I don't think it is really avoidance of a legal fight. I think they're pushing for the networking features which include video sharing and video on demand. The big companies don't want people sharing PPV ever, there will be rules in place.
What scares me is the possibility that this is the first win on a "slippery slope" that will soon force my tivo to play commercials.
Now, if they could manage to target advertising to me personally based on my tastes, I'd be all for that as long as my privacy is guarded. I REFUSE to watch LCD advertising for products that I don't have any interest in. Hell, I would probably watch an extended commercial for a product I really had interest in.
Yeah dude, totally...just like someone who makes a biological weapon to expose the weakness in the current national security infrastructure. They could just leave it out on the street marked "use me to fuck up the entire city."
They haven't done anything wrong, right? I mean, they didn't RELEASE the poison, and their aim is noble since they really only expose all the country's physical security holes.
FUCK virus writers. They cost people money and time. Money and time is LIFE, just because they take it from you 10 minutes at a time doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
If you want to make people more aware of security, try community outreach. Get involved locally and make a real difference in people's lives. Take charitable contributions to buy billboards and TV commercials. Get the big players involved.
But...wait, that would be POSITIVE. That isn't nearly underground enough for your typical virus writer. Their rhetoric is a fucking smokescreen, they're slimebag criminals and they deserve to be punished just like a CEO who jacks down stock prices. They're both doing MONETARY damage. Money is time and time is life, never forget that.
So you didn't think it was slow at all? I mean...it takes forEVER for those features to load up. My tivo is cabled into the other room to a 2.4ghz dedicated server and it still runs like a dog. It is just too slow to use.
I'd really like to see any suggestions make specific reference to both the form factor and the noise issue. I'm imaging that the major desire to mod the xbox is that it fits in well with a home theatre landscape...its not so much the price anymore. Even though the xbox is huge (lol) its still a hell of a lot smaller and quiter and cooler than a typical cheap pc.
The good news is that the home studio market on both the PC and the Mac are booming, bigtime.
My favorite on the Mac side is definitely Logic Audio. Full support of everything a home user might need for a relatively low price. Pro Tools is decent, but the package that gets sold to home users (anything other than tdm or HD) is really underpowered and overpriced. The big players that swear by protools have $100,000 setups with tons of ridiculously expensive plugins, and THAT is why they like it. My advice for novice/home users is to steer clear of Pro Tools unless you plan to make a career in music production, or you've got $20,000 to spend.
On the PC side, you've got some pretty decent and stable software from sonic foundry, cakewalk, steinberg and propellerheads. Other users have mentioned Reason, and I will as well...Reason is hands down the coolest software for a home studio user. If you're just getting started, the learning curve can be kind of high, and the documentation SUCKS. The software is basically a mock up of real world hardware, and if you've got experience with things like mixers, hardware synths, effects units, etc. you'll be right at home and making tracks in no time. One thing to remember about reason is that it can be complete in some ways, but it is NOT a replacement for a true DAW. Recording long stretches of live instrumentation, full MIDI feature support, and other issues keep it from being a complete solution. If you're sticking mainly in the electronic realm, though, its perfect.
For MIDI/recording, I've really become partial to Cakewalk Sonar XL. It doesn't have some of the whizz bang features that the others have, but for me its been the only program that allowed me on the first try to sit and play music without the software being a huge setup issue, or a real pain in the ass. I'm of the opinion that software shouldn't get in your way during the creative process, and SonarXL is one of the only programs that has done that for me.
I've used nuendo, but I found its complexity intimidating and I didn't really want to go through the motions of getting comfortable in yet another software suite. The feature is list is VERY sexy, though...so if it works for you I'd try it out.
All in all, when I'm really feeling like I need to get some ideas down right away, I still run to my standalone digital 4 track and "just hit record.":)
PS - when using any computer based stuff, be sure to check out all of the great directx effects, software synths, VST instruments, etc. They're really good these days!!
The reason that PCs aren't stable with Pro tools is that Digi releases shit PC software. Their focus is clearly with the Macintosh, and they completely ignore their PC users. The feature set of the Mac version is more complete when compared to the PC version. It has nothing to do with hardware, and everything to do with software...digi just spends more time, money and effort on the Mac side. If you'd like more information on the problems and missing features that PC users have with Digi software, check out the user conference on their site at
http://duc.digidesign.com/
By and large, the major audio players in the professional market program for Mac not because it is a stable platform, or faster, or better able to handle the job...but simply because that is where their experience is, and beyond that, that is where their market is. Musicians are all about finding something cool and sticking with it forever. They're not often a group who enjoys moving to newer platforms, even if it might be to their advantage.
This argument of "since the Soviets couldn't do it, we can't either" is just silly. The one determining factor in this situation is that, this time, the afghanis and their cohorts DO NOT have the US backing them with intelligence, weapons, etc. The situation that the Soviets were in was completely different to what we're in now. Oh, and do *I* think we can drop some ground troops and mission acomplished? Damn straight I do. It might take some time, but the only thing we've got to fight against is a bunch of lunatics with a death wish and broken down weaponry.
-w
Re:Globalization is next step, not communism
on
Globalization
·
· Score: 1
Wow, if this isn't a troll I don't know what is. You're completely wrong, and you have no idea what you're talking about. Crack a book.
Here is an interesting idea. If spam was legitamized (or put under legislation), we may be able to force them to include SPAM in their subject, and effectively filter it out. At some point, they'd realize that to do it legally wouldn't allow them to reach a large enough audience, and they'd get out of the business for financial reasons rather than coersion (posting their names/addresses/etc.) If they decided to avoid putting spam in their subject line, they would be subject to criminal investigation.
I really don't think that spam should be outlawed, because we have an exact duplicate of the business practice going through snail mail and telemarketing every day.
Oh, and I don't want to hear about the problems of wasting computer space and time...snail mail spam kills trees and costs us millions in delivery costs, pollution (gotta deliver it right?), etc. If spam is bad, lets hit it at the heart an criminalize the business practice as a whole, INCLUDING snail mail and telemarketing.
But guess what, that will never happen unless we get serious about stopping this style of marketing in every industry. Better get your pen and paper out and write to your legislator. I for one could care less...I block spam at the source at my workplace, and I'm smart about giving my address out....in fact, I haven't received a spam in 3 years of having my account. Funny that...
Is there any reason why e-mail spam gets targetted, as opposed to snail mail "spam"? I routinely get a books worth of coupons in my mailbox weekly. If spam really is evil, why not target the business practice as a whole?
Actually people DON'T delete them when they receive them. I personally know three spammers making over $100,000 a year in the Las Vegas area. The real culprit in the spamming wars are the morons who buy what spam is selling. If there wasn't money to be made by spamming, no one would spam (apart from those trying to get a message out)
I sometimes wonder why people who seriously dislike spam don't go after the customers. The spammers are just targeting a market, and from the look of my friends brand new navigator and 3,000 sq foot house...that market is pretty large.
Poor hopeless you. Stand up for yourself and fix your situation. No one, including the authorities, are going to help you....ever. Get used to it and make a decision on what you're going to do next if you don't like your current situation.
If you say that you have no choice but to accept it, well then it must not be that bad since it's obviously better than the infinite choice of action that you have before you in any situation. You could hire a hitman, but that would be illegal and you don't want to go to jail. You could quit school, but then you can't get into college. None of those are good choices for you...but staying in school and DEALING with the crap is something that you're willing to do. It's a simple business transaction. Do you buy things when they're too expensive? No, because that would be a bad business transaction.
If you had such a huge problem with school, you could have inconvenienced yourself and solved it...but why go through with it when the solution is more complicated than just dealing with the adversity. High school gives us alot more information than we account for, and the social education of dealing with bastards is one thing that we never really forget. For example, been to a roughneck bar or hung out in front of a liqour store lately? If you never dealt with dangerous people, that answer might be different.
There is always more than one solution to a problem. I can agree with your viewpoint that we should stand up for ourselves, and make statements when it comes to our rights. I also believe that things could be better if everyone was reasonable, intelligent, and shared my belief system.
Unfortunately, I don't think that everyone believes in the same ideals that I do. I take into account that some people (especially those who enjoy and benefit from the situation) are going to see my view as the "rogue ideal"
Not everyone is like you and I. As far as I can tell, most people aren't even close!
My viewpoint on this, and it may not be the same as yours, is that any system that is failing doesn't need to be changed, it needs to be abandoned. If you're having major problems with your high school, it is time to look at alternatives. Forcing everyone else into your belief system is a bad thing. If you don't like the way things are happening, and everyone else does...it really isn't your place to ruin their fun(bad choice of word, but oh well:) Remove yourself from their control and make things like YOU want them to be, for yourself and people like you.
I, for one, am tired of the method of rule making that says that everyone needs to be treated the same even when some people get the short end of the stick, but when America was founded it really was the best way to do things economically.
People need to be treated differently, and it just isn't feasible to establish the type of individual treatment that we all want on a measly high school budget. The problem isn't the contests, it runs much deeper than that...unfortunately majority rules in politics, and it rules in anything that politics touch, including schools. The majority actually WANTS schools that way, and because you're a minority in a democracy you're just not going to have your way.
Throwing yourself in the face of authority isn't going to change anything. They're not going to think about it, in fact, it may even degrade the image of the "smart kid" in the eyes of the administrators.
This isn't MTV, its real life, and a silly protest doesn't change anything. If he really wanted things to change, he should have proposed an alternative that everyone could agree on.
I do appreciate your comments, and I remember things about high school that I absolutely would not stand for in my current situation, but I did stand for them in high school and it really made me a better person.
There isn't an easy answer to this question. Changing the homecoming ceremony isn't going to help anything. Specialized schools WILL change things...we're on our way, but I don't think that making a mockery of the current system is really going to solve anything.
Of course, I'm completely open to comments, its the reason why I posted a reply to this story. Thanks for your thoughts...
I'll try to be more specific this time. If you understand why things are happening, you're more easily able to solve them for yourself. If you live in a golden world where everything is spoon fed to you and you run into adversity, you're screwed because you've never dealt with it. The only difference is that after high school, its for real and you're going to have alot more to deal with than hurt feelings.
High school shows you what the real world is like, if you don't like it then you have the option of home school, private school, GED, or not going at all! Most people aren't dissatisfied with high school, in fact, for many students it was the best time of their life. If you were treated unfairly, you should have stood up for yourself, and thats not an inspirational speech, its a fact of life.
Katz, you've gone way too far on this one. Geeks don't need to band together, we don't need another group of people with special rights, and popularity contests are not bad.
High school is designed to help you deal with social situations where people are smarter than you are, dumber than you are, faster than you are, richer than you are, and more popular than you are. These are things that everyone will run into for the rest of their lives, and kids need to be taught how to deal with these situations in a "practice environment" where the consequences are mostly symbolic punishment and hurt feelings.
If you can't deal with other people getting a bigger peice of the social pie than you have, what are you going to do when the beautiful people in line get seated in that swanky new restaurant while you stand outside in your broken shoes with a stain on your shirt?
There are rules as to how things are done in this world, and if you don't play by the rules then you're not going to get anywhere. I am not saying that there is not a place for revolutionaries, I am simply saying that most young kids need to learn how to deal with unfairness from an early age, or they'll constantly be frustrated by their inability to understand why they're being treated unfairly.
If you are smart enough to realize that high school and its methods are a bunch of bunk, then get your diploma, get out, start a company, buy a sparc and have fun. If you're not smart enough to see past that facade, better to get your knocks in a place where it doesn't really matter. If you're intelligent, part of your job is to see past the apparent nastiness of high school for what it really is, a boxing match preparing you for the street brawl of the real world. If you can't see it, then you're not as smart as you think you are, and maybe you're just a tortured soul.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think it is really avoidance of a legal fight. I think they're pushing for the networking features which include video sharing and video on demand. The big companies don't want people sharing PPV ever, there will be rules in place.
What scares me is the possibility that this is the first win on a "slippery slope" that will soon force my tivo to play commercials.
Now, if they could manage to target advertising to me personally based on my tastes, I'd be all for that as long as my privacy is guarded. I REFUSE to watch LCD advertising for products that I don't have any interest in. Hell, I would probably watch an extended commercial for a product I really had interest in.
You're absolutely right...I think your argument was more clear to me in the most recent post.
Tinkering with code in the privacy of your own home or hacking your own machines should not be illegal at all.
Releasing working code into the wild, however, should be...and after reading the above I think you'd agree.
Yeah dude, totally...just like someone who makes a biological weapon to expose the weakness in the current national security infrastructure. They could just leave it out on the street marked "use me to fuck up the entire city."
They haven't done anything wrong, right? I mean, they didn't RELEASE the poison, and their aim is noble since they really only expose all the country's physical security holes.
FUCK virus writers. They cost people money and time. Money and time is LIFE, just because they take it from you 10 minutes at a time doesn't make it any easier to swallow.
If you want to make people more aware of security, try community outreach. Get involved locally and make a real difference in people's lives. Take charitable contributions to buy billboards and TV commercials. Get the big players involved.
But...wait, that would be POSITIVE. That isn't nearly underground enough for your typical virus writer. Their rhetoric is a fucking smokescreen, they're slimebag criminals and they deserve to be punished just like a CEO who jacks down stock prices. They're both doing MONETARY damage. Money is time and time is life, never forget that.
So you didn't think it was slow at all? I mean...it takes forEVER for those features to load up. My tivo is cabled into the other room to a 2.4ghz dedicated server and it still runs like a dog. It is just too slow to use.
I'd really like to see any suggestions make specific reference to both the form factor and the noise issue. I'm imaging that the major desire to mod the xbox is that it fits in well with a home theatre landscape...its not so much the price anymore. Even though the xbox is huge (lol) its still a hell of a lot smaller and quiter and cooler than a typical cheap pc.
The good news is that the home studio market on both the PC and the Mac are booming, bigtime.
:)
My favorite on the Mac side is definitely Logic Audio. Full support of everything a home user might need for a relatively low price. Pro Tools is decent, but the package that gets sold to home users (anything other than tdm or HD) is really underpowered and overpriced. The big players that swear by protools have $100,000 setups with tons of ridiculously expensive plugins, and THAT is why they like it. My advice for novice/home users is to steer clear of Pro Tools unless you plan to make a career in music production, or you've got $20,000 to spend.
On the PC side, you've got some pretty decent and stable software from sonic foundry, cakewalk, steinberg and propellerheads. Other users have mentioned Reason, and I will as well...Reason is hands down the coolest software for a home studio user. If you're just getting started, the learning curve can be kind of high, and the documentation SUCKS. The software is basically a mock up of real world hardware, and if you've got experience with things like mixers, hardware synths, effects units, etc. you'll be right at home and making tracks in no time. One thing to remember about reason is that it can be complete in some ways, but it is NOT a replacement for a true DAW. Recording long stretches of live instrumentation, full MIDI feature support, and other issues keep it from being a complete solution. If you're sticking mainly in the electronic realm, though, its perfect.
For MIDI/recording, I've really become partial to Cakewalk Sonar XL. It doesn't have some of the whizz bang features that the others have, but for me its been the only program that allowed me on the first try to sit and play music without the software being a huge setup issue, or a real pain in the ass. I'm of the opinion that software shouldn't get in your way during the creative process, and SonarXL is one of the only programs that has done that for me.
I've used nuendo, but I found its complexity intimidating and I didn't really want to go through the motions of getting comfortable in yet another software suite. The feature is list is VERY sexy, though...so if it works for you I'd try it out.
All in all, when I'm really feeling like I need to get some ideas down right away, I still run to my standalone digital 4 track and "just hit record."
PS - when using any computer based stuff, be sure to check out all of the great directx effects, software synths, VST instruments, etc. They're really good these days!!
The reason that PCs aren't stable with Pro tools is that Digi releases shit PC software. Their focus is clearly with the Macintosh, and they completely ignore their PC users. The feature set of the Mac version is more complete when compared to the PC version. It has nothing to do with hardware, and everything to do with software...digi just spends more time, money and effort on the Mac side. If you'd like more information on the problems and missing features that PC users have with Digi software, check out the user conference on their site at
http://duc.digidesign.com/
By and large, the major audio players in the professional market program for Mac not because it is a stable platform, or faster, or better able to handle the job...but simply because that is where their experience is, and beyond that, that is where their market is. Musicians are all about finding something cool and sticking with it forever. They're not often a group who enjoys moving to newer platforms, even if it might be to their advantage.
This argument of "since the Soviets couldn't do it, we can't either" is just silly. The one determining factor in this situation is that, this time, the afghanis and their cohorts DO NOT have the US backing them with intelligence, weapons, etc. The situation that the Soviets were in was completely different to what we're in now. Oh, and do *I* think we can drop some ground troops and mission acomplished? Damn straight I do. It might take some time, but the only thing we've got to fight against is a bunch of lunatics with a death wish and broken down weaponry.
-w
Wow, if this isn't a troll I don't know what is. You're completely wrong, and you have no idea what you're talking about. Crack a book.
:/
College kids
Here is an interesting idea. If spam was legitamized (or put under legislation), we may be able to force them to include SPAM in their subject, and effectively filter it out. At some point, they'd realize that to do it legally wouldn't allow them to reach a large enough audience, and they'd get out of the business for financial reasons rather than coersion (posting their names/addresses/etc.) If they decided to avoid putting spam in their subject line, they would be subject to criminal investigation.
I really don't think that spam should be outlawed, because we have an exact duplicate of the business practice going through snail mail and telemarketing every day.
Oh, and I don't want to hear about the problems of wasting computer space and time...snail mail spam kills trees and costs us millions in delivery costs, pollution (gotta deliver it right?), etc. If spam is bad, lets hit it at the heart an criminalize the business practice as a whole, INCLUDING snail mail and telemarketing.
But guess what, that will never happen unless we get serious about stopping this style of marketing in every industry. Better get your pen and paper out and write to your legislator. I for one could care less...I block spam at the source at my workplace, and I'm smart about giving my address out....in fact, I haven't received a spam in 3 years of having my account. Funny that...
-will
Is there any reason why e-mail spam gets targetted, as opposed to snail mail "spam"? I routinely get a books worth of coupons in my mailbox weekly. If spam really is evil, why not target the business practice as a whole?
-will
Actually people DON'T delete them when they receive them. I personally know three spammers making over $100,000 a year in the Las Vegas area. The real culprit in the spamming wars are the morons who buy what spam is selling. If there wasn't money to be made by spamming, no one would spam (apart from those trying to get a message out)
I sometimes wonder why people who seriously dislike spam don't go after the customers. The spammers are just targeting a market, and from the look of my friends brand new navigator and 3,000 sq foot house...that market is pretty large.
-will
Poor hopeless you. Stand up for yourself and fix your situation. No one, including the authorities, are going to help you....ever. Get used to it and make a decision on what you're going to do next if you don't like your current situation.
If you say that you have no choice but to accept it, well then it must not be that bad since it's obviously better than the infinite choice of action that you have before you in any situation. You could hire a hitman, but that would be illegal and you don't want to go to jail. You could quit school, but then you can't get into college. None of those are good choices for you...but staying in school and DEALING with the crap is something that you're willing to do. It's a simple business transaction. Do you buy things when they're too expensive? No, because that would be a bad business transaction.
If you had such a huge problem with school, you could have inconvenienced yourself and solved it...but why go through with it when the solution is more complicated than just dealing with the adversity. High school gives us alot more information than we account for, and the social education of dealing with bastards is one thing that we never really forget. For example, been to a roughneck bar or hung out in front of a liqour store lately? If you never dealt with dangerous people, that answer might be different.
-will
There is always more than one solution to a problem. I can agree with your viewpoint that we should stand up for ourselves, and make statements when it comes to our rights. I also believe that things could be better if everyone was reasonable, intelligent, and shared my belief system.
:) Remove yourself from their control and make things like YOU want them to be, for yourself and people like you.
Unfortunately, I don't think that everyone believes in the same ideals that I do. I take into account that some people (especially those who enjoy and benefit from the situation) are going to see my view as the "rogue ideal"
Not everyone is like you and I. As far as I can tell, most people aren't even close!
My viewpoint on this, and it may not be the same as yours, is that any system that is failing doesn't need to be changed, it needs to be abandoned. If you're having major problems with your high school, it is time to look at alternatives. Forcing everyone else into your belief system is a bad thing. If you don't like the way things are happening, and everyone else does...it really isn't your place to ruin their fun(bad choice of word, but oh well
I, for one, am tired of the method of rule making that says that everyone needs to be treated the same even when some people get the short end of the stick, but when America was founded it really was the best way to do things economically.
People need to be treated differently, and it just isn't feasible to establish the type of individual treatment that we all want on a measly high school budget. The problem isn't the contests, it runs much deeper than that...unfortunately majority rules in politics, and it rules in anything that politics touch, including schools. The majority actually WANTS schools that way, and because you're a minority in a democracy you're just not going to have your way.
Throwing yourself in the face of authority isn't going to change anything. They're not going to think about it, in fact, it may even degrade the image of the "smart kid" in the eyes of the administrators.
This isn't MTV, its real life, and a silly protest doesn't change anything. If he really wanted things to change, he should have proposed an alternative that everyone could agree on.
I do appreciate your comments, and I remember things about high school that I absolutely would not stand for in my current situation, but I did stand for them in high school and it really made me a better person.
There isn't an easy answer to this question. Changing the homecoming ceremony isn't going to help anything. Specialized schools WILL change things...we're on our way, but I don't think that making a mockery of the current system is really going to solve anything.
Of course, I'm completely open to comments, its the reason why I posted a reply to this story. Thanks for your thoughts...
-will
I'll try to be more specific this time. If you understand why things are happening, you're more easily able to solve them for yourself. If you live in a golden world where everything is spoon fed to you and you run into adversity, you're screwed because you've never dealt with it. The only difference is that after high school, its for real and you're going to have alot more to deal with than hurt feelings.
High school shows you what the real world is like, if you don't like it then you have the option of home school, private school, GED, or not going at all! Most people aren't dissatisfied with high school, in fact, for many students it was the best time of their life. If you were treated unfairly, you should have stood up for yourself, and thats not an inspirational speech, its a fact of life.
Katz, you've gone way too far on this one. Geeks don't need to band together, we don't need another group of people with special rights, and popularity contests are not bad.
High school is designed to help you deal with social situations where people are smarter than you are, dumber than you are, faster than you are, richer than you are, and more popular than you are. These are things that everyone will run into for the rest of their lives, and kids need to be taught how to deal with these situations in a "practice environment" where the consequences are mostly symbolic punishment and hurt feelings.
If you can't deal with other people getting a bigger peice of the social pie than you have, what are you going to do when the beautiful people in line get seated in that swanky new restaurant while you stand outside in your broken shoes with a stain on your shirt?
There are rules as to how things are done in this world, and if you don't play by the rules then you're not going to get anywhere. I am not saying that there is not a place for revolutionaries, I am simply saying that most young kids need to learn how to deal with unfairness from an early age, or they'll constantly be frustrated by their inability to understand why they're being treated unfairly.
If you are smart enough to realize that high school and its methods are a bunch of bunk, then get your diploma, get out, start a company, buy a sparc and have fun. If you're not smart enough to see past that facade, better to get your knocks in a place where it doesn't really matter. If you're intelligent, part of your job is to see past the apparent nastiness of high school for what it really is, a boxing match preparing you for the street brawl of the real world. If you can't see it, then you're not as smart as you think you are, and maybe you're just a tortured soul.