You make a good point - if the opposition can afford much better lawyers and then you have to pay their fees, you're screwed. How about a system where a losing plaintiff's lawsuit can be given a special "frivolous" judgement, in which case the plaintiff must pay as much of the defendant's fees as is reasonable (so if M$ spends $10mil on legal fees and you make 30k/year, you only pay what you can). This wouldn't discourage legitimate lawsuits but hopefully cut down on the stupid ones. Of course, it's still open to abuse, but probably no more than our current legal system.
I think a way that would work out well is that if the plaintiff loses the case, they would have to pay for all the defendant's legal fees
I've been saying this for years. Not only would it cut down on big corporations stomping all over "the little guy," but it would dramatically decrease all the stupid, frivolous lawsuits that clog up our legal system. It'll never happen, though... even if it got to a bill in congress, I'm sure it would be quickly stomped out by those with deep pockets.
If they make it original, you complain that it's too different.
If they make it real similar you complain it's not different enough.
Yep. It reminds me of the flamewars that pop up among the fans of any band or artist. If the band releases an album that is a departure from their older material, something new and fresh, the oldtimer fans will complain that it doesn't sound like the old stuff. If the band releases very similar music over and over, people will complain that they haven't done anything new...
Have you all forgotten already that this whole ILOVEYOU fiasco was
all Outlook's fault? It does suck. While it may be useful, it has no security whatsoever and a really brain-dead design in the VB/ActiveX integration.
While I won't argue that Outlook sucks (I have to use it at work and find it very useful for some things and very braindead for others), but how was the ILOVEYOU virus all Outlook's fault as you say? I received several copies of the virus last week, yet was not affected. Perhaps Outlook was the only vulnerable email client due to its VBS integration, but the fact remains that the braindead user still had to click on the attachment to activate it. If the virus author had done a little more work, he/she could have produced an executable that knew the formats of several popular mailer's address books, and then all Windoze clients with stupid, click-happy users would have been vulnerable.
Now, if Outlook had automatically executed the script upon receipt of the message without giving the user a choice, that would be a different story...
Evolution may indeed suffer from virus or worm problems more than other Linux/UNIX email clients, but only indirectly. If it makes opening an executable attachment as easy as a double-click (as opposed to "view attachments -> save attachment -> chmod +x saved file -> run saved file" that you might have to do with mutt), we may very well see more and more of these things targeted at Linux users. Of course, the thing to do would be to set default security options to not allow this, but give expert users a choice.
Yep. This is the main reason I might just have to break down and get a PS2, even if I can't really afford it. The movies on their site are breathtaking...
This is certainly not intended as a flame, but I don't know why people always insist on crying if something is posted here more than a day or so after the original story broke. There are a lot of us who don't regularly read the Mac sites but would still be interested in this. Personally, this article couldn't have come at a better time for me. I have a Mac that I use only for music recording/editing, but I just bought a digital camera that can take short Quicktime movies. Now with iMovie, I can edit those movies and add a few nifty enhancements, all for free! I'm very glad this was posted to slashdot, even if it was "old news."
All to often there are guys that are insecure with the size of certian things (or girls with envy) who feel the need to get the fastest computer or the biggest car in order to compensate for it. That is why I refer to SUVs as penis mobiles.
I agree - some people always have to have the biggest, fastest, etc. Personally, I'm quite happy with my Pentium 233 (which I upgraded from a 90 about a year ago) and don't see myself getting anything faster for quite some time to come. But then I don't play games or run number crunching simulations that take hours (that's what the machines at work are for)... I think those generally fall into the category of "legitimate" uses for the latest and greatest hardware.
As for your penis mobile comment... the analogy works there too. Most people who have SUVs don't need them, but there are those like me, who do. Ever tried hauling around 5 people and 5 mountain bikes in a Tercel? I didn't think so...;-) My 4Runner does nicely for that almost every weekend, and that's why I have it. Besides, I think sports cars are far more guilty of being "penis mobiles" than SUVs... Unfortunately, SUVs are fast becoming "soccer mom mobiles" instead. But now I'm veering a bit offtopic...
No, CmdrTaco broke it, you just stepped on the pieces...
Yup, I got suckered by the bug here too (corrected non-previewed post here). Seems this guy did too (and had to correct it as well). Just venting my (offtopic) frustration, that's all...;-) (fingers crossed without preview...)
Screwed up the previous post after the preview (removed all my html tags... how am I supposed to check my html if I have to re-enter everything afterwards?) arggh... (I'll probably get -1, Redundant for this but oh well...)
*One* Server holds the master file?
One Server to rule them One Server to find them One Server to bring them And in the DNS BIND them
Not that anybody will see this now, but a follow-up to my own post...
This story inspired me to improve my system last night. I knew my modem (USR 56k voice modem) has caller id support, but hadn't bothered getting it to work before. So, after a hacking session, I got it working with my "answering machine" scripts. Now, if a call comes in as Private or Unavailable, the computer/answering machine script picks up after one ring. Otherwise it keeps ringing (til the standard 4 rings, after which the computer picks up anyway) and I'll know it's probably a "real" call so I'll pick it up myself.
I'm running a perl script under Linux that controls a "voice modem control" program I found on the net a while back. It's just a custom hack job that fits my needs, but if you're interested in seeing what I've done, let me know...
Future improvements may be specific greetings for certain people, an alternate greeting for blocked/anonymous calls, etc.
Use a program to dial hundreds and thousands of pagers with the victims number. The victim will get loads of incoming phonecalls.
Hmmm, sounds like a similar trick I've heard of to use against spammers with valid return email addresses (note: I do not personally recommend this at all!): instead of trying to mail bomb them yourself, let others do the work. Sign them up to your favorite 100+ or so high traffic mailing lists...
What I do is simple: I have caller ID, so I don't answer unless the caller shows up as someone I know. If it's blocked or someone I don't recognize, I let the answering machine (actually my Linux box) get it. If it's important, the person will leave a message and I'll call back. I typically get 5 or 6 anonymous calls a day while I'm at work and strangely, no messages...
Or the more fun approach might be what my former roommate used to do. He had this annoying little hold button that plugs into the line between the phone and the wall. While activated, it plays a really bad beepy version of Jingle Bells. Whenever a telemarketer called, he would listen to their spiel, then ask them to hold on while he looked for his credit card. He'd put on the annoying hold music, then check back every 5 minutes or so to say that he almost found his credit card, just another minute... You'd be surprised how long they would hang on, thinking they had a sale...
Hmm, I really don't think it even costs them that much.
I'm no expert, so take this with as many grains of salt as you like, but I've read here on Slashdot many times that console makers typically lose money on the consoles themselves, making it up in game licensing. So if this is true, maybe it really costs them $3 or 400+?
Which brings up another point: having a computer with a CRT in the middle of my studio sort of negates all of the work I've done shielding components and eliminating ground loops. The 60Hz hum through a guitar pickup is almost as annoying as having someone vacuum the studio during a vocal track (or someone singing during the vacuum cleaner solo).
I was in the same boat until I bought my EIZO FlexScan L360 LCD panel. I love this thing. I used to turn off my monitor any time I wanted to record a guitar track - and this got very annoying as I'd go through a cycle of
Turn off monitor
Record take
Turn on monitor
Play back take, decide to record another one...
etc, etc... Now I leave it on all the time and there's no buzz from the guitar pickups. And the thing that really sold me on this model over competitors was the dual inputs: I can have my Mac and my Linux PC connected without some messy external switchbox.
Disclaimer: I have no relation to EIZO, just a satisfied customer.
Could you just get tons of stuff free by repeating the process and always buying ~$350 of computer equipment?
The fine print for the Best Buy offer says that it is valid only on new MSN account established in store at time of PC purchase. So it depends on how they define "new account." If it means you must never have had an MSN account before, then you can only do it once. If it just means that you must not have an existing account, perhaps this would work: use the rebate today, cancel the MSN, and within a month when it's all canceled, try it again. The offer ends Feb 29, so I imagine you could only get it in twice.
That said, the GF and I are off to Best Buy tonight to see what free stuff we want to pick up.;-)
The Only reason you would encode at higher than 128/44 would be if you made the mp3s yourself from a wave editor or a mixing machine. Ripping from CDs should Always be 128/44 (anything higher is wasted bits). Music CDs themselves are recorded at about 120/44, btw.
This is completely false. For one thing, music CDs do not use the same data format as MP3s, so comparing bit rates is entirely misleading. For another, to be really technical, music CDs are recorded at 44100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample x 2 in stereo. That's approximately 1378kbits per second, not 120.
Finally, anything higher than 128kbits for MP3s is certainly not wasted bits. The fidelity of the MP3 increases dramatically as you raise the bit rate. I can always clearly tell the difference between a 128kbit MP3 and the original source when listening closely. 256k or 320k MP3s are difficult to impossible to tell from their sources, but they do come at a price in greater file size.
If you really want the best quality per byte, I highly recommend encoding with LAME with variable bit rate turned on. It's the best of both worlds: it only raises the bit rate when necessary to preserve the best audio quality, otherwise it uses a lower bit rate when it can without noticeable effects. I'm in the process of re-encoding my CD collection using this: the file sizes are typically only about 30% larger than 128k MP3s and the sound quality is far better, much closer to the original source.
Reminds me of May this year in Las Vegas, during Interop Week. As you may know, the casinos have these huge colour displays pushing their dubious attractions - one of them was displaying the Windows Login screensaver - i.e. it had crashed, presumably auto-rebooted (which is possible in NT), and got stuck at the login prompt.
Heh, was this the MGM Grand? I was driving by last October and noticed the BSOD on one of their big displays outside. Too funny...
I cant even remember the last time one of my machines crashed due to a kernel bug '95 maybe. Possibly '94.
Mine has a couple times in the last few months. I always assumed it was one of vmware's modules since I was actively using that each time. I stopped using vmware and the crashes stopped. But Linus says:
The one major fix in 2.2.8 is the SMP fix for disable_irq(), courtesy of Andrea Arcangeli (I disagreed in details and did it differently in the end, but all the heavy lifting was done by Andrea). This is the thing that caused silenth deaths for some people with certain network adapters (3c509 and 8390-based cards in particular: the latter covers ne2000 clones which are fairly common).
Yep, describes my hardware and what happened exactly. I hope this means I can start using vmware again without fear...
Personally, I'm planning to wait a week to see it. (And I'm not going to read anything here that week. Just to be safe.)
Same here. Nothing ruins a movie more for me than having a theater full of rowdy die-hards making noise and spilling their drink on me every time something cool happens. In my opinion the ultimate movie experience is where I forget about the theater and my surroundings and get lost in the movie. That just won't happen with the typical crowds I expect will be seeing the movie the first few days and probably beyond. I'm hoping it will die down enough that I'll be able to catch an early matinee on my lunch break the middle of the following week and see the movie with no distractions, in all its glory.
Slashdot Mirror
(hmm, will anybody see this 5 days after the fact?)
You make a good point - if the opposition can afford much better lawyers and then you have to pay their fees, you're screwed. How about a system where a losing plaintiff's lawsuit can be given a special "frivolous" judgement, in which case the plaintiff must pay as much of the defendant's fees as is reasonable (so if M$ spends $10mil on legal fees and you make 30k/year, you only pay what you can). This wouldn't discourage legitimate lawsuits but hopefully cut down on the stupid ones. Of course, it's still open to abuse, but probably no more than our current legal system.
I've been saying this for years. Not only would it cut down on big corporations stomping all over "the little guy," but it would dramatically decrease all the stupid, frivolous lawsuits that clog up our legal system. It'll never happen, though... even if it got to a bill in congress, I'm sure it would be quickly stomped out by those with deep pockets.
And here I was all set to vote for Al Gore, for inventing hypertext... damn.
Yep. It reminds me of the flamewars that pop up among the fans of any band or artist. If the band releases an album that is a departure from their older material, something new and fresh, the oldtimer fans will complain that it doesn't sound like the old stuff. If the band releases very similar music over and over, people will complain that they haven't done anything new...
While I won't argue that Outlook sucks (I have to use it at work and find it very useful for some things and very braindead for others), but how was the ILOVEYOU virus all Outlook's fault as you say? I received several copies of the virus last week, yet was not affected. Perhaps Outlook was the only vulnerable email client due to its VBS integration, but the fact remains that the braindead user still had to click on the attachment to activate it. If the virus author had done a little more work, he/she could have produced an executable that knew the formats of several popular mailer's address books, and then all Windoze clients with stupid, click-happy users would have been vulnerable.
Now, if Outlook had automatically executed the script upon receipt of the message without giving the user a choice, that would be a different story...
Evolution may indeed suffer from virus or worm problems more than other Linux/UNIX email clients, but only indirectly. If it makes opening an executable attachment as easy as a double-click (as opposed to "view attachments -> save attachment -> chmod +x saved file -> run saved file" that you might have to do with mutt), we may very well see more and more of these things targeted at Linux users. Of course, the thing to do would be to set default security options to not allow this, but give expert users a choice.
Yep. This is the main reason I might just have to break down and get a PS2, even if I can't really afford it. The movies on their site are breathtaking...
This is certainly not intended as a flame, but I don't know why people always insist on crying if something is posted here more than a day or so after the original story broke. There are a lot of us who don't regularly read the Mac sites but would still be interested in this. Personally, this article couldn't have come at a better time for me. I have a Mac that I use only for music recording/editing, but I just bought a digital camera that can take short Quicktime movies. Now with iMovie, I can edit those movies and add a few nifty enhancements, all for free! I'm very glad this was posted to slashdot, even if it was "old news."
I agree - some people always have to have the biggest, fastest, etc. Personally, I'm quite happy with my Pentium 233 (which I upgraded from a 90 about a year ago) and don't see myself getting anything faster for quite some time to come. But then I don't play games or run number crunching simulations that take hours (that's what the machines at work are for)... I think those generally fall into the category of "legitimate" uses for the latest and greatest hardware.
As for your penis mobile comment... the analogy works there too. Most people who have SUVs don't need them, but there are those like me, who do. Ever tried hauling around 5 people and 5 mountain bikes in a Tercel? I didn't think so... ;-) My 4Runner does nicely for that almost every weekend, and that's why I have it. Besides, I think sports cars are far more guilty of being "penis mobiles" than SUVs... Unfortunately, SUVs are fast becoming "soccer mom mobiles" instead. But now I'm veering a bit offtopic...
Yup, I got suckered by the bug here too (corrected non-previewed post here). Seems this guy did too (and had to correct it as well). Just venting my (offtopic) frustration, that's all... ;-) (fingers crossed without preview...)
One Server to rule them
One Server to find them
One Server to bring them
And in the DNS BIND them
*One* Server holds the master file? One Server to rule them all One Server to find them One Server to bring them all And in the DNS BIND them
This story inspired me to improve my system last night. I knew my modem (USR 56k voice modem) has caller id support, but hadn't bothered getting it to work before. So, after a hacking session, I got it working with my "answering machine" scripts. Now, if a call comes in as Private or Unavailable, the computer/answering machine script picks up after one ring. Otherwise it keeps ringing (til the standard 4 rings, after which the computer picks up anyway) and I'll know it's probably a "real" call so I'll pick it up myself.
I'm running a perl script under Linux that controls a "voice modem control" program I found on the net a while back. It's just a custom hack job that fits my needs, but if you're interested in seeing what I've done, let me know...
Future improvements may be specific greetings for certain people, an alternate greeting for blocked/anonymous calls, etc.
Hmmm, sounds like a similar trick I've heard of to use against spammers with valid return email addresses (note: I do not personally recommend this at all!): instead of trying to mail bomb them yourself, let others do the work. Sign them up to your favorite 100+ or so high traffic mailing lists...
Or the more fun approach might be what my former roommate used to do. He had this annoying little hold button that plugs into the line between the phone and the wall. While activated, it plays a really bad beepy version of Jingle Bells. Whenever a telemarketer called, he would listen to their spiel, then ask them to hold on while he looked for his credit card. He'd put on the annoying hold music, then check back every 5 minutes or so to say that he almost found his credit card, just another minute... You'd be surprised how long they would hang on, thinking they had a sale...
Hmm, I really don't think it even costs them that much.
I'm no expert, so take this with as many grains of salt as you like, but I've read here on Slashdot many times that console makers typically lose money on the consoles themselves, making it up in game licensing. So if this is true, maybe it really costs them $3 or 400+?
I was in the same boat until I bought my EIZO FlexScan L360 LCD panel. I love this thing. I used to turn off my monitor any time I wanted to record a guitar track - and this got very annoying as I'd go through a cycle of
- Turn off monitor
- Record take
- Turn on monitor
- Play back take, decide to record another one...
etc, etc... Now I leave it on all the time and there's no buzz from the guitar pickups. And the thing that really sold me on this model over competitors was the dual inputs: I can have my Mac and my Linux PC connected without some messy external switchbox.Disclaimer: I have no relation to EIZO, just a satisfied customer.
The fine print for the Best Buy offer says that it is valid only on new MSN account established in store at time of PC purchase. So it depends on how they define "new account." If it means you must never have had an MSN account before, then you can only do it once. If it just means that you must not have an existing account, perhaps this would work: use the rebate today, cancel the MSN, and within a month when it's all canceled, try it again. The offer ends Feb 29, so I imagine you could only get it in twice.
That said, the GF and I are off to Best Buy tonight to see what free stuff we want to pick up. ;-)
This is completely false. For one thing, music CDs do not use the same data format as MP3s, so comparing bit rates is entirely misleading. For another, to be really technical, music CDs are recorded at 44100 samples per second, 16 bits per sample x 2 in stereo. That's approximately 1378kbits per second, not 120.
Finally, anything higher than 128kbits for MP3s is certainly not wasted bits. The fidelity of the MP3 increases dramatically as you raise the bit rate. I can always clearly tell the difference between a 128kbit MP3 and the original source when listening closely. 256k or 320k MP3s are difficult to impossible to tell from their sources, but they do come at a price in greater file size.
If you really want the best quality per byte, I highly recommend encoding with LAME with variable bit rate turned on. It's the best of both worlds: it only raises the bit rate when necessary to preserve the best audio quality, otherwise it uses a lower bit rate when it can without noticeable effects. I'm in the process of re-encoding my CD collection using this: the file sizes are typically only about 30% larger than 128k MP3s and the sound quality is far better, much closer to the original source.
Heh, was this the MGM Grand? I was driving by last October and noticed the BSOD on one of their big displays outside. Too funny...
Mine has a couple times in the last few months. I always assumed it was one of vmware's modules since I was actively using that each time. I stopped using vmware and the crashes stopped. But Linus says:
Yep, describes my hardware and what happened exactly. I hope this means I can start using vmware again without fear...
Same here. Nothing ruins a movie more for me than having a theater full of rowdy die-hards making noise and spilling their drink on me every time something cool happens. In my opinion the ultimate movie experience is where I forget about the theater and my surroundings and get lost in the movie. That just won't happen with the typical crowds I expect will be seeing the movie the first few days and probably beyond. I'm hoping it will die down enough that I'll be able to catch an early matinee on my lunch break the middle of the following week and see the movie with no distractions, in all its glory.