Side note: the author of the MMCEO mentioned that Sony & Nintendo could start a software war. I think it's already begun. Sony has employed the same "Greatest Hits" tactic with PS2 games that we last saw on PS1. Gran Turismo 3, Twisted Metal Black, ATV offroad Fury, and Dark Cloud are now $20 (USD). I can't wait for GTA3 to go on sale! The author also noted a 6 or 7 year turnover in game consoles. The PSX's 5 year endurance was unheard of at the time. I think a 2 or 3 year turnover is more accurate.
I mean, have you seen any scrolling shooters like R-Type lately, or adventures?
The last great scrolling shooter that I remember is Einhander for the PSX. As far as adventures, I think Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was supposed to be one of the great 2D adventure games (I never got into it much), and Klanoa was a great jump n' run for the PSX (haven't tried Klanoa 2 for PS2, but I hear it's also good). Tomba 1 & 2 are other good examples. I know that this is all Playstation-biased, but that's all I've owned for the last 3 years or so.
Sorry, my comment was meant for a thread farther up where a guy was asking what the point of the comparison when you could just buy a stand-alone player. I also think mplayer rocks.
What about DivX files? I've heard of some upcoming stand-alone players that play MPEG4 stuff, but they probably won't be cheap, and right now most DVD players play DVD/(S)VCD/mp3/CD. If you have a DVD drive on your computer anyway, and a 17" monitor (or TV output capabilities), then doesn't it make sense to find good software to make your computer an entertainment center? The biggest misconception that a lot of the movie industry has is that people don't want to watch movies on their computer monitor. As a student I do this all the time.
but this ruling seems to be taking that right away. From the law.com article:
The court's ruling did not decide whether Nike's ads were false or misleading, instead leaving that for the trial court
This means the the court is NOT determining that Nike's statements constitute fraud, but shutting them up from making unpopular statements. I believe that Nike uses sweatshops, but I also think that they should be allowed to say that they don't, because I haven't gone to Indonesia or Guatemala and taken photographs of huge sweatshops that say 'Nike' on them. When someone has proof that they do use sweatshops (which many groups say that they do), and a court agrees with their proof, then Nike will have to say that they were big, fat, greedy liars (and then the American public will probably go on buying their products anyway, unfortunately).
for the first time, more blank CDs (1.1 billion) were sold last year than prerecorded CDs (968 million).
How can you draw any conclusions from comparing a product that costs $0.50 per unit to a product that costs $18 per unit? The above sentence shows that people are spending $550 million on blanck CDs and $17.4 BILLION on prerecorded CDs. This is a factor of 32 in favour of prerecorded CDs!
Why do I see everyone saying that piracy is the reason for the drop in record sales? I'm sure most/. readers are familiar with the great article that showed how silly this belief was, and this Boston Globe article has a very interesting statistic that relates:
It's also notable where the people who still buy music are buying it. Chains like Tower and Virgin are down 8 to 9 percent, according to SoundScan, while mass merchants such as Wal-Mart and Target (that is, stores that sell many other products besides CDs) are up 6 percent.
Imagine, CD sales UP in stores that sell them cheaply!
Albhy Galuten, vice president of new media for Universal Records: "I find it incredibly ironic that some people will spend an extra $1,000 on their hard drives just so they can store more music, but they won't pay for the music."
Where does this guy buy hard drives? Seems to me that a 40G HD is $150 Canadian. That's enough to store about 10000 songs, or about 1000 albums. That would cost $18000 dollars to buy those albums new, though, so even if you were paying $1000 for your hard drive, I could still see why you were doing it.
I haven't gotten to the Salon article yet... maybe it will cheer me up.
broader consumer notice and privacy concerns are showing up in a compromise Internet privacy legislation soon to be introduced by Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C.
Thank god somebody the/. community trusts is on the case...
The Federal Trade Commission has received complaints about the software, though it won't say how many or for which programs.
Why on earth not? Why wouldn't the FTC notify consumers of potentially dangerous software?
The article recommends Ad-Aware (that's good), but doesn't say anything about KaZaA Lite (ooh, that's bad).
I disagree. I heard the hype, and managed to catch the film a while back in Toronto. I was intensely disappointed despite expecting nothing other than eye candy. It was entertaining, but to say it's in the same league as Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, or Castle of Cagliostro (other mainly action anime films), is a mistake. And far be it from me to complain about anime news on/. (I'm all for it), there have been more anime DVD releases that were a MUCH bigger deal than Spriggan. The biggest deal is Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Highly recommended (at least by me).
and then answer my subject line. Their own website states that "spyware is any software (that) employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called 'backchannel') without their knowledge or explicit permission." They also state that:
"The service downloads a collection of banner ads from a web server while you are online. As you use the KMD, the service rotates ads and intermittently polls the server for new ad collections. Statistics are sent to the webserver recording which ads were displayed and how often. This information is used to bill advertisers. It may also be used to target ads for you. For example, if you often click CD store ads, you will be shown more of these than pet store ads."
I don't remember giving them "explicit permission" to do all that. I know this is preaching to the choir, but I am stunned by the obvious contradictions on their website... Thank you to the above comment poster who pointed me to KaZaA Lite. I had not heard of it previous.
I hope not. Then any company could take away consumer's rights by just issuing warnings. What if I opened up a store with a big sign out front stating, "Warning! Homosexuals are not permitted to make purchases in this store." Something tells me I still might get into trouble... I don't have time right now to cite actual court cases, but it seems to me that consumers have basic rights, and that companies have to have damn good reasons for taking them away.
First of all, the phrase "begs the question" does NOT mean "raises the question". This is not a post that will only correct grammar, so please bear with me.
I think MS should stop attacking Open Source in the market and cite it as the competition the MS detractors have been calling for. Until Open Source starts pulling in more than a couple % of the desktop market, I don't think they have to worry about it being REAL competition, but APPARENT competition might actually do MS some good (as far as public image).
There would have been much more missing had Squaresoft stayed with Nintendo, namely content beyond a T (13+) rating, and also a game any bigger than would fit on a cartridge. Now that Nintendo has finally gone to a CD based system, Squaresoft is back on board. I look forward to kicking some Gamecube ass from my PS2.
I was sad to see that anime was shut out of the nominations, even in the "Best Animated Feature" category. I think "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust" was the only film eligible, but I think it was clearly better than "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" (one of the three films nominated in that category). However, I think the best animated films of the year weren't even declared eligible: "Jin Roh" and "Metropolis". I guess there's always next year...
KazaA may have a decentralized network but there still is the one authority distributing the client; if they go down, eventually the network they created will disintegrate.
I disagree. KaZaA has an installed user base of 30 million or so (or, at least, that's how many downloads of their software have been recorded on cnet, last I checked). Those 10's of millions of users aren't just going to uninstall their software if the network is still working (KaZaA claims the network is self-sustaining).
There is Gnutella, but I find more content on the Fast Track network, and that's what it's all about. I'm waiting patiently for the giFT project to release its OpenFT program, and then all this will be a moot point, as we'll have an open source, Fast Track-like network to play with.
The article mentions that one is protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act if one's disability prevents one from doing "major life activities", tasks which are "central to most people's daily lives". This woman didn't qualify as she was able to perform tasks at home and at work.
It seems to me, though, that your job would qualify as a "major life activity", and should fall under the umbrella of being able to care for (ie. support financially) oneself. At least she still has her job (I'm assuming).
No, I'm not the real Petet Gzowski. Long ago, and far away, I was trying to come up with a login name for something (Yahoo games, I think), and whatever I picked, it told me it was already taken. I reasoned that the majority of users of the service were American (or, at least, non-Canadian), so all I had to do was think of a Canadian personality and it shouldn't be taken. peter_gzowski was the first name I thought of, and lo and behold, it was unclaimed. From then on in, it was the user name of choice for me. This helps me avoid having annoying login names like mojojojo7687907.
That runs fast enough for me on moderate hardware (a standard 500 MHz sort of box). If Mozilla runs too slow for you, run Opera. FVWM may not have the nice desktop graphics of KDE or Gnome, but it doesn't have the overhead either. And learning to tweak out your.fvwm2rc file is half the fun!
The update to this story mentions that everything's ok because the WarpVision code has the GPL, but the Mplayer author contends that Mplayer is not GPL, hence the following quote from the Mplayer homepage:
They also claim to be GPL. They aren't because MPlayer that they modified, also isn't GPL. It has its own license. So that's another lie.
I recognize the following as MST3K fodder (I'm excluding ones mentioned above in this thread):
Wild World of Batwoman
Monster a-Go Go
Eegah ("Watch out for snakes!")
Hellcats (gives Manos a run for its money)
I Accuse My Parents ("I was torn from the thigh of Zeus!")
Also, according to Amazon.com, there are quite a few MST3K episodes on DVD. Here they are:
Eegah
Beginning of the End
Wild World of Batwoman
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
The Movie (This Island Earth)
For those of you who are in to the tape trading, I've found an even better resource: the MST3K Digital Archive Project (MST3K-DAP). This is an effort to encode every non-Rhino release digitally. You can download the episodes (assuming you have a high speed connection, the files are 700MB each or so).
First, why is it that when you transfer a package from one English speaking nation to another it is unlikely that whoever handling it doesn't speak English? I'm not sure I understand... Is it that we in Canada are a bunch of French-speaking yahoos, or is it that you think the only people who handle packages for UPS are immigrant workers?
Second, how does this guy get modded up as "Informative"? What is informative about this?!?
Slashdot Mirror
The Gord also prophesied the demise of the Xbox.
Side note: the author of the MMCEO mentioned that Sony & Nintendo could start a software war. I think it's already begun. Sony has employed the same "Greatest Hits" tactic with PS2 games that we last saw on PS1. Gran Turismo 3, Twisted Metal Black, ATV offroad Fury, and Dark Cloud are now $20 (USD). I can't wait for GTA3 to go on sale! The author also noted a 6 or 7 year turnover in game consoles. The PSX's 5 year endurance was unheard of at the time. I think a 2 or 3 year turnover is more accurate.
I mean, have you seen any scrolling shooters like R-Type lately, or adventures?
The last great scrolling shooter that I remember is Einhander for the PSX. As far as adventures, I think Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was supposed to be one of the great 2D adventure games (I never got into it much), and Klanoa was a great jump n' run for the PSX (haven't tried Klanoa 2 for PS2, but I hear it's also good). Tomba 1 & 2 are other good examples. I know that this is all Playstation-biased, but that's all I've owned for the last 3 years or so.
I am in Ontario, and from the story's link had surmised that the official town mascot was now the hoagie. Maybe their goose is cooked...
Sorry, my comment was meant for a thread farther up where a guy was asking what the point of the comparison when you could just buy a stand-alone player. I also think mplayer rocks.
What about DivX files? I've heard of some upcoming stand-alone players that play MPEG4 stuff, but they probably won't be cheap, and right now most DVD players play DVD/(S)VCD/mp3/CD. If you have a DVD drive on your computer anyway, and a 17" monitor (or TV output capabilities), then doesn't it make sense to find good software to make your computer an entertainment center? The biggest misconception that a lot of the movie industry has is that people don't want to watch movies on their computer monitor. As a student I do this all the time.
Gets to lay Kirsten Dunst!
I guess action truly is his reward...
but this ruling seems to be taking that right away. From the law.com article:
The court's ruling did not decide whether Nike's ads were false or misleading, instead leaving that for the trial court
This means the the court is NOT determining that Nike's statements constitute fraud, but shutting them up from making unpopular statements. I believe that Nike uses sweatshops, but I also think that they should be allowed to say that they don't, because I haven't gone to Indonesia or Guatemala and taken photographs of huge sweatshops that say 'Nike' on them. When someone has proof that they do use sweatshops (which many groups say that they do), and a court agrees with their proof, then Nike will have to say that they were big, fat, greedy liars (and then the American public will probably go on buying their products anyway, unfortunately).
Yeah, I would prefer a mouse to come rescue me, especially the Mighty sort.
for the first time, more blank CDs (1.1 billion) were sold last year than prerecorded CDs (968 million).
/. readers are familiar with the great article that showed how silly this belief was, and this Boston Globe article has a very interesting statistic that relates:
How can you draw any conclusions from comparing a product that costs $0.50 per unit to a product that costs $18 per unit? The above sentence shows that people are spending $550 million on blanck CDs and $17.4 BILLION on prerecorded CDs. This is a factor of 32 in favour of prerecorded CDs!
Why do I see everyone saying that piracy is the reason for the drop in record sales? I'm sure most
It's also notable where the people who still buy music are buying it. Chains like Tower and Virgin are down 8 to 9 percent, according to SoundScan, while mass merchants such as Wal-Mart and Target (that is, stores that sell many other products besides CDs) are up 6 percent.
Imagine, CD sales UP in stores that sell them cheaply!
Albhy Galuten, vice president of new media for Universal Records: "I find it incredibly ironic that some people will spend an extra $1,000 on their hard drives just so they can store more music, but they won't pay for the music."
Where does this guy buy hard drives? Seems to me that a 40G HD is $150 Canadian. That's enough to store about 10000 songs, or about 1000 albums. That would cost $18000 dollars to buy those albums new, though, so even if you were paying $1000 for your hard drive, I could still see why you were doing it.
I haven't gotten to the Salon article yet... maybe it will cheer me up.
From article:
/. community trusts is on the case...
broader consumer notice and privacy concerns are showing up in a compromise Internet privacy legislation soon to be introduced by Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-S.C.
Thank god somebody the
The Federal Trade Commission has received complaints about the software, though it won't say how many or for which programs.
Why on earth not? Why wouldn't the FTC notify consumers of potentially dangerous software?
The article recommends Ad-Aware (that's good), but doesn't say anything about KaZaA Lite (ooh, that's bad).
I disagree. I heard the hype, and managed to catch the film a while back in Toronto. I was intensely disappointed despite expecting nothing other than eye candy. It was entertaining, but to say it's in the same league as Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, or Castle of Cagliostro (other mainly action anime films), is a mistake. And far be it from me to complain about anime news on /. (I'm all for it), there have been more anime DVD releases that were a MUCH bigger deal than Spriggan. The biggest deal is Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Highly recommended (at least by me).
Read what KaZaA has to say about your privacy:
http://www.kazaa.com/en/privacy/index.htm
and then answer my subject line. Their own website states that "spyware is any software (that) employs a user's Internet connection in the background (the so-called 'backchannel') without their knowledge or explicit permission." They also state that:
"The service downloads a collection of banner ads from a web server while you are online. As you use the KMD, the service rotates ads and intermittently polls the server for new ad collections. Statistics are sent to the webserver recording which ads were displayed and how often. This information is used to bill advertisers. It may also be used to target ads for you. For example, if you often click CD store ads, you will be shown more of these than pet store ads."
I don't remember giving them "explicit permission" to do all that. I know this is preaching to the choir, but I am stunned by the obvious contradictions on their website... Thank you to the above comment poster who pointed me to KaZaA Lite. I had not heard of it previous.
I hope not. Then any company could take away consumer's rights by just issuing warnings. What if I opened up a store with a big sign out front stating, "Warning! Homosexuals are not permitted to make purchases in this store." Something tells me I still might get into trouble... I don't have time right now to cite actual court cases, but it seems to me that consumers have basic rights, and that companies have to have damn good reasons for taking them away.
First of all, the phrase "begs the question" does NOT mean "raises the question". This is not a post that will only correct grammar, so please bear with me.
I think MS should stop attacking Open Source in the market and cite it as the competition the MS detractors have been calling for. Until Open Source starts pulling in more than a couple % of the desktop market, I don't think they have to worry about it being REAL competition, but APPARENT competition might actually do MS some good (as far as public image).
There would have been much more missing had Squaresoft stayed with Nintendo, namely content beyond a T (13+) rating, and also a game any bigger than would fit on a cartridge. Now that Nintendo has finally gone to a CD based system, Squaresoft is back on board. I look forward to kicking some Gamecube ass from my PS2.
I was sad to see that anime was shut out of the nominations, even in the "Best Animated Feature" category. I think "Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust" was the only film eligible, but I think it was clearly better than "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" (one of the three films nominated in that category). However, I think the best animated films of the year weren't even declared eligible: "Jin Roh" and "Metropolis". I guess there's always next year...
KazaA may have a decentralized network but there still is the one authority distributing the client; if they go down, eventually the network they created will disintegrate.
I disagree. KaZaA has an installed user base of 30 million or so (or, at least, that's how many downloads of their software have been recorded on cnet, last I checked). Those 10's of millions of users aren't just going to uninstall their software if the network is still working (KaZaA claims the network is self-sustaining).
There is Gnutella, but I find more content on the Fast Track network, and that's what it's all about. I'm waiting patiently for the giFT project to release its OpenFT program, and then all this will be a moot point, as we'll have an open source, Fast Track-like network to play with.
The article mentions that one is protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act if one's disability prevents one from doing "major life activities", tasks which are "central to most people's daily lives". This woman didn't qualify as she was able to perform tasks at home and at work.
It seems to me, though, that your job would qualify as a "major life activity", and should fall under the umbrella of being able to care for (ie. support financially) oneself. At least she still has her job (I'm assuming).
No, I'm not the real Petet Gzowski. Long ago, and far away, I was trying to come up with a login name for something (Yahoo games, I think), and whatever I picked, it told me it was already taken. I reasoned that the majority of users of the service were American (or, at least, non-Canadian), so all I had to do was think of a Canadian personality and it shouldn't be taken. peter_gzowski was the first name I thought of, and lo and behold, it was unclaimed. From then on in, it was the user name of choice for me. This helps me avoid having annoying login names like mojojojo7687907.
Wasn't there an episode of the X-Files with alien robotic cockroaches doing research on our people? Hmmm... Life imitates Art (or at least fiction).
That runs fast enough for me on moderate hardware (a standard 500 MHz sort of box). If Mozilla runs too slow for you, run Opera. FVWM may not have the nice desktop graphics of KDE or Gnome, but it doesn't have the overhead either. And learning to tweak out your .fvwm2rc file is half the fun!
The update to this story mentions that everything's ok because the WarpVision code has the GPL, but the Mplayer author contends that Mplayer is not GPL, hence the following quote from the Mplayer homepage:
They also claim to be GPL. They aren't because MPlayer that they modified, also isn't GPL. It has its own license. So that's another lie.
I think a trebuchet for Christmas would be fantastic! ~$100 USD. Ahh, the power to smite mine enemies from afar... what more could a geek ask for?
I recognize the following as MST3K fodder (I'm excluding ones mentioned above in this thread):
Wild World of Batwoman
Monster a-Go Go
Eegah ("Watch out for snakes!")
Hellcats (gives Manos a run for its money)
I Accuse My Parents ("I was torn from the thigh of Zeus!")
Also, according to Amazon.com, there are quite a few MST3K episodes on DVD. Here they are:
Eegah
Beginning of the End
Wild World of Batwoman
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
The Movie (This Island Earth)
For those of you who are in to the tape trading, I've found an even better resource: the MST3K Digital Archive Project (MST3K-DAP). This is an effort to encode every non-Rhino release digitally. You can download the episodes (assuming you have a high speed connection, the files are 700MB each or so).
First, why is it that when you transfer a package from one English speaking nation to another it is unlikely that whoever handling it doesn't speak English? I'm not sure I understand... Is it that we in Canada are a bunch of French-speaking yahoos, or is it that you think the only people who handle packages for UPS are immigrant workers?
Second, how does this guy get modded up as "Informative"? What is informative about this?!?