This is not going to stop a song from appearing on your favorite P2P app.. All it takes for that is ONE person to rip it digitally or via analog inputs and share it out or post on usenet. What this MAY curb is the average computer USER like Sally burning a copy of the CD she bought for Jill at the office or for a friend after school. Obviously someone feels that is a major threat also and they are trying to find a way to prevent that. Maybe I'm wrong and they honestly think this will prevent the songs from showing up in mp3 format somewhere..
I rip all of my cd's to MP3 to play in my enabled car stereo, dvd unit, portable, and my lan. I will not buy a cd that will not allow me to do that. I will simply wait till I find it with KaZaa.
Isnt PanIP in california also? I believe the last time this was posted to/., the general thought was because a small company would be less likely to travel to CA to fight this and settle out of court. Actually if you look at PanIP's recent actions everything is based on not actually defending the patent in court but getting money from smaller companies with little resources to fight back.
Here is an interesting story about the marketing and construction costs of capacitors. Basically says that labor costs are not an issue with the actual constuction of caps (with the exception of screw type terminals) and that materials dominate the price. I did some searching around with Google for large quantity cap purchases. There seems to be a noteworthy difference in price between higher and lower rated voltage caps of the same cap value, so maybe they are using something closer to the limit to save some pennies. Or cutting corners during fabrications, maybe not something that directly effects the electrical characteristics but the physical ones, like thinner walls, poor sealing surfaces etc. which will lead to failure sooner..
Even if you are playing Doom, it is far better to play Doom for 2 hours with a slight jerkiness and speed reduction, than to lose power and have to kill the game 1 hour into your 2 hour train ride.
I too work for a law firm. It's far better to have the computer setup that that user CAN NOT even get Doom on their computer! Different environments call for different configurations I guess. Hell, I'd volunteer to beta test the Doom software push in the environment! It was a little rough switching to a lockdown mode a few years ago but we had support from many of the main partners. It's the norm now, there are very very few exceptions and no one complains anymore.
but don't try to tell me that people modifying TIVO's at home, in aggregate, has no external effects.
Can you specify an effect this would have and it be DIRECTLY relate to my modifying my TIVO?
Did you ever read the side of a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese box (or any food product instructions)? It says to mix in 1/4 of Parkay Margerine. The fact that I used store brand margerine and not Parkay will result in about the same effect I think you are refering to. I am sure that Kraft Foods would make more money if people only used Parkay and Starkist Tuna with thier M&C. Does that make it WRONG for me to use something else? Does thier business model rely on me to use it? Are they selling the M&C at a loss so the butter can even it out? Should there be a law that only allows me to use what they say on the box? Would everyone be better off as consumers if ALL products had this legal requirement and we were forced into following them? I don't think soooo..
What happens when a TIVO competitor comes around and has a completely open system that allows you to do anything you want with it? Should they be legally banned so TIVO can stay afloat? If this other competitor does make it and TIVO fails would you know why? Because they gave the consumer what they wanted and they bought it!
You cannot buy a 2003 ford mustang, remove the muffler, and drive around at 3am generating 100db of sound. Yes, it's your hardware, but rules exist to further a public good--a (relatively) pollution and noise free environment.
First of all, you CAN remove your muffler and drive around at 3AM. You can do anything you want to that car. You just can not drive it on public roads legally after the fact. If you do this in your own property or a place like a track and no one complains about the noise it is 100% perfectly legal. Have you been to a race track on a test and tune night? By the way, removing the muffler does not increase your emissions levels, removing the catylatic convertors does, and yes, you can buy off road pipes (meaning no convertors) from thousands of companies for just about any vehicle. Modifying a TIVO in no way shape or form bothers my neighbors or is a nuisance to the general public.
the alternative is a world where prices are higher / options are fewer because companies would have to hedge against unauthorized uses.
So when your business has a model that can not make money, the governmant should change the law against the public good (to use your own words) to help you make money? Are you on someones lobbying payroll? Did you ever think that maybe if a company made these hidden options available or added more options that maybe they could sell more units? The consumer would have MORE choices.
the alternative is a world where prices are higher / options are fewer because companies would have to hedge against unauthorized uses.
No, the alternate is where companies compete on the quality and usefulness of thier products. Not trying to squeeze every last penny from a product that is not really exactly what someone may want because a government handout let them keep making it for a profit on it.
michael, given your well known hatred of microsoft,
I know this is offtopic, it is a reply..
More often than not I do not agree with his MS bashing style either. If it bothered me THAT bad I would not worry about getting others to jump on my bandwagon, I would simply block him out with the slashdot user options. It is really that easy... Of course you cant be an AC for that option.
I know a guy that was arrested for a fraudulent 900 scam. I do not know the details of HOW it was done but.. He had a 1 900 Job Line provided by MCI. He rigged it to fake calls and rack up his payout from MCI. In one month MCI owed him almost $400,000 for some cheasy job line. Times were tough back then but not that bad! At the MCI office, an FBI undercover handed him a check and then immediately arrested him.
I'm sure a smaller amount would not have been as obvious and he may have been able to sustain it. Of course these horse cheats in the story could have started small years ago and have just now got caught.
In high school, I used to play Metriod for HOURS a day on my wifes (girlfriend at the time) little brothers Nintendo. It got to the point where she and her friends would leave without me and I'd catch up with them later. After a few weeks of playing and almost losing my future wife, I finally completed the game. All I saw was some stupid credits rolling by and the game started over. It was a very short lived but incredibly satisfying feeling that I shared alone with myself in her basement. I tried playing the game a few times since with various EMU's but its just not the same.
My son and I currently play numerous games but all he wants is cheats and game saves. Hey back when I was a Gamer, there was no cheatz, gamesharks, or printed walk throughs, we played uphill both ways!!
the laws that prevent the telemarketers are violating their 1st amendment right to free speech
They are using and interupting MY time. Freedom of speech does not mean I have to listen, it does not mean you are entitled to every available means to speak your mind. Specially when I am greatly bothered in the process. Just because I have a US Postal mailbox at the end of my driveway does NOT give the right for just anyone to put stuff in it in the name of speech. You can not pick up a two-way radio and start broadcasting a sale on toner refill kits. A marketer is more then welcome to stand at the end of my driveway or walk up and down the road and speak all they want. The freedom of speech for them is still protected, they are concerned about freedom of conducting business in the cheapest manner possible, that is not protected (unless you are a really big campaign donner).
People don't get all bitchy and ask the cops to replace their stuff, do they?
My parents own a small electronics repair shop. It was robbed recently. My parents had to pay each customer what their stolen tv,vcr,stereo etc.. was worth. Paypal is password protected, my parents business was locked with a key. Sorry but I do not see much of a difference. My parents eventually got most of the money back via the insurance company and some of the stuff was recovered within a few weeks.
I think every person with a tv claimed they were less then 1 year old and 5 inches larger, it was a comical event to watch them back peddle when their stuff was recovered.
Navy Federal Credit Union works fine with everything I have ever tried. IE, Kmeleon, Opera (Linux and Win), and whatever version of Mozilla/Netscape RH7.3 comes with and get this... Usable with Lynx on a console. The general bank information like rate calculators, online applications and some of the general info links did not work so well so its a little tricky getting to the account access part but, it works pretty good once logged in to my account. I have not tried the web bill paying portion with all of the browsers, which is handled 3rd party via Checkfree. I do know that Opera and the whatever RH 7.3 comes with but it works with that also. I tried to include some text from a Lynx section but I couldn't get past the lameness filter..
I did not have time to read every article in this story so this may be a repeat.
You can take your statement and substitute "Americans" for "anyone". Bandwidth may be an issue for a cable provider. They may be losing money. The problem is when you have the service for x period of time and then they come back and change the terms to thier advantage. My Comcast connection is capped 1.5m/128k down/up. This is what I signed up for and this is what I expect, this was a limit that I knew before getting the service. I would be VERY upset if two months later they determine that I am a bandwidth hog and try to change me to a special plan of 5GB/month. This is not what I pay for, or ditched my dialup for. Check thier advertisments, blazing fast always on high speed internet video and audio, download 50 times faster then a 28.8k modem!! I am doing that now. Nowhere does it say it will be that fast for 5 days and then you are shut off for the rest of the month. They are pushing terms to get you online then they switch them after you get online. This is the issue...
When I lived in Hawaii I had RR, they had thier own news servers, Tucows and various mirrors, streaming audio and video channels, and recently added various Linux iso mirrors. They advertise these and suggested you use them. Comcast has thier stuff strung out everywhere and farm to GigaNews for usenet (1GB free/month, I upgraded this myself directly with GN for an extra fee). Very little content via Comcast comes from within Comcast. Maybe because HI is an isolated area this was easier to acomplish. A traceroute now from me on Comcast to anything Comcast is at least 18 hops and it bounces between ATT and Sprint to get there. If there was a more centralized location for getting bulk items it would help both parties involved.
I used to work for and airline and flew back and forth daily from Washington Dulles. I havent actually called to inform others while in flight but I have been able to see my car in my driveway and other things in the area of my house. It took some time to finally pinpoint the area but with flying twice daily it did not take very long. This was also the best way for me to gauge the traffic situation for my commute home! Things look a lot different from above.
I know I bought metallica albums before their napster crusade, but I flat our refuse to now.
So did I. I have a limited edition Kill Em All picture disk and at least 4 other vinyls, plus every cd until the Load release including the original limited edition 5.99tape and 9.99cd Garage Days Re-Revisted EP, and I've seen them in concert twice. I do not buy from them anymore because I think they have sucked for at least the last 10 years! The Black album was questionable but they did a complete 180 after that, now they are just like every other band in that genre. This predated Napster. Maybe there are more people that feel the same way? I did download a few tracks from Reload recently and thought it would spark my interest again, listened to it maybe twice and have not touched it since. I WOULD NOT have bought the CD even if I did not find it online. If I did in fact like it, I would have bought it. They have not released new and decent material on a regular basis since the 1983-1988 time frame. This may work for the Dead or the Stones but Metallica did not have quantity or momentum to simply put it in neutral and coast around. Maybe that is the reason for your piss poor sales Lars..
On that same note... You could buy 5 of those Kia's for the same price. It depends on what you are buying a car for. To get you from one point to another, or to sit and admire it in your driveway from your front porch. That Kia has the same ability to be right next to you in traffic, moving right along with you on the highway, parked right next to you at the grocery store, and hauling the kids to the movies. The difference? One was cheaper by over a factor of 5. IMHO buying used is even better. I bought my current second car (a used Ford Aspire made by none other then Kia) for $3000 3 years ago. I have since put over 50k miles with no more then $300 maintenance. I have taken the extra cash I have from not buying a new Mercedes (or something in the same range) and refinanced my mortgage down to 15 years from 30, saving me over 290k over 15 years. I still get around fine regardless of who engineered the thing. The downside is its not really fun to hang out and talk about a Ford Aspire..
Sorry to ramble on but I just had almost the same arguement yesterday with a co-worker on his absolute need for a $42k Suburban because he is expecting his first child soon.
So WAS the company I work for. We are currently about 50% of the way through a company wide conversion to Exchange/AD environment with W2K severs. I can only hope that our current stability problems are because we are in a transition or a temp lack of admin experience with W2K servers. I know we NEVER had problems with our incoming mail when that headless Sun box was handling our regions SMTP...
Bottom line is any system will only be as good as those that are maintaining it.
I do keep meaning to switch to a fully Linux-based client, but email seems to be one of the big issues for me. I have tried Evolution, KMail and at least 4 others but never quite find it as usable. I spend probably 50% of my work time answering email.
Are you at least using IMAP? I switch my mail clients and platforms often. I doubt you will find the "one" mail application that does them all. At least with IMAP you can switch or get access anytime without losing your mail and your directories, add procmail and your filtering will follow also. I was using and upgrading Eudora since 1995 with its proprietary format. It was great but I wanted access from outside my local Win box and did not want to lose all of my previous mail. I converted it all and transfered over to IMAP. Now switching mail clients is a breeze.. You can find some decent freeware/shareware mailbox conversion tools with Google. The only downside (for some) is maintaining a 24x7 IMAP server.
My last assignment in the Navy was the ADP department (their term for IT) for a maintenance facility in Hawaii. We did not have WordStar but were still very dated, in mid 98 they had Dos/W3.11 with Novell and Banyan over coax. Very few of the computers were Pentiums. Due to the bidding process we always received bottom of the barrel equipment that rarely worked like Fujitsu HD's (at the time 50% were failing), boxes of MB's with bad serial ports, 10 packs of zip disks with only 5 in them etc.. It was hell. The network was slow and the computers were slow. The funniest thing I had ever seen was just prior to me leaving. They upgraded the coax to something faster. They did not mess around either, they ran fiber directly to 100's of workstations and used an AUI to fiber converters for some and direct fiber cards for others. Now we still had the same slow computers, same slow network, but it was connected directly with fiber! I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish with that. The software side of things was not really that bad. I guess there was not much you could do that could screw up W3.11, MS Office 6.0, and DOS apps.
99% of the titles released now on regular CD could be of better quality too. I have found some very good quality CD's from Telarc and a few others. The rest are far below par. Lack of dynamic range being the most overlooked, background noise not much better. IMHO, simply adding more channels is not going to automatically improve the sound. Quality controls need to be used if better sound is the goal.
I have a mid range Yamaha reciever with Dolby Pro Logic 2 and some other 5 channel modes. It is possible to get decent multichannel sound out of a regular audio cd with the optical input and if the source material is good quality. A bad quality disc is still bad in multichannel. Not a good apples to apples comparison because it was not indented to be multichannel.
I believe the main reason that the RIAA and MPAA do not do this is because it would cut into existing recordings that they are currently actively pimping. If you had more choices, you may not choose what is best for them. You want to get the music fans back? Take the incredibly massive archives of music that you "own", digitize them, and offer the files at a reasonable price.
The control will be lost, same as with P2P, indies, web casting, copyright extensions, work for hire, vcr/tivo, HDTV, region encoding, local low power radio stations, and bascially anything digital. The main goal for years has been the same, control and distribution of content. The "piracy" issue is a smaller factor but a much larger front for this as it provides them a legal card to play to and maintain the control.
I believe using headphones would defeat the purpose of the technology, unless of course you had a 5 channel headphone ring around your head.
(Some SACDs are two-channel, made to enhance stereo sound.)
This statement needs some explaining. Seems like a way to push a solution for a problem that does not exist (or pure FUD). This can be done in pure digital already on a standard CD or simply encoded or enhanced prior to putting it on the disk. Adding fake reverb, chorus, and delays more often then not leads to garbage.
The ONLY advantages I see for the consumer is the claim of increased storage per disk, and the 5.1 mode. Even then, headphones, your car, boom box etc will get no increase in quality out of this. I assume on SOME titles it might be useful, the other 99.99% of snap, crackle, and pop that comes from the RIAA will not.
The CNN article seems to be based of a press release so the real details are sketchy..
I seem to be having problems getting this thing to post. is/./.'d?
Slashdot Mirror
This is not going to stop a song from appearing on your favorite P2P app.. All it takes for that is ONE person to rip it digitally or via analog inputs and share it out or post on usenet. What this MAY curb is the average computer USER like Sally burning a copy of the CD she bought for Jill at the office or for a friend after school. Obviously someone feels that is a major threat also and they are trying to find a way to prevent that.
Maybe I'm wrong and they honestly think this will prevent the songs from showing up in mp3 format somewhere..
I rip all of my cd's to MP3 to play in my enabled car stereo, dvd unit, portable, and my lan. I will not buy a cd that will not allow me to do that. I will simply wait till I find it with KaZaa.
Isnt PanIP in california also? I believe the last time this was posted to /., the general thought was because a small company would be less likely to travel to CA to fight this and settle out of court. Actually if you look at PanIP's recent actions everything is based on not actually defending the patent in court but getting money from smaller companies with little resources to fight back.
Hell, I'm way overdue with "Samba for Dummies". After the antitrust ruling I don't think I am safe with that either..
Here is an interesting story about the marketing and construction costs of capacitors. Basically says that labor costs are not an issue with the actual constuction of caps (with the exception of screw type terminals) and that materials dominate the price. I did some searching around with Google for large quantity cap purchases. There seems to be a noteworthy difference in price between higher and lower rated voltage caps of the same cap value, so maybe they are using something closer to the limit to save some pennies. Or cutting corners during fabrications, maybe not something that directly effects the electrical characteristics but the physical ones, like thinner walls, poor sealing surfaces etc. which will lead to failure sooner..
Even if you are playing Doom, it is far better to play Doom for 2 hours with a slight jerkiness and speed reduction, than to lose power and have to kill the game 1 hour into your 2 hour train ride.
I too work for a law firm. It's far better to have the computer setup that that user CAN NOT even get Doom on their computer! Different environments call for different configurations I guess. Hell, I'd volunteer to beta test the Doom software push in the environment! It was a little rough switching to a lockdown mode a few years ago but we had support from many of the main partners. It's the norm now, there are very very few exceptions and no one complains anymore.
but don't try to tell me that people modifying TIVO's at home, in aggregate, has no external effects.
Can you specify an effect this would have and it be DIRECTLY relate to my modifying my TIVO?
Did you ever read the side of a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese box (or any food product instructions)? It says to mix in 1/4 of Parkay Margerine. The fact that I used store brand margerine and not Parkay will result in about the same effect I think you are refering to. I am sure that Kraft Foods would make more money if people only used Parkay and Starkist Tuna with thier M&C. Does that make it WRONG for me to use something else? Does thier business model rely on me to use it? Are they selling the M&C at a loss so the butter can even it out? Should there be a law that only allows me to use what they say on the box? Would everyone be better off as consumers if ALL products had this legal requirement and we were forced into following them? I don't think soooo..
What happens when a TIVO competitor comes around and has a completely open system that allows you to do anything you want with it? Should they be legally banned so TIVO can stay afloat? If this other competitor does make it and TIVO fails would you know why? Because they gave the consumer what they wanted and they bought it!
You cannot buy a 2003 ford mustang, remove the muffler, and drive around at 3am generating 100db of sound. Yes, it's your hardware, but rules exist to further a public good--a (relatively) pollution and noise free environment.
First of all, you CAN remove your muffler and drive around at 3AM. You can do anything you want to that car. You just can not drive it on public roads legally after the fact. If you do this in your own property or a place like a track and no one complains about the noise it is 100% perfectly legal. Have you been to a race track on a test and tune night? By the way, removing the muffler does not increase your emissions levels, removing the catylatic convertors does, and yes, you can buy off road pipes (meaning no convertors) from thousands of companies for just about any vehicle.
Modifying a TIVO in no way shape or form bothers my neighbors or is a nuisance to the general public.
the alternative is a world where prices are higher / options are fewer because companies would have to hedge against unauthorized uses.
So when your business has a model that can not make money, the governmant should change the law against the public good (to use your own words) to help you make money? Are you on someones lobbying payroll? Did you ever think that maybe if a company made these hidden options available or added more options that maybe they could sell more units? The consumer would have MORE choices.
the alternative is a world where prices are higher / options are fewer because companies would have to hedge against unauthorized uses.
No, the alternate is where companies compete on the quality and usefulness of thier products. Not trying to squeeze every last penny from a product that is not really exactly what someone may want because a government handout let them keep making it for a profit on it.
michael, given your well known hatred of microsoft,
I know this is offtopic, it is a reply..
More often than not I do not agree with his MS bashing style either. If it bothered me THAT bad I would not worry about getting others to jump on my bandwagon, I would simply block him out with the slashdot user options. It is really that easy... Of course you cant be an AC for that option.
I know a guy that was arrested for a fraudulent 900 scam. I do not know the details of HOW it was done but.. He had a 1 900 Job Line provided by MCI. He rigged it to fake calls and rack up his payout from MCI. In one month MCI owed him almost $400,000 for some cheasy job line. Times were tough back then but not that bad! At the MCI office, an FBI undercover handed him a check and then immediately arrested him.
I'm sure a smaller amount would not have been as obvious and he may have been able to sustain it. Of course these horse cheats in the story could have started small years ago and have just now got caught.
Metroid? Wow..
In high school, I used to play Metriod for HOURS a day on my wifes (girlfriend at the time) little brothers Nintendo. It got to the point where she and her friends would leave without me and I'd catch up with them later. After a few weeks of playing and almost losing my future wife, I finally completed the game. All I saw was some stupid credits rolling by and the game started over. It was a very short lived but incredibly satisfying feeling that I shared alone with myself in her basement. I tried playing the game a few times since with various EMU's but its just not the same.
My son and I currently play numerous games but all he wants is cheats and game saves.
Hey back when I was a Gamer, there was no cheatz, gamesharks, or printed walk throughs, we played uphill both ways!!
the laws that prevent the telemarketers are violating their 1st amendment right to free speech
They are using and interupting MY time. Freedom of speech does not mean I have to listen, it does not mean you are entitled to every available means to speak your mind. Specially when I am greatly bothered in the process. Just because I have a US Postal mailbox at the end of my driveway does NOT give the right for just anyone to put stuff in it in the name of speech. You can not pick up a two-way radio and start broadcasting a sale on toner refill kits. A marketer is more then welcome to stand at the end of my driveway or walk up and down the road and speak all they want. The freedom of speech for them is still protected, they are concerned about freedom of conducting business in the cheapest manner possible, that is not protected (unless you are a really big campaign donner).
Harvesting for email addresses on web pages is not the same thing as sending spam to those email addresses.
People don't get all bitchy and ask the cops to replace their stuff, do they?
My parents own a small electronics repair shop. It was robbed recently. My parents had to pay each customer what their stolen tv,vcr,stereo etc.. was worth. Paypal is password protected, my parents business was locked with a key. Sorry but I do not see much of a difference. My parents eventually got most of the money back via the insurance company and some of the stuff was recovered within a few weeks.
I think every person with a tv claimed they were less then 1 year old and 5 inches larger, it was a comical event to watch them back peddle when their stuff was recovered.
Navy Federal Credit Union works fine with everything I have ever tried. IE, Kmeleon, Opera (Linux and Win), and whatever version of Mozilla/Netscape RH7.3 comes with and get this... Usable with Lynx on a console. The general bank information like rate calculators, online applications and some of the general info links did not work so well so its a little tricky getting to the account access part but, it works pretty good once logged in to my account. I have not tried the web bill paying portion with all of the browsers, which is handled 3rd party via Checkfree. I do know that Opera and the whatever RH 7.3 comes with but it works with that also. I tried to include some text from a Lynx section but I couldn't get past the lameness filter..
Multiple browser support CAN be done...
I did not have time to read every article in this story so this may be a repeat.
You can take your statement and substitute "Americans" for "anyone". Bandwidth may be an issue for a cable provider. They may be losing money. The problem is when you have the service for x period of time and then they come back and change the terms to thier advantage. My Comcast connection is capped 1.5m/128k down/up. This is what I signed up for and this is what I expect, this was a limit that I knew before getting the service. I would be VERY upset if two months later they determine that I am a bandwidth hog and try to change me to a special plan of 5GB/month. This is not what I pay for, or ditched my dialup for. Check thier advertisments, blazing fast always on high speed internet video and audio, download 50 times faster then a 28.8k modem!! I am doing that now. Nowhere does it say it will be that fast for 5 days and then you are shut off for the rest of the month. They are pushing terms to get you online then they switch them after you get online. This is the issue...
When I lived in Hawaii I had RR, they had thier own news servers, Tucows and various mirrors, streaming audio and video channels, and recently added various Linux iso mirrors. They advertise these and suggested you use them. Comcast has thier stuff strung out everywhere and farm to GigaNews for usenet (1GB free/month, I upgraded this myself directly with GN for an extra fee). Very little content via Comcast comes from within Comcast. Maybe because HI is an isolated area this was easier to acomplish. A traceroute now from me on Comcast to anything Comcast is at least 18 hops and it bounces between ATT and Sprint to get there. If there was a more centralized location for getting bulk items it would help both parties involved.
I used to work for and airline and flew back and forth daily from Washington Dulles. I havent actually called to inform others while in flight but I have been able to see my car in my driveway and other things in the area of my house. It took some time to finally pinpoint the area but with flying twice daily it did not take very long. This was also the best way for me to gauge the traffic situation for my commute home!
Things look a lot different from above.
I know I bought metallica albums before their napster crusade, but I flat our refuse to now.
So did I. I have a limited edition Kill Em All picture disk and at least 4 other vinyls, plus every cd until the Load release including the original limited edition 5.99tape and 9.99cd Garage Days Re-Revisted EP, and I've seen them in concert twice. I do not buy from them anymore because I think they have sucked for at least the last 10 years! The Black album was questionable but they did a complete 180 after that, now they are just like every other band in that genre. This predated Napster. Maybe there are more people that feel the same way? I did download a few tracks from Reload recently and thought it would spark my interest again, listened to it maybe twice and have not touched it since. I WOULD NOT have bought the CD even if I did not find it online. If I did in fact like it, I would have bought it. They have not released new and decent material on a regular basis since the 1983-1988 time frame. This may work for the Dead or the Stones but Metallica did not have quantity or momentum to simply put it in neutral and coast around.
Maybe that is the reason for your piss poor sales Lars..
On that same note...
You could buy 5 of those Kia's for the same price. It depends on what you are buying a car for. To get you from one point to another, or to sit and admire it in your driveway from your front porch. That Kia has the same ability to be right next to you in traffic, moving right along with you on the highway, parked right next to you at the grocery store, and hauling the kids to the movies. The difference? One was cheaper by over a factor of 5. IMHO buying used is even better. I bought my current second car (a used Ford Aspire made by none other then Kia) for $3000 3 years ago. I have since put over 50k miles with no more then $300 maintenance. I have taken the extra cash I have from not buying a new Mercedes (or something in the same range) and refinanced my mortgage down to 15 years from 30, saving me over 290k over 15 years. I still get around fine regardless of who engineered the thing. The downside is its not really fun to hang out and talk about a Ford Aspire..
Sorry to ramble on but I just had almost the same arguement yesterday with a co-worker on his absolute need for a $42k Suburban because he is expecting his first child soon.
The company I work for is a pure Novell shop.
So WAS the company I work for. We are currently about 50% of the way through a company wide conversion to Exchange/AD environment with W2K severs. I can only hope that our current stability problems are because we are in a transition or a temp lack of admin experience with W2K servers.
I know we NEVER had problems with our incoming mail when that headless Sun box was handling our regions SMTP...
Bottom line is any system will only be as good as those that are maintaining it.
I do keep meaning to switch to a fully Linux-based client, but email seems to be one of the big issues for me. I have tried Evolution, KMail and at least 4 others but never quite find it as usable. I spend probably 50% of my work time answering email.
Are you at least using IMAP? I switch my mail clients and platforms often. I doubt you will find the "one" mail application that does them all. At least with IMAP you can switch or get access anytime without losing your mail and your directories, add procmail and your filtering will follow also.
I was using and upgrading Eudora since 1995 with its proprietary format. It was great but I wanted access from outside my local Win box and did not want to lose all of my previous mail. I converted it all and transfered over to IMAP. Now switching mail clients is a breeze..
You can find some decent freeware/shareware mailbox conversion tools with Google.
The only downside (for some) is maintaining a 24x7 IMAP server.
My last assignment in the Navy was the ADP department (their term for IT) for a maintenance facility in Hawaii. We did not have WordStar but were still very dated, in mid 98 they had Dos/W3.11 with Novell and Banyan over coax. Very few of the computers were Pentiums. Due to the bidding process we always received bottom of the barrel equipment that rarely worked like Fujitsu HD's (at the time 50% were failing), boxes of MB's with bad serial ports, 10 packs of zip disks with only 5 in them etc.. It was hell. The network was slow and the computers were slow. The funniest thing I had ever seen was just prior to me leaving. They upgraded the coax to something faster. They did not mess around either, they ran fiber directly to 100's of workstations and used an AUI to fiber converters for some and direct fiber cards for others. Now we still had the same slow computers, same slow network, but it was connected directly with fiber! I have no idea what they were trying to accomplish with that. The software side of things was not really that bad. I guess there was not much you could do that could screw up W3.11, MS Office 6.0, and DOS apps.
Wasn't there an article and a post about this earlier today? I believe it was AOL using simulated money to buy the real world Time Warner..
I guess it depends on what your definition of a game is.
99% of the titles released now on regular CD could be of better quality too. I have found some very good quality CD's from Telarc and a few others. The rest are far below par. Lack of dynamic range being the most overlooked, background noise not much better. IMHO, simply adding more channels is not going to automatically improve the sound. Quality controls need to be used if better sound is the goal.
I have a mid range Yamaha reciever with Dolby Pro Logic 2 and some other 5 channel modes. It is possible to get decent multichannel sound out of a regular audio cd with the optical input and if the source material is good quality. A bad quality disc is still bad in multichannel. Not a good apples to apples comparison because it was not indented to be multichannel.
I believe the main reason that the RIAA and MPAA do not do this is because it would cut into existing recordings that they are currently actively pimping. If you had more choices, you may not choose what is best for them.
You want to get the music fans back? Take the incredibly massive archives of music that you "own", digitize them, and offer the files at a reasonable price.
The control will be lost, same as with P2P, indies, web casting, copyright extensions, work for hire, vcr/tivo, HDTV, region encoding, local low power radio stations, and bascially anything digital. The main goal for years has been the same, control and distribution of content. The "piracy" issue is a smaller factor but a much larger front for this as it provides them a legal card to play to and maintain the control.
I believe using headphones would defeat the purpose of the technology, unless of course you had a 5 channel headphone ring around your head.
/. /.'d?
(Some SACDs are two-channel, made to enhance stereo sound.)
This statement needs some explaining. Seems like a way to push a solution for a problem that does not exist (or pure FUD). This can be done in pure digital already on a standard CD or simply encoded or enhanced prior to putting it on the disk. Adding fake reverb, chorus, and delays more often then not leads to garbage.
The ONLY advantages I see for the consumer is the claim of increased storage per disk, and the 5.1 mode. Even then, headphones, your car, boom box etc will get no increase in quality out of this. I assume on SOME titles it might be useful, the other 99.99% of snap, crackle, and pop that comes from the RIAA will not.
The CNN article seems to be based of a press release so the real details are sketchy..
I seem to be having problems getting this thing to post. is