So basically it autoruns the dvd you put in and that's the only program that can be run. Sounds like a stripped down windows to me. That was a pretty poor argument.
If by autorun you mean it runs the game immediately without prompting you for setup/installation or to respond to some preloading screen, then yes that's what it does. That's normal game console behavior. Last I checked, the PlayStation 2 does exactly the same thing.
If you meant the Windows autorun feature, where you have to wait for the OS to boot, THEN insert the CD, then you get presented with an install screen or some type of preloading menu if the game is already installed, no that's not how it works on the Xbox. This isn't even taking into account having to ensure your joystick is calibrated properly, your video card is set to the proper TV-Out mode, and setting the audio level settings in the sound control panel. Microsoft knew what the difference was between PC gaming and console gaming and the Xbox was designed accordingly.
Yea, before I had seen an Xbox in actual use, I thought the BSOD jokes and the "stripped down Windows with autorun" comments were funny too. Then I actually decided to try the system with an open mind and realized most Xbox bashers are too narrow minded to look past the Microsoft name on the front of the box.
XBox -- Everyone's got a PS2. Sorry. Putting a P3-700 in a box with a harddrive and a TV-out running a stripped down windows kernel and DirectX doesn't count as "innovation". That's called "building a computer that plugs into the TV". And Sony's done it better.
If you think that's what an Xbox is, you haven't used one. While true it is based on PC components, the Xbox is a console. You put a game DVD in and it just works... It is far from a "PC with TV-Out".
As for Sony doing it better, if you really see Sony as a lesser of the evils, that's fine. At the moment, the PlayStation 2 is the leading game system; however, considering the fact the Xbox already has more marketshare than the Gamecube, I'd say the Xbox is far from the flop you're making it out be.
Now Microsoft actually making any profit off the Xbox, that's a different story.
Everyone here probably remembers Internet Appliances, right? You know, those loss-leader crippled computers that would provide basic web access via dialup and required a higher-than-average-cost (for Internet access) monthly fee. Yea, those did real well, didn't they?
The author of this article is making the same mistakes as the people that thought Internet appliances would take off. The author is looking at a small segment of the gaming market, out of context, and assuming it is the direction the entire gaming market is going to take.
Yes, for some games, a monthly fee is appropriate. As others have said, if the game has a continuing operating cost to the company that is producing it (new levels/quests/etc., server upkeep, paying people to moderate/admin the game, etc.) and ALSO offers the consumers value for their monthly fee, a subscription model is well justified.
Maybe some companies will try a subscription model for games that should instead be sold - there's no reason they can't try. If the past is any indication though, competition and people voting with their wallet will quickly send such ideas the way of Divx (the original Circuit City DVD competitor, not the MPEG4 codec) and the Netpliance I-Opener.
What I do think we'll see in the future is the same thing we're seeing now... If you want to pirate a game, fine - but the second you try to connect that game to the outside world, don't expect it to work. With a modded Xbox, for example, you can "backup" games to your heart's content - but you cannot play them on Xbox Live. This isn't an indication of game companies planning on something more devious in the future, they're just simply using the tools they have available now to cut down on piracy. Whether or not you're still able to make backups to play on your own system in the future will not be determined by gaming companies interest in subscription models, but by whether or not people buy into "Trusted Computing" aka Palladium.
A current Xbox, modded, can happily run MAME....and NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Playstation 1 and... The list goes on and on.
Some of the best games ever made were made for consoles now considered obsolete. While people can say what they will about Microsoft, what hackers have done with the Xbox is nothing short of amazing. The emulators are so amazingly accurate in terms of framerate, rendering and control, I thought I was playing on the original system.
Just run it through English to some other language then back to English again. Oh sure, you may get marked off for bad English, but they sure as hell won't figure out your source!
Example from turnitin.com's own site:
Turnitin took once to a plagiarized test the 100% word by word. He was of course already suspected, due to the professional quality extraordinary discharge of the writing. But really it helped saving the effort "to obtain the test."
Oh it will be incredible all right - it will be incredibly bad.
Episode 1: Action figures, video games, PROFIT! Kid appeal = $$$ Plot = ??? Midiclohorineienesiens??? WTF, 'nuff said. At least it had some good lines... "Jar Jar leads to annoying the audience, annoying the audience leads to bad reviews, bad reviews are the path to the dark side! I sense much Jar Jar in this film."
Episode 2: Hours of suckyness almost redeemed by a kick ass yoda scene at the end. Despite everything George has done to ruin this series, Yoda still rules. Anakin is now played by an adult actor who amazingly has the same acting ability (ahem, or lack thereof) as the child in Episode 1. "You are in my very soul, tormenting me." "You to. Shut up and just pour hot grits on her OR SOMETHING. A daytime soap opera screenwriter could have written better love scenes."
Episode 3: More of what you love from Episodes 1 and 2... Loads of Jar Jar, another extended scene that will be made into a video game. Maybe Anakin will get mutilated early on and we won't have to hear him spout any more lovey-dovey crap like he was reading it out of a school textbook. Hey, at least my expectations for Episode 3 can't get much lower...
Of course, George Lucas could just be testing a new anti-piracy measure - make the film suck so bad no one wants to pirate it.
I didn't RTFA but considering the comments I've read so far, it doesn't seem like I've missed much.
The only cases I've seen rewriting instead of fixing the original are with smaller projects, like Xbox Media Player for example. For all intents and purposes, XBMP is dead. Pretty much all the original authors of XBMP decided to work on Xbox Media Center instead.
I remember a lot of shareware from back in the day that the same thing happened to... One day the author woke up and hated everything about it and decided to start over completely. Other than complaining about it (which is ill advised since it just pisses off the programmers), there's not much you can really do. To people that don't program, reinventing the wheel looks like a tremendous waste of time. If the programmers of an app you like to use decide it's time for an overhaul, they probably have good reasons for it and if that really bothers you, it's time to look for an alternative or just keep using the old version.
And hey, the good thing about apps that are open source, if some new programmers pick up the old codebase, it may still have some life left in it yet...
Well, you coud always peruse Shoutcast to find thousands of radio stations. There's probably something there you just might like.
Yea, there are Shoutcast stations that play mainstream format... Pity Shoutcast won't work in my car, or while I'm on the job, or mowing the lawn, etc...
Ummm, you could tape it, then rip it to mp3. But that would be too much work now, wouldn't it? BUY MUSIC YOU LIKE. Then maybe artists will continue to put out quality albums.
LOL, that's the same like the warez d00ds use in their.NFO's. The fact is, the majority of the music I like tends to be singles that are on albums full of filler. Yea, iTunes music store is nice - but it serves little use. If I really enjoy the album enough to buy it, I want the silver disc with the lossless audio, not a set of 128kbit AAC files.
Now if it's just a single promo track I want to listen to a few more times before I get sick of it and add it to my collection, it's not really worth even $.99 to me, and is certainly not worth the effort to sit around a radio and try to tape it (or rip via totalrecorder from an Internet stream). It's really not so bad to fire up Kazaa, run a few searches, start a big ass queue, sort out the shit later.
I pity you.
A song is entertainment, it is not a video card that can be benchmarked and compared to competitors based on its performence at its intended use. If I hear something I like and I enjoy it, that's all that matters to me. Hey, I lucked out, the radio plays music I enjoy... If I had pity for anyone, it would be someone who has to use bandwidth, storage space and time to download music he's not even sure if he'll enjoy.
You seem to be making the mistake of stating that the labels "good" and "bad" are directly correlated to "mainstream" and "inde". Just because something is "mainstream", does not at all mean it is good or bad.
Actually, I agree... My point, which I probably didn't make clear enough, was that the radio makes discovering new music (which I may or may not like) completely effortless compared to online services. Yes, I have found some indie music online that I liked, but I had to (unfortunately) listen to a lot of really bad music to find it.
Distribution does not automatically correlate to quality.
Well, it does equate to production quality. A lot of the freebies on MP3.com back in its hayday were just people recording with a RadioShack microphone into their computer. The RIAA stuff that gets airplay pretty much always produced professionally. I'm really not trying to tar all indie artists with the same brush - I realize there are MANY who produce their music professionally. The problem is, generally sites that host indie music don't say no to the artists that suck. A peer review/voting system could do a lot to improve this, but I found MP3.com's (when it existed) to be biased towards the freebies offered by RIAA-signed artists.
Just please don't change your mind after deciding you like it because of who distributes/releases it.
I would never decide I hated something after-the-fact... It's just that, as I said, there's a lot of effort required to find indie music that is similar in production quality and style to what is played on the radio. There's a whole lot of despising the mainstream that goes on in indie circles. Of course, Slashdot's hypocrisy shows with my original post now hovering at score: 0 for saying I actually enjoy mainstream music. "Mainstream bad!, mainstream Baaah... wooo let's go see Lord of the Rings!!!"
But downloading random music and listening to it is my version of listening to the radio to find new stuff.
If you've got the time and bandwidth to do that, that's great. I'd prefer something automated - "Tivo like" if you could call it that. Maybe something that downloads songs it thinks I will like based upon past prefences and uploads them to my iPod overnight while it's docked to charge. Since the iPod has a built-in rating system, maybe such an app could use the rating like a thumbs up/thumbs down on the Tivo. THAT would make discovering new music online as easy as the radio.
...artists I've never heard of want me to buy their music because they're not using DRM. Uh, that's nice.
If you don't like any mainstream radio music and indie stuff is your cup of tea, that's fine - whatever sinks your sub. I happen to enjoy mainstream rock music and do hear new songs that I enjoy via the radio. For the amazing cost of free, you can experience new music almost anywhere, on a cheap dollar store radio, on a audiophile Hi-Fi set or in your car. Sorry, sitting in front of my computer trying to discover new music by taking time to download things I may not like is not as efficient as listening to the radio while I am already doing some other task, like driving.
The problem is that the recording industry behaves like a bratty child with a lot of really cool toys when it comes to the tracks they play on the air... "Sure, you can play with the ball, but only when I say you can! If you listen to me beg for ice cream for hours, you can play my Nintendo, but only after we play electric race cars first!"
I've always felt that if they play it on the air, I should be able to add it to my collection for free. Judging by current P2P usage despite the RIAA's legal attacks, a lot of people still seem to feel the same way. We want the music we HAVE heard with control to listen to it as we want, not music we haven't heard.
I've never seen an OGG file I've wanted to download EVER. Sorry.
Free unprotected WMA content is all over the place... If I could cast a vote for a format I'd like to see MY iPod support, it would be WMA over OGG.
And no, I'm not a WMA fanboy - I do all my own encoding at 192kbit CBR MP3 with LAME, a format that sounds great and plays on everything from the old 16-bit version of Winplay3 to portable MP3-CD players.
See, when you're doing your own encoding, you can choose a format that's widely playable. When you're downloading, you may not be given a choice and if your portable player doesn't support the format, you either have to convert (which may involve having to crack the DRM) or just deal with it. I don't know if it was lack of forsight or just stubbornness that you decided to use OGG, but it's your own damn fault your collection won't play on an iPod. Now if I'd rather download tracks from WalMart and save a few cents over iTunes, or maybe they get a song iTunes doesn't have, it would be nice for my iPod to support WMA... And hell, if it's just a firmware update, I'll have heluva praises about the iPod to tell my friends and people that ask me about it. Just maybe, that will sell more iPods than adding support for a format only hardcore geeks care about (OGG).
Geez, with all the negative comments here you'd think no one has ever encountered unprotected WMA content. I have an entire collection (over 1GB) of song parodies in WMA format that I downloaded, all without any DRM.
The Xbox also, by default, creates WMA files... What if you did a whole lot of CD ripping on your modified Xbox and wanted to upload it to your iPod?
Let's not forget, Apple WANTS to sell iPods - anything that makes them more competitive is a good thing....and yes, I own an iPod.
I was expecting something showcasing technology like the 5 watt Luxeon Star LEDs, instead, it just looks like Lucky the Leprechaun shat all over the place.
Despite the bad example (and color scheme, ugh.) this site shows, LEDs really are coming into their own for uses in lighting and will be a very interesting technology to watch in the coming years. The LED Museum has a great listing and reviews of LED based lighting products, from flashlights to Xmas lights.
I do believe LEDs can be effectively used for lighting. I was given a 1 watt Luxeon Star-based flashlight this Christmas and after using it in instead of an incandescent flashlight, I have to say I am very impressed. The Luxeon puts out a pure white light (very similar to HID headlights) which makes objects being illuminated appear more clearly and it projects an even beam with no dark shadowy spots. If for nothing else, this article should be a reason to check out what's available in LED lighting - you might be pleasantly surprised.
...would tell a child that is asking for $20K he or she needs to get a job.
I think the "teach a man to fish" quote really applies here - Wikipedia needs to find a way to sustain itself. Ads, a premium subscription service or sponsors can go a long way.
Please, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, donate it to the EFF to help fight for our rights that are being taken away. Let the people that run Wikipedia take a business 101 class and learn to pull their own weight.
My father is a realator and one of the things he had to do was fax house listings to customers. He used to do it by printing them out, faxing them, then throwing them away. Besides the obvious environmental impact, he was using an inkjet printer at the time which meant it was a very slow process that also consumed a lot of expensive ink.
When I found out this was how he was sending faxes, I purchased a new-in-box USRobotics Courrier 56k V.Everything external modem on eBay for about $20 (no, I didn't forget any 0's) and set him up with Winfax Pro. I remember those modems costing a fortune back in the days of BBSing... The Courrier was a good workhorse of a modem back in its day and being used for sending/receiving faxes in this age of broadband gives it a new lease on life. And hey, anything that saves paper and keeps electronics out of the landfill is a good thing.
I remember that computer... My memories of it were anything but fond. It's a good thing I discovered PCs years later, otherwise I may have had no interest in computers whatsoever.
The game/program cartreges only worked sometimes - you'd have to blow on them, slide them in and out... Eventually, if you got lucky, it would load. The joysticks were equally flakey and loading something from the cassette recorder was usually an excercize in futility.
Now my first PC was a Tandy 1000RL and I actually have a writeup about that on one of my old pages somewhere... For a PC, it sucked, but what appealed to me about it was for the first time, I saw a glimmer of potential in personal computers. Potential to play games that were more than just colored lines and shapes, potential to listen to digital music that wasn't just beeps and blips. Potentially spending a fortune to upgrade to newer technology so I can do more.
At any rate, my hat is truly off to people who got into computers back in the days of text-only displays or even further back. Course, to some 12 year old who's getting a brand new P4 this xmas, my old Tandy 1000RL probably seems just as acient.
Only DVD-R? Bah. No respectable 10-year-old would want a system with a drive that can ONLY burn DVD-R! Today's modern DVD burners can burn everything, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW and even light cancer sticks.
Re:my Masc-o-meter. . . .
on
Cube House
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· Score: 1
What's the difference between stick shift and a manual?
A "stick shift" is the part of a vehicle that provides a user interface to the transmission, a "manual" is the instruction booklet that came with the vehicle. Perhaps "standard transmission" is the term you're seeking.;)
The car you purchased for probably tens of thousands of dollars doesn't have user replaceable tires, or engine or transmission, yet your are guaranteed that all of those things will wear out at some point in the life of the product.
A car is a really bad analogy to the iPod, nevertheless...
Like most cars, mine needs the oil changed every 3,000 miles... If the dealership had told me I had to bring it in to them and pay a highly marked up fee to have them change the oil because they sealed the hood at the factory, I wouldn't have bought the car. Instead, my car was built to be user-servicable... I can pull the hood release lever, open the hood, change the oil and close everything back up - the multi-thousand dollar vehicle I drive does not look like I took a crowbar to it to pry anything open because it was designed from the beginning to allow user service.
While I will agree the average car owner is uninterested in purchasing the tools to replace tires, an engine or a transmission, there is a highly competitive automotive service industry that keeps prices on common wear items low. Apple has no such competition to service iPods. Engines and transmissions, much like the iPod's mainboard and hard drive, respectively, will easily outlast the battery in both a vehicle and an iPod. At $99, the cost of a battery + service for the iPod is 1/3 the purchase price of their least expensive model. That would be like paying $6,666 for a new battery for a $20k automobile... Last I checked, Sears will install a new battery in your car for a LOT less than that.
For the same reason there's ads for Microsoft's products that Slashdot claims to hate... It's so Slashdot can make a buck - no great conspiracy.
I'd venture to guess of Slashdot's readership is more interested in the Microsoft ads than the personals site ads... Personals are really pretty stupid if you stop to think about it. If you've got the social skills to ask women/men/whatever out on a date, WTF do you need a personal ad for? The stereotype about personals being full of losers you wouldn't want to date is largely true - think of it this way, the people on there can't figure out how to date in real life! If you do find someone you like on a personal site, you'll quickly find out why they're on one - either they have unrelistic standards and are waiting for a perfect match, they have social skill problems or they're just on a personals site to stroke their ego (and won't actually go out with anyone). Just as you can find working television sets in the garbage, you'll hear success stories about personals sites, but for the most part, they're both full of trash.
If you really want to meet people, you have to go out and be seen. Get some decent clothes that don't look like you just stepped out of a time warp. It also doesn't hurt to get a haircut and shave, if you happen to look like Alan Cox. Yes, it takes an investment both in time and money. Yes, people care what you look like - get over it. If you're not motivated to give it 110% and you'd rather sit at home putting CCFTs in your computer case or compiling a kernel - better get used to being alone. Porn ain't all that bad. Russian brides are a scam, I hear...
Slashdot Mirror
What if I as the parent of a 17 year old, give them permission to look at porn?
I'd be more worried if I was the parent of a 17-year-old who isn't already looking at porn, parental permission nonwithstanding.
So basically it autoruns the dvd you put in and that's the only program that can be run. Sounds like a stripped down windows to me. That was a pretty poor argument.
If by autorun you mean it runs the game immediately without prompting you for setup/installation or to respond to some preloading screen, then yes that's what it does. That's normal game console behavior. Last I checked, the PlayStation 2 does exactly the same thing.
If you meant the Windows autorun feature, where you have to wait for the OS to boot, THEN insert the CD, then you get presented with an install screen or some type of preloading menu if the game is already installed, no that's not how it works on the Xbox. This isn't even taking into account having to ensure your joystick is calibrated properly, your video card is set to the proper TV-Out mode, and setting the audio level settings in the sound control panel. Microsoft knew what the difference was between PC gaming and console gaming and the Xbox was designed accordingly.
Yea, before I had seen an Xbox in actual use, I thought the BSOD jokes and the "stripped down Windows with autorun" comments were funny too. Then I actually decided to try the system with an open mind and realized most Xbox bashers are too narrow minded to look past the Microsoft name on the front of the box.
XBox -- Everyone's got a PS2. Sorry. Putting a P3-700 in a box with a harddrive and a TV-out running a stripped down windows kernel and DirectX doesn't count as "innovation". That's called "building a computer that plugs into the TV". And Sony's done it better.
If you think that's what an Xbox is, you haven't used one. While true it is based on PC components, the Xbox is a console. You put a game DVD in and it just works... It is far from a "PC with TV-Out".
As for Sony doing it better, if you really see Sony as a lesser of the evils, that's fine. At the moment, the PlayStation 2 is the leading game system; however, considering the fact the Xbox already has more marketshare than the Gamecube, I'd say the Xbox is far from the flop you're making it out be.
Now Microsoft actually making any profit off the Xbox, that's a different story.
Everyone here probably remembers Internet Appliances, right? You know, those loss-leader crippled computers that would provide basic web access via dialup and required a higher-than-average-cost (for Internet access) monthly fee. Yea, those did real well, didn't they?
The author of this article is making the same mistakes as the people that thought Internet appliances would take off. The author is looking at a small segment of the gaming market, out of context, and assuming it is the direction the entire gaming market is going to take.
Yes, for some games, a monthly fee is appropriate. As others have said, if the game has a continuing operating cost to the company that is producing it (new levels/quests/etc., server upkeep, paying people to moderate/admin the game, etc.) and ALSO offers the consumers value for their monthly fee, a subscription model is well justified.
Maybe some companies will try a subscription model for games that should instead be sold - there's no reason they can't try. If the past is any indication though, competition and people voting with their wallet will quickly send such ideas the way of Divx (the original Circuit City DVD competitor, not the MPEG4 codec) and the Netpliance I-Opener.
What I do think we'll see in the future is the same thing we're seeing now... If you want to pirate a game, fine - but the second you try to connect that game to the outside world, don't expect it to work. With a modded Xbox, for example, you can "backup" games to your heart's content - but you cannot play them on Xbox Live. This isn't an indication of game companies planning on something more devious in the future, they're just simply using the tools they have available now to cut down on piracy. Whether or not you're still able to make backups to play on your own system in the future will not be determined by gaming companies interest in subscription models, but by whether or not people buy into "Trusted Computing" aka Palladium.
A current Xbox, modded, can happily run MAME. ...and NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Playstation 1 and... The list goes on and on.
Some of the best games ever made were made for consoles now considered obsolete. While people can say what they will about Microsoft, what hackers have done with the Xbox is nothing short of amazing. The emulators are so amazingly accurate in terms of framerate, rendering and control, I thought I was playing on the original system.
Just run it through English to some other language then back to English again. Oh sure, you may get marked off for bad English, but they sure as hell won't figure out your source!
Example from turnitin.com's own site:
Turnitin took once to a plagiarized test the 100% word by word. He was of course already suspected, due to the professional quality extraordinary discharge of the writing. But really it helped saving the effort "to obtain the test."
Oh it will be incredible all right - it will be incredibly bad.
Episode 1: Action figures, video games, PROFIT! Kid appeal = $$$ Plot = ??? Midiclohorineienesiens??? WTF, 'nuff said. At least it had some good lines... "Jar Jar leads to annoying the audience, annoying the audience leads to bad reviews, bad reviews are the path to the dark side! I sense much Jar Jar in this film."
Episode 2: Hours of suckyness almost redeemed by a kick ass yoda scene at the end. Despite everything George has done to ruin this series, Yoda still rules. Anakin is now played by an adult actor who amazingly has the same acting ability (ahem, or lack thereof) as the child in Episode 1. "You are in my very soul, tormenting me." "You to. Shut up and just pour hot grits on her OR SOMETHING. A daytime soap opera screenwriter could have written better love scenes."
Episode 3: More of what you love from Episodes 1 and 2... Loads of Jar Jar, another extended scene that will be made into a video game. Maybe Anakin will get mutilated early on and we won't have to hear him spout any more lovey-dovey crap like he was reading it out of a school textbook. Hey, at least my expectations for Episode 3 can't get much lower...
Of course, George Lucas could just be testing a new anti-piracy measure - make the film suck so bad no one wants to pirate it.
I didn't RTFA but considering the comments I've read so far, it doesn't seem like I've missed much.
The only cases I've seen rewriting instead of fixing the original are with smaller projects, like Xbox Media Player for example. For all intents and purposes, XBMP is dead. Pretty much all the original authors of XBMP decided to work on Xbox Media Center instead.
I remember a lot of shareware from back in the day that the same thing happened to... One day the author woke up and hated everything about it and decided to start over completely. Other than complaining about it (which is ill advised since it just pisses off the programmers), there's not much you can really do. To people that don't program, reinventing the wheel looks like a tremendous waste of time. If the programmers of an app you like to use decide it's time for an overhaul, they probably have good reasons for it and if that really bothers you, it's time to look for an alternative or just keep using the old version.
And hey, the good thing about apps that are open source, if some new programmers pick up the old codebase, it may still have some life left in it yet...
Well, you coud always peruse Shoutcast to find thousands of radio stations. There's probably
.NFO's. The fact is, the majority of the music I like tends to be singles that are on albums full of filler. Yea, iTunes music store is nice - but it serves little use. If I really enjoy the album enough to buy it, I want the silver disc with the lossless audio, not a set of 128kbit AAC files.
something there you just might like.
Yea, there are Shoutcast stations that play mainstream format... Pity Shoutcast won't work in my car, or while I'm on the job, or mowing the lawn, etc...
Ummm, you could tape it, then rip it to mp3. But that would be too much work now, wouldn't it? BUY MUSIC YOU LIKE. Then maybe artists will continue to put out quality albums.
LOL, that's the same like the warez d00ds use in their
Now if it's just a single promo track I want to listen to a few more times before I get sick of it and add it to my collection, it's not really worth even $.99 to me, and is certainly not worth the effort to sit around a radio and try to tape it (or rip via totalrecorder from an Internet stream). It's really not so bad to fire up Kazaa, run a few searches, start a big ass queue, sort out the shit later.
I pity you.
A song is entertainment, it is not a video card that can be benchmarked and compared to competitors based on its performence at its intended use. If I hear something I like and I enjoy it, that's all that matters to me. Hey, I lucked out, the radio plays music I enjoy... If I had pity for anyone, it would be someone who has to use bandwidth, storage space and time to download music he's not even sure if he'll enjoy.
You seem to be making the mistake of stating that the labels "good" and "bad" are directly correlated to "mainstream" and "inde". Just because something is "mainstream", does not at all mean it is good or bad.
Actually, I agree... My point, which I probably didn't make clear enough, was that the radio makes discovering new music (which I may or may not like) completely effortless compared to online services. Yes, I have found some indie music online that I liked, but I had to (unfortunately) listen to a lot of really bad music to find it.
Distribution does not automatically correlate to quality.
Well, it does equate to production quality. A lot of the freebies on MP3.com back in its hayday were just people recording with a RadioShack microphone into their computer. The RIAA stuff that gets airplay pretty much always produced professionally. I'm really not trying to tar all indie artists with the same brush - I realize there are MANY who produce their music professionally. The problem is, generally sites that host indie music don't say no to the artists that suck. A peer review/voting system could do a lot to improve this, but I found MP3.com's (when it existed) to be biased towards the freebies offered by RIAA-signed artists.
Just please don't change your mind after deciding you like it because of who distributes/releases it.
I would never decide I hated something after-the-fact... It's just that, as I said, there's a lot of effort required to find indie music that is similar in production quality and style to what is played on the radio. There's a whole lot of despising the mainstream that goes on in indie circles. Of course, Slashdot's hypocrisy shows with my original post now hovering at score: 0 for saying I actually enjoy mainstream music. "Mainstream bad!, mainstream Baaah... wooo let's go see Lord of the Rings!!!"
But downloading random music and listening to it is my version of listening to the radio to find new stuff.
If you've got the time and bandwidth to do that, that's great. I'd prefer something automated - "Tivo like" if you could call it that. Maybe something that downloads songs it thinks I will like based upon past prefences and uploads them to my iPod overnight while it's docked to charge. Since the iPod has a built-in rating system, maybe such an app could use the rating like a thumbs up/thumbs down on the Tivo. THAT would make discovering new music online as easy as the radio.
...artists I've never heard of want me to buy their music because they're not using DRM. Uh, that's nice.
If you don't like any mainstream radio music and indie stuff is your cup of tea, that's fine - whatever sinks your sub. I happen to enjoy mainstream rock music and do hear new songs that I enjoy via the radio. For the amazing cost of free, you can experience new music almost anywhere, on a cheap dollar store radio, on a audiophile Hi-Fi set or in your car. Sorry, sitting in front of my computer trying to discover new music by taking time to download things I may not like is not as efficient as listening to the radio while I am already doing some other task, like driving.
The problem is that the recording industry behaves like a bratty child with a lot of really cool toys when it comes to the tracks they play on the air... "Sure, you can play with the ball, but only when I say you can! If you listen to me beg for ice cream for hours, you can play my Nintendo, but only after we play electric race cars first!"
I've always felt that if they play it on the air, I should be able to add it to my collection for free. Judging by current P2P usage despite the RIAA's legal attacks, a lot of people still seem to feel the same way. We want the music we HAVE heard with control to listen to it as we want, not music we haven't heard.
I've never seen an OGG file I've wanted to download EVER. Sorry.
Free unprotected WMA content is all over the place... If I could cast a vote for a format I'd like to see MY iPod support, it would be WMA over OGG.
And no, I'm not a WMA fanboy - I do all my own encoding at 192kbit CBR MP3 with LAME, a format that sounds great and plays on everything from the old 16-bit version of Winplay3 to portable MP3-CD players.
See, when you're doing your own encoding, you can choose a format that's widely playable. When you're downloading, you may not be given a choice and if your portable player doesn't support the format, you either have to convert (which may involve having to crack the DRM) or just deal with it. I don't know if it was lack of forsight or just stubbornness that you decided to use OGG, but it's your own damn fault your collection won't play on an iPod. Now if I'd rather download tracks from WalMart and save a few cents over iTunes, or maybe they get a song iTunes doesn't have, it would be nice for my iPod to support WMA... And hell, if it's just a firmware update, I'll have heluva praises about the iPod to tell my friends and people that ask me about it. Just maybe, that will sell more iPods than adding support for a format only hardcore geeks care about (OGG).
Geez, with all the negative comments here you'd think no one has ever encountered unprotected WMA content. I have an entire collection (over 1GB) of song parodies in WMA format that I downloaded, all without any DRM.
...and yes, I own an iPod.
The Xbox also, by default, creates WMA files... What if you did a whole lot of CD ripping on your modified Xbox and wanted to upload it to your iPod?
Let's not forget, Apple WANTS to sell iPods - anything that makes them more competitive is a good thing.
I was expecting something showcasing technology like the 5 watt Luxeon Star LEDs, instead, it just looks like Lucky the Leprechaun shat all over the place.
Despite the bad example (and color scheme, ugh.) this site shows, LEDs really are coming into their own for uses in lighting and will be a very interesting technology to watch in the coming years. The LED Museum has a great listing and reviews of LED based lighting products, from flashlights to Xmas lights.
I do believe LEDs can be effectively used for lighting. I was given a 1 watt Luxeon Star-based flashlight this Christmas and after using it in instead of an incandescent flashlight, I have to say I am very impressed. The Luxeon puts out a pure white light (very similar to HID headlights) which makes objects being illuminated appear more clearly and it projects an even beam with no dark shadowy spots. If for nothing else, this article should be a reason to check out what's available in LED lighting - you might be pleasantly surprised.
...AOL CDs, Compuserve CDs, Prodigy CDs, Earthlink CDs. Now I just get AOL CDs.
What I really miss are the days of spam floppies, now I never seem to have a floppy when I need one.
...will not read +R media. I've tried it on 4 different Samsung-having Xboxes, it's a no-go.
The Samsung drives WILL read DVD-R and DVD-RW without a problem. +R is more compatible, my ass!
A quick Google search reveals the Playstation 2 also favors DVD-R over +R
Maybe it's a conspiracy by the video game system maufacturers... Damn Dell.
...would tell a child that is asking for $20K he or she needs to get a job.
I think the "teach a man to fish" quote really applies here - Wikipedia needs to find a way to sustain itself. Ads, a premium subscription service or sponsors can go a long way.
Please, if you have money burning a hole in your pocket, donate it to the EFF to help fight for our rights that are being taken away. Let the people that run Wikipedia take a business 101 class and learn to pull their own weight.
Indeed.
My father is a realator and one of the things he had to do was fax house listings to customers. He used to do it by printing them out, faxing them, then throwing them away. Besides the obvious environmental impact, he was using an inkjet printer at the time which meant it was a very slow process that also consumed a lot of expensive ink.
When I found out this was how he was sending faxes, I purchased a new-in-box USRobotics Courrier 56k V.Everything external modem on eBay for about $20 (no, I didn't forget any 0's) and set him up with Winfax Pro. I remember those modems costing a fortune back in the days of BBSing... The Courrier was a good workhorse of a modem back in its day and being used for sending/receiving faxes in this age of broadband gives it a new lease on life. And hey, anything that saves paper and keeps electronics out of the landfill is a good thing.
I remember that computer... My memories of it were anything but fond. It's a good thing I discovered PCs years later, otherwise I may have had no interest in computers whatsoever.
The game/program cartreges only worked sometimes - you'd have to blow on them, slide them in and out... Eventually, if you got lucky, it would load. The joysticks were equally flakey and loading something from the cassette recorder was usually an excercize in futility.
Now my first PC was a Tandy 1000RL and I actually have a writeup about that on one of my old pages somewhere... For a PC, it sucked, but what appealed to me about it was for the first time, I saw a glimmer of potential in personal computers. Potential to play games that were more than just colored lines and shapes, potential to listen to digital music that wasn't just beeps and blips. Potentially spending a fortune to upgrade to newer technology so I can do more.
At any rate, my hat is truly off to people who got into computers back in the days of text-only displays or even further back. Course, to some 12 year old who's getting a brand new P4 this xmas, my old Tandy 1000RL probably seems just as acient.
Only DVD-R? Bah. No respectable 10-year-old would want a system with a drive that can ONLY burn DVD-R! Today's modern DVD burners can burn everything, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW and even light cancer sticks.
What's the difference between stick shift and a manual?
;)
A "stick shift" is the part of a vehicle that provides a user interface to the transmission, a "manual" is the instruction booklet that came with the vehicle. Perhaps "standard transmission" is the term you're seeking.
Gay? I think not. Chicks HAVE to dig it, it's a LOVE SHACK, baby!
Looks like someone's not going to need to use that OSDN dating service to find a date this New Year's.
Universal Studios seems to think differently.
Never believe what you read on Slashdot, even if you think it looks right.
The car you purchased for probably tens of thousands of dollars doesn't have user replaceable tires, or engine or transmission, yet your are guaranteed that all of those things will wear out at some point in the life of the product.
A car is a really bad analogy to the iPod, nevertheless...
Like most cars, mine needs the oil changed every 3,000 miles... If the dealership had told me I had to bring it in to them and pay a highly marked up fee to have them change the oil because they sealed the hood at the factory, I wouldn't have bought the car. Instead, my car was built to be user-servicable... I can pull the hood release lever, open the hood, change the oil and close everything back up - the multi-thousand dollar vehicle I drive does not look like I took a crowbar to it to pry anything open because it was designed from the beginning to allow user service.
While I will agree the average car owner is uninterested in purchasing the tools to replace tires, an engine or a transmission, there is a highly competitive automotive service industry that keeps prices on common wear items low. Apple has no such competition to service iPods. Engines and transmissions, much like the iPod's mainboard and hard drive, respectively, will easily outlast the battery in both a vehicle and an iPod. At $99, the cost of a battery + service for the iPod is 1/3 the purchase price of their least expensive model. That would be like paying $6,666 for a new battery for a $20k automobile... Last I checked, Sears will install a new battery in your car for a LOT less than that.
For the same reason there's ads for Microsoft's products that Slashdot claims to hate... It's so Slashdot can make a buck - no great conspiracy.
I'd venture to guess of Slashdot's readership is more interested in the Microsoft ads than the personals site ads... Personals are really pretty stupid if you stop to think about it. If you've got the social skills to ask women/men/whatever out on a date, WTF do you need a personal ad for? The stereotype about personals being full of losers you wouldn't want to date is largely true - think of it this way, the people on there can't figure out how to date in real life! If you do find someone you like on a personal site, you'll quickly find out why they're on one - either they have unrelistic standards and are waiting for a perfect match, they have social skill problems or they're just on a personals site to stroke their ego (and won't actually go out with anyone). Just as you can find working television sets in the garbage, you'll hear success stories about personals sites, but for the most part, they're both full of trash.
If you really want to meet people, you have to go out and be seen. Get some decent clothes that don't look like you just stepped out of a time warp. It also doesn't hurt to get a haircut and shave, if you happen to look like Alan Cox. Yes, it takes an investment both in time and money. Yes, people care what you look like - get over it. If you're not motivated to give it 110% and you'd rather sit at home putting CCFTs in your computer case or compiling a kernel - better get used to being alone. Porn ain't all that bad. Russian brides are a scam, I hear...