That's just not true. Those things are important, but they're kind of meaningless when you're comparing different resolutions.
I have a Dell Sharp WUXGA+ 1600x1200 screen, and it is quite possibly the best LCD I've ever seen. I also owned an iBook for awhile and liked its screen too, but all things being equal, the Dell's screen is just better.
WTF are you talking about? We "forced" them to change their culture? Every culture is susceptible to backing a leader who promises the moon and looks like they'll deliver. If you were student of history, which you clearly are not, you'd know that Mao Zedong was castly more palatable to the majority of Chinese and he advocated much more freedom than Chiang Kai Shek. By the way, you seem to want to have Taiwan's baby, and they were under martial law until the mid nineties - that's almost 50 years of continuous political lockdown. What a role model. Please, just be informed. I know it's tempting to choose the easiest answer which conforms to the US Cold War way of thinking, but we've all grown up since then. Cmon little Stargoat, it's time to play ball with the big boys.
The fact is that some aspects of Chinese culture suck, and some aspects of Western culture suck.
You seem to be shifting your focus around quite a bit - first it's the West sucks, now it's Chinese that suck, but only towards each other.
Sure, there's lots of corruption and dirty business in China, but there's just as much in the West, and as someone who's done business extensively in both cultures, this isn't just my fuzzy dream of how things should be.
Your hatred of the communist government is definitely justified, but your blanket statements regarding Chinese culture, a culture which is roughly 1/5 of the world's population, is stupid and naive.
Holy shit. Maybe your sig should say "click here to feed the harmless trolls". Damn.
Anyway, here I go, dinner is served:
" First, China must give up it's unwillingness to examine its own culture in a self critical light. The Chinese have a very bad habit of this. What is learned from the master must be taught to the student, and the student may make no alterations to what he has learned."
This is partially true - Chinese do tend to hold their own culture in a very high light, but that's only because they have had an incredible history of cultural, scientific, and economic achievement. Nowadays, many Chinese will tell you that China is "lou hou" which means backwards - they realize they have catching up to do. Their educational system does not promote free thinking, that's true, but you really can't argue that the US system bows down to the altar of originality either. Both are repressive in different areas.
" Second, China must give up it's intolerance. Chinese are, for the most part, far more racist than Europeans or even modern Japanese."
That's mostly true, but again - racism is racism, and just because we're more politically incorrect in the West doesn't mean that people don't harbor racist feelings - they just don't speak of them.
" Chinese must also remove the idea that everyone is an enemy. Although Chinese work together very well, there is a cultural paranioa about being taken advantage of. To this end, most Chinese work to screw the other guy before he can screw you."
Oops, you fucked up. Study some history - China has repeatedly been raped by foreigners and foreign powers, with it all culiminating with the West seriously abusing China during the early 1900's. Great Britain, Germany, the US, and many other foreign countries took over parts of major Chinese cities and forced China to trade with the west, often at miserable prices. In addition, Great Britain sucessfully hooked the entire nation on opium so that China would have something they wanted to trade for. This paranoia of the West is founded, and not illogical. Remember pal, the world was around before you existed, and some of us take the time to study history.
You obviously need to spend some more time in China - your reaction to Chinese culture is typical of a foreigner who has had only limited exposure with China and her people. Live in the country for more than 15 years, and you'll be more adept at separating genuine Chinese culture from the Communist disaster.
And please, your blowing Western culture without "examining it in a critical light" reeks of hypocrisy. Remember - "It's easy not to do this, but the rewards for introspection are greater."
Whenever this comes up on slashdot, it just makes me cringe. It's so typical - a bunch of nerds sitting around thinking that technology alone can make a good recording. There is a hardcore difference between making a major label record and making an indie label record. Studios that the majors record in cost anywhere from a thousand to several thousand dollars a day, and recording can take from a week to a month. Once the recording is done, then mixing and mastering need to be done, usually at specials studios that are leveraged just for these tasks. Equipment involved in the recording process doesn't even begin to just include a software package and a karaoke mic - microphones and sound insulated environments costs thousands as do all the assorted compressors, noise gates, effects, etc. that need to be in the signal chain. We haven't even talked about the cost of renting/buying quality equipment (which most bands who are doing their first record don't have) and a producer and engineers. So lets all calm down and remember that music is complex and expensive to record at a professional level.
Here's something that I'd like to know (I don't have a Mac and can't use the store) - does the ASM track which music you've bought in the past so that if your hard drive blows up/gets stolen/damaged/or anything else which causes your music that you bought and downloaded to be lost you can download the songs again?
You're missing the entire point. The point isn't that someone used physical means to DDOS someone else - like you said, that's been done before. The point is that this can be automated using computers so that it requires no time at all for the perpetrator, and there are very real physical problems that occur as a result.
How the hell was the parent modded insightful anyway?
Hmmm...i've been using Trillian for almost a year now, and I've never had it crash once because of a protocol change. In fact, I don't even think I've ever updated the program once. Maybe this kind of crashing when protocols were changing was more of a fixture of the past?
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Like several others have said in response to you, the majority of recording is actually about the producer and engineer, as opposed to the artists and their performance. Especially in pop music, the artist's voice is usually completely pitch corrected and washed with effects so that anyone can sing decently for a pop recording. The producer is where the value is added.
Nevermind was recorded with a different philosophy in mind than In Utero. Basically, Nevermind was a rock album that was recorded with a pop style sound. In Utero was what Cobain had always been looking for in terms of sound, and the rawer feel. The sound of the albums has nothing to do with how much they cost to record/produce.
I'm sick of the typical Slashdot response to a question like this: "the hardware + software = cost of producing an album." Somebody who goes out and buys a Mac and tries to record an album is going to get nowhere. Most of the costs of recording an album for a major label go towards recruiting a producer (this makes a huge difference), paying the engineers, marketing, and other things like studio time and mass production. Plus, depending on the genre of music, it takes extremely good equipment to get a good sound (great heavy distortion takes top of the line amps, same with good drum sounds needing excellent drums). Also, top of the line mastering studios cost thousands of dollars and are crucial if you want your album to really be playable on any type of stereo - getting an album to sound great in the car, on the radio, and out of a computer at the same time is extremely difficult.
I guess i'm just a little confused as to where the discussion turned to "what's best" as opposed to "what the general public would appreciate". The same analogy holds for keyboards - they are quickly adopted because they can be used by anyone easily, without training.
Re:Hopefully it will be easier for non-geeks...
on
Palm Kills Off Graffiti
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I can't believe this post was moderated as "Insightful". This type of attitude - the "prove everything, no matter how ridiculous" is the same attitude that prevents a lot of honest reflection about technology from the Slashdot crowd. I'm not trying to be a troll, but its perfectly logical to assume that if 1) you can write in your own handwriting initially without any learning curve that 2) this method of writing will be more appreciated by the general public than one that makes them conform to a specific writing method that has a learning curve. The guy above wasn't speaking for anyone, just rationally explaining why he thought handwriting recognition would be better for most users.
"For a DVD box set that has been over 15 years in the making"
Am I the only one wondering how a DVD box set could be in the making since before DVD's existed? Maybe this guy just meant that was the last time the movies had been seen in the theaters, but it sounds a little silly.
I'll just spout some more praise about Rackspace. I've been with them for almost exactly a year, and they're the best host, and best company I've ever dealt with. You get to immediately speak with a technician, get a quality setup when you order a server, and they are out of control about offering you the best value for your money. I can't emphasize how important it is to look at hosting costs from the view that when the shit hits the fan, that's when you get your money's worth. There have been a couple of times when I've really screwed up or needed help FAST and they've been all over it. Several times they've called me back without me asking just to double check that everything's ok. They also have sent me random gift certificates and t-shirts just to say thanks for being their customer. I had one billing mixup the entire time I've been with them and they were extremely professional about resolving it quickly. Everyone gripes about how expensive they are but if you ask for the older servers they're retiring, you can get some good deals sometimes - I pay 150 a month for a sever that definitely exceeds my needs. That's double the cheapest dedicated provider i've ever seen and comparable to most other providers.
I'm sorry - why was this comment moderated as "Insightful"? Was it insightful because he's 16, or because he runs linux, or because he dual boots, or because the moderator was an idiot?
Do we hate NASA today or love them? Or hate NASA and love space? Or hate space and love other things to spend money on? My 2 cents is that money spent on space is always recouped by space-related technologies making their way into everyday use.
Most universities that limit P2P do so with packet based filtering, which totally screws you based on the signature of the applications packets. I've heard they can tell which applications are which even over SSL, but I'm not 100% sure on that one. Regardless, this means that port swapping is totally innefective, as they'll just ban the whole application off the network.
You are totally correct. My parent's ISP (Earthlink) blocks port 25 so that "spammers can't send email". The end result is that spammers just use another port and everyone else is inconvenienced. ISP's that block ports can go screw themselves.
I'm not really sure you've ever read anything by Kevin J. Anderson. He's one of the best science fiction authors out there today, including some of his work on the "TV novelization" Star Wars series (I'm assuming you think this genre is stupid or something). He's also written some really good short stories, and is one of the more versatile SciFi authors I've read that is still writing. Was there anything in particular you didn't like about him, or were you just being obnoxious?
My guess is that Yahoo is willing to pay a couple thousand bucks to buy more hardware to offset performance penealties they incur as its always cheaper than wasting time because your current system is too unwieldy. In a dynamic environment performance is just not a factor that people with lots of money to spend on hardware (Yahoo) care about when compared to easy maintenence and readability and quality tools.
Slashdot Mirror
That's just not true. Those things are important, but they're kind of meaningless when you're comparing different resolutions.
I have a Dell Sharp WUXGA+ 1600x1200 screen, and it is quite possibly the best LCD I've ever seen. I also owned an iBook for awhile and liked its screen too, but all things being equal, the Dell's screen is just better.
WTF are you talking about? We "forced" them to change their culture? Every culture is susceptible to backing a leader who promises the moon and looks like they'll deliver. If you were student of history, which you clearly are not, you'd know that Mao Zedong was castly more palatable to the majority of Chinese and he advocated much more freedom than Chiang Kai Shek. By the way, you seem to want to have Taiwan's baby, and they were under martial law until the mid nineties - that's almost 50 years of continuous political lockdown. What a role model. Please, just be informed. I know it's tempting to choose the easiest answer which conforms to the US Cold War way of thinking, but we've all grown up since then. Cmon little Stargoat, it's time to play ball with the big boys.
The fact is that some aspects of Chinese culture suck, and some aspects of Western culture suck.
You seem to be shifting your focus around quite a bit - first it's the West sucks, now it's Chinese that suck, but only towards each other.
Sure, there's lots of corruption and dirty business in China, but there's just as much in the West, and as someone who's done business extensively in both cultures, this isn't just my fuzzy dream of how things should be.
Your hatred of the communist government is definitely justified, but your blanket statements regarding Chinese culture, a culture which is roughly 1/5 of the world's population, is stupid and naive.
Holy shit. Maybe your sig should say "click here to feed the harmless trolls". Damn.
Anyway, here I go, dinner is served:
" First, China must give up it's unwillingness to examine its own culture in a self critical light. The Chinese have a very bad habit of this. What is learned from the master must be taught to the student, and the student may make no alterations to what he has learned."
This is partially true - Chinese do tend to hold their own culture in a very high light, but that's only because they have had an incredible history of cultural, scientific, and economic achievement. Nowadays, many Chinese will tell you that China is "lou hou" which means backwards - they realize they have catching up to do. Their educational system does not promote free thinking, that's true, but you really can't argue that the US system bows down to the altar of originality either. Both are repressive in different areas.
" Second, China must give up it's intolerance. Chinese are, for the most part, far more racist than Europeans or even modern Japanese."
That's mostly true, but again - racism is racism, and just because we're more politically incorrect in the West doesn't mean that people don't harbor racist feelings - they just don't speak of them.
" Chinese must also remove the idea that everyone is an enemy. Although Chinese work together very well, there is a cultural paranioa about being taken advantage of. To this end, most Chinese work to screw the other guy before he can screw you."
Oops, you fucked up. Study some history - China has repeatedly been raped by foreigners and foreign powers, with it all culiminating with the West seriously abusing China during the early 1900's. Great Britain, Germany, the US, and many other foreign countries took over parts of major Chinese cities and forced China to trade with the west, often at miserable prices. In addition, Great Britain sucessfully hooked the entire nation on opium so that China would have something they wanted to trade for. This paranoia of the West is founded, and not illogical. Remember pal, the world was around before you existed, and some of us take the time to study history.
You obviously need to spend some more time in China - your reaction to Chinese culture is typical of a foreigner who has had only limited exposure with China and her people. Live in the country for more than 15 years, and you'll be more adept at separating genuine Chinese culture from the Communist disaster.
And please, your blowing Western culture without "examining it in a critical light" reeks of hypocrisy. Remember - "It's easy not to do this, but the rewards for introspection are greater."
Whenever this comes up on slashdot, it just makes me cringe. It's so typical - a bunch of nerds sitting around thinking that technology alone can make a good recording. There is a hardcore difference between making a major label record and making an indie label record. Studios that the majors record in cost anywhere from a thousand to several thousand dollars a day, and recording can take from a week to a month. Once the recording is done, then mixing and mastering need to be done, usually at specials studios that are leveraged just for these tasks. Equipment involved in the recording process doesn't even begin to just include a software package and a karaoke mic - microphones and sound insulated environments costs thousands as do all the assorted compressors, noise gates, effects, etc. that need to be in the signal chain. We haven't even talked about the cost of renting/buying quality equipment (which most bands who are doing their first record don't have) and a producer and engineers. So lets all calm down and remember that music is complex and expensive to record at a professional level.
Here's something that I'd like to know (I don't have a Mac and can't use the store) - does the ASM track which music you've bought in the past so that if your hard drive blows up/gets stolen/damaged/or anything else which causes your music that you bought and downloaded to be lost you can download the songs again?
You're missing the entire point. The point isn't that someone used physical means to DDOS someone else - like you said, that's been done before. The point is that this can be automated using computers so that it requires no time at all for the perpetrator, and there are very real physical problems that occur as a result.
How the hell was the parent modded insightful anyway?
Hmmm...i've been using Trillian for almost a year now, and I've never had it crash once because of a protocol change. In fact, I don't even think I've ever updated the program once. Maybe this kind of crashing when protocols were changing was more of a fixture of the past?
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about. Like several others have said in response to you, the majority of recording is actually about the producer and engineer, as opposed to the artists and their performance. Especially in pop music, the artist's voice is usually completely pitch corrected and washed with effects so that anyone can sing decently for a pop recording. The producer is where the value is added.
Nevermind was recorded with a different philosophy in mind than In Utero. Basically, Nevermind was a rock album that was recorded with a pop style sound. In Utero was what Cobain had always been looking for in terms of sound, and the rawer feel. The sound of the albums has nothing to do with how much they cost to record/produce.
I'm sick of the typical Slashdot response to a question like this: "the hardware + software = cost of producing an album." Somebody who goes out and buys a Mac and tries to record an album is going to get nowhere. Most of the costs of recording an album for a major label go towards recruiting a producer (this makes a huge difference), paying the engineers, marketing, and other things like studio time and mass production. Plus, depending on the genre of music, it takes extremely good equipment to get a good sound (great heavy distortion takes top of the line amps, same with good drum sounds needing excellent drums). Also, top of the line mastering studios cost thousands of dollars and are crucial if you want your album to really be playable on any type of stereo - getting an album to sound great in the car, on the radio, and out of a computer at the same time is extremely difficult.
I guess i'm just a little confused as to where the discussion turned to "what's best" as opposed to "what the general public would appreciate". The same analogy holds for keyboards - they are quickly adopted because they can be used by anyone easily, without training.
I can't believe this post was moderated as "Insightful". This type of attitude - the "prove everything, no matter how ridiculous" is the same attitude that prevents a lot of honest reflection about technology from the Slashdot crowd. I'm not trying to be a troll, but its perfectly logical to assume that if 1) you can write in your own handwriting initially without any learning curve that 2) this method of writing will be more appreciated by the general public than one that makes them conform to a specific writing method that has a learning curve. The guy above wasn't speaking for anyone, just rationally explaining why he thought handwriting recognition would be better for most users.
Here's some new music - check out www.fadededge.com/audio and see what you think.
This might be off topic, but man, spyhunter was the coolest game ever. It had sucky graphics, but damn was it so much fun.
"For a DVD box set that has been over 15 years in the making"
Am I the only one wondering how a DVD box set could be in the making since before DVD's existed? Maybe this guy just meant that was the last time the movies had been seen in the theaters, but it sounds a little silly.
I'll just spout some more praise about Rackspace. I've been with them for almost exactly a year, and they're the best host, and best company I've ever dealt with. You get to immediately speak with a technician, get a quality setup when you order a server, and they are out of control about offering you the best value for your money. I can't emphasize how important it is to look at hosting costs from the view that when the shit hits the fan, that's when you get your money's worth. There have been a couple of times when I've really screwed up or needed help FAST and they've been all over it. Several times they've called me back without me asking just to double check that everything's ok. They also have sent me random gift certificates and t-shirts just to say thanks for being their customer. I had one billing mixup the entire time I've been with them and they were extremely professional about resolving it quickly. Everyone gripes about how expensive they are but if you ask for the older servers they're retiring, you can get some good deals sometimes - I pay 150 a month for a sever that definitely exceeds my needs. That's double the cheapest dedicated provider i've ever seen and comparable to most other providers.
I'm sorry - why was this comment moderated as "Insightful"? Was it insightful because he's 16, or because he runs linux, or because he dual boots, or because the moderator was an idiot?
Do we hate NASA today or love them? Or hate NASA and love space? Or hate space and love other things to spend money on? My 2 cents is that money spent on space is always recouped by space-related technologies making their way into everyday use.
This article was a good one, but its eerily similar to an article that appeared on November 14 written by Robert X. Cringely.
Isn't it ironic that everyone was disputing Cringely's point this week that his column is ripped off just a day or two ago then this shows up?
Most universities that limit P2P do so with packet based filtering, which totally screws you based on the signature of the applications packets. I've heard they can tell which applications are which even over SSL, but I'm not 100% sure on that one. Regardless, this means that port swapping is totally innefective, as they'll just ban the whole application off the network.
Bullcrap. That is all.
You are totally correct. My parent's ISP (Earthlink) blocks port 25 so that "spammers can't send email". The end result is that spammers just use another port and everyone else is inconvenienced. ISP's that block ports can go screw themselves.
I'm not really sure you've ever read anything by Kevin J. Anderson. He's one of the best science fiction authors out there today, including some of his work on the "TV novelization" Star Wars series (I'm assuming you think this genre is stupid or something). He's also written some really good short stories, and is one of the more versatile SciFi authors I've read that is still writing. Was there anything in particular you didn't like about him, or were you just being obnoxious?
My guess is that Yahoo is willing to pay a couple thousand bucks to buy more hardware to offset performance penealties they incur as its always cheaper than wasting time because your current system is too unwieldy. In a dynamic environment performance is just not a factor that people with lots of money to spend on hardware (Yahoo) care about when compared to easy maintenence and readability and quality tools.