After what seems like years of having Europe and America laugh at our foolish ISP filtering proposals, our crazy tech and content prices, maybe... just maybe, we will lead the way and have everyone cheer us instead.
I don't pirate because the people who created media have expressed their wishes quite clearly; If I value it, then I'll pay the price they ask.
However, suggesting that you are forced to break the law is absurd. There is no real threat to your well-being by having the latest music/TV/movies/software. Even if you argued that your quality of life would suffer without your favourite show or game (a BIG stretch), there's plenty of other crap to choose from.
Do I think the typical media owner is driving people away with DRM measures? Absolutely. Do I think there's a happy medium where everyone could be happy? Yep. Do I feel entitled to anything? No.
This argument gets very heated, and from my armchair it makes both sides look like spoiled brats! You can continue for my [free] entertainment as long as you like.:)
In a classic case of title misinterpretation, I thought next-gen consoles were leading the way with internal optical drives, ie. replacing the magnetic rotating disks. I wonder if that tech is far off? It was promising plenty of TBs per cubic-centimetre if I remember rightly.
This is true, assuming you don't have a limit as to the area of panels you can deploy (rooftop solar installations are slightly limited by the area of the roof).
I agree. If I gave them the benefit of the doubt (deservedly or not), I'd say that they are at least hoping to provide a cheap and environmentally friendly choice when space is not the issue.
In context I think they are working from this starting point: "the Gratzel cell is a great concept, but it leaks, so let's see if we can improve on it so it's viable for the mass-market." If they succeed, at worst we'll have an "green" alternative to current Silicon-based PV arrays, and at best we'll have a system that's cheaper to make, is more efficient, is more rugged, etc. If they land in the middle, it'll be a great outcome!
It's important to note though, that if you can make twice as much panel area for less money, then you are being more efficient. At the end of the day they are aiming for two different efficiencies: 1. A lower $cost/output 2. A higher output/environmental-footprint ratio.
I've heard that currently the rule-of-thumb for Photo-Voltaic arrays is 4 years operation before they pay for themselves. Maybe this new technology will lower that significantly
"Which is when the see it if they pirate it, so it appears to work for some folks. Also, they have these things called DVRs now."
Firstly, all I was saying is that no network can be held responsible for the show not being simulcast to all regions at once. It's just a logistical nightmare. Maybe it would be possible to do for 1 show with a less-than-24-hour delay, but not the 100s of shows on all around the world.
Secondly, are you seriously suggesting that a TV station would willingly put a series on TV at a time when they could expect to get a large proportion of viewers via DVR? I'm sure the advertisers (those paying to let you watch the show) would think that was a great idea!
A serious problem that cannot be sorted by the "antiquated methodology" is that the US primetime slot is far removed from the Australian and European primetime slot. A network is not to going to the air the episode when HBO do, just to get it "live". It would be on at 10:30am over here if they did.
"fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it's hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead"
I live in Australia as well, and it's intolerable that we have to wait for our entertainment. I mean, those lazy American's are always a few days more entertained than we are! Some fool tried to tell me that entertainment wasn't measured by the latency between a show airing and my viewing of it - how ridiculous!?!!? What a notion?
And don't get me started on the olympics - I'm considering suing the IOC everytime the Olympics are held abroad. I, and countless others Aussies, will have to wait til the evening to get any live action, whilst the English can watch it in the morning and afternoon as it happens. Outrageous!
Well it's ticked over April 1st in Australia, but there's a few hours to go in the US.
So while it's probably not an April's fool joke, it would be very clever and ironic to have a story about a hoax that poked fun at a marginal group, that turned out to be a "joke's on you" non-hoax. It would be the pinnacle of double-negative April Fool's jokes spawning a new genre of April Fool's jokes. I love the complexity and humour and mind-bending second-guesses, but unfortunately I think I've just convinced myself that the./ mods would *never* be able to concieve such a devious plot.
oh well!
Yep.. totally Agree. Why complain about accidently watching some humour that wastes your time, when you chose to waste the time coming to a news site?
Maybe whining would be sensible if you only had 5 minutes each day to read news, and you had a medical condition called chronic-hyper-inverse-news-allergy. I think not!
When I studied all of my fees were compiled into a thing called a HECS debt which i didnt have to pay off until my annaul salary passed a threshold. The balance of hte loan and the threshold both went up with the CPI. But no interest was ever applied (yes, CPI acted like interest). I never paid it off until about 3-4 years later when we salary went above 29,000.
I do think the guys got no right to gripe for himself. *but* when he started the course, perhaps the standard homeloan rate was about 8.5%. In any case, the gov't should be making it easier for students to study, not making money off them for the privelege. Any capitalist can see that to make a good return you should be encouraging the young'uns to get the highest qualification they can, which has some bearing on their eventual tax output. Interest on the loans is a turnoff!
P.S Should note to those who are talking about tax dodges with student loans - I don't know the US system - but I also got a 15% bonus for any lump sums paid off my HECS debt over and above the mandatory payments. Makes my experience lightyears ahead of this guys plight.
umm.. no! actually with your back to fire there will be a small amount of reflection of whatever is around - the ground, trees, dust in the air. So you will have some light on your face.
not to mention that radiated heat is just light below our minimum visible freq. - ie. Infrared.
and if you want ot be technical - the heat on your face comes from your body.
I call your bluff, maybe I'm not an expert, but neither are you!
You don't need $3800 worth of panels unless you need to run the hair-dryer 24/7 or you neglect to implement some storage and inversion system.
you would look at the kWh's needed for an average day, add 50% and make sure your solar panel array could produce that given a 50/50 overcast day. Or something like that.
obviously for doing work of a scientific nature is best done in metric. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But I think some of what pz, (the original biased bigot *grin*), was saying that its sometimes useful for people to know both and that in the UK, Aust and NZ lots of people do know both. I don't agree about the Engineers being able to have a convo in imperial or metric. Personally, I like the imperial system for some lengths. A foot is a very convienent length when talking about height, short distances ( 3m) and length of materials. I find myself using feet quite often when pointing out an object which is 6 foot off the ground, or 2 feet from the wall, etc. Its just the level of precision you can get for those measures of distance which is alot more convenient than 1.8m, or 70cm or 2.2m. You can describe most distances in multiples of half a foot with enough accuracy to convey meaning. In metres is harder..but that said, once your out past 5-6 metres I think its switches back the other way.
Miles and Kilometres is completely different. Neither of them are more convenient than the other so I use the metric.
I live in Australia and my parents were brought up on imperial and it changed (in 1966) so they got to know that one aswell (they were late teens in 1966). The other thing that contributes to our familiarity is our standard ruler. I grew up with 30cm/12inch rulers.. I suppose its the same today. But I've always been adept at switching inches to mm and back. So I think its fairly common over here.
I still do this sometimes.. put the cheats for high speed and no damage on, and play a game of Survival in San Francisco. A combination of simplistic 3D models of hills, cops chasing you and 160+mph driving made for lots of fun.
If you could hit the top of a hill at 150+ and glance off a police car you could launch yourself through the air and land 4-6 blocks away.. I would try for ages, just for the thrill of "landing it" by coming down on a road instead of inside a building. And if the car was still driveable that was just too good to be true; because of the no-damage cheat, you only had to hope you landed on your wheels.
The American version of human rights is essentially a dressing up of the childish "don't tell me what to do"... but in any case, its irrelevant for this situation.
The issue is not that the Aus govt. refused to classify the games, but that they weren't classified which is illegal - If they get classified, then everyone's happy again. (including the people who raised hell when their rights were disturbed)
hey us too. Only we use the Transformers names for remote embedded Linux machines running on a GUMSTIX. We thought about re-starting hte naming scheme to show the customer where the unit was installed, but what about when they have more than one unit. This scheme lets our associative brain work wonders.. like SRW have Jazz, Echuca Saleyards have Rumble, Cressy Irrigation has CrankCase, CIT have Inferno and SoundWave and Ratchet and lots of others.
Its actually developed into a fun task to go and find a new name when we commission a new unit.
Aside from all the bugs which will block legitimate sites, I think censorship is a great idea. Just block all the crap that leads to depraved minds and sabotages the mind against women and children.
Speaking as an Australian - I would rather this than the "freedom" the US people strive for where the most immoral things are allowed to survive in the name of individual rights.
My only concession is that censoring has a bad history of blocking the most inane and harmless content because of someone's odd interpretation.
The "Geek Olympics Code" for Gold should be: 1. AU 2. $/oz -- a perl reference to a constant used as the variable reference... maybe?!?!?! 3. if($rank lt 2) { $self->award = WINNER; }
else { $self->position = $rank;
$self->award = LOSER;
} 4. 0x476F6C67 5. the purist 0b00100111011011110110101001100111
Why have grouped processes when a single Konsole gives me a as many active screens as I need (granted some people may need to see ALL at once) and Konqueror gives me tabbed browsing..
Slashdot Mirror
After what seems like years of having Europe and America laugh at our foolish ISP filtering proposals, our crazy tech and content prices, maybe... just maybe, we will lead the way and have everyone cheer us instead.
Aussie aussie aussie, free! free! free!
"then I have to break the law to do so."
I don't pirate because the people who created media have expressed their wishes quite clearly;
If I value it, then I'll pay the price they ask.
However, suggesting that you are forced to break the law is absurd. There is no real threat to your well-being by having the latest music/TV/movies/software. Even if you argued that your quality of life would suffer without your favourite show or game (a BIG stretch), there's plenty of other crap to choose from.
Do I think the typical media owner is driving people away with DRM measures? Absolutely.
Do I think there's a happy medium where everyone could be happy? Yep.
Do I feel entitled to anything? No.
This argument gets very heated, and from my armchair it makes both sides look like spoiled brats! You can continue for my [free] entertainment as long as you like. :)
Matt out.
I think the First poster beat you to that joke.
It was the first thing I thought of aswell.
We are all cut from the same foolish cloth here on /.
In a classic case of title misinterpretation, I thought next-gen consoles were leading the way with internal optical drives, ie. replacing the magnetic rotating disks.
I wonder if that tech is far off? It was promising plenty of TBs per cubic-centimetre if I remember rightly.
This is true, assuming you don't have a limit as to the area of panels you can deploy (rooftop solar installations are slightly limited by the area of the roof).
I agree. If I gave them the benefit of the doubt (deservedly or not), I'd say that they are at least hoping to provide a cheap and environmentally friendly choice when space is not the issue.
In context I think they are working from this starting point: "the Gratzel cell is a great concept, but it leaks, so let's see if we can improve on it so it's viable for the mass-market."
If they succeed, at worst we'll have an "green" alternative to current Silicon-based PV arrays, and at best we'll have a system that's cheaper to make, is more efficient, is more rugged, etc.
If they land in the middle, it'll be a great outcome!
It's important to note though, that if you can make twice as much panel area for less money, then you are being more efficient.
At the end of the day they are aiming for two different efficiencies:
1. A lower $cost/output
2. A higher output/environmental-footprint ratio.
I've heard that currently the rule-of-thumb for Photo-Voltaic arrays is 4 years operation before they pay for themselves. Maybe this new technology will lower that significantly
Actually, with the rise of the electric car, renewable electricity is directly lined up against oil in a HUGE way!
Sometimes thinking clearly needs a minute or two to kick in
I can't believe this guy. He is so committed to getting in the current slashdot poll, that he's become the newest "Currently Dead Inventor".
I will create a post in the poll comments to record his memory forever - the inventor is dead! Long live the Inventor!
"Which is when the see it if they pirate it, so it appears to work for some folks. Also, they have these things called DVRs now."
Firstly, all I was saying is that no network can be held responsible for the show not being simulcast to all regions at once. It's just a logistical nightmare. Maybe it would be possible to do for 1 show with a less-than-24-hour delay, but not the 100s of shows on all around the world.
Secondly, are you seriously suggesting that a TV station would willingly put a series on TV at a time when they could expect to get a large proportion of viewers via DVR? I'm sure the advertisers (those paying to let you watch the show) would think that was a great idea!
A serious problem that cannot be sorted by the "antiquated methodology" is that the US primetime slot is far removed from the Australian and European primetime slot. A network is not to going to the air the episode when HBO do, just to get it "live". It would be on at 10:30am over here if they did.
"fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it's hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead"
I live in Australia as well, and it's intolerable that we have to wait for our entertainment. I mean, those lazy American's are always a few days more entertained than we are!
Some fool tried to tell me that entertainment wasn't measured by the latency between a show airing and my viewing of it - how ridiculous!?!!? What a notion?
And don't get me started on the olympics - I'm considering suing the IOC everytime the Olympics are held abroad. I, and countless others Aussies, will have to wait til the evening to get any live action, whilst the English can watch it in the morning and afternoon as it happens. Outrageous!
sincerely, Balzi
Exactly!
I don't get why he got 144 hours of community service - surely armed "robbery", or at least armed something, deserves something more severe?
Well it's ticked over April 1st in Australia, but there's a few hours to go in the US. So while it's probably not an April's fool joke, it would be very clever and ironic to have a story about a hoax that poked fun at a marginal group, that turned out to be a "joke's on you" non-hoax. It would be the pinnacle of double-negative April Fool's jokes spawning a new genre of April Fool's jokes. I love the complexity and humour and mind-bending second-guesses, but unfortunately I think I've just convinced myself that the ./ mods would *never* be able to concieve such a devious plot.
oh well!
Yep.. totally Agree. Why complain about accidently watching some humour that wastes your time, when you chose to waste the time coming to a news site?
Maybe whining would be sensible if you only had 5 minutes each day to read news, and you had a medical condition called chronic-hyper-inverse-news-allergy.
I think not!
sorry - should have said "I never started paying it off until 3-4 years later... " (no edit it Slashworld)
When I studied all of my fees were compiled into a thing called a HECS debt which i didnt have to pay off until my annaul salary passed a threshold.
The balance of hte loan and the threshold both went up with the CPI. But no interest was ever applied (yes, CPI acted like interest).
I never paid it off until about 3-4 years later when we salary went above 29,000.
I do think the guys got no right to gripe for himself. *but* when he started the course, perhaps the standard homeloan rate was about 8.5%.
In any case, the gov't should be making it easier for students to study, not making money off them for the privelege. Any capitalist can see that to make a good return you should be encouraging the young'uns to get the highest qualification they can, which has some bearing on their eventual tax output. Interest on the loans is a turnoff!
P.S Should note to those who are talking about tax dodges with student loans - I don't know the US system - but I also got a 15% bonus for any lump sums paid off my HECS debt over and above the mandatory payments. Makes my experience lightyears ahead of this guys plight.
umm.. no! actually with your back to fire there will be a small amount of reflection of whatever is around - the ground, trees, dust in the air. So you will have some light on your face.
not to mention that radiated heat is just light below our minimum visible freq. - ie. Infrared.
and if you want ot be technical - the heat on your face comes from your body.
I call your bluff, maybe I'm not an expert, but neither are you!
You don't need $3800 worth of panels unless you need to run the hair-dryer 24/7 or you neglect to implement some storage and inversion system.
you would look at the kWh's needed for an average day, add 50% and make sure your solar panel array could produce that given a 50/50 overcast day. Or something like that.
obviously for doing work of a scientific nature is best done in metric. I don't think anyone disagrees with that. But I think some of what pz, (the original biased bigot *grin*), was saying that its sometimes useful for people to know both and that in the UK, Aust and NZ lots of people do know both. I don't agree about the Engineers being able to have a convo in imperial or metric.
Personally, I like the imperial system for some lengths. A foot is a very convienent length when talking about height, short distances ( 3m) and length of materials. I find myself using feet quite often when pointing out an object which is 6 foot off the ground, or 2 feet from the wall, etc. Its just the level of precision you can get for those measures of distance which is alot more convenient than 1.8m, or 70cm or 2.2m. You can describe most distances in multiples of half a foot with enough accuracy to convey meaning. In metres is harder..but that said, once your out past 5-6 metres I think its switches back the other way.
Miles and Kilometres is completely different. Neither of them are more convenient than the other so I use the metric.
I live in Australia and my parents were brought up on imperial and it changed (in 1966) so they got to know that one aswell (they were late teens in 1966).
The other thing that contributes to our familiarity is our standard ruler. I grew up with 30cm/12inch rulers.. I suppose its the same today. But I've always been adept at switching inches to mm and back. So I think its fairly common over here.
I still do this sometimes.. put the cheats for high speed and no damage on, and play a game of Survival in San Francisco.
A combination of simplistic 3D models of hills, cops chasing you and 160+mph driving made for lots of fun.
If you could hit the top of a hill at 150+ and glance off a police car you could launch yourself through the air and land 4-6 blocks away.. I would try for ages, just for the thrill of "landing it" by coming down on a road instead of inside a building.
And if the car was still driveable that was just too good to be true; because of the no-damage cheat, you only had to hope you landed on your wheels.
awesome fun!!!
The American version of human rights is essentially a dressing up of the childish "don't tell me what to do"... but in any case, its irrelevant for this situation.
The issue is not that the Aus govt. refused to classify the games, but that they weren't classified which is illegal - If they get classified, then everyone's happy again. (including the people who raised hell when their rights were disturbed)
or maybe I'm wrong :)
hey us too. Only we use the Transformers names for remote embedded Linux machines running on a GUMSTIX.
We thought about re-starting hte naming scheme to show the customer where the unit was installed, but what about when they have more than one unit.
This scheme lets our associative brain work wonders.. like SRW have Jazz, Echuca Saleyards have Rumble, Cressy Irrigation has CrankCase, CIT have Inferno and SoundWave and Ratchet and lots of others.
Its actually developed into a fun task to go and find a new name when we commission a new unit.
Aside from all the bugs which will block legitimate sites, I think censorship is a great idea. Just block all the crap that leads to depraved minds and sabotages the mind against women and children.
Speaking as an Australian - I would rather this than the "freedom" the US people strive for where the most immoral things are allowed to survive in the name of individual rights.
My only concession is that censoring has a bad history of blocking the most inane and harmless content because of someone's odd interpretation.
I was gonna say;
The "Geek Olympics Code" for Gold should be:
1. AU
2. $/oz -- a perl reference to a constant used as the variable reference... maybe?!?!?!
3. if($rank lt 2) { $self->award = WINNER; }
else { $self->position = $rank;
$self->award = LOSER;
}
4. 0x476F6C67
5. the purist 0b00100111011011110110101001100111
more options???
My KDE apps most used are Konqueror and Konsole.
Why have grouped processes when a single Konsole gives me a as many active screens as I need (granted some people may need to see ALL at once) and Konqueror gives me tabbed browsing..
in my world, grouped icons are unnecessary.