I suppose this stuff sorta comes round-trip then huh? I mean, most of the electronics in my house are MADE in Asia as well...
IMHO, given the documentaries I've seen about the production and labor practises used in high-tech, textile, and plain-old consumer products manufacturing in Asia (specifically China), recycling old computers is the least of their concerns.
The reason countries like China can build consumer products so cheaply is the lack (or non-existance) of environmental protection and labor standards.
Sure, I think recycling is good whenever possible, and I recycle in my house. But to say that China's problem is caused by first-world consumers - I have a problem with that.
I don't have much sympathy for people and governments that do it to themselves in the name of profits...
For comparison, Microcell in Canada (one of Canada's 2 GSM providers) also gouges people for additional digital services.
$0.10 per SMS message, and $0.03 per KB of GPRS data.
Yes, sending/receiving that same 150k via GPRS would cost me $4.50 here.
Rather than pick up the occasional bit of data traffic from me, I have absolutely no use for their service at that price. I'll use their voice service (at least until they go under), but it's not surprising that customers are mad.
SMS between customers on the same network used to be free until they started gouging for that too...
The point of putting the class-action lawsuit together is not to get any huge financial settlement.
The point is to give the company so much bad PR that they're willing to do whatever it takes to fix the problem.
Even FILING a class-action suit, is usually enough to make the company look like idiots in the media, and convince their shareholders to whack the boardmembers with the rolled up newspaper and get them to fix the problems.
It's pretty damn obvious that Palm was hoping they wouldn't get caught... And now is relying on marketing-lingo lawyerspeak that has no relation to the actual capabilities of their hardware.
You know, when technology companies treat their customers as fools, it's usually the sign of a technology company that's going to be appearing on a certain f*ckedcompany.com site shortly...
Note to future marketing gurus: BSing tech-savvy consumers is not a wise career move...
The audio for the X-men trailer seemed very "Swooshy", like the channels are slightly out of phase or something (or extremely low bitrate with poor compression).
If the RIAA wants to go after websites, they'll hire some outside company to do it, not use their own servers...
If they wanna prosecute people, they'll hire "investigators" who will probably work out of their homes on cable/DSL modems on any ISP in the country.
If they're allowed to DOS the P2P connections, they'll hire (or create) some big backbone-sized cybercop network host that will be able to deliver the attacks from a wide variety of (probably spoofed and constantly changing) IPs.
The only thing that blocking RIAA.org will do is maybe not allow their secretary to connect to the ISP's customers...
One of the other problems with Japanese DVDs is that the region coding on some of them makes no sense.
I'm a big fan of Japanese pop music, yet when I buy a DVD of it, it's nearly always coded region 2 only.
I can understand them coding animated series region 2 only because they want north american studios to license/release them.
Since there's next to no reason to release japanese music in north america, you'd think they could add region 1 as well and maybe get a few more international sales.
I suppose it doesn't really matter in the longrun though, as people like me own region-free players anyway, but it would be nice if they clued-in.
As for the price, it's more a product of what the market is used to as opposed to the cost or worth of the product.
Consumers in Japan are used to paying high prices for new releases - until some studio breaks down and starts selling the DVDs for $15 each for a new release (unlikely to happen - nobody wants to depress the market like that), prices will stay high.
It's not unusual for a box-set of animation DVDs to cost the equivilent of $400 US in Japan. When those same titles are released in the US, the box is usually under $100 because there's no way most US fans would even think about paying $400 for 4 or 5 DVDs.
I'd really like a system like this for a desktop PC - a proximity tag which would automatically unlock the screensaver when I get within 6 feet of the machine, and automatically re-lock when I move away.
I don't particularly need the encryption side of things, I just don't want anyone messing with my machine in my office.
Anyone know of such a device for less than a small fortune?
I'd just like to say that Wil is a class-act. I have a lot of respect for celebrities that know how to handle fame gracefully, and even more for those who know how to set priorities in their life for what really matters.
Fame is fleeting - family lasts forever...
It's gotta be twice as difficult to be an actor with a wife and kids and keep everything together. Wil seems to be doing just fine.
N.
Re:Card counting is fair
on
MIT vs. Las Vegas
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Sorry,
If they don't like card counters in the game, they should drop the game from their floor, or modify the game's rules so they can maintain their advantage without kicking people out.
The whole idea of being able to kick out people who have a perceived advantage rubs me the wrong way... If they're cheating, arrest them - otherwise the game is there to play, so play it.
Infact, the first thought I had was a Invader Zim flashback to Megadoomer - two kids playing and when one has a perceived advantage, the other yells "I'm not gonna play with you any more!"
The RIAA is secret planning a new music delivery system which is implanted directly into your skull! With wires connecting directly to your brain, they will use a digital representation of sound waves to trigger nerve cells to fire and thus reproduce the sound with crystal clarity.
Satellite delivery of digital music data will beam directly into the small dish-shaped implant in your forehead (the dish may be spray-painted flesh-tone to account for ethnic asthetics).
Incorperated into this system is a sophisticated digital rights management system "BrainSTRAIN" (Brain Secure Transmission And Integrated Metering). Should you fail to pay your BrainSTRAIN bill, the system, will beam country music to your, gradually increasing the volume until a payment is made.
FORTUNATELY there IS a solution developed by Canadian hackers who have not yet come under the loathsome grip of the U.S. DMCA legislation.
Using sophisticated Canadian engineering technology, an advanced signal-blocking device utilizing common, off-the-shelf hardware has been fabricated for cranial signal blocking.
Referred to by experts as a "TinFoil Hat", this technology may be all that can save us from corporate broadcast tyranny.
WE pay their salaries, WE pay their employees, WE pay their artists when WE buy their products.
If they get us sufficiently mad, WE will not spend our hard-earned money on their products any more and THEY will feel it.
It's about time to organize a month-long media boycott. Show the "big boys" exactly how much power we have over "their business". Pick a nice date like January, 2003, and just swear off ANY CD/Movie Ticket/DVD purchases for a month.
Easy to do - if you wanna watch a movie or listen to some music, just borrow it from a friend, but don't spend a RETAIL DIME purchasing anything.
Well, old (and I do stress the OLD) Fritz isn't going to be around forever... Hopefully when he moves on he'll be replaced by someone younger and more in-tune with reality.
I think the Boston Strangler's days are long since over... Perhaps it's time he realized it.
Well, that's the reason my company is bailing out of Real's products and going windows media (well, the 2nd reason I suppose):
1. Real's server license costs and arm and a leg. Thousands of dollars a year. Windows Media server can be installed (for now) for free on MS Server operating systems.
2. Real's player is an absolute pain in the ass to set up. Have to dodge around dozens of registration pages, email address requests, deselecting "additional bonus spam", etc. Then you get bombarded with advertising, and disabled features.
Windows media - just doubleclick on the link on MS's web site, and it's installed. Done.
Real REALLY dropped the ball on streaming media - they used to have a near monopoly on it, but the additional crap they shoveled on us made it useless.
I had nearly the same experience. Didn't know it was anime, but I loved the stories and the animation style. Starblazers (Yamato) was the first that I remember watching as much as I could.
I suppose I turned into an anime snob too, but more against dubs (ya, dubs suck), and genres (I have no time for pokemon, dragonball, ninja scroll, etc).
I find myself watching less and less anime though, I don't know if that's because I'm getting older, or because everything is going domestic and just isn't as cool as it used to be when it was obscure and exciting (the golden age of fansubs).
A local computer reviewer had a bit on this unit - said it was nearly impossible to get the earpiece/mic unit to stay on the site of their head, and that they found it uncomfortably heavy.
I'd prefer something that used a small in-ear speaker/mic combination (something like my pair of Sony EX70LPs, although those don't have mics) and a small pager-sized beltpack.
Besides looking like a spy, I think it would be less intrusive and not look like you had become a borg drone.
I want to be able to go into a store and say 'I'd like a screen 120" wide by 67" tall', and have them print it for me there on the spot, laminate it together, then just sell me a little re-usable "connection" module that clips on the edge of the screen to power/activate it.
If you want a different size screen, you just toss out the old one, keep the module and get a new one printed up.
Now I can finally back up my system! Been waiting years to do that;P
And of course, the obligatory RIAA/MPAA annoyance note...
"WOW, I could store like 100,000 MP3s, or around 200 DVD-style movies on ONE disc! Hope I can hook it up to my TV so I can RECORD LOTS of shows on it! Maybe even some new HIGH-DEFINITION signals!":)
That, or religious frenzy of some sort... I read once that the majority of major conflicts in history were started in one way or another by religion...
Posting to newsgroups with your email address is probably one of the easiest ways of getting on spamlists.
Like you, I NEVER use my real email when posting (certainly not in the headers), and if I find if necessary to have people contact me, I'll just create a unique address (I run my own mailserver), then delete it when I'm done.
It still suprises me how many people think that simply adding "NOSPAM", "REMOVE ME" "MYNAME DOT ORG" or something to their email address is going to protect them from getting on spam lists. Any programmer could whip up a short bit of code in about 5 seconds that would strip that sort of primitive obfuscation out and return a real address...
Oh yes, and I never use my real email address when going to a webpage to download software. If they need to send me a reg code, then again, I'll create a temporary throwaway for a few days.
I still get bits of spam, but probably only 3 or 4 messages a day. Not too bad.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose this stuff sorta comes round-trip then huh? I mean, most of the electronics in my house are MADE in Asia as well...
IMHO, given the documentaries I've seen about the production and labor practises used in high-tech, textile, and plain-old consumer products manufacturing in Asia (specifically China), recycling old computers is the least of their concerns.
The reason countries like China can build consumer products so cheaply is the lack (or non-existance) of environmental protection and labor standards.
Sure, I think recycling is good whenever possible, and I recycle in my house. But to say that China's problem is caused by first-world consumers - I have a problem with that.
I don't have much sympathy for people and governments that do it to themselves in the name of profits...
Argh, I have moderator points, but I must post ;P
We need a new generation of "tech-hicks" who can leave old computer junk on their lawns instead of broken-down old cars.
"That there is mah old Commodore 64! She don look like much, but she used to play a wikkid game o MULE"
(from the house) "Billy-Bob! Yer new 200gig-o-bite hard disk just come from Fedex!"
"DAMN WOMAN, go install mah raid server willya? Donna forget to stripe drives NTFS. None o that fat32!"
For comparison, Microcell in Canada (one of Canada's 2 GSM providers) also gouges people for additional digital services.
$0.10 per SMS message, and $0.03 per KB of GPRS data.
Yes, sending/receiving that same 150k via GPRS would cost me $4.50 here.
Rather than pick up the occasional bit of data traffic from me, I have absolutely no use for their service at that price. I'll use their voice service (at least until they go under), but it's not surprising that customers are mad.
SMS between customers on the same network used to be free until they started gouging for that too...
The point of putting the class-action lawsuit together is not to get any huge financial settlement.
The point is to give the company so much bad PR that they're willing to do whatever it takes to fix the problem.
Even FILING a class-action suit, is usually enough to make the company look like idiots in the media, and convince their shareholders to whack the boardmembers with the rolled up newspaper and get them to fix the problems.
It's worked before, and it will work again.
It's pretty damn obvious that Palm was hoping they wouldn't get caught... And now is relying on marketing-lingo lawyerspeak that has no relation to the actual capabilities of their hardware.
You know, when technology companies treat their customers as fools, it's usually the sign of a technology company that's going to be appearing on a certain f*ckedcompany.com site shortly...
Note to future marketing gurus: BSing tech-savvy consumers is not a wise career move...
N.
The audio for the X-men trailer seemed very "Swooshy", like the channels are slightly out of phase or something (or extremely low bitrate with poor compression).
Nasty... Not a good way to listen to a trailer.
I'm hoping for a subtitled release as well... I'm really not looking forward to a dub.
Whenever I watch any foreign movies, I _always_ watch in the language it was originally made in... The only way to get the real feeling, imho.
I doubt they'll release the subbed version theatrically though, so I'll just go the import route instead and buy the Japanese DVD.
N.
Do you think this makes a shred of a difference?
If the RIAA wants to go after websites, they'll hire some outside company to do it, not use their own servers...
If they wanna prosecute people, they'll hire "investigators" who will probably work out of their homes on cable/DSL modems on any ISP in the country.
If they're allowed to DOS the P2P connections, they'll hire (or create) some big backbone-sized cybercop network host that will be able to deliver the attacks from a wide variety of (probably spoofed and constantly changing) IPs.
The only thing that blocking RIAA.org will do is maybe not allow their secretary to connect to the ISP's customers...
One of the other problems with Japanese DVDs is that the region coding on some of them makes no sense.
I'm a big fan of Japanese pop music, yet when I buy a DVD of it, it's nearly always coded region 2 only.
I can understand them coding animated series region 2 only because they want north american studios to license/release them.
Since there's next to no reason to release japanese music in north america, you'd think they could add region 1 as well and maybe get a few more international sales.
I suppose it doesn't really matter in the longrun though, as people like me own region-free players anyway, but it would be nice if they clued-in.
As for the price, it's more a product of what the market is used to as opposed to the cost or worth of the product.
Consumers in Japan are used to paying high prices for new releases - until some studio breaks down and starts selling the DVDs for $15 each for a new release (unlikely to happen - nobody wants to depress the market like that), prices will stay high.
It's not unusual for a box-set of animation DVDs to cost the equivilent of $400 US in Japan. When those same titles are released in the US, the box is usually under $100 because there's no way most US fans would even think about paying $400 for 4 or 5 DVDs.
I'd really like a system like this for a desktop PC - a proximity tag which would automatically unlock the screensaver when I get within 6 feet of the machine, and automatically re-lock when I move away.
I don't particularly need the encryption side of things, I just don't want anyone messing with my machine in my office.
Anyone know of such a device for less than a small fortune?
I'd just like to say that Wil is a class-act. I have a lot of respect for celebrities that know how to handle fame gracefully, and even more for those who know how to set priorities in their life for what really matters.
Fame is fleeting - family lasts forever...
It's gotta be twice as difficult to be an actor with a wife and kids and keep everything together. Wil seems to be doing just fine.
N.
Sorry,
If they don't like card counters in the game, they should drop the game from their floor, or modify the game's rules so they can maintain their advantage without kicking people out.
The whole idea of being able to kick out people who have a perceived advantage rubs me the wrong way... If they're cheating, arrest them - otherwise the game is there to play, so play it.
Infact, the first thought I had was a Invader Zim flashback to Megadoomer - two kids playing and when one has a perceived advantage, the other yells "I'm not gonna play with you any more!"
Not so!
The RIAA is secret planning a new music delivery system which is implanted directly into your skull! With wires connecting directly to your brain, they will use a digital representation of sound waves to trigger nerve cells to fire and thus reproduce the sound with crystal clarity.
Satellite delivery of digital music data will beam directly into the small dish-shaped implant in your forehead (the dish may be spray-painted flesh-tone to account for ethnic asthetics).
Incorperated into this system is a sophisticated digital rights management system "BrainSTRAIN" (Brain Secure Transmission And Integrated Metering). Should you fail to pay your BrainSTRAIN bill, the system, will beam country music to your, gradually increasing the volume until a payment is made.
FORTUNATELY there IS a solution developed by Canadian hackers who have not yet come under the loathsome grip of the U.S. DMCA legislation.
Using sophisticated Canadian engineering technology, an advanced signal-blocking device utilizing common, off-the-shelf hardware has been fabricated for cranial signal blocking.
Referred to by experts as a "TinFoil Hat", this technology may be all that can save us from corporate broadcast tyranny.
THANK YOU - THANK YOU - THANK YOU!
;P
If I had moderator status right now, you'd be getting a +1 for "insightful"
This one is a keeper (and completely accurate IMHO).
Lol
Because I work in the Film and Television industry, and do this stuff day in and day out, but DAMN...
At the bare minimum, get a farking Microphone and a couple of lights...
That they work for US.
WE pay their salaries, WE pay their employees, WE pay their artists when WE buy their products.
If they get us sufficiently mad, WE will not spend our hard-earned money on their products any more and THEY will feel it.
It's about time to organize a month-long media boycott. Show the "big boys" exactly how much power we have over "their business". Pick a nice date like January, 2003, and just swear off ANY CD/Movie Ticket/DVD purchases for a month.
Easy to do - if you wanna watch a movie or listen to some music, just borrow it from a friend, but don't spend a RETAIL DIME purchasing anything.
Well, old (and I do stress the OLD) Fritz isn't going to be around forever... Hopefully when he moves on he'll be replaced by someone younger and more in-tune with reality.
I think the Boston Strangler's days are long since over... Perhaps it's time he realized it.
Well, that's the reason my company is bailing out of Real's products and going windows media (well, the 2nd reason I suppose):
1. Real's server license costs and arm and a leg. Thousands of dollars a year. Windows Media server can be installed (for now) for free on MS Server operating systems.
2. Real's player is an absolute pain in the ass to set up. Have to dodge around dozens of registration pages, email address requests, deselecting "additional bonus spam", etc. Then you get bombarded with advertising, and disabled features.
Windows media - just doubleclick on the link on MS's web site, and it's installed. Done.
Real REALLY dropped the ball on streaming media - they used to have a near monopoly on it, but the additional crap they shoveled on us made it useless.
I had nearly the same experience. Didn't know it was anime, but I loved the stories and the animation style. Starblazers (Yamato) was the first that I remember watching as much as I could.
I suppose I turned into an anime snob too, but more against dubs (ya, dubs suck), and genres (I have no time for pokemon, dragonball, ninja scroll, etc).
I find myself watching less and less anime though, I don't know if that's because I'm getting older, or because everything is going domestic and just isn't as cool as it used to be when it was obscure and exciting (the golden age of fansubs).
A local computer reviewer had a bit on this unit - said it was nearly impossible to get the earpiece/mic unit to stay on the site of their head, and that they found it uncomfortably heavy.
I'd prefer something that used a small in-ear speaker/mic combination (something like my pair of Sony EX70LPs, although those don't have mics) and a small pager-sized beltpack.
Besides looking like a spy, I think it would be less intrusive and not look like you had become a borg drone.
I want to be able to go into a store and say 'I'd like a screen 120" wide by 67" tall', and have them print it for me there on the spot, laminate it together, then just sell me a little re-usable "connection" module that clips on the edge of the screen to power/activate it.
If you want a different size screen, you just toss out the old one, keep the module and get a new one printed up.
And it's starting to sound very, very possible...
Now I can finally back up my system! Been waiting years to do that ;P
:)
And of course, the obligatory RIAA/MPAA annoyance note...
"WOW, I could store like 100,000 MP3s, or around 200 DVD-style movies on ONE disc! Hope I can hook it up to my TV so I can RECORD LOTS of shows on it! Maybe even some new HIGH-DEFINITION signals!"
Technology marches on...
That, or religious frenzy of some sort... I read once that the majority of major conflicts in history were started in one way or another by religion...
Well, Apple does have to protect their case design, after all, it does generate a large portion of their sales for the interior decorating crowd...
Posting to newsgroups with your email address is probably one of the easiest ways of getting on spamlists.
Like you, I NEVER use my real email when posting (certainly not in the headers), and if I find if necessary to have people contact me, I'll just create a unique address (I run my own mailserver), then delete it when I'm done.
It still suprises me how many people think that simply adding "NOSPAM", "REMOVE ME" "MYNAME DOT ORG" or something to their email address is going to protect them from getting on spam lists. Any programmer could whip up a short bit of code in about 5 seconds that would strip that sort of primitive obfuscation out and return a real address...
Oh yes, and I never use my real email address when going to a webpage to download software. If they need to send me a reg code, then again, I'll create a temporary throwaway for a few days.
I still get bits of spam, but probably only 3 or 4 messages a day. Not too bad.