Interestingly, there's an overlap between videophiles and internet video traders. It's not uncommon to find uncompressed DVD images available because people want quality.
Even just-released movies are frequently available at reasonably good quality.
You're going to have trouble getting all of Star Trek and Dr. Who on one disk unless you're talking about really low quality video.
There have been 29 seasons of Star Trek and about 20 seasons of Dr Who. If we call an average season 24 episodes, and an average episode 30 minutes, and we encode at 1 gig/hour, we're talking about over 500 gigs of video.
On the other hand, being able to get an entire 7 season star trek series onto one disk at full quality would be pretty cool.
How is "five years from now" a silly timeline. I'd bet that in five years it'll be possible to get digital TVs with digital tuners for what analog TVs cost now - probably even full resolution HDTVs.
Socialism is one of the few broad economic concepts that I'm pretty sure has been successfully implemented. My example is Northern Europe.
As far as I know, the other two honest suggestions (Communism and Free Market Capitolism) have both never actually been tried in their pure form - meaning that no one has any real clue what would happen.
Only if you completely fail to understand the concept of UDP and how it's treated by NAT devices would you see this as a security issue.
It's no more a security issue than the fact that most firewalls allow responses to outgoing HTTP requests.
All your facts are correct - except that you're completely missing the point.
AAC has the same properties re: lossy compression that mp3 has. Therefore, the post that you're replying to becomes correct if you take out "are mp3 files which is" and "(16bit, 44.1)".
No. Surfing the web on a low quality analog TV sucks ass. Even someone who has never used the internet before will notice the problem.
Modern websites are graphics heavy and designed for resolutions of at least 800x600 (1024x768 is the most common design target now).
Additionally, a normal quality analog television is worse for web browsing than a Windows 3.1 era 640x480 16 color monitor would be. The display resolution is slightly better (in china) at 768x576, but television are designed for a significant viewing distance and have pixel blur that wouldn't allow for reasonable size screen fonts.
When I got my Sega Dreamcast I tried TV webbrowsing, and the resolution was a legitmate issue.
I'm not a big fan of Skype, but the "UDP Magic" you speak of is a normal technique used for bypassing firewalls in modern UDP applications.
On the protocal level, it's no more of a dirty trick than network address translation is to begin with, and on the user level it's no more relevent than TCP vs. UDP. There's no security issue here.
Oh, and just a side note: Before you go ahead and label me a "commie pinko", or whatever, know that I'm a miniarchist libertarian. I simply believe that copyrights are not a legitimate function of government.
When making a poltical comment on a public discussion forum, *never* label your political position like this.
The position that the copyright system is broken is perfectly reasonable, but this sort of comment associates it with radical political beliefs helping those who believe that politics aren't important / you're a wacko easily discount the position.
A much more effective technique is to malign Disney or the record labels for "lobbying to destroying the public domain and thus the people's freedom to take advantage their own cultural identity" or something. That makes someone else out to be the wackos.
It's perfectly possible to verify this guy's story. He was a major developer for a version of Perl.
Perl is pretty well known and legitimate software, so unless you're overly parinoid, you can assume that the average Perl developer who isn't currently asking for your money is trustworthy.
So, to verify his story email some other perl developer with the link and ask them if it's legit. Even if you pick the wrong developer, they will probably be able to direct you to someone who can help you.
The hardware advantage is severly overrated. As long as you have reasonable hardware for the game you're playing, the one step of graphics/textures better that high end computers can do is irrelevent when compared to evne minor skill differences.
There are three major genres where PC games still own console games:
First Person Shooter
Far Cry is the recent example you missed.
Real Time Strategy
Some argue that StarCraft is still the peak of this genre, but more recent stuff like Battle for Middle Earth has been good.
Massively Multiplayer Online RPG
Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, etc
Hybrid genres, like the massively multiplayer first person shooter, are also supposedly pretty good.
Have you actually looked into new low power x86 servers?
A decent system based on an integrated VIA chipset can be fanless and sufficiently low power for most applications.
- lack of standardization:
This point is brought up repeatedly because it's hard to argue against. It could mean anything. But it really doesn't matter: For an actual user, actually tring to do something, eithor Gnome or KDE is simple enough to use, and mostly things are the same as they are on any platform - Print is in the File menu.
- lack of desktop infrastructure
Why does a user care about this. The copy/paste thing is irrelevent. Pasting images between applications isn't a work flow plan that works - so you save the image to a file. This is a *difference* that the users need to learn.
- lack of simplicity
Does this acutally matter to a real user? All the important things work the same way they've worked for the last 10 years, and the other stuff's easy to figure out. The fact that people with Linux experience aren't readily available is to be expected, but, again, it's only power user tasks that are hard, and power users should be able to operate HOWTOs.
Modern distros handle that stuff pretty transparently. You shouldn't need to mess with config files unless you're doing really weird stuff.
What distro are you using?
SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu - Should handle stuff like that transparently.
Debian, Slackware, Gentoo - You're expected to know what you're doing.
This is a workflow issue. On Windows and the Mac, you use the clipboard to copy arbitrary stuff whereas on Unix the system clipboard copies text.
This is OK - it's a difference between the systems that you can learn. Under Unix, you save a temporary file instead.
As I've been saying: Linux is perfectly functional, but there's no guarantee that it functions exactly the same as other sytems.
I don't know. Here are the two features needed for a laptop to compete with a powerbook:
- 6+ hour battery life
- Integrated 3D Graphics w/ T&L
I'd guess the lowest price x86 laptop like that would be in the $800 range at best.
KDE and Gnome are both realistically there now. Things only get hard when you try to do weird stuff. Like it or not, on Linux, a personal firewall is weird stuff - and that's OK.
Even when you mix KDE and Gnome apps the differences aren't really significant enough to matter. The recent SuSE and RedHat released even make them look the same.
There still are a couple minor issues with Desktop Linux, but that really isn't one of them anymore.
Slashdot Mirror
What's "less public" or "hard" about The Pirate Bay?
Interestingly, there's an overlap between videophiles and internet video traders. It's not uncommon to find uncompressed DVD images available because people want quality.
Even just-released movies are frequently available at reasonably good quality.
There have been 29 seasons of Star Trek and about 20 seasons of Dr Who. If we call an average season 24 episodes, and an average episode 30 minutes, and we encode at 1 gig/hour, we're talking about over 500 gigs of video.
On the other hand, being able to get an entire 7 season star trek series onto one disk at full quality would be pretty cool.
How is "five years from now" a silly timeline. I'd bet that in five years it'll be possible to get digital TVs with digital tuners for what analog TVs cost now - probably even full resolution HDTVs.
Socialism is one of the few broad economic concepts that I'm pretty sure has been successfully implemented. My example is Northern Europe. As far as I know, the other two honest suggestions (Communism and Free Market Capitolism) have both never actually been tried in their pure form - meaning that no one has any real clue what would happen.
Communism seems pretty sketchy, but what was this test case you're referring to where it didn't work?
Only if you completely fail to understand the concept of UDP and how it's treated by NAT devices would you see this as a security issue. It's no more a security issue than the fact that most firewalls allow responses to outgoing HTTP requests.
All your facts are correct - except that you're completely missing the point. AAC has the same properties re: lossy compression that mp3 has. Therefore, the post that you're replying to becomes correct if you take out "are mp3 files which is" and "(16bit, 44.1)".
No. Surfing the web on a low quality analog TV sucks ass. Even someone who has never used the internet before will notice the problem.
Modern websites are graphics heavy and designed for resolutions of at least 800x600 (1024x768 is the most common design target now).
Additionally, a normal quality analog television is worse for web browsing than a Windows 3.1 era 640x480 16 color monitor would be. The display resolution is slightly better (in china) at 768x576, but television are designed for a significant viewing distance and have pixel blur that wouldn't allow for reasonable size screen fonts.
When I got my Sega Dreamcast I tried TV webbrowsing, and the resolution was a legitmate issue.
I'm not a big fan of Skype, but the "UDP Magic" you speak of is a normal technique used for bypassing firewalls in modern UDP applications. On the protocal level, it's no more of a dirty trick than network address translation is to begin with, and on the user level it's no more relevent than TCP vs. UDP. There's no security issue here.
Remember that people voting Yes could have wanted the thing to go through with the anti-software-patent ammendments.
If there's any question, then the work shoudln't be paid hourly, it should be paid as piecework.
When making a poltical comment on a public discussion forum, *never* label your political position like this. The position that the copyright system is broken is perfectly reasonable, but this sort of comment associates it with radical political beliefs helping those who believe that politics aren't important / you're a wacko easily discount the position. A much more effective technique is to malign Disney or the record labels for "lobbying to destroying the public domain and thus the people's freedom to take advantage their own cultural identity" or something. That makes someone else out to be the wackos.
It's perfectly possible to verify this guy's story. He was a major developer for a version of Perl. Perl is pretty well known and legitimate software, so unless you're overly parinoid, you can assume that the average Perl developer who isn't currently asking for your money is trustworthy. So, to verify his story email some other perl developer with the link and ask them if it's legit. Even if you pick the wrong developer, they will probably be able to direct you to someone who can help you.
The hardware advantage is severly overrated. As long as you have reasonable hardware for the game you're playing, the one step of graphics/textures better that high end computers can do is irrelevent when compared to evne minor skill differences.
New consoles tend to cost about $400. A solid gaming computer need only cost about twice that.
There are three major genres where PC games still own console games:
First Person Shooter Far Cry is the recent example you missed. Real Time Strategy Some argue that StarCraft is still the peak of this genre, but more recent stuff like Battle for Middle Earth has been good. Massively Multiplayer Online RPG Everquest 2, World of Warcraft, etcHybrid genres, like the massively multiplayer first person shooter, are also supposedly pretty good.
Have you actually looked into new low power x86 servers? A decent system based on an integrated VIA chipset can be fanless and sufficiently low power for most applications.
- lack of standardization:
This point is brought up repeatedly because it's hard to argue against. It could mean anything. But it really doesn't matter: For an actual user, actually tring to do something, eithor Gnome or KDE is simple enough to use, and mostly things are the same as they are on any platform - Print is in the File menu.
- lack of desktop infrastructure
Why does a user care about this. The copy/paste thing is irrelevent. Pasting images between applications isn't a work flow plan that works - so you save the image to a file. This is a *difference* that the users need to learn.
- lack of simplicity
Does this acutally matter to a real user? All the important things work the same way they've worked for the last 10 years, and the other stuff's easy to figure out. The fact that people with Linux experience aren't readily available is to be expected, but, again, it's only power user tasks that are hard, and power users should be able to operate HOWTOs.
Modern distros handle that stuff pretty transparently. You shouldn't need to mess with config files unless you're doing really weird stuff. What distro are you using? SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu - Should handle stuff like that transparently. Debian, Slackware, Gentoo - You're expected to know what you're doing.
This is a workflow issue. On Windows and the Mac, you use the clipboard to copy arbitrary stuff whereas on Unix the system clipboard copies text. This is OK - it's a difference between the systems that you can learn. Under Unix, you save a temporary file instead. As I've been saying: Linux is perfectly functional, but there's no guarantee that it functions exactly the same as other sytems.
you = pwned
Any sort of non-liquid bong should work fine in freefall. Now... a water bong in freefall, that'd be an interesting project.
I don't know. Here are the two features needed for a laptop to compete with a powerbook: - 6+ hour battery life - Integrated 3D Graphics w/ T&L I'd guess the lowest price x86 laptop like that would be in the $800 range at best.
KDE and Gnome are both realistically there now. Things only get hard when you try to do weird stuff. Like it or not, on Linux, a personal firewall is weird stuff - and that's OK. Even when you mix KDE and Gnome apps the differences aren't really significant enough to matter. The recent SuSE and RedHat released even make them look the same. There still are a couple minor issues with Desktop Linux, but that really isn't one of them anymore.