblivion if they don't. I think they've chosen the wrong path for long term success. *shrug* (BTW, the embeded DVD recorder versions do look promising, but -once again - they're not available for DTV)
Seriously. A rewritable lightscribe surface would be (to me) the perfect solution to labelling my RW discs. I use mainly +RW for rapidly changing stuff and for interim backups, as well as video which I'm not going to keep indefinitely. Being able to re-write the label side would be cool. Cool enough to be able to live with monochrome, imho.
Though I've read that some of the Epsons are finniky about printing, I haven't had any problems with mine (R300). Moreso, the base model is under $100 at retail (R200), and aftermarket inks are available for under $5 a cartridge.
Unless you happen to have a thing against Epson printers, thi seem sto be a pretty easy solution. Especially since you can buy a DVD writer and the Epson printer for less than the price of one of these drives.
I think this occurs in the bagging section, as I can scan my stuff at Kroger pretty damned fast, and it never rests on the scanner. Gawd, I love those self-checkouts when I've got to get in and out fast. Gawd I hate those checkouts when they're filled with the guys trying to work them for the first time, or trying to pay the $30 bill with pennies and nickels from their pockets.
Antoher way would be to seed the online sources with lousy copies and malware infested files.
I learned long ago that p2p just wasn't worth the effort - and that was before the RIAA started messing around. People who rip poorly or tag inconsistently just made it harder to use. Especially when Half.com was in its heyday. Most pop music that was more than a year old could be had for $1-$2 a disc (plus $2 shipping) in pretty good condition, so I bought the discs used. Cheap, legal tunes, and the RIAA didn't get a red cent (extra) for my purchase.
I can;t believe there are acutally three posters who didn't get your reply.
Of course there are people willing to pay for water, even though it is nearly free. (a couple of cents per gallon, delivered from any tap in your house). The reason is marketing, convenience, and product - mostly in that order, accentuated at higher price points (Deerfield...Dasani...Perrier).
The key is that there is sweet spot for the price, and most folks don't mind $.50/bottle for a pleasant-tasting, clean water source which is portable. Add $.50 if it happens to be pre-chilled.
Three or four bucks for a factory CD with case, artwork, and liner notes? I'm in. $18-$20 a disc...no thanks. Of course, I'll drink poor tasting (but clean/safe) water rather than spend more than $2 a bottle, but there are folks who would rather be seen with the designer bottle label than a tupperware container.
It's called the proper chain of command. If there's no contact point for this kind of information, then there's no quick way to get people to realize the severity. CNN probably saw it on the AP wire and said *yawn 8,"Another earthquake. Jim see if you can run down a 20 second bit for the 10 o'clock news."
Three hours isn't long enough for a warning when there's no efficient mechanism in place for dealing with the event in rapid fashion. Hell, it takes an hour here in my corner of the US for the local TV/radio stations to get school delays/closings up and running when we have an unexpected snow. If Sri Lanka monitored an earthquake off the Atlantic coast of the US, and suspected a possible tidal wave headed for a group of barrier islands in the mid atlantic region, which TV or radio station would you call? I live 400 miles away, and I have no idea. If you did call, and spoke with a heavy accent (you do know all the languages in the world, right?), do you think they'd believe you and put it on the nes immediately? Of course not, they'd try to verify it before they broadcast such a warning. For an area with so few tidal waves, this sounds like a prank call to me.
Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy before those with the means decide it is worth their while to prepare for such disasters. I'm sure that this will spur more countries to create the pathways of communication necessary to mitigate damage in the future.
This is a tragedy, and a terrible one. I agree that it is worse than the 9/11/01 attack - far worse in human loss.
[aside] I believe it is less shocking because natural disasters occur on a fairly regular basis, whereas terrorists flying passenger jets into buildings is crazy. More improtantly, the cameras were rolling when the real tragedy occured - the buildings collaped on/with many occupants. Drama, horror, immediacy. [/aside]
My thoughts and prayers go out to all who have lost loved ones, and I hope that the country can pull together and get the physical damage repaired as soon as possible.
Based on his name alone, I don't think he's going to find that "those red states" are going to be a pleasant place for him to raise a family. They're wonderful places to raise a white, protestant family, though.
Really? I can send a hundred snapshots to my Epson R300 from the MS picture & fax viewer in under a minute. If I do that when I come into the office in the morning, my prints are ready by lunch. The printing is done in the background and has no noticable effect on my PC.
If I have to take my media to WalMart, I have to drive 10 minutes out there, park, walk several hundred yards to and from the printing desk, load up my images, send them to their printer, return an hour (or more) later, stand in line to get the prints, pay for them, and drive home. I've got about 30-40 miles and a good hour of time invested in getting those 100 prints. I can cut that in half by sacrificing my network connection for half a day to upload the files (1M file x 100 files = 3.5 hours @ 100% of my 80kb DSL upload bandwidth), but then I can't surf/. 'til after lunch.
I can't argue that the machines thay have are great, but they're waaaaay overkill for home printer. If Epson made the R300 printer sitting on my desk to handle 24/7 operation, and only expected to sell a few thousand, it would be a might expensive machine, too. My main beef with the mini-labs is that the crop everything. Even a 35mm negative gets a 90-92% crop on 4x6 paper. When I shoot 35 with my F4, I see - and use - 100% of the negative. The printers feel it necessary to crop the hair off of most of my subjects, even though it's on the film itself.
If ENRON execs could reasonably pay back the losses to the stockholders, plus penalties, I'd say no jail time was necessary. Unfortunately, that's not possible. They destroyed lives by making a lifes worth of savings valueless, and they can't fix it. They go to jail to "make amends".
This, however, is case is of a breaking and entering, or tresspassing, sort with intent to commit a(nother) felony. No actual montary loss was incurred. I say three to six months, significant five or six figure fine.
Last things first. The guarantee is not worth the paper its written on, and it's likely worth less than the paper your printing on.
The quality of paper base in photolabs is tough to beat. I've gone through a lot of different weights and bases. Though thin, I've found Epson's premium photo glossy to be as satisfying, or more satisfying, than mini-lab prints. The base is probbaly 20% thinner, but the feel is right. I usually pick up mine in 20(8.5x11) or 100(4x6) sheet packs when OfficeMax has a 2 for 1 sale (I was getting 200 4x6 sheets for $10 a while back)
I agree about the color profiles being a bitch. Kodak has some nice photo papers, but I can't seem to get the profile correct to print anything useful on it in my HP DesignJet 120 (horrible non-linear magenta shift). I'm tempted to go get a roll of Epson or HP paper, but I print so few larger format images I can't justify it (yet). (The 24" printer is officially for my engineering business, but it has 6 color proofing quality output;-)
I picked up an Epson R300 for snapshots and CD/DVDs, and with the 4x6 Epson paper, it's fabulous. I keep thinking I'll try the new WalMart upload & print to the local store, but compared to having them print at home, the convenience wins out.
I can hear the difference between lame and lossless on several Boston tracks up to between 224 and 256 kbit/s on $90 Sony MDR-V6 headphones. Beyond that I haven't been able to find a source I listen to that makes a difference. That said, I encoded all my CDs to FLAC, and keep a transcoded version at 192 ABR simultaneously. FLAC for the heavy duty listening or future recoding to the "latest greatest", and MP3 for my portable, which usually gets modulated to the car stereo or listened to on cheap earbuds.
And why, might I ask, would a domain space for mobile phones have a longer-than-usual text string. Not that.m is a good idea, but it's better than 6>66622444 for god's sake.
But if he had OTA reception, he could just record it, legally, and store the tape/file/disc in his personal collection.
He's getting
- A show, for free, over the internet
Because he CAN'T get
- The same show, for free, over broadcast
The only real problem is that the local TV station isn't realizing revenue from his eyeballs, which are (theoretically) located in their market. OF course, if the local TV station isn't proving QOS sufficient for his viewing, they aren't actually losing eyeballs.
So, the question remains, if you give something away to 295,000,000 people in the US, is it reasonable to claim that the remaining 5,000,000 must pay for it (or, more specifically, be denied it), based on local topography alone?
On the contrary, they are not a monopoly. Monopolies are illegal. Microsoft has been reprimanded for some actions which are anti- competitive in a market in which they are a dominant force.
Monopolies are illegal (except baseball). Microsoft was intentinally left intact after investigations into their practices. Therefore, legally, Microsoft is not a monopoly.
Apple isn't a monopoly either. That doesn't make the GPs analogy - or the intentional change to the DRM by Apple - morally correct. Both, however, are commonplace in cutthroat business. Choose your side...consumers or corporations, then decide.
If you were trying to stop hitmen, would you go after the guy who can tell you where to find one, or would you go after the actual hitman?
No, of course not. You'd make firearms and ammunition illegal. But that's not [popular,constitutional]. If we had a NTA (National Torrent Association) with a bazillion members all willing to fork over big buks to play with torrents on the weekends, BT sites wouldn't have to worry either.
Oh, but didn't you know...we're going to take out a loan (treasuries) to pay for all the old folks right now, and the miracle of Wall Street (see original post, re- internet stocks) is going to make us all rich in our old age, thanks to SS privatization. It's like doubling down your bet after every loss...you can't lose!
Okay, so not a real Ponzi, but a similar result. At some point, the game will end, leaving a bunch of folks with nothing in return for their hard earned dollars. In theory, this fool could "develop" his new island, generate a little green, and then sell it to some other loser for even more money. All that does is raise the stakes.
Then again, buying internet startups wasn't illegal either, but the result was the same.
They would be referred to as "Colonial" and have vinyl siding. They're designed by "builders" and the only real advantage is that they save the builder money. Trust me, they're everywhere. And most people who don't know better will buy one.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's a shame. Truth is, poor managers should not be CEOs. While there are more poor male managers in CEO positions than poor female managers in CEO positions, the females tend to stick out simply due to their gender difference. It's hard to be a really good CEO...and the best ones - male or female - rarely get any press.
Just goes to prove that anyone can be an asshole.
Your new around here, are you?
The cool things that you can do directly with TiVo, and all the really cool things you can do with hacks (and roll-your-own PVRs for that matter) are the things that the studios don't want you to do. TiVo has the bonus of being able to be operated by just about anyone. This MATTERS! I want something my wife is comfortable with, and is pretty darned stable. Moreover, if something goes wrong and her show gets missed, it damned well better no be my fault. This rules out anything but a consumer box in my house. The ability to let the tech savvy strip/rip/burn to their hearts content means the whole family can play.
I'm frustrated that TiVo lets their name be used on DirecTV sets, as the gap between the real TiVo and the locked-down, abandoned, ugly step-child of receiver they call DirecTiVo grows almost daily. I have one, and it does everything my old standalone did...four years ago. Yes, it's cheaper (no dialups to wory about). Yes it records two streams (a feature lacking in the SA). But if you look at the comparison of features on their own website, it pales in comparison to the new features of the SA models. And even the SAs are missing some key features (real transfers, real commercial skip, cut points for recording, etc.).
They're caught between a rock and a hard place - consumers who will leave them if they protect the content, and studios who will sue them into oblivion if they don't. I think they've chosen the wrong path for long term success. *shrug* (BTW, the embeded DVD recorder versions do look promising, but -once again - they're not available for DTV)
Seriously. A rewritable lightscribe surface would be (to me) the perfect solution to labelling my RW discs. I use mainly +RW for rapidly changing stuff and for interim backups, as well as video which I'm not going to keep indefinitely. Being able to re-write the label side would be cool. Cool enough to be able to live with monochrome, imho.
Though I've read that some of the Epsons are finniky about printing, I haven't had any problems with mine (R300). Moreso, the base model is under $100 at retail (R200), and aftermarket inks are available for under $5 a cartridge.
Unless you happen to have a thing against Epson printers, thi seem sto be a pretty easy solution. Especially since you can buy a DVD writer and the Epson printer for less than the price of one of these drives.
I think this occurs in the bagging section, as I can scan my stuff at Kroger pretty damned fast, and it never rests on the scanner. Gawd, I love those self-checkouts when I've got to get in and out fast. Gawd I hate those checkouts when they're filled with the guys trying to work them for the first time, or trying to pay the $30 bill with pennies and nickels from their pockets.
Said simply:
It's far easier to cause damage than to fix it.
Antoher way would be to seed the online sources with lousy copies and malware infested files.
I learned long ago that p2p just wasn't worth the effort - and that was before the RIAA started messing around. People who rip poorly or tag inconsistently just made it harder to use. Especially when Half.com was in its heyday. Most pop music that was more than a year old could be had for $1-$2 a disc (plus $2 shipping) in pretty good condition, so I bought the discs used. Cheap, legal tunes, and the RIAA didn't get a red cent (extra) for my purchase.
I can;t believe there are acutally three posters who didn't get your reply.
Of course there are people willing to pay for water, even though it is nearly free. (a couple of cents per gallon, delivered from any tap in your house). The reason is marketing, convenience, and product - mostly in that order, accentuated at higher price points (Deerfield...Dasani...Perrier).
The key is that there is sweet spot for the price, and most folks don't mind $.50/bottle for a pleasant-tasting, clean water source which is portable. Add $.50 if it happens to be pre-chilled.
Three or four bucks for a factory CD with case, artwork, and liner notes? I'm in. $18-$20 a disc...no thanks. Of course, I'll drink poor tasting (but clean/safe) water rather than spend more than $2 a bottle, but there are folks who would rather be seen with the designer bottle label than a tupperware container.
It's called the proper chain of command. If there's no contact point for this kind of information, then there's no quick way to get people to realize the severity. CNN probably saw it on the AP wire and said *yawn
8,"Another earthquake. Jim see if you can run down a 20 second bit for the 10 o'clock news."
Three hours isn't long enough for a warning when there's no efficient mechanism in place for dealing with the event in rapid fashion. Hell, it takes an hour here in my corner of the US for the local TV/radio stations to get school delays/closings up and running when we have an unexpected snow. If Sri Lanka monitored an earthquake off the Atlantic coast of the US, and suspected a possible tidal wave headed for a group of barrier islands in the mid atlantic region, which TV or radio station would you call? I live 400 miles away, and I have no idea. If you did call, and spoke with a heavy accent (you do know all the languages in the world, right?), do you think they'd believe you and put it on the nes immediately? Of course not, they'd try to verify it before they broadcast such a warning. For an area with so few tidal waves, this sounds like a prank call to me.
Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy before those with the means decide it is worth their while to prepare for such disasters. I'm sure that this will spur more countries to create the pathways of communication necessary to mitigate damage in the future.
This is a tragedy, and a terrible one. I agree that it is worse than the 9/11/01 attack - far worse in human loss.
[aside] I believe it is less shocking because natural disasters occur on a fairly regular basis, whereas terrorists flying passenger jets into buildings is crazy. More improtantly, the cameras were rolling when the real tragedy occured - the buildings collaped on/with many occupants. Drama, horror, immediacy. [/aside]
My thoughts and prayers go out to all who have lost loved ones, and I hope that the country can pull together and get the physical damage repaired as soon as possible.
Based on his name alone, I don't think he's going to find that "those red states" are going to be a pleasant place for him to raise a family. They're wonderful places to raise a white, protestant family, though.
Really? I can send a hundred snapshots to my Epson R300 from the MS picture & fax viewer in under a minute. If I do that when I come into the office in the morning, my prints are ready by lunch. The printing is done in the background and has no noticable effect on my PC.
/. 'til after lunch.
If I have to take my media to WalMart, I have to drive 10 minutes out there, park, walk several hundred yards to and from the printing desk, load up my images, send them to their printer, return an hour (or more) later, stand in line to get the prints, pay for them, and drive home. I've got about 30-40 miles and a good hour of time invested in getting those 100 prints. I can cut that in half by sacrificing my network connection for half a day to upload the files (1M file x 100 files = 3.5 hours @ 100% of my 80kb DSL upload bandwidth), but then I can't surf
I can't argue that the machines thay have are great, but they're waaaaay overkill for home printer. If Epson made the R300 printer sitting on my desk to handle 24/7 operation, and only expected to sell a few thousand, it would be a might expensive machine, too. My main beef with the mini-labs is that the crop everything. Even a 35mm negative gets a 90-92% crop on 4x6 paper. When I shoot 35 with my F4, I see - and use - 100% of the negative. The printers feel it necessary to crop the hair off of most of my subjects, even though it's on the film itself.
Wow, I'm really rambling today.
If ENRON execs could reasonably pay back the losses to the stockholders, plus penalties, I'd say no jail time was necessary. Unfortunately, that's not possible. They destroyed lives by making a lifes worth of savings valueless, and they can't fix it. They go to jail to "make amends".
This, however, is case is of a breaking and entering, or tresspassing, sort with intent to commit a(nother) felony. No actual montary loss was incurred. I say three to six months, significant five or six figure fine.
Last things first. The guarantee is not worth the paper its written on, and it's likely worth less than the paper your printing on.
;-)
The quality of paper base in photolabs is tough to beat. I've gone through a lot of different weights and bases. Though thin, I've found Epson's premium photo glossy to be as satisfying, or more satisfying, than mini-lab prints. The base is probbaly 20% thinner, but the feel is right. I usually pick up mine in 20(8.5x11) or 100(4x6) sheet packs when OfficeMax has a 2 for 1 sale (I was getting 200 4x6 sheets for $10 a while back)
I agree about the color profiles being a bitch. Kodak has some nice photo papers, but I can't seem to get the profile correct to print anything useful on it in my HP DesignJet 120 (horrible non-linear magenta shift). I'm tempted to go get a roll of Epson or HP paper, but I print so few larger format images I can't justify it (yet). (The 24" printer is officially for my engineering business, but it has 6 color proofing quality output
I picked up an Epson R300 for snapshots and CD/DVDs, and with the 4x6 Epson paper, it's fabulous. I keep thinking I'll try the new WalMart upload & print to the local store, but compared to having them print at home, the convenience wins out.
Yeah, I'll call (mostly) bullshit on this one.
I can hear the difference between lame and lossless on several Boston tracks up to between 224 and 256 kbit/s on $90 Sony MDR-V6 headphones. Beyond that I haven't been able to find a source I listen to that makes a difference. That said, I encoded all my CDs to FLAC, and keep a transcoded version at 192 ABR simultaneously. FLAC for the heavy duty listening or future recoding to the "latest greatest", and MP3 for my portable, which usually gets modulated to the car stereo or listened to on cheap earbuds.
And why, might I ask, would a domain space for mobile phones have a longer-than-usual text string. Not that .m is a good idea, but it's better than 6>66622444 for god's sake.
But if he had OTA reception, he could just record it, legally, and store the tape/file/disc in his personal collection.
He's getting
- A show, for free, over the internet
Because he CAN'T get
- The same show, for free, over broadcast
The only real problem is that the local TV station isn't realizing revenue from his eyeballs, which are (theoretically) located in their market. OF course, if the local TV station isn't proving QOS sufficient for his viewing, they aren't actually losing eyeballs.
So, the question remains, if you give something away to 295,000,000 people in the US, is it reasonable to claim that the remaining 5,000,000 must pay for it (or, more specifically, be denied it), based on local topography alone?
On the contrary, they are not a monopoly. Monopolies are illegal. Microsoft has been reprimanded for some actions which are anti- competitive in a market in which they are a dominant force.
Monopolies are illegal (except baseball). Microsoft was intentinally left intact after investigations into their practices. Therefore, legally, Microsoft is not a monopoly.
Apple isn't a monopoly either. That doesn't make the GPs analogy - or the intentional change to the DRM by Apple - morally correct. Both, however, are commonplace in cutthroat business. Choose your side...consumers or corporations, then decide.
If you were trying to stop hitmen, would you go after the guy who can tell you where to find one, or would you go after the actual hitman?
No, of course not. You'd make firearms and ammunition illegal. But that's not [popular,constitutional]. If we had a NTA (National Torrent Association) with a bazillion members all willing to fork over big buks to play with torrents on the weekends, BT sites wouldn't have to worry either.
Oh, but didn't you know...we're going to take out a loan (treasuries) to pay for all the old folks right now, and the miracle of Wall Street (see original post, re- internet stocks) is going to make us all rich in our old age, thanks to SS privatization. It's like doubling down your bet after every loss...you can't lose!
It really sickens me since I'm good at game design and can't get a job.
I hear EA is hiring...
(sorry, I just couldn't resist)
nm
Someone just had a whole virtual world slashdotted. $26,000 island and all.
Okay, so not a real Ponzi, but a similar result. At some point, the game will end, leaving a bunch of folks with nothing in return for their hard earned dollars. In theory, this fool could "develop" his new island, generate a little green, and then sell it to some other loser for even more money. All that does is raise the stakes.
Then again, buying internet startups wasn't illegal either, but the result was the same.
They would be referred to as "Colonial" and have vinyl siding. They're designed by "builders" and the only real advantage is that they save the builder money. Trust me, they're everywhere. And most people who don't know better will buy one.