If I am stuck next to random stranger X, then certain courtesy guidelines come into place. Among them are not
picking my nose and eating it, screaming profanities, masturbating, and talking on a cell phone, listed in my own order of
rudeness rating.
So next time the guy next to you makes a phonecall, show him you can do better and start masturbating. If he counters by screaming profanities at you, pick your nose.
That's got more to do with the fact that most people still use traditional download methods, whereas bittorrent users are still in the minority. The.torrent files still need to be hosted somewhere, and we've all seen what the slashdot-effect can do to a website. Even if everyone "only" needs to download the.torrent file, that's still tens of thousands of hits in a very short period of time.
This time BitTorrent is taking the heat for the distribution -
even though there's no company behind it to drag over the coals
So what? There doesn't need to be a company behind it in order to assign blame. It would be handy if they wanted to sue somebody though. But with websites like www.torrentfiles.com having banner-ads, it would be easy for the movie company's lawyer to argue that they're promoting and profiting from piracy, and have them shut down. Then it's on to the next site.
How did we go from "within the next few years the firm's
engineers may be able to achieve data densities of a trillion bits per square centimetre" (quote from the article, emphasis mine), to "promises to deliver
densities of over 1 terabit per cm^2" ?? There is no promise there, just a "maybe".
Try getting an equivalently featured box from Dell or Sony and you'll be within 10-20% of the Apple
What features are you talking about? Apple hardware is mostly "half the speed for twice the price". I can't think of any distinguishing features on Apple hardware that would account (let alone make up) for this. The only thing Apples have going for them is the OS.
Apple's $4+ billion in cash was not earned over 70+ years
First of all, Apple doesn't have 4 billion in cash. They have just over 2 billion in "cash and equivalents" (meaning cash and stuff they can convert into cash quickly and easily). And it was probably earned the way most companies got huge amounts of cash: by selling their overvalued stock.
Granted, Apple's net profit in 2000 was about 10 times as much as it was last year. Isn't it amazing how much money you can make by selling overpriced hardware?
If Apple can keep this up, or even grow the business, it could soon account for the bulk of their profits: if we extrapolate 100,000 in 18 hours to a year, we get almost 50 million dollars net profit, compared to their current $65M/year net profit.
Re:maintaining the shape of the original waveform
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
·
· Score: 1
It doesn't matter AT ALL how different it LOOKS (whether in time or frequency domain). What matters is how different it SOUNDS. I am more convinced than ever that you have no business running a supposedly informative website about audio. You're a know-nothing fraud.
Re:maintaining the shape of the original waveform
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
·
· Score: 1
the whole point of a lossy compression format is to replicate the orginal uncompressed format in the truest manner
No, the point is to get something that SOUNDS like the original, not to get a waveform that LOOKS like the original. If you can't even understand that, why the hell are you running a website that is supposed to INFORM people?
"maintaining the shape of the original waveform"
on
AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3
·
· Score: 1
It's too bad the original article has already been slashdotted, so I'll have to go by the summary alone. It sounds like they're trying to determine which format is "best" based on a comparison of a spectrum analysis of the encoded files and the original one. THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! All of the named formats are lossy, meaning that the waveform WILL be different. Once you've established that, the only right way to compare them is to do a blind listening test. Looking at the spectrum doesn't tell you anything. For example, I could take the original WAV file ripped from CD, filter out a very narrow frequency band, and then introduce a single-frequency tone of that frequency. The spectrum would look virtually identical (it would only differ at the frequency that I modified), and so it would probably come out on top in this comparison. However it would sound like crap, and nobody would want to listen to it.
Well, sort of... "Back in the day", I wrote a virtual memory handler for my Amiga's accelerator card (which had a 68030 and MMU). Meanwhile, some friends of mine had developed this networking scheme that involved wiring the serial ports of our Amiga's together in a ring, which allowed us to have a true network without network cards. Then came the true test: I configured my virtual memory to use a swapfile located in a friend's RAM-disk (he had way more memory than I did), fired up an image editor, opened a large image, and lo and behold: I was swapping at a whopping 9600 bytes per second! The fact that every packet had to pass through multiple other machines (because of the ring-nature of the network) didn't make it any faster either...
Absolutely, I could see perhaps a trunk mounted cell phone charger running off the vibration of the car itself.
So let's see, not only do you want to put your cellphone in the trunk (great way to prevent driving-while-yakking, I'll give you that), but you want to charge it using something that converts car-vibration back into electricity, as opposed to just plugging it into the cigarette-lighter?
Judging from many of the comments so far, most slashdot readers seem to think she was responsible for the evil things that DoubleClick did. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. She joined DoubleClick when it was already being investigated, and cleaned up DoubleClick's act.
For multiroom viewing, you need two tivos, both with active service AND home media option. That's a LOT of money for something that doesn't even seem all that well integrated: the "other" TiVo shows up as a single entry in the "now showing list". It would have been better if the lists of both units were consolidated. I don't really care which unit a show is stored on. What I would like is to be able to simply add another tivo, and have all of them work as a single multi-tuner unit. Now *that* would be nice...
Slashdot Mirror
So next time the guy next to you makes a phonecall, show him you can do better and start masturbating. If he counters by screaming profanities at you, pick your nose.
Not circular at all. If I whack your brains in with a hammer, should hammers be banned thereafter?
Almost, but not completely. Somebody still has to host the .torrent files.
Also of note is its noted ability to be used for non-infringing purposes
Give it a year and 99% of its use will be for piracy. The remaining 1% legitimate use will not save it in court.
That's got more to do with the fact that most people still use traditional download methods, whereas bittorrent users are still in the minority. The .torrent files still need to be hosted somewhere, and we've all seen what the slashdot-effect can do to a website. Even if everyone "only" needs to download the .torrent file, that's still tens of thousands of hits in a very short period of time.
So what? There doesn't need to be a company behind it in order to assign blame. It would be handy if they wanted to sue somebody though. But with websites like www.torrentfiles.com having banner-ads, it would be easy for the movie company's lawyer to argue that they're promoting and profiting from piracy, and have them shut down. Then it's on to the next site.
In what dream world do you run MacOS X on a 3 GHz P4?
How did we go from "within the next few years the firm's engineers may be able to achieve data densities of a trillion bits per square centimetre" (quote from the article, emphasis mine), to "promises to deliver densities of over 1 terabit per cm^2" ?? There is no promise there, just a "maybe".
What features are you talking about? Apple hardware is mostly "half the speed for twice the price". I can't think of any distinguishing features on Apple hardware that would account (let alone make up) for this. The only thing Apples have going for them is the OS.
First of all, Apple doesn't have 4 billion in cash. They have just over 2 billion in "cash and equivalents" (meaning cash and stuff they can convert into cash quickly and easily). And it was probably earned the way most companies got huge amounts of cash: by selling their overvalued stock. Granted, Apple's net profit in 2000 was about 10 times as much as it was last year. Isn't it amazing how much money you can make by selling overpriced hardware?
If Apple can keep this up, or even grow the business, it could soon account for the bulk of their profits: if we extrapolate 100,000 in 18 hours to a year, we get almost 50 million dollars net profit, compared to their current $65M/year net profit.
It doesn't matter AT ALL how different it LOOKS (whether in time or frequency domain). What matters is how different it SOUNDS. I am more convinced than ever that you have no business running a supposedly informative website about audio. You're a know-nothing fraud.
No, the point is to get something that SOUNDS like the original, not to get a waveform that LOOKS like the original. If you can't even understand that, why the hell are you running a website that is supposed to INFORM people?
It's too bad the original article has already been slashdotted, so I'll have to go by the summary alone. It sounds like they're trying to determine which format is "best" based on a comparison of a spectrum analysis of the encoded files and the original one. THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY TO DO IT! All of the named formats are lossy, meaning that the waveform WILL be different. Once you've established that, the only right way to compare them is to do a blind listening test. Looking at the spectrum doesn't tell you anything. For example, I could take the original WAV file ripped from CD, filter out a very narrow frequency band, and then introduce a single-frequency tone of that frequency. The spectrum would look virtually identical (it would only differ at the frequency that I modified), and so it would probably come out on top in this comparison. However it would sound like crap, and nobody would want to listen to it.
Yet somehow you can afford a computer and internet access...
Well, sort of...
"Back in the day", I wrote a virtual memory handler for my Amiga's accelerator card (which had a 68030 and MMU). Meanwhile, some friends of mine had developed this networking scheme that involved wiring the serial ports of our Amiga's together in a ring, which allowed us to have a true network without network cards.
Then came the true test: I configured my virtual memory to use a swapfile located in a friend's RAM-disk (he had way more memory than I did), fired up an image editor, opened a large image, and lo and behold: I was swapping at a whopping 9600 bytes per second! The fact that every packet had to pass through multiple other machines (because of the ring-nature of the network) didn't make it any faster either...
The left nipple, and the right nipple...
Look at the trailer. Even the trucks in the chase-scene look fake. If they can't even do a TRUCK right, I'd be surprised if the CG actors look real.
Not to mention that despite that enormous size, his pants still fit! Only in the US do pants stretch THAT far...
I wish there was a moderation option for "most moronic post ever"...
So let's see, not only do you want to put your cellphone in the trunk (great way to prevent driving-while-yakking, I'll give you that), but you want to charge it using something that converts car-vibration back into electricity, as opposed to just plugging it into the cigarette-lighter?
Hiring a hacker for security, isn't that a bit like putting a former DoubleClick exec in charge of privacy issues?
... isn't that a bit like putting a former DoubleClick exec in charge of privacy?
Judging from many of the comments so far, most slashdot readers seem to think she was responsible for the evil things that DoubleClick did. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. She joined DoubleClick when it was already being investigated, and cleaned up DoubleClick's act.
You work from home and you use a MODEM? You need to find an employer that'll pay for DSL or cable...
For multiroom viewing, you need two tivos, both with active service AND home media option. That's a LOT of money for something that doesn't even seem all that well integrated: the "other" TiVo shows up as a single entry in the "now showing list". It would have been better if the lists of both units were consolidated. I don't really care which unit a show is stored on. What I would like is to be able to simply add another tivo, and have all of them work as a single multi-tuner unit. Now *that* would be nice...