Thanks for the link. I knew about those sony glasses, but hadn't bothered to check them out. A wee bit on the expensive side but maybe they're worth it. I won't be able to invite friends with those tough;)
I don't know how theaters look around your place, but the ones I usually go to are pretty enjoyable.
Re analog video. So you have the $$ for a 30 inch plasma display with fully digital interfaces to the dvd-player? Does that even exist yet? If not, I've got some news for you. Your TV (remember, cathode ray) is as much analog as it ever gets.
If you're not talking about doing this as a form of protest, though, feel free to disregard that.
Well, yes, that was kind of my point, altough expressed poorly (englizh is nut me natif language) : I am, like most slashdotters, very opposed to the way content companies are trying to take away customers rights. It is a reason for me not to buy a DVD-player (the most important to me however, is that I refuse whenever possible to use any storage technology which isn't "two way", i.e. read/writeable, for ideological reasons). I would boycott hollywood movies, if I actually watched them in the first place (well I do see some, but the vast majority are independent films). What I was trying to express however, is that I don't even see that much of an advantage to DVDs in opposition to the good old movie theaters (the quality and usefulness of the technology being the usual argument in favor of DVD). Your post intrigued me tough.
have to respectfully disagree. In the last year or so, theater experiences have been come near-intolerable. Cell phones, pagers, smoking-rights activists lighting up during the movie, etc. It's not worth the $7.50 to me anymore--particularly when I can rent all the DVDs I want from Netflix for $20.00/month.
Arrgh this sounds bad. Well you see I live in Switzerland, where people seem to still have some respect for the movie-going experience. I own a cell-phone, but I always turn it off for movies, since I'd rather not imagine what would happen to me if it rang during the movie (lynched at the very least)... I've never seen anyone light up a cigarette in a movie (well yes, a joint once, in spain during Lost Highway, which I found very justified;) Chatting during the movie is not that much of a problem neither, since for action movies the volume is turned way up, and when it's a more intellectual one, most guys are sleeping anyway. We don't have that much of a "popcorn-coke" habit around here either. I don't know about the quality of movie-theaters at your place, but I've been very satisfied by them so far. The single most convincing argument being the SIZE of the screen. I find it much more immersive. To match that I'd have to buy a giant TV, for which I (1) don't have the money (poor student) and (2) no place to store (everything filled up with computers).
You can get Dolby Digital decoders and home-theater quality speaker systems for $299 these days; perfect for the tech on a budget. It's also great for, say, living in an apartment.
This actually sounds interesting. I had never seriously looked into purchasing such a system. In my situation tough, it's still more expensive, since I only see a few carefully selected movies, about once a month. I'd have to get a bigger TV anyway, mine's too small.
However, with Netflix allowing you to rent as many DVDs as you want with no return dates, the rental industry is making a huge stride forward.
Renting movies at my place is unfortunately quite expensive, but well, you know we also pay metered rates for local phone calls around here, so...
In conclusion, I really think there's something great about going to the theater which DVDs won't top. After all, technically, theaters will go digital soon as well, and it's the best excuse to get off of my computer screen and meet friends.
Well, help out the Linux DVD folks, write your own player from scratch or live in a world without DVDs. Those are your options.
Well I for one will happily go along without DVDs and go watch movies in the theater. Better video, better sound, better experience. I'm certainly not going to buy myself a whole home theater solution just for the pleasure of watching movies. It's more expensive anyway. In addition, I've never seen the point in owning a movie. I've got some on video, but it's been years since I've ever watched one of those tapes again (and yes, that includes Star Wars).
On the other hand, someone would be free to reverse engineer CPhack
Well there isn't a lot to reverse engineer since the source is out there. Somebody would have to create a whole new program based solely on the essay, and then correctly license it under the GPL (ideally even transferring ownership to the FSF). That is, if you actually want this to be the test-case for the GPL.
readibility (and quick/easy access) IS the number one reason for the web right? If I wanted arty shit I'd go buy a book on design....
Yes, readability and easy access is king, but I was referring to the wonderful standards-compliant code of the page. It even degrades gracefully with alternative browsers (VERY readable in Lynx). This guy knows HTML 4.0, period.
I'm on ftp.beos.com right now, and the file is there, but I can't download it due to the permissions... Can't even GET ReadMe.txt. Has anyone gotten it yet?
Yes, but you have to concede that font management on X (or is it Netscapes fault?) is crap. I had the similar problem with other sites. The solution was to get xfstt (a free truetype font sserver for X), setup and create a link to my windows fonts directory (yes, I dual-boot... Falcon 4.0).
Take a look at this , and then compare it to this (the guy he is responding to). Yes, his voice is absolutely worth listening to. Correctness before prettiness, that's just my two cents...
Easy. The theory behind "information wants to be free" is that you can't really assign an intrinsic value to a 0 or a 1. The cost of (re-)producing them is basically reduced to the initial buying of the technology (a computer). Once you have this, you can multiply (or reproduce) those bits indefinitely at almost no cost (disregarding memory/hdd cost). So "free-flow of information" advocates would argue that putting a price on the flow/access of/to information has no basis on fact, and as such is arbitrary and unjust. What they often forget about is that unlike the creation of material goods (say, a blow-up doll;), the initial process is much more costly and uncertain costly (in terms of R&D for compsci, or creativity for artists), and should be rewarded as such.
...Hate to be a nitpicker (no actually I love it;), but then this has nothing to do with English. We're talking Roman characterset here, in which case I fully agree. Still, my point stands, as you could replace English with german, french, spanish, etc. (except for those annoying little éèàöüä, of course).
Agreed. Those é and ê are really obnoxious. Even for a french-speaker like me;). I really hate spanish even more for that tough. I've never been able to figure out when there should be an accent and when not (there's so damn many exceptions!)
Quoting wsabstract : the entire English language is based on the permutation of only 26 characters.
Wow, so is French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc, etc. Nothing specific to English there, while he claimed it was the permutation of those 26 characters that made English (specifically) easy.
So there's nothing about English which makes it digital-friendlier than all other character/word based languages, as opposed to glyph-based ones (like chinese), which are harder to encode, since the alphabet is much bigger. (I suspect that is the point he was trying to make).
Back to you: The roman and Arabic charactersets have nothing to do with each other, except that european languages use some parts of both. We use Roman characters and Arab digits, ok?
And there's no need to call me an idiot and a retard. I wasn't trying to insult him with my post.
That's because you were raised with english as your native language.... So the above should be (since my native language is french) Some would even say that French is much more friendly on people than say, English or Swahili, simply because of its simplicity. See? That's what we mean when we say America- and English-centric. It doesn't even cross your mind that the perceived simplicity of your language depends solely on your point of view.
ROFL! I hope you aren't serious. Those little 26 signs are called the Roman alphabet, for obvious reasons. That was established before english was even a word, to paraphrase you.
BTW: Have you noticed how the moderators have pretty much given up Level 0 to the trollers?
I used to read at 0, now I can't anymore (specially because of that goatse.cx asshole -- I mean that literally -- who almost made me puke my coffee onto the keyboard). I don't mind the first posts, but the hot grits et al. trolls are really getting on my nerves (and I've recently even observed some of them on other forums too, arrgh). It's been a long time since I've seen an intelligent troll on/.
Moderators: Fight back and reconquer level 0 for us please!
Sorry to hear that. I submitted it and it got on the front page in no time. On the other hand, this is my first submission that gets posted, and you're spoiling my fun... Go away!;)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the link. I knew about those sony glasses, but hadn't bothered to check them out. A wee bit on the expensive side but maybe they're worth it. I won't be able to invite friends with those tough ;)
Greetings from Cheeseland!
I don't know how theaters look around your place, but the ones I usually go to are pretty enjoyable.
Re analog video. So you have the $$ for a 30 inch plasma display with fully digital interfaces to the dvd-player? Does that even exist yet? If not, I've got some news for you. Your TV (remember, cathode ray) is as much analog as it ever gets.
And screen size matters to me.
Thanks for your very interesting reply.
.
;)
If you're not talking about doing this as a form of protest, though, feel free to disregard that
Well, yes, that was kind of my point, altough expressed poorly (englizh is nut me natif language) : I am, like most slashdotters, very opposed to the way content companies are trying to take away customers rights. It is a reason for me not to buy a DVD-player (the most important to me however, is that I refuse whenever possible to use any storage technology which isn't "two way", i.e. read/writeable, for ideological reasons). I would boycott hollywood movies, if I actually watched them in the first place (well I do see some, but the vast majority are independent films).
What I was trying to express however, is that I don't even see that much of an advantage to DVDs in opposition to the good old movie theaters (the quality and usefulness of the technology being the usual argument in favor of DVD). Your post intrigued me tough.
have to respectfully disagree. In the last year or so, theater experiences have been come near-intolerable. Cell phones, pagers, smoking-rights activists lighting up during the movie, etc. It's not worth the $7.50 to me anymore--particularly when I can rent all the DVDs I want from Netflix for $20.00/month.
Arrgh this sounds bad. Well you see I live in Switzerland, where people seem to still have some respect for the movie-going experience. I own a cell-phone, but I always turn it off for movies, since I'd rather not imagine what would happen to me if it rang during the movie (lynched at the very least)... I've never seen anyone light up a cigarette in a movie (well yes, a joint once, in spain during Lost Highway, which I found very justified
Chatting during the movie is not that much of a problem neither, since for action movies the volume is turned way up, and when it's a more intellectual one, most guys are sleeping anyway. We don't have that much of a "popcorn-coke" habit around here either.
I don't know about the quality of movie-theaters at your place, but I've been very satisfied by them so far. The single most convincing argument being the SIZE of the screen. I find it much more immersive. To match that I'd have to buy a giant TV, for which I (1) don't have the money (poor student) and (2) no place to store (everything filled up with computers).
You can get Dolby Digital decoders and home-theater quality speaker systems for $299 these days; perfect for the tech on a budget. It's also great for, say, living in an apartment.
This actually sounds interesting. I had never seriously looked into purchasing such a system. In my situation tough, it's still more expensive, since I only see a few carefully selected movies, about once a month. I'd have to get a bigger TV anyway, mine's too small.
However, with Netflix allowing you to rent as many DVDs as you want with no return dates, the rental industry is making a huge stride forward.
Renting movies at my place is unfortunately quite expensive, but well, you know we also pay metered rates for local phone calls around here, so...
In conclusion, I really think there's something great about going to the theater which DVDs won't top. After all, technically, theaters will go digital soon as well, and it's the best excuse to get off of my computer screen and meet friends.
Well, help out the Linux DVD folks, write your own player from scratch or live in a world without DVDs. Those are your options.
Well I for one will happily go along without DVDs and go watch movies in the theater. Better video, better sound, better experience. I'm certainly not going to buy myself a whole home theater solution just for the pleasure of watching movies. It's more expensive anyway.
In addition, I've never seen the point in owning a movie. I've got some on video, but it's been years since I've ever watched one of those tapes again (and yes, that includes Star Wars).
On the other hand, someone would be free to reverse engineer CPhack
Well there isn't a lot to reverse engineer since the source is out there. Somebody would have to create a whole new program based solely on the essay, and then correctly license it under the GPL (ideally even transferring ownership to the FSF). That is, if you actually want this to be the test-case for the GPL.
Wired did a feature on antigrav and this russian scientist 2 years ago. It's available online here.
Oh I got it now... Had a look at the source, the font sizes are defined in pixels! hehe.
;)
OT: Nice site. Coincidentaly, I was just downloading Mandrake right now, and I'll come back to molest you with my install problems in about 3 hours
readibility (and quick/easy access) IS the number one reason for the web right? If I wanted arty shit I'd go buy a book on design....
Yes, readability and easy access is king, but I was referring to the wonderful standards-compliant code of the page. It even degrades gracefully with alternative browsers (VERY readable in Lynx). This guy knows HTML 4.0, period.
Uh, correction, ftp.be.com...
I'm on ftp.beos.com right now, and the file is there, but I can't download it due to the permissions... Can't even GET ReadMe.txt. Has anyone gotten it yet?
Yes, but you have to concede that font management on X (or is it Netscapes fault?) is crap. I had the similar problem with other sites. The solution was to get xfstt (a free truetype font sserver for X), setup and create a link to my windows fonts directory (yes, I dual-boot... Falcon 4.0).
And btw, some of the quotes are excellent.
Easy. The theory behind "information wants to be free" is that you can't really assign an intrinsic value to a 0 or a 1. The cost of (re-)producing them is basically reduced to the initial buying of the technology (a computer). Once you have this, you can multiply (or reproduce) those bits indefinitely at almost no cost (disregarding memory/hdd cost). So "free-flow of information" advocates would argue that putting a price on the flow/access of/to information has no basis on fact, and as such is arbitrary and unjust. What they often forget about is that unlike the creation of material goods (say, a blow-up doll
...Hate to be a nitpicker (no actually I love it ;), but then this has nothing to do with English. We're talking Roman characterset here, in which case I fully agree. Still, my point stands, as you could replace English with german, french, spanish, etc. (except for those annoying little éèàöüä, of course).
goddamn I meant 8-bit ASCII, of course. Time to sleep...
Agreed. Those é and ê are really obnoxious. Even for a french-speaker like me ;). I really hate spanish even more for that tough. I've never been able to figure out when there should be an accent and when not (there's so damn many exceptions!)
that's ok, I've been called worse names on the net already.
As for ASCII. é è ê ä ü ö (6-bit ASCII, that is) are defined there so it's good enough for me
You don't get it do you?
Quoting wsabstract :
the entire English language is based on the permutation of only 26 characters.
Wow, so is French, German, Italian, Spanish, etc, etc. Nothing specific to English there, while he claimed it was the permutation of those 26 characters that made English (specifically) easy.
So there's nothing about English which makes it digital-friendlier than all other character/word based languages, as opposed to glyph-based ones (like chinese), which are harder to encode, since the alphabet is much bigger. (I suspect that is the point he was trying to make).
Back to you: The roman and Arabic charactersets have nothing to do with each other, except that european languages use some parts of both. We use Roman characters and Arab digits, ok?
And there's no need to call me an idiot and a retard. I wasn't trying to insult him with my post.
That's because you were raised with english as your native language.... So the above should be (since my native language is french) Some would even say that French is much more friendly on people than say, English or Swahili, simply because of its simplicity.
See? That's what we mean when we say America- and English-centric. It doesn't even cross your mind that the perceived simplicity of your language depends solely on your point of view.
ROFL! I hope you aren't serious. Those little 26 signs are called the Roman alphabet, for obvious reasons. That was established before english was even a word, to paraphrase you.
Have a look at the slash code sometime. It has been done already...
I've noticed that too. Strange. Maybe they reduced the number of moderator tokens? imho they should increase them greatly...
[That's way OT, I KNOW!]
/.
BTW: Have you noticed how the moderators have
pretty much given up Level 0 to the trollers?
I used to read at 0, now I can't anymore (specially because of that goatse.cx asshole -- I mean that literally -- who almost made me puke my coffee onto the keyboard). I don't mind the first posts, but the hot grits et al. trolls are really getting on my nerves (and I've recently even observed some of them on other forums too, arrgh). It's been a long time since I've seen an intelligent troll on
Moderators: Fight back and reconquer level 0 for us please!
Wow, thanks alot for this post!
Someone please moderate it up ASAP.
Insightful, Informative, Underrated...
Sorry to hear that. I submitted it and it got on the front page in no time. On the other hand, this is my first submission that gets posted, and you're spoiling my fun... Go away! ;)
/me taking screenshots of the frontpage