Oh look! Someone stole my car and used it to commit a crime! It was my car officer, arrest me.
Faulty logic. You didn't commit the crime... you can't really be held accountable if someone stole your car. But if someone steals your CDs, and you make new copies from someone else, well that is a copyright violation. As excuses go it's semi-decent, after all in theory you paid for it in the first place... but that doesn't mean it's not a copyright violation.
Unfortunatly there is not license to own a copy... perhaps there should be, but there isn't. I'm actually pro physical licenses in the form of a cover... and i'm pro download the music and buy the cover. I think this would solve the huge problem with freeloaders, and those users who have the legit excuse of not buying something because it's out of print... digital copy would mean there is no such thing as out of print, and a licensed cover would mean you paid for it. Or for single tracks... a little stamp you can put on a cover. Free distribution and profit... who could ask for more?
This way... all those stupid freaking control freaks who are running amuck with their little pro-anti p2p flags.
Which still doesn't make it legal or right, either morally or ethically.
Legal!=Moral Moral!=right Ethical!=right
Anytime you see someone make a big deal about these excuses, you know they are excusing their own complete lack of morals.
Assuming someone else lacks morals when their ethics are different than yours isn't right even though it's perfectly legal to be deluded into thinking that somehow your code of conduct makes you a better person.
If you are a copyright holder, you have every right to choose how you want your material copied. This would include whether or not you want radio play, tape/cd/vinyl sales, or whether to allow others to copy your music via P2P.
Downloading something off a p2p system might be wrong, it might even be considered unethical or immoral, and could be illegal. But it is also wrong for people like your self to deny copyright holders the choice by repeating the brainwashing rhetoric without any regard to their rights under the law. It would seem you too lack a certain level of ethics. So did the RIAA when they decided to sue the Girl Scouts for singing Puff the Magic Dragon around the campfire.
The best thing you can do, as a fan of music, is to find out who supports P2P, and show your support by obeying their desire by sharing or not sharing. At the end of the day each dollar is a vote... make them count. Buy a shirt, buy a bumpersticker... and take one step to change the world. Perhaps then morality = legal = right.
I don't think I'm stealing anything whatsoever by downloading replacement copies of CDs I used to own. I'm not sure I am even guilty of copyright infringement. I used to have a right to play all that music, whenever I pleased. Was that right somehow erased when my car was broken into?
Problem is, someone else is enjoying their licensed copy of your old CD. While I personaly have no moral objection... you are violating the copyright plain and simple. A better plan would be to backup everything you own before hand and then if it's stolen it's no great loss. Better yet get a nice CD printer and imprint your name on the discs.... this way second hand shops would at the very least look twice before buying them, if they buy them at all.
I too have lost a number of tapes and CDs by bozos who broke into my car, and I supply my car with CD-rs rather than CDs.
In the same vein those people who buy CDs from pawnshops and 2nd hand stores, while legal (mostly) are not actually supporting the bands, or the RIAA. This is one thing I could never stand about anti piracy advocates... most bought things used and on close out and while they would preach about the importance of supporting the copyright holders... they were doing their best to cheat them but in a socialy acceptable way.
I support the idea of doing non-criminal activities as a way to avoid punishment for criminal activities. For example, if I steal a car and, later, donate the car to charity, then the authorities should ignore my original theft. I am Buddha. Therefore, I make the rules.
This analogy is flawd. There is NO theft.
A better analogy would be... let's say for example you rented a room to exhibit media that you didn't own the rights too... esp something you taped off the air. This would be wrong. But... let's say for example that you accepted donations for charity. Chances are... and this has been proven by others in the past... permission is always given. This is a great loophole for people who want to run marathons... entire seasons of programing in a rented hall legaly, moraly, and ethicaly correct.
Now... talk to an artist... give him a choice whether they would prefer low piracy and low profit, or high piracy and high profit. Which do you think they would choose? If you are doing something they wish you to do... there is no violation, and no copyright infringement... or "NO THEFT" to the boneheads who still feel this is a form of theft.
They buy more music. Good. That gives them the right to steal whatever they want then, right?
It's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. Does it give the right to infringe on copyrights? Not at all. But are the losing money on the the people they are sueing? Not likely.
Think back to the 1980s when VCRs were new. Some pay channels encouraged taping of movies and others took it upon them selfs to dedicate a timeslot for people to set their timmers to record a movie. To the subscriber they got a very cheap means of getting a movie collection. To the provider they got advertising. Cable subscriptions went up, copyright holders made more money, everyone was happy.
look at the Romanian pop song that was lipsynced by some joe in new jersey... spread across the net. This was a form of copyright infringement too. However I doubt that O-zone objected to the free advertising that that resulted.
Think to your self how many times someone gave you a mix tape with clearly printed artists and song titles. How often did one of those result in a sale. This is also a form of copyright infringement. But is it wrong? If the artist wishes this, then it's not, but if they don't then it is. There is no real way to know if it's right or wrong.
But if the RIAA wants to go out of their way to kill an uncontrolled distribution medium... let them. If they don't want free advertising... by all means end it.
i've seen unskippable previews that can still be fast forwarded, maybe it was one of those
The only time I had an issue was with a Sony DVD player. I couldn't skip through the previews, nor could I fast forward. Come to think about it, I couldn't even pause the copyright warning. All the buttons except stop were locked out.
I have an Epson r300, and I can easily say that printing a DVD and a single photo quality page would not come anywhere near $3-4 in ink costs. Somewhere in the 30-50c range would be more accurate.
What's sad is I was quoting prices for canon, I also own an epson r200 as well.
Black $16.09 + color 5 x 11.99 = 76.04 + tax and what not. Estimated yield 430p @ 5% or 21.5p @ 100% yield.
roughly 16 @ 100% yield roughly 16 @ 1/4 yield
$4.75 a unit @ 100% yield
It's rare that photo printing hits 100% yield, unless you are printing images of gothic churches at night, 50% yield is more reasonable for photos. My limit for DVDs boxes before running out of ink was about 24 or so.. depending on how much colors I used on the r200.
Conclusion... While I was lazy, assumed that a DVD represented roughly 1/4 the area of a letter, and assumed that a dvd cover was also letter, these ball park figures are close to reality from my experence. It costs bucks to print full color high yield DVD covers and Discs using offical OEM ink.
Having done both screen printing and DVD burning, I heartily disagree. A six-station screen printing machine will set you back about USD $8,000, before buying ink and screens and blank shirts and a dryer and a ventilated place to do it all. DVD-R's are a much easier product to make.
I'm sure if I went out of my way I could pirate movies on DVD+/-R. I've done quite a few home movies on DVD in batches of 100. I'm sure I could use a consumer grade printer like Canon's or Epson's sub $200 solution (r200/r300/ip3000/4000/5000/6000). I could spend $40ish to $60ish on OEM ink with an estimated yield of 12 covers and 12 discs or so.
I could spend 50c a disc, 3 to 4 bucks in ink, another 50c for the photopaper, and another 50cents for a long box. I "could" do this for about 5 bucks a disc in terms of materials.
or
I can go to the local flea market, and get a nice bootleg video with excelent cover quality that is reasonably water proof, silk screened discs, and something that actually looks like the genuine artical for $5.00. And as a bonus... something that's printed on a real dvd-rom and not one of those funky DVD-Rs that while are useful don't always play well in all players.
Not to dismiss your theory but I think I can safely assume that anything out of hollywood isn't going to be on KVCD, and chances are if they are selling KVCD that are bloody likely to be bootlegs, then the DVDs are equaly likely to be bootlegs as well. I can tell you the quality of the goods is superior to anything you can produce using consumer grade goods.
I'm sure costs would go down on ink by going with bulk inks, but even then we're still talking a couple of bucks/disc for an inferior product to that of hollywood or commercial bootlegers. I can make something pretty good, worth paying for, but using consumer inkjet printers i'd be priced out of the market by commercial enterprises legit or bootleg. Consumer inkjets and dvd burners are best for material you can't buy in stores like home movies.
Is why they would want to restrict what you can use it for at all? You'd think that more popular = better image = better? I could understand restricting the dev kits but why wouldn't they want people to be able to play flash on non-PC devices?
I can only assume it's the same basic rule of thumb....
An individual can download the product (so long as it's not over a network) and use it for non-profit use.
A company who wishes to use it for a display, kiosk, or wants to employ a specalized version of their software on a dediated device rather than a general purpose PC must contact the copyright holder for a license. This would include cable company provided surfing boxes.
A mobile phone, a PDA, or any other device that the end user has no ability to install software onto requires a different license... after all the end user isn't agreeing it's the vender who's giving it to them.
It's easy enough to understand, if you make a buck using their product they might want a piece of the pie, either money or advertising time, either way you must reach an agreement with them. If you plan to distribute it eithin your intranet you must agree to a different license. This makes sense as an average employee may not have the authority to agree to the terms of a license.
While it all might seem anal-retentive, it's their product and they do have every right to choose to distribute it how they please. You have the right to choose to use it per the agreement offered, not to use it, or ask for different terms which, "Macromedia offers the License Agreement as-is and enters into custom agreements on an extremely limited basis".
Now why they can't work out their license agreement into something easy to understand yet legaly sound is beyond me.
The first fricken thing I ever get on a hospital meal tray is a cup of coffee!!! And I have been in the hospital enough to have a good spectrum of meals. Coffee, no matter what is else on the tray, there is always Coffee!
I rather thought that it was because coffee was a semi-instent beverage that can be bought for a few dollars a pound for cafeteria grade crap where one pound can provide 600 to 1000oz of liquid (4.6gal to 7.8gal). Assuming a standard hospital ration of coffee is about 4oz that's 150 to 250 servings for only a few bucks, 5 to 8 gallons of water, and the electrisity to heat it.
I'm sure there are other reasons too, but as far as beverages also coffee is a very practical solution to food service. Even if someone hates coffee, most enjoy the smell.
Wesley have left you. But you still seemed some what regretful of the fact your left-on-the-cutting-room-floor cameo would be the last time you would bring Wesley to life. If you can pull it off, I think I wouldn't be the only one to find a Wesley Crusher novel told by the man who gave him life to be very worth reading. Please think about it.
*Flashback*
Mr. Crusher: What is this Traveler: This is a bluescreen Wesley Mr. Crusher: I don't understand Traveler: You see the universe is one big jog and shuttle VCR, and once we learn how to use the *remote control* we can freeze reality. Mr. Crusher: Can I overlap a bullet train and make it run over the producers who gave me grief when I wanted to move on to bigger and better things? Travelers: Or better still you can remove the William Fucking Shatner's toupee and make it travel around the universe.
*theme music*
Space... the void between the stars This is the story of William Shatner's toupee Our purpose... to meet three breasted alien women To get down and funky... like white on rice to make it so hard to get rid of me they give up and give me a blow
Which begs the question why, when other airports (such as Heathrow) have miles of tracks that work just fine, couldn't Denver do the same?
In all fairness Heathrow isn't 100% esp if making a hop to Heathrow from one airline to another. The flaw though seems to be in human part of the equation on that case.... where a person checks in in Manchester, their bags to to Heathrow just fine... but for some reason they stay in Heathrow.. for days to a week. This seems to be most troublesome for that Virgin connection.
But the belts, i'm sure they work just fine... it's just getting those bags on the belts that seems to be the issue.
Don't know why you were modded troll, as you say VHS has had index search for a very long time.
Because I was pointing out a feature that exists now on DVD was very common on VHS decks. You gotta expect that around here.... it's like saying Windows has a feature that Linux doesn't have, or being critical an aspect of Macintosh.
Having said that, DVD is ten times better, no question. Far more durable than tape if handled well (DVDs might be more sensitive to things like mishandling/dropping, but aren't damaged half as much as tape through normal playing/sitting on a shelf/etc.) And while you might not notice the quality difference so much on a smallish TV, but projected there is no competition (erm, apart from HD of course).
Hey, I'll fully agree DVD is my medium of choice. But many features that are very native to tape are not all that native to DVD. Fast forward / rewind for example. Near as I can tell the disc spins at a constent speed neither becoming faster nor slowing down. Fast seaking tends to be more choppy on DVD. Frame by frame tends to be emulated very very well but its rate of speed is somewhat limited. This can be handeled better by huge buffers but it's not really native to the design.
The biggest edge VHS had over DVD was the fact that it lived in it's own case. This could have been resolved with caddy based discs but that would eliminate the usefulness of carousel style players.
Quality.... well VHS was crap. It was crap when it was new. You could tell the quality difference between laserdisc and beta and VHS on even the more crappy TVS... and VHS was the worst of the bunch then.
Ok, I have to wonder, why these never caught on. I have a mini-disc player and I love it.
I got one for my newphew at one point in history. To copy music to it required a usb dongle and some sort of optical connection, and recording to it was in real time. This had to have been 8 years ago or so, back when CD-Rs were for sale in 4x or 8x varities. I was shocked about this fact. Keep in mind this was an early generation MD Discman.
But anyways... these days CD-R is up above and beyond 40x. A full cd burn can take as little as 2min without a problem. I'm not sure about CD3 but I imagine one of those can be made in about 1min. I don't have an accurate price for CD3, but I know I can get hockey rink CD-Rs for $30 per 100pack. I would expect that CD3s would float at about 20c to 50c each depending on where you shop. Regular CDs are in the same price bracket. while I know of very few cd3 mp3 players, normal walkmen style CD players can play them without a hitch. Portable CD mp3 players cost as low as $20, but $50 is a typical price.
Minidisc I expect to spend $2.00 each for them on a good day.
So.. I could either buy into a MD recorder at a price of $100ish and media at $2.00ish each. I assume slower recording that CD-r but I could be wrong as i'm out of touch. But a device only useful for one thing... playing portable music.
or
I could buy a burner at $30ish, a portable player at $20ish, and media at squatish. There is no real price advantage going CD3 over CD5, and CD5. There is an advantage with the fact that if I don't already have a CD burner it's useful for more things than music.
Unless I needed recording in the field, something that MD does very well, I simply must say a good reason why sony MD didn't catch on was the fact that with the exception of that feature, it was pretty redundent.
Don't get me wrong... they are a nice standard. I would have bought into one in a heart beat if I could buy a drive to replace my floppy for $100ish or so. Perhaps then we wouldn't have this stilly trivial war about zip and superdisc. The only reason I was not hip to them was the fact that I was more hip to multi purpose media.
I finally sacked up and cancelled my AOL account several months ago, after about ten years. It almost seemed to take ten years to finalize the cancellation with that call. Everytime I thought the deed was done, the woman with the vaguely foreign accent would present me with one more consolation prize to keep me on. And, every time she gave me the "Well, I can do such and such for you" spiel, I repeated the mantra: "Actually, I just want to cancel my service."
Canceling earthlink was somewhat painless... some to think about it the only thing painful was the agent was a mac zelot telling me about some trivial feature in the newest OS9 or some such.
Canceling comcast I did get pressented three offers... 1 month, 6 months 1/2 price, or 1 year 1/2 price. I was getting a better deal and my main argument was "wow, that would cost a little less, or I could switch to someone with a lower rate to begin with and not have to phone you lot, threaten to cancel". It was a good deal, but I had already switched.
On the one hand, I don't mind so much being offered one, two or three deals to stay. On the other... it makes me wonder about any business who's in the practice of giving arbitrary discounts to those lucky few.
The general rule of thumb for the quality of a power supply is the weight. The heavier the power supply, generally, the higher quality.
It's a tad late to respond to this, but I will anyway.
This is a common rule of thumb among audio equipment. When I was in a market for an amp for my truck... nothing fancy... just something to make the speakers louder than the engine, I used the rule of thumb of heavier = better. And I found some heavy amps too.
They had lead weights in them bolted to the inside of the cover.
A better rule of thumb is to measture the temp out of your power supply. If it's too warm either the cooling fans are inadquate or the vr are overworked, in which case it's best to upgrade.
But needless to say one should consider huge heat syncs, and huge caps, things you tend not to find in cheepo power supplies. You can really notice the difference when you hookup your PC to a battery backup. If your system reboots you have crap.
I still do not understand why they do not simply upgrade existing DVD players to decode MPEG-4 AVC content, and continue to use the exact same physical DVD media. With superior compression codecs, HDTV can be offered now with existing hardware and manufacturing processes.
Mpeg-4 is pretty good... but some detail is lost in the high compression.. artifacts are more common, and is not as spiffy as a huge mpeg-2.
Microsoft is already offering HDTV titles in WMV format, and you can in theory buy standalone DVD players that handle WMV. I find my amd 2800xp just adquate enough to handel 1080p. They look nice... save some compression noise.
But the bigest reason to offer a new media format on new media discs isn't so much the fact that you can't fit HDTV on normal DVD. It's the fact that for a time the new disks will be very hard to pirate because no bugger has the recorders to duplicate them yet. Not to speak of the fact that a 12gig video is going to take three times as long to download as a 4gig SP DVD.
Deer LC-300ATX... might also be L&C Technology, or low cost. I think I bought it close to the year 2000. It was in a full tower case I wanted and at the time I was running a either an amd k6-3 400, or a pentium III 500. It was before the i820 chip was recalled.
I've seen lots of power supplies, but never any that lie about their rating like that.
Well I can't say I was lied to... it was in a case and the specs were not listed on the box. Worked just fine for a number of years till I upgraded to an athlon 1700 at which time the biostar rejected it one day. Odd beep code that was resolved with a PS swap. Kept it around for troubleshooting but now I know how bad it is, as in others have had similar complaints about it, it's getting trashed.
I even know a well-off kid with HDTV and all of the latest computer "toys" who still buys VHS movies for some stupid reason. Besides price I see no difference.
The only reason I can think of that anyone would choose VHS over DVD is the fact that a vhs tape can take more external abuse than a DVD disc. If DVDs were like 3.5 inch floppies this would be another story.
I honestly know people who prefer to rent VHS tapes over DVDs because they feel rental DVDs are too damanged to watch. These people have spiffy players that can't play jack even under normal condtions, and they can't seem to grasp that they got a bum unit and should have returned it... but that's not the point. The point is for whatever reason some people, not me, prefer VHS.
VHS doesn't go by scene, and when you stop it there's usually a delay, and then it's slightly off from where you wanted it. My PS2 doesn't do that.
I have *never* owned a VHS player that didn't at the very least allow me to jump scene by scene. Even my first Toshiba unit... early generation front loader with analog dials for any one of the 14 channels, even that went scene by scene... as does my current JVC. It's a nice feature i used to trim commericals out of things I tapped but without a flying erase head I tended to get rainbow noise. Jog and shuttle on the other hand, I have never owned a deck that had that feature.
Look at the sticker on the side of the unit sometime..
I have, many times. Many just list a wattage, most of mine list Max wattage and peek output. For example this crappy supply that came with my full tower is listed as 300watt but clearly marked peek output total 165watt. To me that says 55% efficent. Utter crap but never the less any time I actually see it clearly marked max output the value is lower than the wattage rating by there and abouts of 70%, in rare cases less, in even more rare cases more.
When it's not clearly printed on the label if the wattage listed is input or output, I assume input. If i'm wrong i'm wrong, but it's been my experence that's the standard.
Well, to be fair, it does for absolutely everyone who isn't using a Pentium 4. My hottest 2GHz+ system is only using 100W when maxed-out, the rest are even lower.
I was almost happy with the cheepo compusa PS, it worked MOST of the time. I would crash once a day though. But I swapped it out with something new and i'm stable as a rock. Works just great on my other machine that's an AMD 1700 with only one HD.
That is clearly a case of defective products. Either the motherboard is on it's last leg, or those dirt-cheap power supplies you are getting are utter crap.
Well the motherboard was pretty damned new, and it's still in service under a different power supply. The PS was what came with the full tower... so I would agree the PS was utter crap. In fact there is no shortage of utter crap powersupplies on the market.
I would very much like to know how you "established" that. Even if you're right, it's almost certainly a defective unit, not a case of your system exceeding the rated capacity.
Basic trouble shooting. Had odd ball problems a while after swapping out that 400watt unit that the Biostar motherboard rejected. Matter of fact, I have a stack of power supplies here many are pulls from HP systems (Vectra VE series)... I would crash under the following conditions....
1. After the system had been on for a while... I would put in a CD and crash 2. I would play a game... after about 1/2 hour crash 3. Microsoft word.. 15min or so after using it.
I however would not crash under the following condtions
1. disconnecting all my HDs except for one 2. Using the crap power supplies but powering my drives with an old at power supply, but the motherboard with an ATX power supply rated anywhere from 150watts (e machine pull) to 400 watts. 3. Swapping out the power supply with a new one, one I guessed was not utter crap
The most stable supplies i have with the exception of this new one are pulls from HP vectras by Delta Electronics.
Who said you were the target audience for this product? I am sure if you want to buy one enermax won't say, nah you're goofy for spending money on this everyone knows that a 250 watt compusa generic brand works for just as good
Does it? I totally can not agree. I don't have anything resembling a gamer machine, just a simple asus a7v333 with amd 2800xp, pair of drives, a few cards, and ati 9600 video. That 250watt compusa generic powersupply does NOT cut the mustard. It looks like it works but I've established that most of my intermitent problems were a result of a lame power supply. My biostar motherboard (VIP) wouldn't even post with a generic 250watt compusa generic powersupply. Hell it rejected a 400watt PS.
250watts at 70% efficency, assuming that's even accurate is 175watts.
Below are generic numbers based on what I aproximate what my consumption is.
CPU--- about 70 watts [2ghz P-IV or high end AMD K7) Video card about 40 watts [Geforce FX 5200 or ATI 9600) Drives about 25 watts each [CD-rom spinup is typicaly about 30 watts] PCI cards about 5 watts each Memory about 10 watts each Fans about 2 watts each.
Even with just one hard drive I'm so close to 175 watts it's not even funny. Two drives and Rom spin up.. I'm over 175watts without a doubt. While I'm sure the 250 watt generic compusa P/S might work in cases that have a modest video card, one drive, and modest power consuming CPU it's easy to see you might need more than that compusa 250watt PS.
This is not taking into account max power per voltage line, which the 3.3v in older power supplies might be limited to 14A (46.2watt).
Check for your self what you have and what PS is reccomended.
I agree 1KW is double or tripple what even a hard core gamer would need.... and is probally not money well spent, but neither is that 250watt compusa power supply. A fool and their money are soon parted.
The HDTV mandate allows for a relatively cheap adapter. This standard does not.
Plus the fact that analog will either be available via the cable company, or they will provide a converter box. Old TVs can still be used even 20 year old ones that require an RF modulator of some sort.
The point is that technology changes... people here should know that better than most.
If people aren't willing to purchase an expensive new TV/monitor to view that HD content, then the format will die.
The display technology isn't changing, existing technology is being locked out because it doesn't properly ID it self as being a display device.
What people here know better than most is while formats change TVs/Monitors remain very much unchanged. With a few exceptions most if not all computer monitors made within the past 10 years can still be used. For example, I'm running two Sonys circa 1994, the 20se and the 17se. I plan to use them until such time as they either stop working, or the price for wide screens become reasonable.
With some exceptions monitors made within the past 20 years can still be used. Win95 was the big cut off point for old monochrome, CGA and EGA displays, but even those were useable up until win95 came out, and even then you were not obligated to upgrade to win95. There were some fixed frequency monitors for workstation class machines that can't exactly be used with ease, not unless there is a means of establishing the sync rate at POST which "can" be done but generally isn't. The technology is pretty much the same technicaly speaking.
Now TV... at least in the americas has remained pretty much unchanged since it was released. Sure there was the switch to color but in the americas and your old 50 year old B&W tv still works, you can watch anything from broadcast television to DVD. You might want to upgrade to color, buy a TV with at least direct inputs and a coax connector.
So even among the Slashdot crowd... one can reasonably expect a display device to be a stable investment for about 10 years or so. Playback and storage media I can agree with you, but display devices I can not.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh look! Someone stole my car and used it to commit a crime! It was my car officer, arrest me.
Faulty logic. You didn't commit the crime... you can't really be held accountable if someone stole your car. But if someone steals your CDs, and you make new copies from someone else, well that is a copyright violation. As excuses go it's semi-decent, after all in theory you paid for it in the first place... but that doesn't mean it's not a copyright violation.
Unfortunatly there is not license to own a copy... perhaps there should be, but there isn't. I'm actually pro physical licenses in the form of a cover... and i'm pro download the music and buy the cover. I think this would solve the huge problem with freeloaders, and those users who have the legit excuse of not buying something because it's out of print... digital copy would mean there is no such thing as out of print, and a licensed cover would mean you paid for it. Or for single tracks... a little stamp you can put on a cover. Free distribution and profit... who could ask for more?
This way... all those stupid freaking control freaks who are running amuck with their little pro-anti p2p flags.
Which still doesn't make it legal or right, either morally or ethically.
Legal!=Moral
Moral!=right
Ethical!=right
Anytime you see someone make a big deal about these excuses, you know they are excusing their own complete lack of morals.
Assuming someone else lacks morals when their ethics are different than yours isn't right even though it's perfectly legal to be deluded into thinking that somehow your code of conduct makes you a better person.
If you are a copyright holder, you have every right to choose how you want your material copied. This would include whether or not you want radio play, tape/cd/vinyl sales, or whether to allow others to copy your music via P2P.
Downloading something off a p2p system might be wrong, it might even be considered unethical or immoral, and could be illegal. But it is also wrong for people like your self to deny copyright holders the choice by repeating the brainwashing rhetoric without any regard to their rights under the law. It would seem you too lack a certain level of ethics. So did the RIAA when they decided to sue the Girl Scouts for singing Puff the Magic Dragon around the campfire.
The best thing you can do, as a fan of music, is to find out who supports P2P, and show your support by obeying their desire by sharing or not sharing. At the end of the day each dollar is a vote... make them count. Buy a shirt, buy a bumpersticker... and take one step to change the world. Perhaps then morality = legal = right.
I don't think I'm stealing anything whatsoever by downloading replacement copies of CDs I used to own. I'm not sure I am even guilty of copyright infringement. I used to have a right to play all that music, whenever I pleased. Was that right somehow erased when my car was broken into?
Problem is, someone else is enjoying their licensed copy of your old CD. While I personaly have no moral objection... you are violating the copyright plain and simple. A better plan would be to backup everything you own before hand and then if it's stolen it's no great loss. Better yet get a nice CD printer and imprint your name on the discs.... this way second hand shops would at the very least look twice before buying them, if they buy them at all.
I too have lost a number of tapes and CDs by bozos who broke into my car, and I supply my car with CD-rs rather than CDs.
In the same vein those people who buy CDs from pawnshops and 2nd hand stores, while legal (mostly) are not actually supporting the bands, or the RIAA. This is one thing I could never stand about anti piracy advocates... most bought things used and on close out and while they would preach about the importance of supporting the copyright holders... they were doing their best to cheat them but in a socialy acceptable way.
I support the idea of doing non-criminal activities as a way to avoid punishment for criminal activities. For example, if I steal a car and, later, donate the car to charity, then the authorities should ignore my original theft. I am Buddha. Therefore, I make the rules.
This analogy is flawd. There is NO theft.
A better analogy would be... let's say for example you rented a room to exhibit media that you didn't own the rights too... esp something you taped off the air. This would be wrong. But... let's say for example that you accepted donations for charity. Chances are... and this has been proven by others in the past... permission is always given. This is a great loophole for people who want to run marathons... entire seasons of programing in a rented hall legaly, moraly, and ethicaly correct.
Now... talk to an artist... give him a choice whether they would prefer low piracy and low profit, or high piracy and high profit. Which do you think they would choose? If you are doing something they wish you to do... there is no violation, and no copyright infringement... or "NO THEFT" to the boneheads who still feel this is a form of theft.
They buy more music. Good. That gives them the right to steal whatever they want then, right?
It's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. Does it give the right to infringe on copyrights? Not at all. But are the losing money on the the people they are sueing? Not likely.
Think back to the 1980s when VCRs were new. Some pay channels encouraged taping of movies and others took it upon them selfs to dedicate a timeslot for people to set their timmers to record a movie. To the subscriber they got a very cheap means of getting a movie collection. To the provider they got advertising. Cable subscriptions went up, copyright holders made more money, everyone was happy.
look at the Romanian pop song that was lipsynced by some joe in new jersey... spread across the net. This was a form of copyright infringement too. However I doubt that O-zone objected to the free advertising that that resulted.
Think to your self how many times someone gave you a mix tape with clearly printed artists and song titles. How often did one of those result in a sale. This is also a form of copyright infringement. But is it wrong? If the artist wishes this, then it's not, but if they don't then it is. There is no real way to know if it's right or wrong.
But if the RIAA wants to go out of their way to kill an uncontrolled distribution medium... let them. If they don't want free advertising... by all means end it.
i've seen unskippable previews that can still be fast forwarded, maybe it was one of those
The only time I had an issue was with a Sony DVD player. I couldn't skip through the previews, nor could I fast forward. Come to think about it, I couldn't even pause the copyright warning. All the buttons except stop were locked out.
So for the future I won't buy Sony DVD players.
I have an Epson r300, and I can easily say that printing a DVD and a single photo quality page would not come anywhere near $3-4 in ink costs. Somewhere in the 30-50c range would be more accurate.
What's sad is I was quoting prices for canon, I also own an epson r200 as well.
Black $16.09 + color 5 x 11.99 = 76.04 + tax and what not. Estimated yield 430p @ 5% or 21.5p @ 100% yield.
roughly 16 @ 100% yield
roughly 16 @ 1/4 yield
$4.75 a unit @ 100% yield
It's rare that photo printing hits 100% yield, unless you are printing images of gothic churches at night, 50% yield is more reasonable for photos. My limit for DVDs boxes before running out of ink was about 24 or so.. depending on how much colors I used on the r200.
@25% yield $1.1875
@50% yield $2.375
@75% yield $3.5625
@100% yield $4.75
Conclusion... While I was lazy, assumed that a DVD represented roughly 1/4 the area of a letter, and assumed that a dvd cover was also letter, these ball park figures are close to reality from my experence. It costs bucks to print full color high yield DVD covers and Discs using offical OEM ink.
Having done both screen printing and DVD burning, I heartily disagree. A six-station screen printing machine will set you back about USD $8,000, before buying ink and screens and blank shirts and a dryer and a ventilated place to do it all. DVD-R's are a much easier product to make.
I'm sure if I went out of my way I could pirate movies on DVD+/-R. I've done quite a few home movies on DVD in batches of 100. I'm sure I could use a consumer grade printer like Canon's or Epson's sub $200 solution (r200/r300/ip3000/4000/5000/6000). I could spend $40ish to $60ish on OEM ink with an estimated yield of 12 covers and 12 discs or so.
I could spend 50c a disc, 3 to 4 bucks in ink, another 50c for the photopaper, and another 50cents for a long box. I "could" do this for about 5 bucks a disc in terms of materials.
or
I can go to the local flea market, and get a nice bootleg video with excelent cover quality that is reasonably water proof, silk screened discs, and something that actually looks like the genuine artical for $5.00. And as a bonus... something that's printed on a real dvd-rom and not one of those funky DVD-Rs that while are useful don't always play well in all players.
Not to dismiss your theory but I think I can safely assume that anything out of hollywood isn't going to be on KVCD, and chances are if they are selling KVCD that are bloody likely to be bootlegs, then the DVDs are equaly likely to be bootlegs as well. I can tell you the quality of the goods is superior to anything you can produce using consumer grade goods.
I'm sure costs would go down on ink by going with bulk inks, but even then we're still talking a couple of bucks/disc for an inferior product to that of hollywood or commercial bootlegers. I can make something pretty good, worth paying for, but using consumer inkjet printers i'd be priced out of the market by commercial enterprises legit or bootleg. Consumer inkjets and dvd burners are best for material you can't buy in stores like home movies.
Is why they would want to restrict what you can use it for at all? You'd think that more popular = better image = better? I could understand restricting the dev kits but why wouldn't they want people to be able to play flash on non-PC devices?
I can only assume it's the same basic rule of thumb....
An individual can download the product (so long as it's not over a network) and use it for non-profit use.
A company who wishes to use it for a display, kiosk, or wants to employ a specalized version of their software on a dediated device rather than a general purpose PC must contact the copyright holder for a license. This would include cable company provided surfing boxes.
A mobile phone, a PDA, or any other device that the end user has no ability to install software onto requires a different license... after all the end user isn't agreeing it's the vender who's giving it to them.
It's easy enough to understand, if you make a buck using their product they might want a piece of the pie, either money or advertising time, either way you must reach an agreement with them. If you plan to distribute it eithin your intranet you must agree to a different license. This makes sense as an average employee may not have the authority to agree to the terms of a license.
While it all might seem anal-retentive, it's their product and they do have every right to choose to distribute it how they please. You have the right to choose to use it per the agreement offered, not to use it, or ask for different terms which, "Macromedia offers the License Agreement as-is and enters into custom agreements on an extremely limited basis".
Now why they can't work out their license agreement into something easy to understand yet legaly sound is beyond me.
The first fricken thing I ever get on a hospital meal tray is a cup of coffee!!! And I have been in the hospital enough to have a good spectrum of meals. Coffee, no matter what is else on the tray, there is always Coffee!
I rather thought that it was because coffee was a semi-instent beverage that can be bought for a few dollars a pound for cafeteria grade crap where one pound can provide 600 to 1000oz of liquid (4.6gal to 7.8gal). Assuming a standard hospital ration of coffee is about 4oz that's 150 to 250 servings for only a few bucks, 5 to 8 gallons of water, and the electrisity to heat it.
I'm sure there are other reasons too, but as far as beverages also coffee is a very practical solution to food service. Even if someone hates coffee, most enjoy the smell.
I've often wondered whether the role of Chekov contributed to the end of the cold war
Could be... I mean... before Chekov we had the threat of Nuclear subs... post Chekov we had the threat of Nuclear Wessles... Nu-Clear Wess-les.
Wesley have left you. But you still seemed some what regretful of the fact your left-on-the-cutting-room-floor cameo would be the last time you would bring Wesley to life. If you can pull it off, I think I wouldn't be the only one to find a Wesley Crusher novel told by the man who gave him life to be very worth reading. Please think about it.
*Flashback*
Mr. Crusher: What is this
Traveler: This is a bluescreen Wesley
Mr. Crusher: I don't understand
Traveler: You see the universe is one big jog and shuttle VCR, and once we learn how to use the *remote control* we can freeze reality.
Mr. Crusher: Can I overlap a bullet train and make it run over the producers who gave me grief when I wanted to move on to bigger and better things?
Travelers: Or better still you can remove the William Fucking Shatner's toupee and make it travel around the universe.
*theme music*
Space... the void between the stars
This is the story of William Shatner's toupee
Our purpose... to meet three breasted alien women
To get down and funky... like white on rice
to make it so hard to get rid of me they give up and give me a blow
Which begs the question why, when other airports (such as Heathrow) have miles of tracks that work just fine, couldn't Denver do the same?
In all fairness Heathrow isn't 100% esp if making a hop to Heathrow from one airline to another. The flaw though seems to be in human part of the equation on that case.... where a person checks in in Manchester, their bags to to Heathrow just fine... but for some reason they stay in Heathrow.. for days to a week. This seems to be most troublesome for that Virgin connection.
But the belts, i'm sure they work just fine... it's just getting those bags on the belts that seems to be the issue.
Don't know why you were modded troll, as you say VHS has had index search for a very long time.
Because I was pointing out a feature that exists now on DVD was very common on VHS decks. You gotta expect that around here.... it's like saying Windows has a feature that Linux doesn't have, or being critical an aspect of Macintosh.
Having said that, DVD is ten times better, no question. Far more durable than tape if handled well (DVDs might be more sensitive to things like mishandling/dropping, but aren't damaged half as much as tape through normal playing/sitting on a shelf/etc.) And while you might not notice the quality difference so much on a smallish TV, but projected there is no competition (erm, apart from HD of course).
Hey, I'll fully agree DVD is my medium of choice. But many features that are very native to tape are not all that native to DVD. Fast forward / rewind for example. Near as I can tell the disc spins at a constent speed neither becoming faster nor slowing down. Fast seaking tends to be more choppy on DVD. Frame by frame tends to be emulated very very well but its rate of speed is somewhat limited. This can be handeled better by huge buffers but it's not really native to the design.
The biggest edge VHS had over DVD was the fact that it lived in it's own case. This could have been resolved with caddy based discs but that would eliminate the usefulness of carousel style players.
Quality.... well VHS was crap. It was crap when it was new. You could tell the quality difference between laserdisc and beta and VHS on even the more crappy TVS... and VHS was the worst of the bunch then.
Ok, I have to wonder, why these never caught on. I have a mini-disc player and I love it.
I got one for my newphew at one point in history. To copy music to it required a usb dongle and some sort of optical connection, and recording to it was in real time. This had to have been 8 years ago or so, back when CD-Rs were for sale in 4x or 8x varities. I was shocked about this fact. Keep in mind this was an early generation MD Discman.
But anyways... these days CD-R is up above and beyond 40x. A full cd burn can take as little as 2min without a problem. I'm not sure about CD3 but I imagine one of those can be made in about 1min. I don't have an accurate price for CD3, but I know I can get hockey rink CD-Rs for $30 per 100pack. I would expect that CD3s would float at about 20c to 50c each depending on where you shop. Regular CDs are in the same price bracket. while I know of very few cd3 mp3 players, normal walkmen style CD players can play them without a hitch. Portable CD mp3 players cost as low as $20, but $50 is a typical price.
Minidisc I expect to spend $2.00 each for them on a good day.
So.. I could either buy into a MD recorder at a price of $100ish and media at $2.00ish each. I assume slower recording that CD-r but I could be wrong as i'm out of touch. But a device only useful for one thing... playing portable music.
or
I could buy a burner at $30ish, a portable player at $20ish, and media at squatish. There is no real price advantage going CD3 over CD5, and CD5. There is an advantage with the fact that if I don't already have a CD burner it's useful for more things than music.
Unless I needed recording in the field, something that MD does very well, I simply must say a good reason why sony MD didn't catch on was the fact that with the exception of that feature, it was pretty redundent.
Don't get me wrong... they are a nice standard. I would have bought into one in a heart beat if I could buy a drive to replace my floppy for $100ish or so. Perhaps then we wouldn't have this stilly trivial war about zip and superdisc. The only reason I was not hip to them was the fact that I was more hip to multi purpose media.
I finally sacked up and cancelled my AOL account several months ago, after about ten years. It almost seemed to take ten years to finalize the cancellation with that call. Everytime I thought the deed was done, the woman with the vaguely foreign accent would present me with one more consolation prize to keep me on. And, every time she gave me the "Well, I can do such and such for you" spiel, I repeated the mantra: "Actually, I just want to cancel my service."
Canceling earthlink was somewhat painless... some to think about it the only thing painful was the agent was a mac zelot telling me about some trivial feature in the newest OS9 or some such.
Canceling comcast I did get pressented three offers... 1 month, 6 months 1/2 price, or 1 year 1/2 price. I was getting a better deal and my main argument was "wow, that would cost a little less, or I could switch to someone with a lower rate to begin with and not have to phone you lot, threaten to cancel". It was a good deal, but I had already switched.
On the one hand, I don't mind so much being offered one, two or three deals to stay. On the other... it makes me wonder about any business who's in the practice of giving arbitrary discounts to those lucky few.
The general rule of thumb for the quality of a power supply is the weight. The heavier the power supply, generally, the higher quality.
It's a tad late to respond to this, but I will anyway.
This is a common rule of thumb among audio equipment. When I was in a market for an amp for my truck... nothing fancy... just something to make the speakers louder than the engine, I used the rule of thumb of heavier = better. And I found some heavy amps too.
They had lead weights in them bolted to the inside of the cover.
A better rule of thumb is to measture the temp out of your power supply. If it's too warm either the cooling fans are inadquate or the vr are overworked, in which case it's best to upgrade.
But needless to say one should consider huge heat syncs, and huge caps, things you tend not to find in cheepo power supplies. You can really notice the difference when you hookup your PC to a battery backup. If your system reboots you have crap.
I still do not understand why they do not simply upgrade existing DVD players to decode MPEG-4 AVC content, and continue to use the exact same physical DVD media. With superior compression codecs, HDTV can be offered now with existing hardware and manufacturing processes.
t ent_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx
Mpeg-4 is pretty good... but some detail is lost in the high compression.. artifacts are more common, and is not as spiffy as a huge mpeg-2.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/con
Microsoft is already offering HDTV titles in WMV format, and you can in theory buy standalone DVD players that handle WMV. I find my amd 2800xp just adquate enough to handel 1080p. They look nice... save some compression noise.
But the bigest reason to offer a new media format on new media discs isn't so much the fact that you can't fit HDTV on normal DVD. It's the fact that for a time the new disks will be very hard to pirate because no bugger has the recorders to duplicate them yet. Not to speak of the fact that a 12gig video is going to take three times as long to download as a 4gig SP DVD.
What power supply is this? (Brand/Model#)
Deer LC-300ATX... might also be L&C Technology, or low cost. I think I bought it close to the year 2000. It was in a full tower case I wanted and at the time I was running a either an amd k6-3 400, or a pentium III 500. It was before the i820 chip was recalled.
I've seen lots of power supplies, but never any that lie about their rating like that.
Well I can't say I was lied to... it was in a case and the specs were not listed on the box. Worked just fine for a number of years till I upgraded to an athlon 1700 at which time the biostar rejected it one day. Odd beep code that was resolved with a PS swap. Kept it around for troubleshooting but now I know how bad it is, as in others have had similar complaints about it, it's getting trashed.
I even know a well-off kid with HDTV and all of the latest computer "toys" who still buys VHS movies for some stupid reason. Besides price I see no difference.
The only reason I can think of that anyone would choose VHS over DVD is the fact that a vhs tape can take more external abuse than a DVD disc. If DVDs were like 3.5 inch floppies this would be another story.
I honestly know people who prefer to rent VHS tapes over DVDs because they feel rental DVDs are too damanged to watch. These people have spiffy players that can't play jack even under normal condtions, and they can't seem to grasp that they got a bum unit and should have returned it... but that's not the point. The point is for whatever reason some people, not me, prefer VHS.
VHS doesn't go by scene, and when you stop it there's usually a delay, and then it's slightly off from where you wanted it. My PS2 doesn't do that.
I have *never* owned a VHS player that didn't at the very least allow me to jump scene by scene. Even my first Toshiba unit... early generation front loader with analog dials for any one of the 14 channels, even that went scene by scene... as does my current JVC. It's a nice feature i used to trim commericals out of things I tapped but without a flying erase head I tended to get rainbow noise. Jog and shuttle on the other hand, I have never owned a deck that had that feature.
Look at the sticker on the side of the unit sometime..
I have, many times. Many just list a wattage, most of mine list Max wattage and peek output. For example this crappy supply that came with my full tower is listed as 300watt but clearly marked peek output total 165watt. To me that says 55% efficent. Utter crap but never the less any time I actually see it clearly marked max output the value is lower than the wattage rating by there and abouts of 70%, in rare cases less, in even more rare cases more.
When it's not clearly printed on the label if the wattage listed is input or output, I assume input. If i'm wrong i'm wrong, but it's been my experence that's the standard.
Well, to be fair, it does for absolutely everyone who isn't using a Pentium 4. My hottest 2GHz+ system is only using 100W when maxed-out, the rest are even lower.
I was almost happy with the cheepo compusa PS, it worked MOST of the time. I would crash once a day though. But I swapped it out with something new and i'm stable as a rock. Works just great on my other machine that's an AMD 1700 with only one HD.
That is clearly a case of defective products. Either the motherboard is on it's last leg, or
those dirt-cheap power supplies you are getting are utter crap.
Well the motherboard was pretty damned new, and it's still in service under a different power supply. The PS was what came with the full tower... so I would agree the PS was utter crap. In fact there is no shortage of utter crap powersupplies on the market.
I would very much like to know how you "established" that. Even if you're right, it's almost certainly a defective unit, not a case of your system exceeding the rated capacity.
Basic trouble shooting. Had odd ball problems a while after swapping out that 400watt unit that the Biostar motherboard rejected. Matter of fact, I have a stack of power supplies here many are pulls from HP systems (Vectra VE series)... I would crash under the following conditions....
1. After the system had been on for a while... I would put in a CD and crash
2. I would play a game... after about 1/2 hour crash
3. Microsoft word.. 15min or so after using it.
I however would not crash under the following condtions
1. disconnecting all my HDs except for one
2. Using the crap power supplies but powering my drives with an old at power supply, but the motherboard with an ATX power supply rated anywhere from 150watts (e machine pull) to 400 watts.
3. Swapping out the power supply with a new one, one I guessed was not utter crap
The most stable supplies i have with the exception of this new one are pulls from HP vectras by Delta Electronics.
Who said you were the target audience for this product? I am sure if you want to buy one enermax won't say, nah you're goofy for spending money on this everyone knows that a 250 watt compusa generic brand works for just as good
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Does it? I totally can not agree. I don't have anything resembling a gamer machine, just a simple asus a7v333 with amd 2800xp, pair of drives, a few cards, and ati 9600 video. That 250watt compusa generic powersupply does NOT cut the mustard. It looks like it works but I've established that most of my intermitent problems were a result of a lame power supply. My biostar motherboard (VIP) wouldn't even post with a generic 250watt compusa generic powersupply. Hell it rejected a 400watt PS.
250watts at 70% efficency, assuming that's even accurate is 175watts.
Below are generic numbers based on what I aproximate what my consumption is.
CPU--- about 70 watts [2ghz P-IV or high end AMD K7)
Video card about 40 watts [Geforce FX 5200 or ATI 9600)
Drives about 25 watts each [CD-rom spinup is typicaly about 30 watts]
PCI cards about 5 watts each
Memory about 10 watts each
Fans about 2 watts each.
Even with just one hard drive I'm so close to 175 watts it's not even funny. Two drives and Rom spin up.. I'm over 175watts without a doubt. While I'm sure the 250 watt generic compusa P/S might work in cases that have a modest video card, one drive, and modest power consuming CPU it's easy to see you might need more than that compusa 250watt PS.
This is not taking into account max power per voltage line, which the 3.3v in older power supplies might be limited to 14A (46.2watt).
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/Power_Sup
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/Power_Sup
Check for your self what you have and what PS is reccomended.
I agree 1KW is double or tripple what even a hard core gamer would need.... and is probally not money well spent, but neither is that 250watt compusa power supply. A fool and their money are soon parted.
The HDTV mandate allows for a relatively cheap adapter. This standard does not.
Plus the fact that analog will either be available via the cable company, or they will provide a converter box. Old TVs can still be used even 20 year old ones that require an RF modulator of some sort.
The point is that technology changes... people here should know that better than most.
If people aren't willing to purchase an expensive new TV/monitor to view that HD content, then the format will die.
The display technology isn't changing, existing technology is being locked out because it doesn't properly ID it self as being a display device.
What people here know better than most is while formats change TVs/Monitors remain very much unchanged.
With a few exceptions most if not all computer monitors made within the past 10 years can still be used. For example, I'm running two Sonys circa 1994, the 20se and the 17se. I plan to use them until such time as they either stop working, or the price for wide screens become reasonable.
With some exceptions monitors made within the past 20 years can still be used. Win95 was the big cut off point for old monochrome, CGA and EGA displays, but even those were useable up until win95 came out, and even then you were not obligated to upgrade to win95. There were some fixed frequency monitors for workstation class machines that can't exactly be used with ease, not unless there is a means of establishing the sync rate at POST which "can" be done but generally isn't. The technology is pretty much the same technicaly speaking.
Now TV... at least in the americas has remained pretty much unchanged since it was released. Sure there was the switch to color but in the americas and your old 50 year old B&W tv still works, you can watch anything from broadcast television to DVD. You might want to upgrade to color, buy a TV with at least direct inputs and a coax connector.
So even among the Slashdot crowd... one can reasonably expect a display device to be a stable investment for about 10 years or so. Playback and storage media I can agree with you, but display devices I can not.