A "what to buy" article like this has a significant effect on sales and advertisers perceptions - which is why almost every card won "in its category", to avoid pissing anyone off.
Can you imagine if Tom's Hardware said "THE DEFINITIVE BEST VALUE CARD RIGHT NOW IS THE... ATI RADEON (blah) GT!!!" ?
Someone at Tom's Hardware would have lost some important friends at nVidia. Which is why we have 7 pages of fence-sitting instead:)
So what if you play games until you drop dead? "You're only hurting yourself"
So what if you eat until you're diabetic and obese? "You're only hurting yourself"
So what if you OD on recreational drugs, die alone, and nobody finds your body for 2 months? "You're only hurting yourself"
So what if you jerk it to porn all day, stay home and lose your job? "You're only hurting yourself"
... and so on
For all of the above:
- even if you're only hurting yourself, you're not helping anybody either. You consume the worlds resources and health care/rehab services, but don't contribute much value in return. We can't afford to have many of these people in the world; we should help them get over their problem and into a life that is fulfilling to themselves, and contributory to the world.
- even if you're only hurting yourself, it's simply sad to hear of these things happening. Life wasn't meant to be lived this way!
It's not up to private companies to tell the government how to set the laws. Think of the other side of the coin with regards to copyright - the media companies are largely telling the US government how to set copyright laws, which are unfair and unjustified.
If Yahoo sets this well-intentioned precedent and bends the Chinese law, then other companies will feel entitled to do the same, but in the name of self-interest.
Semel is right, lawmaking is a matter to be settled between US and Chinese governments. Companies may lobby the government for support, companies shouldn't be making the decision, nor should they take the law into their own hands.
The Indy series was great, and if I remember correctly Lucas and Spielberg did some of them together. But that was a fair way back, Spielberg started changing his style around Jurassic Park time. I'm thinking recent stuff like Schindler's, AI, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, they've all had some sort of moral to them, and I've often walked out chewing on some intellectual morsel.
I don't want to walk out of Episode III debating the moral relativity of the dark side - I want to leap out woom-wooming my imaginary saber:)
Don't know about everybody else, but I would have hated to see this happen, especially with only one episode in the saga left.
Lucas hasn't great job with Ep 1 and 2, but Spielberg carries a completely different flavour of sci-fi to Lucas. Spielberg likes to intellectualize his movies somewhat too, which might be a good idea in itself, but wouldn't fit well into Star Wars.
Also, Spielberg would surely feel the need to inject his personal vision into the SW universe. Remember watching AI? Kubrick's parts and Spielberg's parts contrasted badly with each other, especially the ending. Everybody knows what the story in Episode III will be, we just want to see how the events play out and the final holes in the story get filled in. SW definitely doesn't need new influences at this stage.
I believe handhelds deserve to become ubiquitous more than PCs do. Most people use their desktop PCs for appointment and contact books, email and web - getting this functionality off their desk and into their pocket would be incredible. A widespread accessible wireless network will be the killer-app that move handhelds off shelves and into pockets in droves.
We're beginning to see a convergence of handheld computers and mobile phones. Nokia tried it a few years back before the technology was capable, Handspring is now trying to do the same thing and having a little more success. But I don't think the (expensive) mobile network will endear itself to customers as a means of sending data. We really need a ubiquitous accessible wireless network, and it so happens that right about now we have several wireless networks starting to gather steam. In fact, this might lead to an interesting clash between mobile networks and VoIP... but I'm digresing...
By the time the network is up and commercial grade, handhelds will acceptably cheap (they're still too expensive right now for most people). Cheap and functional is always a winning combination.
The idea which began with the Newton has waited a long time to come to fruition.
During closing arguments, Microsoft lawyer John Warden refused to give any ground.
"We have been through this. We negotiated. We went as far as we can go," Mr Warden said. "That's the deal."
The judge, who had asked both sides to find middle ground, smiled slightly through Mr Warden's statements.
Interesting, the first indicator of personal attitude from KK that I've heard of (You can draw conclusions whichever way you want). I remember an earlier/. post saying that if you wanted to slam MS with a killer verdict, you'd shut up and keep the appearance of impartiality until the end. I'd like to think that's what she's doing:) Just as long as she keeps it subtle and don't do a Jackson.
I know if I were in her position and hearing that from Warden, I'd be blowing raspberries.
Looking around the project website, I see that they make no mention of drivers. These guys are undergrad/recent graduate Electrical Engineers, and I can understand their focus on the hardware, but a card is useless without drivers.
Which leads to the question, what 3D API will these drivers implement? OpenGL of course. An open source implementation of The Other One would be self contradictory:)
But... doesn't it cost money for an implementation to be tested for OpenGL compliance? Like mesa is an open source software implementation of opengl, and probably satisfies all the tests. But it ain't certified as compliant because a) nobody's coughed up the cash and b) probably past interests in not having an open source implementation back then (though opengl is fully open sourced now). Think of how JBoss had a hell of a time getting Sun to admit JBoss was even halfway J2EE compliant...
It's an interesting project but drivers guys, put some thought into the drivers...
In this article, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe "conceded that piracy helped drive the popularity of the original PlayStation console".
piracy on the PlayStation had delivered some unexpected benefits, providing a "sampling value" similar to listening to music free on a radio station with the possibility of buying it later.
"Some people were able to get access to some games that they either didn't know about or weren't sure were worth it," Mr Deering said.
Furthermore, he gets that one pirated copy != one lost sale.
...if people buy something, make a copy of it, and give it to a friend, the friend uses it once and doesn't give it back, that's piracy.
"Is it piracy? Really? Would that person have bought that? He might have just borrowed it for a day."
Still, I wouldn't expect Sony to allow copying anytime soon. Or even to rollback their laughingstock copy protection, for that matter. But it's nice to see somebody high profile talking sense once in a while.
Yet another application for when we have universal wireless networking. People love talking about what you can do with universal wireless networking, but they all conveniently ignore the fact that such a network does not exist and will not for a long time yet.
PDA and handheld device manufacturers are all trying to sell themselves saying "Just imagine accessing the internet wherever you want!". Yeah, it's a good vision. I do believe PDAs have an important role to play in a wireless networked world.
Get the network up first. And that ain't no easy task. Mobile phone connections have only become reliable (by my standards) in the past year or two. A true wireless network would be much more demanding in terms of bandwidth, and demand higher levels of performance too. I can accept my phone call dropping out when I drive into a tunnel or a between some big buildings but I'd probably be less tolerant of some IP-based function dropping out. (I don't know why, I just am!).
A network of sufficient capacity and robustness for this level of service, over a wide area, is not coming for a loong time.
They know how many episodes they want to cram it into. That way it makes it easier to make a coherent story out of it. More shows should be made on that premice and we'd have a lot more stuff worth watching.
Mmmm, X-Files sure comes to mind when you say this. In western tv, series are kept alive as long as the brand is considered "viable". This is why you have crap like characters coming back from the dead multiple times. Or a series can be running along just fine, and suddenly stop because one of the actors gets pregnant or has a contract dispute.
In japanese culture, products generally have a shorter shelf life, especially in entertainment. There's no misgivings about planning and creating a good series, letting it run for a short time and then going out on a high note. So sometimes a series will end and leave me badly wishing for more, but I know there's always another series to distract me:)
Rumour has it there is also a handheld missile called the Dragon Punch which features voice activation. Soldiers should extend their hands towards their enemies, palms out and joined at the wrist, and loudly yell "ah-DOOOH-ken!" to launch the distinctive blue projectile.
However, the device has been found only to work with Super-Saiyans. Researchers are currently looking at ways to increase the KI of soldiers....
This is a little off topic, but the mention of Charlotte's Web, and all the posts here saying "TV is still crap, struck a chord with me...
I've recently gotten into anime and I'm really, really loving it. I've never been an avid TV watcher but lately I've been doing several hours of anime a day. I ask myself what it is I love about anime and it's not the visuals or the cuteness or the different-ness, it's the simple fact that they have stories. A series of 26 episodes is about 8 hours of viewing, and in that time you can pack in a seriously good story and excellent character development. Good stories are just not found in (my local) australian tv anymore.
Here's the state of TV in Australia, I don't think it's majorly different to america apart from the fact that cable has relatively low penetration here. Most of the prime time shows are:
Socalled reality shows, big brother, survivor, popstarts. Mush.
"Edutainment" shows, like how to build a coffee table, or travel shows, cooking and gardening. If I come home and collapse and turn on the box, I'll watch 'em because they're there, but I won't make a point of coming back next week.
And the soaps, often imported from america. Often, there is no story in these - usually it's just a bunch of people living every day lives, cracking a few jokes. No story to speak of (apart from who's going out with who this episode?)... a little character development but not much reason to tune in regularly. I can watch an episode, skip a few weeks, and not miss anything significant.
There are no regular shows which tell a decent story!Star Trek is probably comes closest. DS9 and Voyager are gone, just a single episode of Enterprise weekly, late on wednesday nights. I haven't been watching much though. DS9 and Voyager particularly suffered overly from the hit-the-reset-button-at-the-end-of-every-episode syndrome. Despite, they have far more continuity and return appeal (for me) than most other shows around.
So, where have all the decent stories gone? All this hurrah about "Spiderman rocks because everybody relates to it!" is a crock to me. The recent blockbusters (Ep2, Spiderman, LOTR) have been successes because they are uncommon good stories told well. Visuals and action and romance put together do not make a good show. It's the story which captures your imagination and takes you away for a few hours.
Back to the anime, episodes often finish on a cliffhanger note, and I'm excited in the few seconds it takes to change directories and load up the next divx. Can you imagine what it must be like to see this episode and have to wait a whole week to see it resolved? GUARANTEED VIEWERS.
This is related to how Harry Potter is lauded as making it "cool for kids to read again". I hope Hogwart's is as real to today's kids as Kirrin Cottage (don't laugh!) was to me as a kid...
Good storytellers have always been hard to find but unfortunately it seems the TV networks have given up the search in favour of DIY handymen.
... watermark detectors would be required in all devices that perform analog to digital conversions. In such devices (e.g., PC video capture cards), the role of the watermark detector would be to
When people like us say A-D converter, we think of devices that convert a continuous signal into discrete levels.
However, when the **AA says A-D converter, they're thinking about content stored on analog media being moved onto digital media.
I'm sure the MPAA ain't thinking of digital thermometers or such lower level devices (though if a black marker can be a circumvention device, why not a digitherm?). They're thinking of analog content, in the form of audio cassettes, VCRs, TV, the like. Same 2 words, but their interpretation is completely different to the technical interpretation we're used to. Almost, a storm in a teacup. The MPAA doesn't care about your wristwatch, your alarm clock! (I suppose they're not smart enough to realize the potential circumvention uses of such harmless devices *grin*)
What would be an absolute tragedy though, is if this misunderstanding of a technical term became enshrined in law. Then, one day some idle lawyer could pounce on the idle wording and start issuing C&D's to, say, alarm clock manufacturers.
Detection and response to the watermarks does not mean less functionality for video devices, including PCs.. Rather, it adds to these devices the ability to determine the difference between protected and unprotected works.
So what they're saying is, breaking your leg doesn't reduce your ability to walk, it adds the ability to use a crutch. Another ridiculous argument, another sign of desperation...
"Boucher is hoping to rewrite a federal law that led FBI agents to arrest Dmitry Sklyarov in Las Vegas, Nevada,
last week on copyright felony charges..."
That raised an eyebrow, until I looked at the date on the article.
Slashdot Mirror
A "what to buy" article like this has a significant effect on sales and advertisers perceptions - which is why almost every card won "in its category", to avoid pissing anyone off.
... ATI RADEON (blah) GT!!!" ?
:)
Can you imagine if Tom's Hardware said "THE DEFINITIVE BEST VALUE CARD RIGHT NOW IS THE
Someone at Tom's Hardware would have lost some important friends at nVidia. Which is why we have 7 pages of fence-sitting instead
So what if you play games until you drop dead? "You're only hurting yourself"
... and so on
So what if you eat until you're diabetic and obese? "You're only hurting yourself"
So what if you OD on recreational drugs, die alone, and nobody finds your body for 2 months? "You're only hurting yourself"
So what if you jerk it to porn all day, stay home and lose your job? "You're only hurting yourself"
For all of the above:
- even if you're only hurting yourself, you're not helping anybody either. You consume the worlds resources and health care/rehab services, but don't contribute much value in return. We can't afford to have many of these people in the world; we should help them get over their problem and into a life that is fulfilling to themselves, and contributory to the world.
- even if you're only hurting yourself, it's simply sad to hear of these things happening. Life wasn't meant to be lived this way!
See, Saddam did it - he was way ahead of his time!
It's not up to private companies to tell the government how to set the laws. Think of the other side of the coin with regards to copyright - the media companies are largely telling the US government how to set copyright laws, which are unfair and unjustified.
If Yahoo sets this well-intentioned precedent and bends the Chinese law, then other companies will feel entitled to do the same, but in the name of self-interest.
Semel is right, lawmaking is a matter to be settled between US and Chinese governments. Companies may lobby the government for support, companies shouldn't be making the decision, nor should they take the law into their own hands.
Priceless!
And then punish it for failing :)
That picture of the "Man of Great Potential" is really giving me strange ideas.
I don't want to walk out of Episode III debating the moral relativity of the dark side - I want to leap out woom-wooming my imaginary saber :)
Lucas hasn't great job with Ep 1 and 2, but Spielberg carries a completely different flavour of sci-fi to Lucas. Spielberg likes to intellectualize his movies somewhat too, which might be a good idea in itself, but wouldn't fit well into Star Wars.
Also, Spielberg would surely feel the need to inject his personal vision into the SW universe. Remember watching AI? Kubrick's parts and Spielberg's parts contrasted badly with each other, especially the ending. Everybody knows what the story in Episode III will be, we just want to see how the events play out and the final holes in the story get filled in. SW definitely doesn't need new influences at this stage.
There goes the price of my frickin' Linux shares. It was the frickin' lack of management I tell you.
I believe handhelds deserve to become ubiquitous more than PCs do. Most people use their desktop PCs for appointment and contact books, email and web - getting this functionality off their desk and into their pocket would be incredible. A widespread accessible wireless network will be the killer-app that move handhelds off shelves and into pockets in droves.
We're beginning to see a convergence of handheld computers and mobile phones. Nokia tried it a few years back before the technology was capable, Handspring is now trying to do the same thing and having a little more success. But I don't think the (expensive) mobile network will endear itself to customers as a means of sending data. We really need a ubiquitous accessible wireless network, and it so happens that right about now we have several wireless networks starting to gather steam. In fact, this might lead to an interesting clash between mobile networks and VoIP ... but I'm digresing ...
By the time the network is up and commercial grade, handhelds will acceptably cheap (they're still too expensive right now for most people). Cheap and functional is always a winning combination.
The idea which began with the Newton has waited a long time to come to fruition.
During closing arguments, Microsoft lawyer John Warden refused to give any ground.
"We have been through this. We negotiated. We went as far as we can go," Mr Warden said. "That's the deal."
The judge, who had asked both sides to find middle ground, smiled slightly through Mr Warden's statements.
Interesting, the first indicator of personal attitude from KK that I've heard of (You can draw conclusions whichever way you want). I remember an earlier /. post saying that if you wanted to slam MS with a killer verdict, you'd shut up and keep the appearance of impartiality until the end. I'd like to think that's what she's doing :) Just as long as she keeps it subtle and don't do a Jackson.
I know if I were in her position and hearing that from Warden, I'd be blowing raspberries.
But ... doesn't it cost money for an implementation to be tested for OpenGL compliance? Like mesa is an open source software implementation of opengl, and probably satisfies all the tests. But it ain't certified as compliant because a) nobody's coughed up the cash and b) probably past interests in not having an open source implementation back then (though opengl is fully open sourced now). Think of how JBoss had a hell of a time getting Sun to admit JBoss was even halfway J2EE compliant...
It's an interesting project but drivers guys, put some thought into the drivers...
Furthermore, he gets that one pirated copy != one lost sale.
Still, I wouldn't expect Sony to allow copying anytime soon. Or even to rollback their laughingstock copy protection, for that matter. But it's nice to see somebody high profile talking sense once in a while.
PDA and handheld device manufacturers are all trying to sell themselves saying "Just imagine accessing the internet wherever you want!". Yeah, it's a good vision. I do believe PDAs have an important role to play in a wireless networked world. Get the network up first. And that ain't no easy task. Mobile phone connections have only become reliable (by my standards) in the past year or two. A true wireless network would be much more demanding in terms of bandwidth, and demand higher levels of performance too. I can accept my phone call dropping out when I drive into a tunnel or a between some big buildings but I'd probably be less tolerant of some IP-based function dropping out. (I don't know why, I just am!).
A network of sufficient capacity and robustness for this level of service, over a wide area, is not coming for a loong time.
Mmmm, X-Files sure comes to mind when you say this. In western tv, series are kept alive as long as the brand is considered "viable". This is why you have crap like characters coming back from the dead multiple times. Or a series can be running along just fine, and suddenly stop because one of the actors gets pregnant or has a contract dispute.
In japanese culture, products generally have a shorter shelf life, especially in entertainment. There's no misgivings about planning and creating a good series, letting it run for a short time and then going out on a high note. So sometimes a series will end and leave me badly wishing for more, but I know there's always another series to distract me :)
Rumour has it there is also a handheld missile called the Dragon Punch which features voice activation. Soldiers should extend their hands towards their enemies, palms out and joined at the wrist, and loudly yell "ah-DOOOH-ken!" to launch the distinctive blue projectile.
... shoot me :) )
However, the device has been found only to work with Super-Saiyans. Researchers are currently looking at ways to increase the KI of soldiers....
(OK OK I'm mixing animes
This is offtopic but relevant.
Hey! You read slashdot too!
I've recently gotten into anime and I'm really, really loving it. I've never been an avid TV watcher but lately I've been doing several hours of anime a day. I ask myself what it is I love about anime and it's not the visuals or the cuteness or the different-ness, it's the simple fact that they have stories. A series of 26 episodes is about 8 hours of viewing, and in that time you can pack in a seriously good story and excellent character development. Good stories are just not found in (my local) australian tv anymore.
Here's the state of TV in Australia, I don't think it's majorly different to america apart from the fact that cable has relatively low penetration here. Most of the prime time shows are:
There are no regular shows which tell a decent story!Star Trek is probably comes closest. DS9 and Voyager are gone, just a single episode of Enterprise weekly, late on wednesday nights. I haven't been watching much though. DS9 and Voyager particularly suffered overly from the hit-the-reset-button-at-the-end-of-every-episode syndrome. Despite, they have far more continuity and return appeal (for me) than most other shows around.
So, where have all the decent stories gone? All this hurrah about "Spiderman rocks because everybody relates to it!" is a crock to me. The recent blockbusters (Ep2, Spiderman, LOTR) have been successes because they are uncommon good stories told well. Visuals and action and romance put together do not make a good show. It's the story which captures your imagination and takes you away for a few hours.
Back to the anime, episodes often finish on a cliffhanger note, and I'm excited in the few seconds it takes to change directories and load up the next divx. Can you imagine what it must be like to see this episode and have to wait a whole week to see it resolved? GUARANTEED VIEWERS.
This is related to how Harry Potter is lauded as making it "cool for kids to read again". I hope Hogwart's is as real to today's kids as Kirrin Cottage (don't laugh!) was to me as a kid...
Good storytellers have always been hard to find but unfortunately it seems the TV networks have given up the search in favour of DIY handymen.
When people like us say A-D converter, we think of devices that convert a continuous signal into discrete levels.
However, when the **AA says A-D converter, they're thinking about content stored on analog media being moved onto digital media.
I'm sure the MPAA ain't thinking of digital thermometers or such lower level devices (though if a black marker can be a circumvention device, why not a digitherm?). They're thinking of analog content, in the form of audio cassettes, VCRs, TV, the like. Same 2 words, but their interpretation is completely different to the technical interpretation we're used to. Almost, a storm in a teacup. The MPAA doesn't care about your wristwatch, your alarm clock! (I suppose they're not smart enough to realize the potential circumvention uses of such harmless devices *grin*)
What would be an absolute tragedy though, is if this misunderstanding of a technical term became enshrined in law. Then, one day some idle lawyer could pounce on the idle wording and start issuing C&D's to, say, alarm clock manufacturers.
Detection and response to the watermarks does not mean less functionality for video devices, including PCs.. Rather, it adds to these devices the ability to determine the difference between protected and unprotected works.
So what they're saying is, breaking your leg doesn't reduce your ability to walk, it adds the ability to use a crutch. Another ridiculous argument, another sign of desperation...
Guess we don't like the MPAA today.
Again, 'nuff said :(
That raised an eyebrow, until I looked at the date on the article.
July 25, 2001
'nuff said.
Co-Director, PROductivity From Information Technology (PROFIT) Program.
Co-Principal Inbestigator, COntext INtercharge (COIN) project
Heh. Seems apt that he's talking for M$! Puns aside, anybody know this guy in person and want to give a personal description?