Let's go under the strange assumption that I'm not an idiot, and that "royalty check" is rhetorical shorthand for "any documentation whatsoever that allofmp3 is paying out to artists."
Frankly, I'd be surprised if their claim to pay into ROMS were truthful. I'd wager my entire salary that no american, canadian or EU artist has ever received cent one from allofmp3, through any channel.
But hey, like I said, this is an easy one to disprove. Go ahead, show me up! I'll be right here, failing to hold my breath.
Other dot-bombs may have been flashier, but WebVan was the undisputed heavyweight king: they ran through over one billion-with-a-b dollars in venture funding before going under.
Anyone can lose a few million dollars in VC money. Losing a billion take serious style.
Yup, it's a sweeping statement. You know what the great thing about sweeping statements is? They're easy to disprove: you only need a single counterexample.
So why can't anyone produce one, when it should be so easy?
Yes yes yes, I know what SQLite is. It's still a monumentally dumb idea. The current format is simple, machine-and-human parseable, portable and reliable. SQLite is none of these things. This is a non-solution to a non-problem, brought to you by the usual bozos who always think that adding a database to something makes it swoopier, without considering the real-world failure scenarios for a heartbeat.
Storing bookmarks and history in a sql database is possibly the dumbest idea I've heard in a long, long time. With any luck, this will remain a feature of the future...forever.
You'll still have to dual-boot if you want to play F.E.A.R. or whatever the flavor-of-the-month 3D game in windows is.
Virtualization is great, but so far nobody has figured out a good way to virtualize a GPU. Look carefully at VMware or Xen, and you'll notice that the "video card" inside the guest OS is a very barebones VESA card with minimal hardware accelleration features, and no hardware-accellerated GL/D3D at all.
I kinda doubt that Apple has any warehouses of Newton MessagePad 2100s available to take on this duty, and even if they did, the MP never had wifi or a card scanner attachement that I know of.
So while the choice of WinCE for the task is certainly ironic, it's not like they had a homegrown option that wouldn't have cost millions more in manufacturing and QA costs to use.
Actually, the ethnic breakdown of the bottom-feeder camera stores in NYC is an intersting mix: lots of Arabs, yes, but probably a slim majority are either Israeli or other middle-eastern Jewish ("Crazy" Eddie Antar being the most famous of the lot -- the Antars were all Syrian Jews), but also a good chunk of Russian, Polish, Turkish and other assorted Eastern/Central European and "near east" ethnicities.
Not all of them are criminal -- a lot of the completely legitimate places like J&R and B&H are run by people from the same places -- but you'd have to be off your rocker to order anything from a camera store in the 11xxx area code without having a face-to-face/handshake relationship with the staff.
let me guess.... they got a lot of tech gizmo nerds that don't get to spend enough time with women?
Actually no. They (B&H) are staffed almost entirely by Hassidic Jews, some of whom appear to have have bracingly old-world opinions about the usefulness and divine purpose of the female gender.
Well, there's another and probably more pertinent reason that they weren't going to go anywhere near a court of law: I rate the odds of these characters not having any outstanding arrest warrants against them as close to zero.
I am, however, surprised that the commentor's car hasn't recently had a rash of suspicious flat tires and brake line failures.
B&H is definintly a reputable business -- wouldn't mean to impute otherwise.
From a customer-service standpoint, they can still be dicey. Not to put a fine point on it, but multiple friends of mine have found that you get much better service at the storefront if you look like you have a Y chromosome. It's not 100% consistant, but it happens often enough that I hesitate to send female friends there, and that translates into a more general reluctance to give them business.
There are dozens of similar outfits all over New York City. It's an open secret that they're basically all fronts for various ethnic Mafia organizations. Primarily Russian, Israeli and Syrian, but with ample representation from just about everywhere else on the planet. Whoever the actual operator of "Pricerite" is, you can bet your last quarter that they already have half a dozen other D/B/As, maildrops and websites up and running already, and that they spin up and down various identities all the time.
From a sociological standpoint, these are fascinating organizations, especially in the way that they sometimes slowly, over time, evolve into "proper" retail outlets, (e.g. J&R Music/Video)... and sometimes "devolve" back into criminality (e.g. Crazy Eddie)....but if you're just a consumer and not a sociologist, you would be well advised to avoid the heck out of any online "camera store" with a 11xxx or 10xxx zip code, with the possible exceptions of J&R and B&H. Caveat Emptor, to say the least.
Google has a presence in China, and they have been very tight-lipped about what the conditions of that presence are. But as long as they're there and the Chinese government aren't blocking access to them, you can safely assume that they're playing ball to some extent.
Slashdot Mirror
Are they going to tax internet video conferencing and Netmeeting next? Instant messaging?
Quiet, please. Let's not give them any ideas.
It was released a little while ago. The design looks suspiciously like postfix and qmail. :)
Let's go under the strange assumption that I'm not an idiot, and that "royalty check" is rhetorical shorthand for "any documentation whatsoever that allofmp3 is paying out to artists."
Frankly, I'd be surprised if their claim to pay into ROMS were truthful. I'd wager my entire salary that no american, canadian or EU artist has ever received cent one from allofmp3, through any channel.
But hey, like I said, this is an easy one to disprove. Go ahead, show me up! I'll be right here, failing to hold my breath.
Other dot-bombs may have been flashier, but WebVan was the undisputed heavyweight king: they ran through over one billion-with-a-b dollars in venture funding before going under.
Anyone can lose a few million dollars in VC money. Losing a billion take serious style.
Yup, it's a sweeping statement. You know what the great thing about sweeping statements is? They're easy to disprove: you only need a single counterexample.
So why can't anyone produce one, when it should be so easy?
Not a single recording artist has been paid one cent by allofmp3.com, and I defy you to prove otherwise.
C'mon. One scan of a royalty check. That's all it'd take.
Yes yes yes, I know what SQLite is. It's still a monumentally dumb idea. The current format is simple, machine-and-human parseable, portable and reliable. SQLite is none of these things. This is a non-solution to a non-problem, brought to you by the usual bozos who always think that adding a database to something makes it swoopier, without considering the real-world failure scenarios for a heartbeat.
Aside to the moderators: my "flamebait" comment is essentially the same opinion as the guy who wrote Communicator 1.0 and 2.0 for linux, so kindly bite me.
Storing bookmarks and history in a sql database is possibly the dumbest idea I've heard in a long, long time. With any luck, this will remain a feature of the future...forever.
Number of companies claiming a breakthrough in compression technology since the release of bzip2: too many to count.
Number of them which were anything other than complete bullshit: 0
I'm not holding my breath.
You'll still have to dual-boot if you want to play F.E.A.R. or whatever the flavor-of-the-month 3D game in windows is.
Virtualization is great, but so far nobody has figured out a good way to virtualize a GPU. Look carefully at VMware or Xen, and you'll notice that the "video card" inside the guest OS is a very barebones VESA card with minimal hardware accelleration features, and no hardware-accellerated GL/D3D at all.
At least Gibson's treatment for Neuromancer didn't get filmed. His script for Johnny Mnenomic did, and it was a complete and total atrocity.
(That said, his script for Alien 3 would probably have been better than the abortion that Fincher foisted off on us.)
It's 12v DC by the time it gets to the computer end of the power converter. At worst, that'll tingle a bit.
wow. so that powerbook 165c with it's 68030 and 14 M of RAM in my storage closet must be a figment of my imagination.
:)
It's not a figment of your imagination, but it is a major irritation to your spouse. C'mon, cut the cord already.
This will mean that in future, all native Windows applications will easily run on Linux, with Mono.
If by "the future" you mean "never", then this is correct. Otherwise, this is balderdash.
I kinda doubt that Apple has any warehouses of Newton MessagePad 2100s available to take on this duty, and even if they did, the MP never had wifi or a card scanner attachement that I know of.
So while the choice of WinCE for the task is certainly ironic, it's not like they had a homegrown option that wouldn't have cost millions more in manufacturing and QA costs to use.
...I give them about 5 minutes post-release before they are hit with the mother of all cease-and-desist notices from Apple Legal.
I know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but come on here. At least try to make your cut-and-paste jobs a bit less obvious.
And then what happens to AJAX?
I dunno... a bunch of empty-headed hype men will have to find a new buzzword to latch onto?
It's just a thought.
Jifty is Coming. RSN.
Make of this what you will.
Actually, the ethnic breakdown of the bottom-feeder camera stores in NYC is an intersting mix: lots of Arabs, yes, but probably a slim majority are either Israeli or other middle-eastern Jewish ("Crazy" Eddie Antar being the most famous of the lot -- the Antars were all Syrian Jews), but also a good chunk of Russian, Polish, Turkish and other assorted Eastern/Central European and "near east" ethnicities.
Not all of them are criminal -- a lot of the completely legitimate places like J&R and B&H are run by people from the same places -- but you'd have to be off your rocker to order anything from a camera store in the 11xxx area code without having a face-to-face/handshake relationship with the staff.
let me guess.... they got a lot of tech gizmo nerds that don't get to spend enough time with women?
Actually no. They (B&H) are staffed almost entirely by Hassidic Jews, some of whom appear to have have bracingly old-world opinions about the usefulness and divine purpose of the female gender.
Well, there's another and probably more pertinent reason that they weren't going to go anywhere near a court of law: I rate the odds of these characters not having any outstanding arrest warrants against them as close to zero.
I am, however, surprised that the commentor's car hasn't recently had a rash of suspicious flat tires and brake line failures.
B&H is definintly a reputable business -- wouldn't mean to impute otherwise.
From a customer-service standpoint, they can still be dicey. Not to put a fine point on it, but multiple friends of mine have found that you get much better service at the storefront if you look like you have a Y chromosome. It's not 100% consistant, but it happens often enough that I hesitate to send female friends there, and that translates into a more general reluctance to give them business.
Your mileage, obviously, may vary.
There are dozens of similar outfits all over New York City. It's an open secret that they're basically all fronts for various ethnic Mafia organizations. Primarily Russian, Israeli and Syrian, but with ample representation from just about everywhere else on the planet. Whoever the actual operator of "Pricerite" is, you can bet your last quarter that they already have half a dozen other D/B/As, maildrops and websites up and running already, and that they spin up and down various identities all the time.
...but if you're just a consumer and not a sociologist, you would be well advised to avoid the heck out of any online "camera store" with a 11xxx or 10xxx zip code, with the possible exceptions of J&R and B&H. Caveat Emptor, to say the least.
From a sociological standpoint, these are fascinating organizations, especially in the way that they sometimes slowly, over time, evolve into "proper" retail outlets, (e.g. J&R Music/Video)... and sometimes "devolve" back into criminality (e.g. Crazy Eddie).
He's yet another music video hack turned big-budget feature hack -- and possibly the worst of that dismal breed.
Google's policies are not concordant with Chinese policy, nor is google willing to subjugate itself to Chinese policy.
Oh really?
Google has a presence in China, and they have been very tight-lipped about what the conditions of that presence are. But as long as they're there and the Chinese government aren't blocking access to them, you can safely assume that they're playing ball to some extent.