There is no way this would get past regulatory approval. If the FTC wouldn't allow MCI/Sprint, I can't see how in the world they would allow the number one and number two cable companies to merge operations. This is precisely the type of deal that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to prevent.
This guy clearly didn't even bother to do the slightest bit of homework. If he would have bothered to spend $4 and pick up a copy of The Perfict Vision or Home Theater he would have avoided much of his problems. It doesn't take a lot of research to find out that the RCA DirecTV receiver has DB-15 output for VGA. It takes even less time to find out that DirecTV only has 1 "actual" HD channel. (BTW, if you want HD, buy a DISH Network system. They require multiple dishes in many instances, but you get several more HD channels, with much more room to grow.) There is definitely a problem with HD broadcasts right now. However, this article just sounds like a rich guy saw a Best Buy ad and decided he had to have HDTV NOW! Had he done a bit of homework, he would have realized that it isn't that easy.
all i can say is alt+f4 / alt+w / ctrl+f4 (depending if you're using ie / netscape / opera).
If you are using Opera, you can disable pop-up/under windows completely. Go to File -> Perferences -> Window, and uncheck "Allow documents to create Windows." It's great, I haven't seen an X10 ad in a long time. Unfortunately, it does break a lot of sites. Having to go into the options every now and then to re-enable pop-ups is a small price to pay to not have to look at the countless ad windows that sites now use.
I think the experts raise some valid points in the end of the article about poor sound quality not necessarily being excusable. But then, I'm a musician, so I may have different views on the matter.
It was the article I have been waiting someone to write. With all the attention the mass media has given to MP3, no one has really brought up the fact that MP3s simply suck as far as sound quality is concerned. Just because most people don't pay much attention, doesn't mean it is OK to sacrifice quality. I'm really quite surprised that this story appeared in mainstream press. It reads like an article you would find in Stereophile.
Most people think that they can't hear good sound. Fact is, they just never have. If more people would invest in quality audio components from companies like NAD and Paradigm, they would find better sound really does improve the enjoyment of the music, and can be quite affordable.
How exactly do you have the RIGHT to download something for free that is meant to be sold for money? If you haven't paid for the album, then your rights to it are exactly none. Like it or not, music is not meant to be free. If you like it, pay for it. Copyright holders have every right to make sure that their work is protected.
MySQL.org is definitely confusing. Go there. See if you can find any hint of who they are. I don't necessarily have trouble with them using the domain, but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to tell that they are not in fact the developers. If MySQL AB owns the trademark, then they definitely have a reason to complain. I don't, howevever, think the tone of their press release was justified.
The distrubing part is that "illustrator" is a somewhat generic name, which does not specificlly indicate a piece of IP owned by Adobe Systems, Inc
Adobe owns the trademark for the word "Illustrator" in relation to graphics software. Similarly, Apple Computer owns the trademark for "Apple" in relation to computers. They are both generic terms by themselves, but put in the context of these two industries, and they become trademarks. Trademarks are different from copyright, in that if not defended, their significance is weakened. I highly recommend you read 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained for more info. Adobe is just defending their trademark, and being quite classy about it IMO.
Mod the parent up. I think one of the values of a good keyboard is that the keys 'cave in' to the movement of your finger _but_ do no require you to forcefully reach the end.
Agreed. I type fastest on an old Zeos AT keyboard that I have at home. It is very loud, but the keys require almost no force to press, yet have excellent tactile feedback. I hate the new quietkey keyboards. They don't make much noise, but the keys feel very stiff to me, and wear my fingers out after typing a short message such as this one. Unfortunately, you can't find keyboards that type as well as the old IBMs. The clostest I've found lately are the Dell keyboards.
I've heard complaints about the editorial staff getting lazy...this proves it. The article (which I remember reading on News.com when it was first posted more than a month ago) is about a company falsely advertising a Motorola pager. Do the editors even look at the articles to make sure that they pertain to what they person was talking about?
I, for one, wouldn't be opposed to paying for content. I just don't see it feasable to pay every site I go to a few cents. I don't know how realistic it would be, but maybe the major ad networks could become subsciption networks. IE, pay DoubleClick 10-20$ month and get unlimited access to all their affiliate sites. The revenue would then be distributed to the sites based on traffic. The pr0n industry has been doing something similar to this for a while, and has apparently had some success.
Take it from someone who used to work at a bank, this stuff happens. Send in those forms. It may not do any good, but at least you will be voicing your opinion.
I remember being assigned the task of extracting all of our customer info from the database, formatting it, then emailing it (unencrypted - heh) to a marketing firm. Scary stuff. Don't think for a minute banks care about your privacy.
I don't know about Linux (unfortunately, haven't been lucky enough to get an install to ever actually take...) but under Win32, even Mozilla pales in comparison to the speed and ease of use of Opera. Check it out, you'll love it.
TAC somewhere on the planet that is not only awake during their normal business hours, but also speaks your language!
This, I must say, is the most frustrating part of calling tech support. I have no issues with people migrating to the US to work. However, if someone is going to work in a phone support position, it should be requisite that they speak clear, coherent English. There is nothing more frustrating when systems are down than dealing with a support rep that you can't understand and can't understand you.
come to think of it.. attaching ads is changing the content, and could possibly be a copyright violation.
I've read this several times in this thread. Apparently, people don't realize that even though email is technically copyrighted, there is no legal avenue if that copyright is broken because it has no commercial value.
But, as has been said before, if you don't like it, don't use a free ISP. If you don't want your email modified, don't send it to someone at a free ISP.
And mere seconds later the first Q1 CD key hit the Net. Ahh, the halcycon days of client-side key authentication were great, weren't they? *sniff*
Ummm... Unless I am mistaken-- and I don't think I am-- Quake didn't use CD keys. As a matter of fact, I don't think it even looked for the CD. It did have some Redbook audio tracks on the disc that it would play, but it just knew which tracks to play and played those numbers. It would actually play any audio CD that happened to be in the drive. I don't even think Quake2 had a CD key you had to type in. Half-life, OTOH, always did, and was a real pain about it too.
Perhaps you mean the demo CDs that id distributed that had the shareware version, along with the full version you could unlock by calling id.
. ..while the NTSC-quality images on your VHS tapes have silently gone the way of magnetic flux loss . ..
Small technical beef there. 99% of broadcasts in the US are NTSC. Even if you record something to Tivo, the image is still NTSC. (this is, of course, assuming you live in the US, overseas PAL and SECAM are common) The only time a broadcast is not NTSC, is if it is in one of the ATSC standards for high-definition TV. I don't know of any Tivo box that can take HD (or even prograssive 480p) signals off the air or from satellite and put them on hard drive. I'm sure as high-def broadcasts become more common we will see a PVR that has this capability. There would be larger issues though, as an ATSC 1080i or 720p stream would take up an enormous amount of disk space.
Still something prone for abuse, probably by Microsoft. I shudder at the customer complaints of 'bad linkage' or problems with the links to other websites (either in content or whatever) that are directed to the webmasters of these sites and yet they never created the links. Joe Schmoe won't understand the technicalities behind it.. as far as he sees, *your* site has these links.
An excellent point. Not only that, having pages linked from your site implicitly gives your endorsement of those pages. How many corporate sites do you see that when linking external web pages add a disclaimer something like "External pages are not maintained or endorsed by XYZ Inc." Are all pages going to have to include in the footers "All links in squiggly lines are not ours and are not endorsed by us."?
Just remove Outlook from all the machines. That's what will happen soon at my university.
I don't know how this would go over in a University setting, but at the network I administer I have a batch file running in the login script that renames wscript.exe in the Windows directory to a filename that is no executable. I small hack, but it does an excellent job at preventing people from running.vbs or.js files. (does anyone actually use these for good?) I have the script online if you want to use it.
We still run Norton Enterprise, but this adds a layer of protection in case a new virus comes out before the defs get updated.
Besides, with digital TV/HDTV you really do want to get the original MPEG2 stream instead of decoding it once, and then encoded again when you record. Any set-top boxers/satellite recievers with firewire out?
It can be done. The DirecTiVo receivers (the ones that have the TiVo and DirecTV boxes combined) take the signal from the satellite and record it to the TiVo's hard drive without decoding it to analog. This effectively presserves perfectly the satellite feed when replayed off hard drive
With an external TiVo box, I am not aware of any way to copy digitally. All require you to output either S-Video or Composite to the TiVo, which then re-digitizes it.
(Am I the only one that gets tired of the/. crowd taking every article and somehow twisting it to whine about the DMCA, RIAA, or MPAA?)
I generally agree with Katz, but this article doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
He and his company are about to launch one of the most ambitious campaigns in the history of business, one that should leave him firmly in control of the digital universe.
Katz continues in this same manner for several paragraphs, preaching how Microsoft will dominate the world very soon, but he never gives any solid reasons why. What is this "most ambitious campaigns in the history of business" that is going to cement MS is a permanent world power? Why is it so different from anything else they've been doing for the last decade?
I prefer Outlook Express to all other email clients I've tried. . .
I know it's uncool to say so here, but Microsoft gets things right every now and then, and OE is one of them. It's clean, fast, versatile, and free. So far, I haven't been able to find anything I like better. Now, if someone wanted to argue that Outlook is bloatware, I definitely won't argue there. For standard Internet email though, OE does a great job.
Another program Microsoft did right is Money 99. The 2000 and 2K1 versions are getting pretty bloated, but 99 is very nice. I've yet to find a program that does as good a job at handling multiple accounts, and the reports it generates are suberb.
And while on the subject, why is it that so many people precede any mention of encryption with little "it's not like I have anything to hide, 'cuz I don't" comments? Ugh.
I think this is the biggest issue most people have with encryption. I see a usefulness for it, but I see no need to use it. My emails aren't important. If someone intercepted them, they would most likely just be getting an email to abuse@ complaining about some spam. If I have nothing important to bother encrypting, what is the purpose of going through the hassle of encrypting, then making sure the other party has the correct key?
Can a minor get into a movie if he's under 17? Then why should he (or she) be allowed he buy a videogame that's just as bad violent / sexual / vulgar if not worse?
Poor example. Movie ratings are not mandated by government. They are set and inforced by the industry. Tobacco and alcohol are, on the other hand, controlled by actual federal and state laws, but they aren't really applicable to this discussion.
BTW, my mother has an SBC DSL modem, and I regularly can get 6 megabits worth of concurrent traffic, so they must be using something much bigger then a T1.
Southwestern Bell in Kansas City ran their ADSL customers this way for over a year. They have had service in this area since summer of '99, and just recently moved from a a single T1 to a partial DS3. SBC is betting on the fact that 90% of their customers are going to spend 90% of their time doing simple web browsing, which uses very little bandwidth. This allows them to justify such little incoming bandwidth, since most of their users wouldn't use more than a 56k modem anyway. They get to charge 40-50/month, and not offer any better service than analog, and most people won't notice.
You mentioned SDSL has a better ratio of users:bandwidth. This is true. It is also apparently a money losing business, as SDSL companies are dropping like flies.
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There is no way this would get past regulatory approval. If the FTC wouldn't allow MCI/Sprint, I can't see how in the world they would allow the number one and number two cable companies to merge operations. This is precisely the type of deal that the Sherman Antitrust Act was designed to prevent.
This guy clearly didn't even bother to do the slightest bit of homework. If he would have bothered to spend $4 and pick up a copy of The Perfict Vision or Home Theater he would have avoided much of his problems. It doesn't take a lot of research to find out that the RCA DirecTV receiver has DB-15 output for VGA. It takes even less time to find out that DirecTV only has 1 "actual" HD channel. (BTW, if you want HD, buy a DISH Network system. They require multiple dishes in many instances, but you get several more HD channels, with much more room to grow.) There is definitely a problem with HD broadcasts right now. However, this article just sounds like a rich guy saw a Best Buy ad and decided he had to have HDTV NOW! Had he done a bit of homework, he would have realized that it isn't that easy.
all i can say is alt+f4 / alt+w / ctrl+f4 (depending if you're using ie / netscape / opera).
If you are using Opera, you can disable pop-up/under windows completely. Go to File -> Perferences -> Window, and uncheck "Allow documents to create Windows." It's great, I haven't seen an X10 ad in a long time. Unfortunately, it does break a lot of sites. Having to go into the options every now and then to re-enable pop-ups is a small price to pay to not have to look at the countless ad windows that sites now use.
Here in Holland it is on the Discovery Channel
I'm not sure what you are eluding to, but TLC is a Discovery Network channel. As a matter of fact, the TLC site is under Discovery.com.
I think the experts raise some valid points in the end of the article about poor sound quality not necessarily being excusable. But then, I'm a musician, so I may have different views on the matter.
.
It was the article I have been waiting someone to write. With all the attention the mass media has given to MP3, no one has really brought up the fact that MP3s simply suck as far as sound quality is concerned. Just because most people don't pay much attention, doesn't mean it is OK to sacrifice quality. I'm really quite surprised that this story appeared in mainstream press. It reads like an article you would find in Stereophile
Most people think that they can't hear good sound. Fact is, they just never have. If more people would invest in quality audio components from companies like NAD and Paradigm, they would find better sound really does improve the enjoyment of the music, and can be quite affordable.
. . .we have a right to download the music. . .
How exactly do you have the RIGHT to download something for free that is meant to be sold for money? If you haven't paid for the album, then your rights to it are exactly none. Like it or not, music is not meant to be free. If you like it, pay for it. Copyright holders have every right to make sure that their work is protected.
MySQL.org is definitely confusing. Go there. See if you can find any hint of who they are. I don't necessarily have trouble with them using the domain, but it is very difficult, if not impossible, to tell that they are not in fact the developers. If MySQL AB owns the trademark, then they definitely have a reason to complain. I don't, howevever, think the tone of their press release was justified.
/. running really sporadic today?)
(Is it me or is
The distrubing part is that "illustrator" is a somewhat generic name, which does not specificlly indicate a piece of IP owned by Adobe Systems, Inc
Adobe owns the trademark for the word "Illustrator" in relation to graphics software. Similarly, Apple Computer owns the trademark for "Apple" in relation to computers. They are both generic terms by themselves, but put in the context of these two industries, and they become trademarks. Trademarks are different from copyright, in that if not defended, their significance is weakened. I highly recommend you read 10 Big Myths About Copyright Explained for more info. Adobe is just defending their trademark, and being quite classy about it IMO.
Mod the parent up. I think one of the values of a good keyboard is that the keys 'cave in' to the movement of your finger _but_ do no require you to forcefully reach the end.
Agreed. I type fastest on an old Zeos AT keyboard that I have at home. It is very loud, but the keys require almost no force to press, yet have excellent tactile feedback. I hate the new quietkey keyboards. They don't make much noise, but the keys feel very stiff to me, and wear my fingers out after typing a short message such as this one. Unfortunately, you can't find keyboards that type as well as the old IBMs. The clostest I've found lately are the Dell keyboards.
I've heard complaints about the editorial staff getting lazy...this proves it. The article (which I remember reading on News.com when it was first posted more than a month ago) is about a company falsely advertising a Motorola pager. Do the editors even look at the articles to make sure that they pertain to what they person was talking about?
I, for one, wouldn't be opposed to paying for content. I just don't see it feasable to pay every site I go to a few cents. I don't know how realistic it would be, but maybe the major ad networks could become subsciption networks. IE, pay DoubleClick 10-20$ month and get unlimited access to all their affiliate sites. The revenue would then be distributed to the sites based on traffic. The pr0n industry has been doing something similar to this for a while, and has apparently had some success.
Take it from someone who used to work at a bank, this stuff happens. Send in those forms. It may not do any good, but at least you will be voicing your opinion.
I remember being assigned the task of extracting all of our customer info from the database, formatting it, then emailing it (unencrypted - heh) to a marketing firm. Scary stuff. Don't think for a minute banks care about your privacy.
I don't know about Linux (unfortunately, haven't been lucky enough to get an install to ever actually take...) but under Win32, even Mozilla pales in comparison to the speed and ease of use of Opera. Check it out, you'll love it.
TAC somewhere on the planet that is not only awake during their normal business hours, but also speaks your language!
This, I must say, is the most frustrating part of calling tech support. I have no issues with people migrating to the US to work. However, if someone is going to work in a phone support position, it should be requisite that they speak clear, coherent English. There is nothing more frustrating when systems are down than dealing with a support rep that you can't understand and can't understand you.
come to think of it.. attaching ads is changing the content, and could possibly be a copyright violation.
I've read this several times in this thread. Apparently, people don't realize that even though email is technically copyrighted, there is no legal avenue if that copyright is broken because it has no commercial value.
10 Big Myths about copyright explained
But, as has been said before, if you don't like it, don't use a free ISP. If you don't want your email modified, don't send it to someone at a free ISP.
And mere seconds later the first Q1 CD key hit the Net. Ahh, the halcycon days of client-side key authentication were great, weren't they? *sniff*
Ummm... Unless I am mistaken-- and I don't think I am-- Quake didn't use CD keys. As a matter of fact, I don't think it even looked for the CD. It did have some Redbook audio tracks on the disc that it would play, but it just knew which tracks to play and played those numbers. It would actually play any audio CD that happened to be in the drive. I don't even think Quake2 had a CD key you had to type in. Half-life, OTOH, always did, and was a real pain about it too.
Perhaps you mean the demo CDs that id distributed that had the shareware version, along with the full version you could unlock by calling id.
. . .while the NTSC-quality images on your VHS tapes have silently gone the way of magnetic flux loss . . .
Small technical beef there. 99% of broadcasts in the US are NTSC. Even if you record something to Tivo, the image is still NTSC. (this is, of course, assuming you live in the US, overseas PAL and SECAM are common) The only time a broadcast is not NTSC, is if it is in one of the ATSC standards for high-definition TV. I don't know of any Tivo box that can take HD (or even prograssive 480p) signals off the air or from satellite and put them on hard drive. I'm sure as high-def broadcasts become more common we will see a PVR that has this capability. There would be larger issues though, as an ATSC 1080i or 720p stream would take up an enormous amount of disk space.
Still something prone for abuse, probably by Microsoft. I shudder at the customer complaints of 'bad linkage' or problems with the links to other websites (either in content or whatever) that are directed to the webmasters of these sites and yet they never created the links. Joe Schmoe won't understand the technicalities behind it.. as far as he sees, *your* site has these links.
An excellent point. Not only that, having pages linked from your site implicitly gives your endorsement of those pages. How many corporate sites do you see that when linking external web pages add a disclaimer something like "External pages are not maintained or endorsed by XYZ Inc." Are all pages going to have to include in the footers "All links in squiggly lines are not ours and are not endorsed by us."?
Just remove Outlook from all the machines. That's what will happen soon at my university.
.vbs or .js files. (does anyone actually use these for good?) I have the script online if you want to use it.
I don't know how this would go over in a University setting, but at the network I administer I have a batch file running in the login script that renames wscript.exe in the Windows directory to a filename that is no executable. I small hack, but it does an excellent job at preventing people from running
We still run Norton Enterprise, but this adds a layer of protection in case a new virus comes out before the defs get updated.
Besides, with digital TV/HDTV you really do want to get the original MPEG2 stream instead of decoding it once, and then encoded again when you record. Any set-top boxers/satellite recievers with firewire out?
/. crowd taking every article and somehow twisting it to whine about the DMCA, RIAA, or MPAA?)
It can be done. The DirecTiVo receivers (the ones that have the TiVo and DirecTV boxes combined) take the signal from the satellite and record it to the TiVo's hard drive without decoding it to analog. This effectively presserves perfectly the satellite feed when replayed off hard drive
With an external TiVo box, I am not aware of any way to copy digitally. All require you to output either S-Video or Composite to the TiVo, which then re-digitizes it.
(Am I the only one that gets tired of the
I generally agree with Katz, but this article doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
He and his company are about to launch one of the most ambitious campaigns in the history of business, one that should leave him firmly in control of the digital universe.
Katz continues in this same manner for several paragraphs, preaching how Microsoft will dominate the world very soon, but he never gives any solid reasons why. What is this "most ambitious campaigns in the history of business" that is going to cement MS is a permanent world power? Why is it so different from anything else they've been doing for the last decade?
I prefer Outlook Express to all other email clients I've tried. . .
I know it's uncool to say so here, but Microsoft gets things right every now and then, and OE is one of them. It's clean, fast, versatile, and free. So far, I haven't been able to find anything I like better. Now, if someone wanted to argue that Outlook is bloatware, I definitely won't argue there. For standard Internet email though, OE does a great job.
Another program Microsoft did right is Money 99. The 2000 and 2K1 versions are getting pretty bloated, but 99 is very nice. I've yet to find a program that does as good a job at handling multiple accounts, and the reports it generates are suberb.
And while on the subject, why is it that so many people precede any mention of encryption with little "it's not like I have anything to hide, 'cuz I don't" comments? Ugh.
I think this is the biggest issue most people have with encryption. I see a usefulness for it, but I see no need to use it. My emails aren't important. If someone intercepted them, they would most likely just be getting an email to abuse@ complaining about some spam. If I have nothing important to bother encrypting, what is the purpose of going through the hassle of encrypting, then making sure the other party has the correct key?
Can a minor get into a movie if he's under 17? Then why should he (or she) be allowed he buy a videogame that's just as bad violent / sexual / vulgar if not worse?
Poor example. Movie ratings are not mandated by government. They are set and inforced by the industry. Tobacco and alcohol are, on the other hand, controlled by actual federal and state laws, but they aren't really applicable to this discussion.
BTW, my mother has an SBC DSL modem, and I regularly can get 6 megabits worth of concurrent traffic, so they must be using something much bigger then a T1.
Southwestern Bell in Kansas City ran their ADSL customers this way for over a year. They have had service in this area since summer of '99, and just recently moved from a a single T1 to a partial DS3. SBC is betting on the fact that 90% of their customers are going to spend 90% of their time doing simple web browsing, which uses very little bandwidth. This allows them to justify such little incoming bandwidth, since most of their users wouldn't use more than a 56k modem anyway. They get to charge 40-50/month, and not offer any better service than analog, and most people won't notice.
You mentioned SDSL has a better ratio of users:bandwidth. This is true. It is also apparently a money losing business, as SDSL companies are dropping like flies.