Not to flame, but very few of us have as bad ADD as Jobs seems to think we all do. INSTANT gratification is cool and all, but really - waiting 45 minutes to be able to watch a movie isn't exactly going to kill me.
You said it yourself - you have to walk down to Blockbuster, and that takes time. Unless one's next door and it's summer out and there's no line up (ie: 99% of people, 99% of the time), you have to get a coat, get in the car, drive who knows how far (most people I know are 10-15 mins away from a video store these days now that Blockbuster is the only place left), hunt for the movie you want, get in line, wait for the transaction to go through, drive back...
Or, you could spend 30 seconds typing in the movie name, clicking OK, and DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH YOUR TIME.
The telephone succeeded for precisely this reason. Instead of having to walk 20 minutes to tell something to your neighbour, you could do it in 20 seconds, and have that time to yourself. Movies, no different.
I'd kill for a service that would give me a movie in 30-45 minutes for whatever they rent DVDs for these days. Having delivered "instantly" is currently irrelevent, because there so far is no distribution medium that does this anyway.
For a bunch of technologists, the Slashdot crowd is suprisingly reactionary when it comes to music. Ever consider that the currently model of buying music permanently isn't the be all and end all?
I can't speak for the "Slashdot crowd", but I can speak for myself.
You're goddamn right I'm reactionary about technology that essentially gives me what I used to have, with less utility. I'm reactionary when other people try to use technology to restrict what I've been able to do in the past.
Usually, people who think of themselves as "technologists" tend to look towards the future, because of this little thing called progress. Ending the ability to be able to permanently own a piece of music, listen to it whenever I damn well feel like it, do with it what I want, on any device, at any time, anywhere...
This quote is pure, unadultered (dare I say racist?) arrogance.
I have to say, bringing up the race card in each and every Slashdot story about outsourcing is really, really funny.
I don't know about the US, but in Canada I'd venture at least 25% if not 50% of people working in IT are of Asian/Indian descent. Lower echelons, project managers, you name it. Hardly anyone here questions the abilities of someone from an Asian/Indian race to do the job.
What is in doubt is the ability of people who may or may not possess the skill set/education that we receive here.
It has fuck all to do with race, and I really wish Slashdot mods would stop moderating every post up just because someone tries to supplement their arguments with "you're being racist!"
You know, I was thinking of doing the standard Slashdot list of 50 or so applications (out of tens of thousands) that prove you wrong.
Then I realized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the big show-stopper closed source software in Linux is the controversial nvidia driver(s). Your entire point is that without 3D games, Linux is dead.
Actually, it looks like trading was pretty light today. SCOX closed slightly down for the day, but nothing exciting. I guess this news didn't hit until after the market closed.
Now, Monday is going to be interesting. Unless investors are still fooled, and wait the 30 days...
I picked up a non-working Mr. Do! a couple of years back, was gonna do the MAME cabinet thing but never found the space to put the cab.
As it turns out, the only thing wrong with the game was that the monitor was blown (and no, I'm not up to re-capping it, thanks:). The speaker was unplugged, so the guy I got it from just assumed it was busted. I finally managed to cobble together a cable to interface into an old Tandy RGB monitor. So instead of a nice 19" screen, I play on a sad 9" screen:(
I've been debating looking into the cheap LCD monitors you can get for PSX/GC/XBOX, and basically making the world's stupidest gameboy. The original Mr. Do! board fits almost perfectly into a standard sized briefcase, so it would be a fun luggable to show off.
Anyone know if any of these screens can accept straight RGB inputs? Or are they composite/s-video only?
I interviewed for a co-op position up here in Canada with the feds that required a pretty high security clearance level. Think Canada's NSA.
15 page background info to fill out, security interview, polygraph, the whole works. The interview was really, really bizarre. They basically want to know every bad/weird thing you've ever done, so you're pretty much baring your soul to these people.
What amused me the most, though, was when he asked if I had ever looked at pornography (who hasn't). And if I still do (who doesn't).
Well! You'd think I just admitted to killing Kennedy. What followed was probably 10 minutes solid of questions relating to it: What kind do you like (and he broke down into specific categories, some of which *I've* never even heard of, and I click on random Slashdot links all the time:), how often do you look, how much money do you spend on it, what do you do when looking at it (duh:), do you watch with other people, do your friends/s.o. know of your fetishes, etc, etc, etc.
I walked out of that room after 3 hours feeling like I had just run a marathon. To be honest, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and I ended up taking another job in the private sector. But it bugs me - the feds basically have every little thing about me on file. Would suck if our government decided to be less than ethical, now wouldn't it?
Looking back on it, it was an interesting experience, and while I have nothing to hide (the "worst" thing I've ever done is summed up in my nick) it's still unsettling. I now understand a lot better why privacy as a value in and of itself is a GOOD thing.
I kinda regret going through the process now, but *shrug*.
A major coporation has its product modified to do something entirely unintended, AND could be linked with piracy, and isn't suing right out of the gate.
Hell hath frozen over. Finally, a company I can respect.
Pong was "removed" (we'll get to this in a second) because there is nothing to emulate. No code, no ROM, nothing.
Pong was originally entirely run off of discrete circuitry (much like my beloved Magnavox Odyssey 1). There was no code, just combinatorial circuits that controlled the game. As MAME is intended and designed as an emulator, well... when you have nothing to emulate...
However, it's not actually removed AFAIK. It's still in the source code if you want to compile it yourself, just not in the "official" binaries. This may have changed recently though, it's been months since I compiled a new MAME myself.
I was shocked to find out that at UHaul it actually cost 19.95 plus mileage.
Yeah, UHaul's a wonderful company. It's $19.95, plus milage, plus insurance, plus fuel. An in-town move of roughly 10 miles ended up costing me over $70 recently. By my math, that's over 3x the advertised price.
The joke's on them though - I got so irritated at this that I've done some price comparisons for long distance moves. A lot of people think UHaul is much cheaper, because you do it yourself. Turns out it's going to cost me less than HALF to get a partial load on a moving truck, AND they do the heavy lifting for me, AND the driving.
I really don't see how companies like UHaul stay in business, other than consumer ignorance and/or lack of competition in the local market.
Dunno about other countries, but in Canada it's against the law (or at least against merchant agreements) to charge a fee for accepting credit cards. For those that don't know, merchants pay a percentage of every puchase you make on credit card back to the card issuer. The $1000 television you just bought on your Visa may end up costing the store 10 or 20 bucks, depending on their merchant agreement. This money cannot be charged back to the customer.
Now, stores up here like to play games with this. They offer a "cash discount" if you pay with anything other than a credit card. It's usually right around what their merchant fee is, in my experience. So bascially, they raise their prices by 1%, and charge everyone who uses a credit card the higher price. Sneaky, eh? What's funny is that some stores claim they do this because of the cost of processing various forms of money. I did retail for a while with the swipe terminals, and I'll tell you, it's FAR cheaper for a business to handle credit card monies - except for their merchant fees.
It simply amazes me that this is allowed to go on.
The other neat one is the "no payment, no interest for 12 months deal", but they tack on a $50 (or more) fee onto the purchase as an "administration fee". Often, it'd be cheaper to get a small bank loan and just pay the damned interest.
If, on the other hand, there's a problem with a type of voting machine then what do you do? You can't just put off an election. The timing of those is usually mandated by law.
This is to me the scary side of the recent voting shennanigans.
First, implement flawed voting scheme, but do it slowly so as to keep it under the radar. Once enough people accept it, use it for the next BIG election. A short while later (ie: while still in office), notify the public that the vote didn't work, and the system is broken. Of course, it will take months at the very least to figure out what went wrong, some more months to implement a new voting scheme, etc, etc. Sorry, the election can't be counted, and we'll have to keep the current administration around until things get sorted out.
Does the US constitution or law have anything that deals with a situation like this? Sounds like a good way to stay in power a lot longer than you normally would otherwise.
I've never managed to catch the NG episode where they explain why all aliens look humanoid, but I heard it's a pretty interesting story, and somewhat consistent with the ST universe.
Let's presume for a second that we're ignoring P2P systems, just to focus on this "caching" issue.
Isn't this pretty much the same as copying a file from a CD into RAM to be able to use it? Didn't Sony or someone already sue over this in the video game area (copies of games loaded into RAM, bad bad bad) and lose their case?
From what I recall, it was a US court decision, but really, it's the same damn thing. You're not making a "copy" in the traditional sense, you're just temporarily holding the data to make it more feasible for use.
I bet you're the kind of guy who doesn't give Voluntary Contributions when you go to museams ? After all, they're no worse off, since you wouldn't have seen the exhibit if you had to pay for it.
Dear sweet christ, I just had a horrible mental image: the RIAA taking over the running of our museums and libraries.
YOU READ A BOOK WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT? THIEF! THIEF! THIEF!
For some reason, mp3 downloading is justified around here, yet software piracy is frowned upon.
Yeah, a website practically dedicated to OSS and Free Software.. nope, I see no one here wanting to get their software for free, and tear down the old style of software distibution by a select rich few.
The hypocrisy runs thick on Slashdot, it sure does!
I'll preface this by saying I'm a Canadian, and we also celebrate thanksgiving, although a month earlier than the USA. I'm also not sure why we do it, other than "we needed a long weekend in October". I DO know why Americans celebrate it.
A friend of mine once asked me if they celebrated Thanksgiving in the UK (and by extension, Europe in general). Neither of us has ever been there, but I'm known as a trivia buff, so he figured I'd know. Knowing why the USA celebrates it, but not why Canada does, I ventured a guess:
"Of course they do. They're thankful that all the Americans left Europe".
For those of you about to mod this as flamebait, don't feel too bad. It took my friend about 2 days to get the joke, too:)
Slashdot Mirror
Ok then...
:)
isnt every speed a fraction of light speed?
Not to flame, but very few of us have as bad ADD as Jobs seems to think we all do. INSTANT gratification is cool and all, but really - waiting 45 minutes to be able to watch a movie isn't exactly going to kill me.
You said it yourself - you have to walk down to Blockbuster, and that takes time. Unless one's next door and it's summer out and there's no line up (ie: 99% of people, 99% of the time), you have to get a coat, get in the car, drive who knows how far (most people I know are 10-15 mins away from a video store these days now that Blockbuster is the only place left), hunt for the movie you want, get in line, wait for the transaction to go through, drive back...
Or, you could spend 30 seconds typing in the movie name, clicking OK, and DO SOMETHING ELSE WITH YOUR TIME.
The telephone succeeded for precisely this reason. Instead of having to walk 20 minutes to tell something to your neighbour, you could do it in 20 seconds, and have that time to yourself. Movies, no different.
I'd kill for a service that would give me a movie in 30-45 minutes for whatever they rent DVDs for these days. Having delivered "instantly" is currently irrelevent, because there so far is no distribution medium that does this anyway.
For a bunch of technologists, the Slashdot crowd is suprisingly reactionary when it comes to music. Ever consider that the currently model of buying music permanently isn't the be all and end all?
I can't speak for the "Slashdot crowd", but I can speak for myself.
You're goddamn right I'm reactionary about technology that essentially gives me what I used to have, with less utility. I'm reactionary when other people try to use technology to restrict what I've been able to do in the past.
Usually, people who think of themselves as "technologists" tend to look towards the future, because of this little thing called progress. Ending the ability to be able to permanently own a piece of music, listen to it whenever I damn well feel like it, do with it what I want, on any device, at any time, anywhere...
Sorry, bud. That ain't progress in my book.
This quote is pure, unadultered (dare I say racist?) arrogance.
I have to say, bringing up the race card in each and every Slashdot story about outsourcing is really, really funny.
I don't know about the US, but in Canada I'd venture at least 25% if not 50% of people working in IT are of Asian/Indian descent. Lower echelons, project managers, you name it. Hardly anyone here questions the abilities of someone from an Asian/Indian race to do the job.
What is in doubt is the ability of people who may or may not possess the skill set/education that we receive here.
It has fuck all to do with race, and I really wish Slashdot mods would stop moderating every post up just because someone tries to supplement their arguments with "you're being racist!"
You know, I was thinking of doing the standard Slashdot list of 50 or so applications (out of tens of thousands) that prove you wrong.
Then I realized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the big show-stopper closed source software in Linux is the controversial nvidia driver(s). Your entire point is that without 3D games, Linux is dead.
See subject line.
Probably she's the one single person to have brought in most benefit in the whole thing
I knew it! PJ has been behind this all along!
Take THAT, you "Microsoft did it" conspiracists!
(God, I can't wait to leave work...)
Actually, it looks like trading was pretty light today. SCOX closed slightly down for the day, but nothing exciting. I guess this news didn't hit until after the market closed.
Now, Monday is going to be interesting. Unless investors are still fooled, and wait the 30 days...
I picked up a non-working Mr. Do! a couple of years back, was gonna do the MAME cabinet thing but never found the space to put the cab.
:). The speaker was unplugged, so the guy I got it from just assumed it was busted. I finally managed to cobble together a cable to interface into an old Tandy RGB monitor. So instead of a nice 19" screen, I play on a sad 9" screen :(
As it turns out, the only thing wrong with the game was that the monitor was blown (and no, I'm not up to re-capping it, thanks
I've been debating looking into the cheap LCD monitors you can get for PSX/GC/XBOX, and basically making the world's stupidest gameboy. The original Mr. Do! board fits almost perfectly into a standard sized briefcase, so it would be a fun luggable to show off.
Anyone know if any of these screens can accept straight RGB inputs? Or are they composite/s-video only?
I interviewed for a co-op position up here in Canada with the feds that required a pretty high security clearance level. Think Canada's NSA.
:), how often do you look, how much money do you spend on it, what do you do when looking at it (duh :), do you watch with other people, do your friends/s.o. know of your fetishes, etc, etc, etc.
15 page background info to fill out, security interview, polygraph, the whole works. The interview was really, really bizarre. They basically want to know every bad/weird thing you've ever done, so you're pretty much baring your soul to these people.
What amused me the most, though, was when he asked if I had ever looked at pornography (who hasn't). And if I still do (who doesn't).
Well! You'd think I just admitted to killing Kennedy. What followed was probably 10 minutes solid of questions relating to it: What kind do you like (and he broke down into specific categories, some of which *I've* never even heard of, and I click on random Slashdot links all the time
I walked out of that room after 3 hours feeling like I had just run a marathon. To be honest, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth, and I ended up taking another job in the private sector. But it bugs me - the feds basically have every little thing about me on file. Would suck if our government decided to be less than ethical, now wouldn't it?
Looking back on it, it was an interesting experience, and while I have nothing to hide (the "worst" thing I've ever done is summed up in my nick) it's still unsettling. I now understand a lot better why privacy as a value in and of itself is a GOOD thing.
I kinda regret going through the process now, but *shrug*.
Sweet zombie Jesus. Grab your ice skates kids, we're going deep.
A major coporation has its product modified to do something entirely unintended, AND could be linked with piracy, and isn't suing right out of the gate.
Hell hath frozen over. Finally, a company I can respect.
Pong was "removed" (we'll get to this in a second) because there is nothing to emulate. No code, no ROM, nothing.
Pong was originally entirely run off of discrete circuitry (much like my beloved Magnavox Odyssey 1). There was no code, just combinatorial circuits that controlled the game. As MAME is intended and designed as an emulator, well... when you have nothing to emulate...
However, it's not actually removed AFAIK. It's still in the source code if you want to compile it yourself, just not in the "official" binaries. This may have changed recently though, it's been months since I compiled a new MAME myself.
I was shocked to find out that at UHaul it actually cost 19.95 plus mileage.
Yeah, UHaul's a wonderful company. It's $19.95, plus milage, plus insurance, plus fuel. An in-town move of roughly 10 miles ended up costing me over $70 recently. By my math, that's over 3x the advertised price.
The joke's on them though - I got so irritated at this that I've done some price comparisons for long distance moves. A lot of people think UHaul is much cheaper, because you do it yourself. Turns out it's going to cost me less than HALF to get a partial load on a moving truck, AND they do the heavy lifting for me, AND the driving.
I really don't see how companies like UHaul stay in business, other than consumer ignorance and/or lack of competition in the local market.
Dunno about other countries, but in Canada it's against the law (or at least against merchant agreements) to charge a fee for accepting credit cards. For those that don't know, merchants pay a percentage of every puchase you make on credit card back to the card issuer. The $1000 television you just bought on your Visa may end up costing the store 10 or 20 bucks, depending on their merchant agreement. This money cannot be charged back to the customer.
Now, stores up here like to play games with this. They offer a "cash discount" if you pay with anything other than a credit card. It's usually right around what their merchant fee is, in my experience. So bascially, they raise their prices by 1%, and charge everyone who uses a credit card the higher price. Sneaky, eh? What's funny is that some stores claim they do this because of the cost of processing various forms of money. I did retail for a while with the swipe terminals, and I'll tell you, it's FAR cheaper for a business to handle credit card monies - except for their merchant fees.
It simply amazes me that this is allowed to go on.
The other neat one is the "no payment, no interest for 12 months deal", but they tack on a $50 (or more) fee onto the purchase as an "administration fee". Often, it'd be cheaper to get a small bank loan and just pay the damned interest.
If, on the other hand, there's a problem with a type of voting machine then what do you do? You can't just put off an election. The timing of those is usually mandated by law.
This is to me the scary side of the recent voting shennanigans.
First, implement flawed voting scheme, but do it slowly so as to keep it under the radar. Once enough people accept it, use it for the next BIG election. A short while later (ie: while still in office), notify the public that the vote didn't work, and the system is broken. Of course, it will take months at the very least to figure out what went wrong, some more months to implement a new voting scheme, etc, etc. Sorry, the election can't be counted, and we'll have to keep the current administration around until things get sorted out.
Does the US constitution or law have anything that deals with a situation like this? Sounds like a good way to stay in power a lot longer than you normally would otherwise.
When did the universe become so darned human?
When the Star Trek budget was announced.
I've never managed to catch the NG episode where they explain why all aliens look humanoid, but I heard it's a pretty interesting story, and somewhat consistent with the ST universe.
Let's presume for a second that we're ignoring P2P systems, just to focus on this "caching" issue.
Isn't this pretty much the same as copying a file from a CD into RAM to be able to use it? Didn't Sony or someone already sue over this in the video game area (copies of games loaded into RAM, bad bad bad) and lose their case?
From what I recall, it was a US court decision, but really, it's the same damn thing. You're not making a "copy" in the traditional sense, you're just temporarily holding the data to make it more feasible for use.
I bet you're the kind of guy who doesn't give Voluntary Contributions when you go to museams ? After all, they're no worse off, since you wouldn't have seen the exhibit if you had to pay for it.
Dear sweet christ, I just had a horrible mental image: the RIAA taking over the running of our museums and libraries.
YOU READ A BOOK WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT? THIEF! THIEF! THIEF!
For some reason, mp3 downloading is justified around here, yet software piracy is frowned upon.
Yeah, a website practically dedicated to OSS and Free Software.. nope, I see no one here wanting to get their software for free, and tear down the old style of software distibution by a select rich few.
The hypocrisy runs thick on Slashdot, it sure does!
Other systems do have bugs. It happens. However, when Windows has a bug, everybody knows about it because it affects just about everybody.
Yup, explains all the Code Reds attacking Apache these days.
other earth's doesn't make sense in the same way other solar systems doesn't make sense
:)
Doesn't make sense in the same way we descrive the "moons of Jupiter"?
Language changes when our perspective changes.
And oh yeah, there's no need for an apostrophe when you pluralize words. Earths
Hey, I think we finally found a post that contains legitimate irony on Slashdot. Now all the grammar nazis can relax!
"But then you meet the girl, and she says, 'Let me see what's on your iPod.' You pull out a tape player, and she walks away."
Hmm.
iPenisenvy?
I'll preface this by saying I'm a Canadian, and we also celebrate thanksgiving, although a month earlier than the USA. I'm also not sure why we do it, other than "we needed a long weekend in October". I DO know why Americans celebrate it.
:)
A friend of mine once asked me if they celebrated Thanksgiving in the UK (and by extension, Europe in general). Neither of us has ever been there, but I'm known as a trivia buff, so he figured I'd know. Knowing why the USA celebrates it, but not why Canada does, I ventured a guess:
"Of course they do. They're thankful that all the Americans left Europe".
For those of you about to mod this as flamebait, don't feel too bad. It took my friend about 2 days to get the joke, too
Heh. Guess I didn't think someone would actually take the time to post "nothing lasts forever" :)
Even of there is full backward compatibility this is still something to worry about with most formats...if my player ever breaks they become useless.
This is the whole POINT of backwards compatibility! If your old player breaks, no big deal, because the new player can play them.
The reason your LaserDiscs will eventually become useless is due to LACK of backwards compatibility on modern players.