I believe that movies and music would enter more of a black market similar to drugs and (in the 1920's), alcohol. Many people are disgusted at the prices we're forced to pay to see a movie in the theater or the price of a full CD, and you can see how many people have turned to file sharing networks. The demand for movies probably won't go down, but if there is enough profit out there then we'll see more and more underground systems pop up that will distribute movies and music.
Throw in some international laws and all of a sudden the.tw people have a billion dollar export market for black market movies. When that much money is at stake, people will find a way.
I know I wasn't ashamed to download Undercover Brother. If I had paid to see it I would have been treated to nearly a DOZEN scenes with the boom mic in-frame. However I would have gladly paid $15 to see Lord of the Rings, it was completely worth it to pay for a quality viewing experience.
In order to sell something, there has to be a contact method. Usually a phone number, at some point. So, why don't we go after the companies selling the product? Sure, spammers may be able to hide their identity, but the "how to order" part must be true or they wouldn't be able to sell anything.
So, make it illegal to sell something using false information (forged headers) and the profits will be instantly gone.
Why are gestures all of a sudden popular? Opera has them, and I accidentally closed all my windows. Black & White had them but they were the worst part of the game, I could never get a spell to cast right. We've got a keyboard with 102 "gestures" on it sitting in front of nearly every computer. Make use of those instead!
1) Buy a 433 or better (faster is better) 2) Buy a video card with TV out 3) Buy a TV tuner card 4) Find a hard drive with 20 gigs free or so 5) Get some PVR software, such as IUVCR
It's not nearly as user friendly, but you can be absolutely sure that no company is tracking you. Plus you end up with standard DivX AVI's that you can do whatever you want with.
Voice: Too slow, annoying, and disruptive. Gestures: Too much effort, too easy to make mistakes. If you're using the mouse already anyway then just click something. Touchscreen: Too imprecise and messy.
The simple fact is that the Windows concept is an excellent one. What we need is better teaching, such as "minimizing is not closing" and "right-click for more options" and telling people how the file system works - "your laptop still has a 'desktop', even though it's a laptop."
Our local Ralphs supermarket recently installed flat-panel LCD screens on every register to show advertising to the people waiting in line to check out. Video I can tune out, you simply look away, but they added audio. You can't not pay attention to audio, which is why I am now boycotting Ralphs. I still think consumer boycots are the best way to go. Here's my boycot list:
Shell - Bastards wouldn't let me use their bathroom because they close them at 10pm. Arco - Deceptive pricing, $0.35 if you use an ATM card, noted in very small print on the pump. TNN - Put a black bar that blocks content without adding anything extra. Movies on TV - "Edited for Time", removing content to put in commercials or fit a schedule.
One thing about those big sites is that they rarely link to another site. I can't tell you how many times I've read a CNN story that had ZERO links or domain names. They often will link internally to their own stories, but they try hard to not send people off their site. Slashdot, on the other hand, exists solely on links, with just minor blurbs to get people to go to the site.
Pagers going off. Phones ringing. People shouting fragments of conversations over the tops of cubicles. Groups of people huddled around monitors. Others dashing up and down the hallways, sticking their heads into office doors for just a moment, then scampering along to the next doorway. You are frantically talking on your cell phone, silencing your pager, and yelling into the speakerphone on your desk while typing on two different keyboards attached to three different monitors.
Sound familiar? It's a classic case of the dreaded 'downtime' disease, a terrible ailment where none of your systems work and for reasons you can't always understand. Of course, it typically strikes at the most inopportune moments - the launch of a major product upgrade, or right after announcing your partnerships with 5 of the Fortune 100.
Nobody wants downtime. It's a terrible thing that always involves blood, sweat, tears, and inevitably, a loss of money. This is why when you talk to the upper management of any company with a strategic online initiative you'll be told that the IT group has the highest goals, and that downtime is considered to be an anathema to be stamped out vigorously.
Unfortunately, when you talk to the company's IT manager you commonly hear a different story; the resources to back-up the company's lofty online goals are hard to come by. In fact, with the down swing of the last couple years, combined with the fact that IT isn't, at least directly, a revenue generating entity, IT budgets are being reduced while uptime performance levels are expected to be the same. This can just lead to a death march of extremely over-worked IT personnel, and longer, more numerous, occurrences of system downtime. These goals need to be re-evaluated.
Genesis of the 'Five Nines'
We've all heard the mantra of 'five nines', or 99.999% reliability. Somewhere in the depths of the Internet's 'big bang', when systems were slow and cranky, reliability became a major selling point of why one company's system was 'better' than the competition.
First, people talked about being 'two nines' or 99% reliable. Then someone else would top that, and make their product seem better, claiming 'three nines' (99.9%). Not long after that came 'four nines' (99.99%) and then, near the peak of the dot com era, came 'five nines'.
The herd mentality left no room in which to pitch for investment without the 'five nines' claim. "After all," it was thought, ôif everyone else is saying they can provide 'five nines', I'd have to pretend I didn't know what I was doing if I didn't say I could match everyone else's claim."
'Five nines' isn't impossible. It's merely impractical and unnecessary in the world of the Internet. A shocking statement, perhaps, but a truism none-the-less.
We're not talking about launching people into space (which, by the way, is unfortunately done under 'three nines'), or working with nuclear power plants. We're working within the reference of online systems providing services to users both on and off the Internet - nobody dies from a system failure.
The Greasy Steel Bar
Think of uptime as a chin-up bar coated in grease. The higher the reliability desired, the greater the coating of grease. It's clearly tougher to hang to a higher standard of reliability.
What's not so obvious, but very important, is that the higher the uptime target, the worse one does if not prepared. An IT department capable of three nines faced with a bar that's five nines slippery won't even manage the three nines they are capable of doing.
Re:Author's Site SUCKS!
on
Built For Use
·
· Score: 2
font tags are standard and backwards-compatible.
Not everything has to be latest-greatest, go with what works.
Actually, if the ISP has a T1, and the total bandwidth used by all the subscribers at a time is only 1 megabit, the amount available IS being artificially limited, with the excess.44 megabit being wasted.
In general though, I agree, bandwidth is not free.
Anyone can put up a false file or rename [tmd]Crossroads(1of2).avi to [scr]MinorityReport(1of2).avi without breaking any laws. Why they would try to make this a law is beyond me...
We all know that ClearChannel has over 1200 stations across the country, and that they reach around 60% of the nation's population, but I have a question:
How many radio stations are there, total, in the US/World?
I have been unable to find the answer on the net, does anyone have a source?
"Thank you Mr. President. I rise today to voice my concerns about the concentration of ownership in the radio and concert industry and its effect on consumers, artists, local businesses, and ticket prices. ... In 1996, prior to the passage of the Telecommunications Act, there were 5133 owners of radio stations. Today, for the Contemporary Hit Radio/Top 40 Formats, four radio station groups - Chancellor, Clear Channel, Infinity, and Capstar - control access to 63 percent of the format's 41 million listeners nationwide. ... Many of the same corporations that own multiple radio stations in a given market wield their power through their ownership of a number of businesses related to the music industry. For example, the Clear Channel Corporation owns over 1200 radio companies, more than 700,000 billboards, various promotion companies, and venues across the United States. Also, just three years ago, in 1999, Clear Channel bought SFX productions, the nation's largest promotion company. ... Ticket prices have gone up by nearly 50 percentage points more than consumer prices since passage of the Telecommunications Act - and that doesn't even include the facility fees, parking charges, box office charges or food and beverage increases. ... It isn't just about who's talented, and who deserves to be played. It's about a shakedown, and that's just unacceptable, Mr. President, for the industry, for the artist, and for all of us as who listen."
One great trick I found for converting excel files to HTML files. Excel does an awful job, writing an html page 10 times the size it needs to be, and the code is IE-centric. However, openoffice can open.xls files, and then save as html, and it outputs nicely formatted, standard HTML at very respectable sizes.
What do you use your VCR for? I use mine to time-shift TV shows. I cannot do that with a DVD player. Phasing out pre-recorded VHS tapes I can understand, DVD is far better in that case, but the VCR will have plenty of market behind it as long as it is the only affordable way to record shows.
I also had a similar problem. When I code, I keep reference materials and the web close at hand. Whenever I have a question about syntax, style, examples, whatever I quickly look it up. In a test environment you're expected to have everything memorized and at your instant recall for obscure things. I always hated that I was being judged outside of my normal working environment when I had to code on paper.
GTA3 was a port, port's nearly always suck when it comes to support. If they had programmed it with the PC in mind from the beginning then there would be far wider support and far fewer bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that movies and music would enter more of a black market similar to drugs and (in the 1920's), alcohol. Many people are disgusted at the prices we're forced to pay to see a movie in the theater or the price of a full CD, and you can see how many people have turned to file sharing networks. The demand for movies probably won't go down, but if there is enough profit out there then we'll see more and more underground systems pop up that will distribute movies and music.
.tw people have a billion dollar export market for black market movies. When that much money is at stake, people will find a way.
Throw in some international laws and all of a sudden the
I know I wasn't ashamed to download Undercover Brother. If I had paid to see it I would have been treated to nearly a DOZEN scenes with the boom mic in-frame. However I would have gladly paid $15 to see Lord of the Rings, it was completely worth it to pay for a quality viewing experience.
In order to sell something, there has to be a contact method. Usually a phone number, at some point. So, why don't we go after the companies selling the product? Sure, spammers may be able to hide their identity, but the "how to order" part must be true or they wouldn't be able to sell anything.
So, make it illegal to sell something using false information (forged headers) and the profits will be instantly gone.
Travis
Why are gestures all of a sudden popular? Opera has them, and I accidentally closed all my windows. Black & White had them but they were the worst part of the game, I could never get a spell to cast right. We've got a keyboard with 102 "gestures" on it sitting in front of nearly every computer. Make use of those instead!
Travis
1) Buy a 433 or better (faster is better)
2) Buy a video card with TV out
3) Buy a TV tuner card
4) Find a hard drive with 20 gigs free or so
5) Get some PVR software, such as IUVCR
It's not nearly as user friendly, but you can be absolutely sure that no company is tracking you. Plus you end up with standard DivX AVI's that you can do whatever you want with.
Travis
Gah, I was hoping at least ONE would have been a real web site :(
Travis
What UI do they want?
Voice: Too slow, annoying, and disruptive.
Gestures: Too much effort, too easy to make mistakes. If you're using the mouse already anyway then just click something.
Touchscreen: Too imprecise and messy.
The simple fact is that the Windows concept is an excellent one. What we need is better teaching, such as "minimizing is not closing" and "right-click for more options" and telling people how the file system works - "your laptop still has a 'desktop', even though it's a laptop."
Travis
Our local Ralphs supermarket recently installed flat-panel LCD screens on every register to show advertising to the people waiting in line to check out. Video I can tune out, you simply look away, but they added audio. You can't not pay attention to audio, which is why I am now boycotting Ralphs. I still think consumer boycots are the best way to go. Here's my boycot list:
Shell - Bastards wouldn't let me use their bathroom because they close them at 10pm.
Arco - Deceptive pricing, $0.35 if you use an ATM card, noted in very small print on the pump.
TNN - Put a black bar that blocks content without adding anything extra.
Movies on TV - "Edited for Time", removing content to put in commercials or fit a schedule.
What else do people boycot?
Travis
Shouldn't the day be Feb 25th?
Travis
One thing about those big sites is that they rarely link to another site. I can't tell you how many times I've read a CNN story that had ZERO links or domain names. They often will link internally to their own stories, but they try hard to not send people off their site. Slashdot, on the other hand, exists solely on links, with just minor blurbs to get people to go to the site.
:)
But you do bring up many good points
Travis
What about Star Wars Galaxies? I thought that was the big game they were hyping...
Travis
all free, linux only, spamassassin.org
Travis
get spamassassin, catches 99% of the spam, and I've never had a false positive.
Travis
The Scenario
Pagers going off. Phones ringing. People shouting fragments of conversations over the tops of cubicles. Groups of people huddled around monitors. Others dashing up and down the hallways, sticking their heads into office doors for just a moment, then scampering along to the next doorway. You are frantically talking on your cell phone, silencing your pager, and yelling into the speakerphone on your desk while typing on two different keyboards attached to three different monitors.
Sound familiar? It's a classic case of the dreaded 'downtime' disease, a terrible ailment where none of your systems work and for reasons you can't always understand. Of course, it typically strikes at the most inopportune moments - the launch of a major product upgrade, or right after announcing your partnerships with 5 of the Fortune 100.
Nobody wants downtime. It's a terrible thing that always involves blood, sweat, tears, and inevitably, a loss of money. This is why when you talk to the upper management of any company with a strategic online initiative you'll be told that the IT group has the highest goals, and that downtime is considered to be an anathema to be stamped out vigorously.
Unfortunately, when you talk to the company's IT manager you commonly hear a different story; the resources to back-up the company's lofty online goals are hard to come by. In fact, with the down swing of the last couple years, combined with the fact that IT isn't, at least directly, a revenue generating entity, IT budgets are being reduced while uptime performance levels are expected to be the same. This can just lead to a death march of extremely over-worked IT personnel, and longer, more numerous, occurrences of system downtime. These goals need to be re-evaluated.
Genesis of the 'Five Nines'
We've all heard the mantra of 'five nines', or 99.999% reliability. Somewhere in the depths of the Internet's 'big bang', when systems were slow and cranky, reliability became a major selling point of why one company's system was 'better' than the competition.
First, people talked about being 'two nines' or 99% reliable. Then someone else would top that, and make their product seem better, claiming 'three nines' (99.9%). Not long after that came 'four nines' (99.99%) and then, near the peak of the dot com era, came 'five nines'.
The herd mentality left no room in which to pitch for investment without the 'five nines' claim. "After all," it was thought, ôif everyone else is saying they can provide 'five nines', I'd have to pretend I didn't know what I was doing if I didn't say I could match everyone else's claim."
'Five nines' isn't impossible. It's merely impractical and unnecessary in the world of the Internet. A shocking statement, perhaps, but a truism none-the-less.
We're not talking about launching people into space (which, by the way, is unfortunately done under 'three nines'), or working with nuclear power plants. We're working within the reference of online systems providing services to users both on and off the Internet - nobody dies from a system failure.
The Greasy Steel Bar
Think of uptime as a chin-up bar coated in grease. The higher the reliability desired, the greater the coating of grease. It's clearly tougher to hang to a higher standard of reliability.
What's not so obvious, but very important, is that the higher the uptime target, the worse one does if not prepared. An IT department capable of three nines faced with a bar that's five nines slippery won't even manage the three nines they are capable of doing.
font tags are standard and backwards-compatible.
Not everything has to be latest-greatest, go with what works.
Travis
Wow, a useful page that is actually larger than my 3 monitor wide desktop! Impressive!
Travis
Actually, if the ISP has a T1, and the total bandwidth used by all the subscribers at a time is only 1 megabit, the amount available IS being artificially limited, with the excess .44 megabit being wasted.
In general though, I agree, bandwidth is not free.
Travis
actually I'm pretty sure most ISP's have UNmetered lines, such as a T1, or T3.
Travis
Gee, is it currently illegal to do those things?
Anyone can put up a false file or rename [tmd]Crossroads(1of2).avi to [scr]MinorityReport(1of2).avi without breaking any laws. Why they would try to make this a law is beyond me...
Travis
We all know that ClearChannel has over 1200 stations across the country, and that they reach around 60% of the nation's population, but I have a question:
How many radio stations are there, total, in the US/World?
I have been unable to find the answer on the net, does anyone have a source?
Travis
Statement of US Senator Russ Feingold on Market Concentration in the Radio, Concert, and Promotion Industries
"Thank you Mr. President. I rise today to voice my concerns about the concentration of ownership in the radio and concert industry and its effect on consumers, artists, local businesses, and ticket prices.
...
In 1996, prior to the passage of the Telecommunications Act, there were 5133 owners of radio stations. Today, for the Contemporary Hit Radio/Top 40 Formats, four radio station groups - Chancellor, Clear Channel, Infinity, and Capstar - control access to 63 percent of the format's 41 million listeners nationwide.
...
Many of the same corporations that own multiple radio stations in a given market wield their power through their ownership of a number of businesses related to the music industry. For example, the Clear Channel Corporation owns over 1200 radio companies, more than 700,000 billboards, various promotion companies, and venues across the United States. Also, just three years ago, in 1999, Clear Channel bought SFX productions, the nation's largest promotion company.
...
Ticket prices have gone up by nearly 50 percentage points more than consumer prices since passage of the Telecommunications Act - and that doesn't even include the facility fees, parking charges, box office charges or food and beverage increases.
...
It isn't just about who's talented, and who deserves to be played. It's about a shakedown, and that's just unacceptable, Mr. President, for the industry, for the artist, and for all of us as who listen."
Travis
One great trick I found for converting excel files to HTML files. Excel does an awful job, writing an html page 10 times the size it needs to be, and the code is IE-centric. However, openoffice can open .xls files, and then save as html, and it outputs nicely formatted, standard HTML at very respectable sizes.
Travis
What do you use your VCR for? I use mine to time-shift TV shows. I cannot do that with a DVD player. Phasing out pre-recorded VHS tapes I can understand, DVD is far better in that case, but the VCR will have plenty of market behind it as long as it is the only affordable way to record shows.
Travis
I also had a similar problem. When I code, I keep reference materials and the web close at hand. Whenever I have a question about syntax, style, examples, whatever I quickly look it up. In a test environment you're expected to have everything memorized and at your instant recall for obscure things. I always hated that I was being judged outside of my normal working environment when I had to code on paper.
Travis
Did anyone think that perhaps the viruses they think can be transmitted by jpg's are the en from Snow Crash?
:)
Makes ya think.
Travis
GTA3 was a port, port's nearly always suck when it comes to support. If they had programmed it with the PC in mind from the beginning then there would be far wider support and far fewer bugs.
Travis