The Sony Clie does support this using the MSImport app (included with all the latest Clie models, I believe).
MSImport allows you to mount the memory stick on the Clie as a removable disk. While it's designed to run under Windows, it works under Linux quite well too. If you run a kernel > 2.4.10, the Clie acts as a SCSI device that you can easily mount and grab files to/from.
To me, it sounds like a good deal. $5 for 1000 pages is far more than I'd ever use. It's also nice to see that the Slashdot crew gave this some thought and decided to give their users a choice, rather than shove huge banners down our throats or go all-subscription based like the IGN boards.
My only complaint is the use of Paypal. I won't subscribe until they provide an alternative method that is more trustworthy. But it's understandable....like Taco said, this is probably the easiest method to get up and running first.
When corps are loyal to their 'human resources' then they can expect reciprocal loyalty
I'd just like to say, this is entirely true. The company I work for practices this, and as a result I've stayed with them for the last five years (and look forward to many more). I enjoy working for the company, and I enjoy speaking highly of it. I could make more money elsewhere, but I feel that working for a company that respects it's employees, and treats them like people instead of "assets" is more valuable.
For a company to be successful, it must have good employee relations. Especially tech companies. It's unfortunate that so many companies don't believe in this simple concept, we'd all be much better off.
I agree with most of your points, however look on the (somewhat) bright side.....at least Paramount isn't throwing it back in the movie theaters, but instead sending it to a (presumably simultaneous) VHS/DVD release.
As for putting up with the studios crap, I know what you mean. In fact, that's why I've held off on purchasing "Dogma", for instance. I could purchase it now, or wait for the "special edition" with the bonus features on it (like many of their other movies). I haven't heard of any "special edition" of it yet (if anyone has, let me know!), but I think I can hold out until one does come along....
I'm a bit curious on what you mean when you said "Loading a CDR and a GD-ROM are two completely seperate things and obviously two pieces of code in the BIOS.....". If that's true, why would Sega have support in the Dreamcast for booting from CDR's in the first place? I can't see any legit reason for having CDR boot support in there at all.
Now, I can see if they added programming to the boot code to detect CDR media and refuse to boot up...perhaps that's what you meant? At any rate, I've heard that GD-ROM discs hold somewhere around 1.2GB of data, and that pirates usually remote non-essential pieces of a game like FMV, music, sound effects, whatever, in order to fit the game on 650MB CD media (please, someone correct be if that's not true...). I really can't see the incentives behind wide-spread pirating of DC games if you lose most of the game in the process. So this all goes back to "Is Sega really loosing enough money to make this worth the effort?"
DISCLAIMER: Some info on this page assumes you are from the Omaha, NE area. I apologize.......
I just got into arcade collecting/building myself, so I'll try to lend a few pointers (though most of this info will be totally region-centric)
You mention Omaha, so I'm assuming you are from the area. I usually check out the old used arcade cabinets from Central Distrubting. They are located off 108th street in the Old Mill area, right next to Old Mill Toyota (by the hotel over there). I picked up my SF 2 cabinet there (not exactly a classic, but it's Jamma based with lotsa buttons, more on that later) and they were pretty cool. They'll deliver it to you for a small fee I think (I lived too far away for them to deliever). Anyway, the salesman there you want to talk to is Joe. He'll let you come in and look around. Most of the stuff is in pretty bad shape, but occasionally you'll find some nice gems. Another place to check out (and I forget the name) is the ammusement place close to 84th and 'F' (next to Skateland). A friend of mine went there, said they had good deals. Also check out the arcade places at Westroads/Crossroads/and Oakview. Especially Oakview, they tend to sell a lot of cabinets from time to time (but most of their's are newer machines). And I'm not sure, but Family Fun Center might be willing to part with some older ones (they have a really cool retro arcade there, if you manage to dodge the bullets:)
As for what kind of cabinet you want, I recommend sticking to Jamma based cabinets (most are, but the really old ones aren't). Basically, the Jamma harness provides a uniform interface to the monitor/buttons/etc, so swapping out PCB's are pretty easy. I like old Capcom games (Strider, SF 2, Final Fight), and you can find tons of them on Ebay or perhaps purchase them from a place like Central Distributing. For the really really old ones that used dedicated hardware, there are a few sites on the net that show you how to make a Jamma harness yourself, but you'd be better off buying the whole thing in a lot of cases (if you are interested in coverting a non-jamma to jamma, check out This link.
You will also want to check the condition of the monitor. It's pretty much a given that older games will have some burn in. You'll have to watch out for that. The good news is, if you have to settle for a monitor with burn in, Happ Controls has a good selection of monitors to choose from, if you need to replace it.
Personally, I like to pick up my cabinets from local outlets (like that place Central Distributing). Usually, they are more than happy to let you mess around with it and make sure all the controls work and the monitor looks sharp and the sound works, etc. In other words, you know what you are buying.:)
Once you find yourself a decent cabinet, you can start buying just the PCB's and swap them in an out (nice thing about the Jamma harness, it makes this painless, for the most part). Like I said earlier though, older games ( Pac-Man, Gyruss era) might require a bit more work.
While I realize you don't like emulation, there is a neat cabinet from Hanaho called the ArcadePC. It gives you more of the arcade "feel", while running the games from a PC under MAME or something. Sometimes, this may be your only choice:(
Here is a list of some of my favorite sites (all can be found by searching Google with the keyword 'jamma' or 'jamma pcb' or something like that
If you need more info or anything, feel free to email me (remove the NOSPAM) and discuss!
Re:Does spam actually work?
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MAPS vs. ORBS
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Is there any evidence that anyone can actually make cash through it?
I've thought about that before. I simply couldn't not believe spam would be an viable money making scheme. But then I realized that the fact that spam continues (and quite possibly growing), is evidence in itself. While it has to have very low returns, I don't think you need lots of people to make it a profitable business.
I once worked with someone who was a spammer (he preferred the term "Bulk Internet Mail"). Quite a loony character, he was!
Mr. Valenti has never heard of the DVD CCA or even decss (yet he insists it violates the "law"), has never heard of a DVD disc even being decrypted using decss, and doesn't even know who the defendants are or what they do......other than they sell t-shirts with his face on it.
Yet, according to him, the MPAA acts on behalf of the DVD CCA member companies in anti-piracy matters. Pretty funny, if you ask me.
I think this is a great idea. The argument I see being used against this the most is that a lot of third world countries have more important problems to worry about (like food, shelter, ect) than worrying about technological issues. I agree, but remember Geekcorps isn't going to any old third world nation, but targeting those who would benefit the most and already have a sort of established foundation to work from. Second, I agree that many places have more important problems at hand, but also look at it like this: There are other organizations out there to provide for those needs. Geekcorps is going what geeks do best, so to speak. Combine Geekcorps efforts with the efforts of other "helping hand" organizations and I think together we can make serious progress in developing nations.
A lot of posts suggest that you encrypt your messages, some even suggest using steganography to encode your messages. That's great and all, especially for messages that you consider "sensitive" (which makes me wonder why you'd use email for highly sensitive information, but whatever trips your trigger). But, what many of you forget is that it's not the stuff we know is going to come back and haunt us, it's the little things. Off hand remarks, rush jobs, and even messages that are completely innocent can be turned against you. Even if they are not directly incriminating, they can be used to paint a negative profile of you in court. The point is, lawyers can and will exploit the smallest things and turn them against you. I'm in no way saying "Encryption is for the birds, why bother". I'm saying that in many cases it's not feasible to encrypt every single piece of mail (esp. to those who'd have no clue as to decrypt it), and chances are, those "little" things are the ones that's going to come back to you.
You have my attention. Now, please present hard facts, documents whatever to support your claim. I'd be very interested in hearing it. You claim Slashdot should have done some research before posting this story. Okay, fair enough. Sounds like you did. Now, exactly where did you get your information?
Re:Will Apple finally see OpenSource light at last
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"Lets hope Apple comes to its senses and sets the APIs free (those that aren't already, what with Darwin, [read BSD,] OpenGL, the data management infrestructure etcetera,) to put a severe kink in the strategies of Redmond."
I believe it's a definate possibility. Look at it like this, back then (84ish) the industry was pretty much in it's infancy. Apple made what it thought were smart business moves (by keeping everything close to its vest, as you say), but in hindsight we can easily say "Hey, you guys really screwed up a good thing". Now that open source is finally beginning to be accepted or at least regarded my the "mainstream" industry as a smart way of doing business, I see Apple trying to right a wrong that they made many years ago. Who knows? Now that's Steve Jobs is back at the helm, it's an even better chance that he remembers personally the follys he made in the past. Or, perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.:)
The way I understand it, overlaying means inserting your video or whatever directly onto the video signal going to your monitor. They use colorkeys to determine which region gets overlayed.
True, uninstalling software under Windows is certainly not an "exact" science:). However, most users don't even think that far ahead. They want program X to install and run and be done with it. When they eventually try to uninstall it, I think it's a safe bet that most users don't even think about "Gee, the program directory is gone, most of the icons are too, but did it clean up the registry? Did it accidently remove DLLs that other programs are dependant on?" They just want it "to go". It's tough job to meet their expectations without compromising the "grace" (for lack of a better word) of Linux (yeah, yeah, any other flavor too). Question is: Do we want to? I know everyone talks about "Yeah, Linux on every desktop" and all, but really, what's so wrong with it having a "niche" market with the more technically savvy users?
"But what happens when you live in the sticks and Wal-Mart comes to town? Statistically your little town turns into a feudal society where small business (eg. Record Stores, Hardware Stores, Book Stores, you name it) They will outprice the local music store until it shuts down and at that point you can't buy what you want."
Yeah, I do see this as a problem, but a much larger one. You can't expect Wal-Mart to cater to each and every one of the populations needs. And, I'd be willing to bet that if the community (especially a small one) was really concerned about the "mom and pop" stores going out of business, then they should have petitioned the local government not to let a Wal-Mart to be built there. Yes, I've heard of plenty of stories were some citizens gripped but nothing was done. It's sad and unfortunate (I live in a *very* small town that's slowly losing it's mom and pop stores), but I don't blame the companies moving in. I blame mostly the citizens for their inaction. Sorry if this post seems a bit inflamatory. But like I said, I live in a very small rural Iowa town (actually, I don't live in any town. We're out in the country, but the nearest town to us has a population of maybe 1,500 - 2,000. Most other towns in the area only have half a dozen or so). I find that if there's anything I need, either A) purchase it online (I have that luxary, I realize that many don't), or B) Travel to the nearest "big city", which I do frequently. Yes, it's a 50 mile trip (one way), but if I need something RIGHT NOW, that's what I have to do. That's life, you deal. I personally think the benefits of living in a small town far outweight the crap you have to put up with in a city. It's quiet, cleaner, safer, and.....geez, I really have gone off topic here:)
Actually, I've seen this happen a few times, were a decent post was mistaken as a troll or flamebait. I have seen a few unfair moderations when meta-moderating and quickly marked them as such. Fortunately, other moderators usually (like they did in your case) bump your post back up a bit. You know what'd be really cool though? If there was a way for moderators to leave a short reason why they felt the post deserved a certain score. These could be short little notes, seperate from the actual discussion thread. I dunno. Sounds cool, but probably isn't very practical.
"Due to the Tipper Gore's actions, tons of rap and other music has been pulled from chains such as Walmart and K-mart"
Okay, I don't totally disagree with you, and definatly think that her actions should raise a few flags of a certain color. However I would like to point out that it was a marketing decision made by Walmart/K-mart. No one forced it upon them. They simply figured it was in their best interests (money). I hate censorship, or shall I say, I hate government censorship. Governments should never be allowed to tell anyone what they can/can't read/hear/see/etc. However, citizens should be encouraged to censor things they don't like for their own benefits. Walmart doesn't sell your favorite rap groups CD? Easy answer: Find someplace that will. Demanding that places carry music that *you* like is a form of censorship in itself. That said, I agree that Mrs. Tipper Gore is walking a *very* fine line. It's one thing to increase public awareness, however it's too easy to overstep those bounds once you have political influence and try to force those viewpoints on everyone (an opportunity she'd most certainly jump on if given the chance). In short, Walmart/K-Mart has a *right* to pull the music. Until someone *mandates* they pull the music, I don't have a problem.
The article was good readage. Nothing that I didn't already know from visiting jwz home page though. BUT, anyone else notice the little blurb about a PBS documentary "Code Rush"? Seems like it's going to air March 30th according to the link.
"The specific time period captured on film covers a crucial moment in the history of the "free-software movement" -- that frantic couple of months during which Netscape programmers scrambled to clean up the hitherto proprietary source code to the Navigator Web browser so that it could be released as publicly accessible open-source software."
Hmmm....sounds pretty interesting. I wonder who's going to portray jwz:)
Sure, they may be running a fraudlent, bandwagon hopping, rip off scam of a business, but in defacing Tux with their LinuxOne logo, they went too far damn it!:)
As a side note, I'm seriously beginning to think their entire operation is simply a joke. Perhaps they are trying to out do last years April Fools joke, so they're starting early. Any company that makes a mockary of themselves with a "Fame of the Week" contest, especially since they're gearing up for their IPO, deserves no respect right there. Are they trying to win our sympathy? Do they think that people are joking? I dunno, it just seems like a very bad thing to do, especially when a lot of the flames have a basis in reality.
"PS: I'm wearing my DeCSS source code shirt to work today, and if I have to explain it means one more time, I'm going to go nuts"
Yes, I'm at work too, sporting my new shirt that just arrived yesterday from Copyleft. And I can understand why you are going nuts. Everyone has been pestering me too. However, as posts above point out, we must explain to everyone (well, all who ask) what it means! Don't shrug them off!
But I did get some heat from it. A co-worker of mine asked what the back of my shirt said. I told her "It's the source code, well part of it, to the DeCSS program. In a nutshell, it allows you to decrypt the data on a DVD which in turn allows you to actually play the movie. Without the decryption process, the movie data is scrambled and useless." Her response, "Oh, so that the thing thats for pirating DVD's. I read about it" I felt like banging my head into the nearest wall.
Now, she's about as an average Joe (or Jane) as you can get. And if the average Joe (or Jane) thinks of us as pirates, then we definately need to do more to educate those who aren't "in the loop". Lots of us (myself including) rant and rave about what's going on, yet who are we ranting and raving to?!? It's like preaching to the choir. We need to convince the average person out there, say ones who either have home DVD's, or DVD players running under Windows, or even people who don't yet own DVD players, that what the industry is doing is wrong. It's affecting them, even though not directly.
We aren't pirates. We aren't ripping movies and selling them on street corners. DeCSS isn't used for copying DVD's. We are simply people who purchased DVD movies legally who want to watch them on their DVD players.
I am using SDL for a few game projects right now. It simply rocks, let me tell you! SDL contains routines that interface to graphics framebuffers, audio devices, CD-ROMS, etc as well as routines for handling events and thread management. It is supposedly cross-platform, running under Win32/Linux/BeOS and others (I've had problems using it under FreeBSD, but apparently others have to according to the FAQ). SDL is under constant development, and though I've only subscribed to the mailing list for a short time, the maintainer Sam Lantinga seems very open to new ideas, routines, etc, though I haven't contributed any code to the library myself yet. But, yes it is very much worth the effort. For being a low level library, I believe it has a very clean, consistant and easy to use interface. Also, the source code is pretty clean and well-written, making it easy to browse through to see what's going on.
From the DVD FAQ For reference, a CD-ROM holds about 650 megabytes, which is 0.64 gigabytes or 0.68 billion bytes. In the list below, SS/DS means single-/double-sided, SL/DL/ML means single-/dual-/mixed-layer (mixed means single layer on one side, double layer on the other side), gig means gigabytes (2^30), G means billions of bytes (10^9). See note about giga vs. billion in section 7.2.
You know, I noticed this too. I think the point he wants to make is he believes the PPC architecture is more compact, RISC-like and therefore more "streamlined" than their x86 counter-parts. That's just my take on it.
Slashdot Mirror
My MBNA Mastercard already has this feature. They call it "Online Shopsafe" or something like that.
You log into their site, tell them how much of a "credit limit" you want and how long the credit card number should be active.
Works pretty good if you ask me.
MSImport allows you to mount the memory stick on the Clie as a removable disk. While it's designed to run under Windows, it works under Linux quite well too. If you run a kernel > 2.4.10, the Clie acts as a SCSI device that you can easily mount and grab files to/from.
See this link for more info.
To me, it sounds like a good deal. $5 for 1000 pages is far more than I'd ever use. It's also nice to see that the Slashdot crew gave this some thought and decided to give their users a choice, rather than shove huge banners down our throats or go all-subscription based like the IGN boards.
My only complaint is the use of Paypal. I won't subscribe until they provide an alternative method that is more trustworthy. But it's understandable....like Taco said, this is probably the easiest method to get up and running first.
Good luck 'all
So I get it! How about we reconfigure the solar matrix in parallel for endothermic propulsion!
We'll do that!
:-)
I'd just like to say, this is entirely true. The company I work for practices this, and as a result I've stayed with them for the last five years (and look forward to many more). I enjoy working for the company, and I enjoy speaking highly of it. I could make more money elsewhere, but I feel that working for a company that respects it's employees, and treats them like people instead of "assets" is more valuable.
For a company to be successful, it must have good employee relations. Especially tech companies. It's unfortunate that so many companies don't believe in this simple concept, we'd all be much better off.
I agree with most of your points, however look on the (somewhat) bright side.....at least Paramount isn't throwing it back in the movie theaters, but instead sending it to a (presumably simultaneous) VHS/DVD release.
As for putting up with the studios crap, I know what you mean. In fact, that's why I've held off on purchasing "Dogma", for instance. I could purchase it now, or wait for the "special edition" with the bonus features on it (like many of their other movies). I haven't heard of any "special edition" of it yet (if anyone has, let me know!), but I think I can hold out until one does come along....
I'm a bit curious on what you mean when you said "Loading a CDR and a GD-ROM are two completely seperate things and obviously two pieces of code in the BIOS.....". If that's true, why would Sega have support in the Dreamcast for booting from CDR's in the first place? I can't see any legit reason for having CDR boot support in there at all.
Now, I can see if they added programming to the boot code to detect CDR media and refuse to boot up...perhaps that's what you meant? At any rate, I've heard that GD-ROM discs hold somewhere around 1.2GB of data, and that pirates usually remote non-essential pieces of a game like FMV, music, sound effects, whatever, in order to fit the game on 650MB CD media (please, someone correct be if that's not true...). I really can't see the incentives behind wide-spread pirating of DC games if you lose most of the game in the process. So this all goes back to "Is Sega really loosing enough money to make this worth the effort?"
DISCLAIMER: Some info on this page assumes you are from the Omaha, NE area. I apologize.......
I just got into arcade collecting/building myself, so I'll try to lend a few pointers (though most of this info will be totally region-centric)
You mention Omaha, so I'm assuming you are from the area. I usually check out the old used arcade cabinets from Central Distrubting. They are located off 108th street in the Old Mill area, right next to Old Mill Toyota (by the hotel over there). I picked up my SF 2 cabinet there (not exactly a classic, but it's Jamma based with lotsa buttons, more on that later) and they were pretty cool. They'll deliver it to you for a small fee I think (I lived too far away for them to deliever). Anyway, the salesman there you want to talk to is Joe. He'll let you come in and look around. Most of the stuff is in pretty bad shape, but occasionally you'll find some nice gems. Another place to check out (and I forget the name) is the ammusement place close to 84th and 'F' (next to Skateland). A friend of mine went there, said they had good deals. Also check out the arcade places at Westroads/Crossroads/and Oakview. Especially Oakview, they tend to sell a lot of cabinets from time to time (but most of their's are newer machines). And I'm not sure, but Family Fun Center might be willing to part with some older ones (they have a really cool retro arcade there, if you manage to dodge the bullets
As for what kind of cabinet you want, I recommend sticking to Jamma based cabinets (most are, but the really old ones aren't). Basically, the Jamma harness provides a uniform interface to the monitor/buttons/etc, so swapping out PCB's are pretty easy. I like old Capcom games (Strider, SF 2, Final Fight), and you can find tons of them on Ebay or perhaps purchase them from a place like Central Distributing. For the really really old ones that used dedicated hardware, there are a few sites on the net that show you how to make a Jamma harness yourself, but you'd be better off buying the whole thing in a lot of cases (if you are interested in coverting a non-jamma to jamma, check out This link.
You will also want to check the condition of the monitor. It's pretty much a given that older games will have some burn in. You'll have to watch out for that. The good news is, if you have to settle for a monitor with burn in, Happ Controls has a good selection of monitors to choose from, if you need to replace it.
Personally, I like to pick up my cabinets from local outlets (like that place Central Distributing). Usually, they are more than happy to let you mess around with it and make sure all the controls work and the monitor looks sharp and the sound works, etc. In other words, you know what you are buying. :)
Once you find yourself a decent cabinet, you can start buying just the PCB's and swap them in an out (nice thing about the Jamma harness, it makes this painless, for the most part). Like I said earlier though, older games ( Pac-Man, Gyruss era) might require a bit more work.
While I realize you don't like emulation, there is a neat cabinet from Hanaho called the ArcadePC. It gives you more of the arcade "feel", while running the games from a PC under MAME or something. Sometimes, this may be your only choice :(
Here is a list of some of my favorite sites (all can be found by searching Google with the keyword 'jamma' or 'jamma pcb' or something like that
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/vide oarcade/faq/
http://nexus.nanospace.com/~spo onman/neogeo/faq.htm
http://www.ntrnet.net/~braze/ arcade/tech/repair.shtml
http:/ /directory.google.com/alpha/Top/Games/Coin-Op/Arca de_Games/Collectors/ (TONS of links)
http://www.tir.com/~devilman/index.html
http://members.xoom.com/organian/
If you need more info or anything, feel free to email me (remove the NOSPAM) and discuss!
Is there any evidence that anyone can actually make cash through it?
I've thought about that before. I simply couldn't not believe spam would be an viable money making scheme. But then I realized that the fact that spam continues (and quite possibly growing), is evidence in itself. While it has to have very low returns, I don't think you need lots of people to make it a profitable business.
I once worked with someone who was a spammer (he preferred the term "Bulk Internet Mail"). Quite a loony character, he was!
Mr. Valenti has never heard of the DVD CCA or even decss (yet he insists it violates the "law"), has never heard of a DVD disc even being decrypted using decss, and doesn't even know who the defendants are or what they do......other than they sell t-shirts with his face on it.
Yet, according to him, the MPAA acts on behalf of the DVD CCA member companies in anti-piracy matters.
Pretty funny, if you ask me.
I think this is a great idea. The argument I see being used against this the most is that a lot of third world countries have more important problems to worry about (like food, shelter, ect) than worrying about technological issues. I agree, but remember Geekcorps isn't going to any old third world nation, but targeting those who would benefit the most and already have a sort of established foundation to work from. Second, I agree that many places have more important problems at hand, but also look at it like this: There are other organizations out there to provide for those needs. Geekcorps is going what geeks do best, so to speak. Combine Geekcorps efforts with the efforts of other "helping hand" organizations and I think together we can make serious progress in developing nations.
Just a thought
A lot of posts suggest that you encrypt your messages, some even suggest using steganography to encode your messages. That's great and all, especially for messages that you consider "sensitive" (which makes me wonder why you'd use email for highly sensitive information, but whatever trips your trigger). But, what many of you forget is that it's not the stuff we know is going to come back and haunt us, it's the little things. Off hand remarks, rush jobs, and even messages that are completely innocent can be turned against you. Even if they are not directly incriminating, they can be used to paint a negative profile of you in court. The point is, lawyers can and will exploit the smallest things and turn them against you.
I'm in no way saying "Encryption is for the birds, why bother". I'm saying that in many cases it's not feasible to encrypt every single piece of mail (esp. to those who'd have no clue as to decrypt it), and chances are, those "little" things are the ones that's going to come back to you.
You have my attention. Now, please present hard facts, documents whatever to support your claim. I'd be very interested in hearing it. You claim Slashdot should have done some research before posting this story. Okay, fair enough. Sounds like you did. Now, exactly where did you get your information?
"Lets hope Apple comes to its senses and sets the APIs free (those that aren't already, what with Darwin, [read BSD,] OpenGL, the data management infrestructure etcetera,) to put a severe kink in the strategies of Redmond."
:)
I believe it's a definate possibility. Look at it like this, back then (84ish) the industry was pretty much in it's infancy. Apple made what it thought were smart business moves (by keeping everything close to its vest, as you say), but in hindsight we can easily say "Hey, you guys really screwed up a good thing". Now that open source is finally beginning to be accepted or at least regarded my the "mainstream" industry as a smart way of doing business, I see Apple trying to right a wrong that they made many years ago.
Who knows? Now that's Steve Jobs is back at the helm, it's an even better chance that he remembers personally the follys he made in the past.
Or, perhaps I'm giving them too much credit.
The way I understand it, overlaying means inserting your video or whatever directly onto the video signal going to your monitor. They use colorkeys to determine which region gets overlayed.
Am I close, or completely off the wall here?
True, uninstalling software under Windows is certainly not an "exact" science :). However, most users don't even think that far ahead. They want program X to install and run and be done with it. When they eventually try to uninstall it, I think it's a safe bet that most users don't even think about "Gee, the program directory is gone, most of the icons are too, but did it clean up the registry? Did it accidently remove DLLs that other programs are dependant on?"
They just want it "to go". It's tough job to meet their expectations without compromising the "grace" (for lack of a better word) of Linux (yeah, yeah, any other flavor too).
Question is: Do we want to? I know everyone talks about "Yeah, Linux on every desktop" and all, but really, what's so wrong with it having a "niche" market with the more technically savvy users?
"But what happens when you live in the sticks and Wal-Mart comes to town? Statistically your little town turns into a feudal society where small business (eg. Record Stores, Hardware Stores, Book Stores, you name it) They will outprice the local music store until it shuts down and at that point you can't buy what you want."
:)
Yeah, I do see this as a problem, but a much larger one. You can't expect Wal-Mart to cater to each and every one of the populations needs. And, I'd be willing to bet that if the community (especially a small one) was really concerned about the "mom and pop" stores going out of business, then they should have petitioned the local government not to let a Wal-Mart to be built there. Yes, I've heard of plenty of stories were some citizens gripped but nothing was done. It's sad and unfortunate (I live in a *very* small town that's slowly losing it's mom and pop stores), but I don't blame the companies moving in. I blame mostly the citizens for their inaction.
Sorry if this post seems a bit inflamatory. But like I said, I live in a very small rural Iowa town (actually, I don't live in any town. We're out in the country, but the nearest town to us has a population of maybe 1,500 - 2,000. Most other towns in the area only have half a dozen or so). I find that if there's anything I need, either A) purchase it online (I have that luxary, I realize that many don't), or B) Travel to the nearest "big city", which I do frequently. Yes, it's a 50 mile trip (one way), but if I need something RIGHT NOW, that's what I have to do. That's life, you deal. I personally think the benefits of living in a small town far outweight the crap you have to put up with in a city. It's quiet, cleaner, safer, and.....geez, I really have gone off topic here
Actually, I've seen this happen a few times, were a decent post was mistaken as a troll or flamebait. I have seen a few unfair moderations when meta-moderating and quickly marked them as such. Fortunately, other moderators usually (like they did in your case) bump your post back up a bit.
You know what'd be really cool though? If there was a way for moderators to leave a short reason why they felt the post deserved a certain score. These could be short little notes, seperate from the actual discussion thread.
I dunno. Sounds cool, but probably isn't very practical.
"Due to the Tipper Gore's actions, tons of rap and other music has been pulled from chains such as Walmart and K-mart"
Okay, I don't totally disagree with you, and definatly think that her actions should raise a few flags of a certain color. However I would like to point out that it was a marketing decision made by Walmart/K-mart. No one forced it upon them. They simply figured it was in their best interests (money). I hate censorship, or shall I say, I hate government censorship. Governments should never be allowed to tell anyone what they can/can't read/hear/see/etc. However, citizens should be encouraged to censor things they don't like for their own benefits. Walmart doesn't sell your favorite rap groups CD? Easy answer: Find someplace that will. Demanding that places carry music that *you* like is a form of censorship in itself.
That said, I agree that Mrs. Tipper Gore is walking a *very* fine line. It's one thing to increase public awareness, however it's too easy to overstep those bounds once you have political influence and try to force those viewpoints on everyone (an opportunity she'd most certainly jump on if given the chance).
In short, Walmart/K-Mart has a *right* to pull the music. Until someone *mandates* they pull the music, I don't have a problem.
The article was good readage. Nothing that I didn't already know from visiting jwz home page though.
:)
BUT, anyone else notice the little blurb about a PBS documentary "Code Rush"? Seems like it's going to air March 30th according to the link.
"The specific time period captured on film covers a crucial moment in the history of the "free-software movement" -- that frantic couple of months during which Netscape programmers scrambled to clean up the hitherto proprietary source code to the Navigator Web browser so that it could be released as publicly accessible open-source software."
Hmmm....sounds pretty interesting. I wonder who's going to portray jwz
Sure, they may be running a fraudlent, bandwagon hopping, rip off scam of a business, but in defacing Tux with their LinuxOne logo, they went too far damn it! :)
As a side note, I'm seriously beginning to think their entire operation is simply a joke. Perhaps they are trying to out do last years April Fools joke, so they're starting early. Any company that makes a mockary of themselves with a "Fame of the Week" contest, especially since they're gearing up for their IPO, deserves no respect right there. Are they trying to win our sympathy? Do they think that people are joking? I dunno, it just seems like a very bad thing to do, especially when a lot of the flames have a basis in reality.
Oh well, it's a Gates Plot. It's gotta be.
"PS: I'm wearing my DeCSS source code shirt to work today, and if I have to explain it means one more time, I'm going to go nuts"
Yes, I'm at work too, sporting my new shirt that just arrived yesterday from Copyleft. And I can understand why you are going nuts. Everyone has been pestering me too. However, as posts above point out, we must explain to everyone (well, all who ask) what it means! Don't shrug them off!
But I did get some heat from it. A co-worker of mine asked what the back of my shirt said. I told her "It's the source code, well part of it, to the DeCSS program. In a nutshell, it allows you to decrypt the data on a DVD which in turn allows you to actually play the movie. Without the decryption process, the movie data is scrambled and useless."
Her response, "Oh, so that the thing thats for pirating DVD's. I read about it"
I felt like banging my head into the nearest wall.
Now, she's about as an average Joe (or Jane) as you can get. And if the average Joe (or Jane) thinks of us as pirates, then we definately need to do more to educate those who aren't "in the loop". Lots of us (myself including) rant and rave about what's going on, yet who are we ranting and raving to?!? It's like preaching to the choir. We need to convince the average person out there, say ones who either have home DVD's, or DVD players running under Windows, or even people who don't yet own DVD players, that what the industry is doing is wrong. It's affecting them, even though not directly.
We aren't pirates. We aren't ripping movies and selling them on street corners. DeCSS isn't used for copying DVD's. We are simply people who purchased DVD movies legally who want to watch them on their DVD players.
I am using SDL for a few game projects right now. It simply rocks, let me tell you!
SDL contains routines that interface to graphics framebuffers, audio devices, CD-ROMS, etc as well as routines for handling events and thread management. It is supposedly cross-platform, running under Win32/Linux/BeOS and others (I've had problems using it under FreeBSD, but apparently others have to according to the FAQ).
SDL is under constant development, and though I've only subscribed to the mailing list for a short time, the maintainer Sam Lantinga seems very open to new ideas, routines, etc, though I haven't contributed any code to the library myself yet. But, yes it is very much worth the effort. For being a low level library, I believe it has a very clean, consistant and easy to use interface. Also, the source code is pretty clean and well-written, making it easy to browse through to see what's going on.
If anyone is interested in checking it out, here's the address where you can find it:
http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/
From the DVD FAQ
For reference, a CD-ROM holds about 650 megabytes, which is 0.64 gigabytes or 0.68 billion bytes. In the list below, SS/DS means single-/double-sided,
SL/DL/ML means single-/dual-/mixed-layer (mixed means single layer on one side, double layer on the other side), gig means gigabytes (2^30), G means billions of
bytes (10^9). See note about giga vs. billion in section 7.2.
DVD-5 (12cm, SS/SL): 4.38 gig (4.7 G) of data, over 2 hours of video
DVD-9 (12cm, SS/DL): 7.95 gig (8.5 G), about 4 hours
DVD-10 (12cm, DS/SL): 8.75 gig (9.4 G), about 4.5 hours
DVD-14 (12cm, DS/ML): 12.33 gig (13.24 G), about 6.5 hours
DVD-18 (12cm, DS/DL): 15.90 gig (17 G), over 8 hours
DVD-1 (8cm, SS/SL): 1.36 gig (1.4 G), about half an hour
DVD-2 (8cm, SS/DL): 2.48 gig (2.7 G), about 1.3 hours
DVD-3 (8cm, DS/SL): 2.72 gig (2.9 G), about 1.4 hours
DVD-4 (8cm, DS/DL): 4.95 gig (5.3 G), about 2.5 hours
DVD-R (12cm, SS/SL): 3.68 gig (3.95 G)
DVD-R (12cm, DS/SL): 7.38 gig (7.9 G)
DVD-R (8cm, SS/SL): 1.15 gig (1.23 G)
DVD-R (8cm, DS/SL): 2.29 gig (2.46 G)
DVD-RAM (12cm, SS/SL): 2.40 gig (2.58 G)
DVD-RAM (12cm, DS/SL): 4.80 gig (5.16 G)
You know, I noticed this too. I think the point he wants to make is he believes the PPC architecture is more compact, RISC-like and therefore more "streamlined" than their x86 counter-parts.
That's just my take on it.