I have a Casio Cassiopea EM-500, and at the moment it serves as a very expensive alarm-clock (tapping buttons in the morning to stop it when your half asleep is very effective at waking you up). A games console (Mame, NES, Sega etc). A web browser (ah except i lost my Infrared phone so not anymore). With some more memory i could use it as an mp3 player, or run doom or quake on it. The calendar function is to messy for me to bother using, i have my phone to keep phone numbers (which is the more logical place for them). And notes are much better on paper, not on low res screens. Really the problem with these things is the clumsiness. When you grab a scrap of paper or a notepad you really dont care, its just a case of scribble whatever down, but with a PDA you have to take more care, its a droppable thing so you have to hold it carefully, and it usually takes more than one attempt at entering data (yes even with the better handwriting recognition installed). tapping a keyboard is not too bad, but its still hard. I think the people to blame are the designers, they have no concept of designing a piece of software that anyone will actually use. Ive seen so many scheduling programs, all the way from that old data-bank watch to the newest PDAs and every single one looks identical to the other, they just don't work for everyone.. or infact most people. Its about time the software changed.
Helecopters can glide in some situations, since the rotors dont stop spinning when the engine fails, you can adjust the pitch in cleaver ways to allow you to go down reasonably slowly.
Please stop this DRM misinformation. DRM does not stand for "Digital Rights Management" it stands for "Digital Restriction Mechanisms". This mistake has been circulating around the internet for several years now and its about time its corrected. People's opinions are being tainted by this blunder as "Rights Management" sounds like a good idea. If you don't want people to accuse you of spreading RIAA FUD please stop propagating this name.
Apple computers feature DRM-free environments, Palladium is a non-DRM free environment. which sounds better?
Dont worry everyone, this isnt about censoring the internet - you see, they are putting it under the "hate speech" banner, so no-one will protest against it (if you protest then your classed as a racist/sexist/homophobic etc etc. so whos going to speak up?) its really just a hack to take our general freedom of speech away. Im surprised their not using the terrorism excuse - i guess thats getting old
Ok maybe ive missed something, what exactly are tablet PCs? why are they revolutionary? this is just a notebook with a stylus and maybe a wireless card. Like my PDA its going to be a bugger to write on (even with amazing handwriting recognition, writing is still slower than typing for most geeks.) It has a bigger screen - so what? so does a laptop. It can be used on the move? like my PDA? yes. WTF?? why wernt these things around before if their so amazing.
How does the internet handle voip and other streaming? surely it puts a massive strain on the network or are the major lines and routers so high-bandwidth that it doesnt care? what would happen if more people started using voip instead of the phone?
and cant you just change ports anyway? if you were using some sort of IM system anyway it wouldnt take long to negotiate a port number semi randomly.
Sorry.. why dont you just secure your network with encryption? Triangulation is a neat idea, but its just not going to work with so many obsticles (some moving) in a building. Why bother calibrating 1000's of square feet when you can just use a password?
What do you think the mobile-phone networks are used for? Oh, and when GPS-equipped phones become popular you can forget about your privacy altogether (the GPS position can be requested remotely by the phone company etc without you ever knowing. The microphone can be activated, and the phones can even play dead and _pretend_ to be turned off)
Well the government already knows where you are anyway if you have your phone on - obviously the phone has to logon to a cell and that connects it with your phone number (and potentially your name and address if your on a rental/contract). The government could be looking at this already without anyone's knowledge, certainly a technician or programmer for the phone company can, and probably they do, without anyone's knowledge. So already you can be tracked to with-in a cell, which could be quite close especially in a city.
When you physically move into another cell, the network must know witch transmitter to take over (this might only happen if your actually in a call im not sure) but that effectively means they are tracking signal strength of the surrounding transmitters so you could take a guess or use triangulation/geometry to figure out a more precise position - depending if a call is actually being made - this would be harder to pull off if you wanted to keep it secret (or avoid loosing your job) but its still possible.
Everyone knows that phones with GPS receivers will also take commands from the phone company/3rd party. At any time the phone is on, they'll be able to ask it for its position without the user even knowing. You never know, the phone could even _pretend_ to be turned off, yet still be giving out its position. You'd have to take out the battery or wrap it in foil.
Has anyone found any more sites with past future-predictions? I read one in 2000 on slashdot about future predictions from 1950 but i cant find the article, or any similar things on the net. I'm mainly looking for things from the mid 1900's. Some of them are pretty interesting, and even the bad ones are a great read.
As for helicopters, they are much harder to control than fixed-wing planes (well my only experiance is simulated). And its very easy to loose control. Back then, there was no way to make them easier to use, but now you could stick in a computer and reduce the controls to something easier than a car. Once everyone started using them then the sky would be just as crowded - dont forget, you cant stick helicopters in a traffic jam with a few feet between them, they need lots of space, and they need somewhere to land in an emergency, where? Also, the police cant try and stop them by fish-tailing or stinging, and no-one is going to agree to have police controllable remotes mandated in them.
Tivo did have some pretty evil marketing tactics - like updating software without users permission and removing features. Thats the sort of thing that makes me not want to buy a companies product. The media corporations dont want PVR's to be able to skip adverts, and record some premium content, so they would love to have them all chipped. Hopefully people will either build their own PVR or buy dodgy ones made in china etc that didnt have any restrictions (like DVD players). Although this is unlikely to happen. Whats most likely is that cable/digital/satelite providers will also provide PVRs built into their decoder boxes (well they already do) but make sure that they have control of what you can and cant record and do (they already do that too) with all these PVRs being given away free with subscriptions, they will saturate the market and we will all be stuck with peices of shit that dont do what we want.
Im pretty sure there are more TV's than Internet terminals. Plus lots of people gather round one tv where as they're less likely to do that with the internet. TV news is probably better for big events like september 11th because they interrupt normal programs. http://www.televisionarchive.org has all the major world tv channels on that morning - most of them had no idea what was going on, they just sat there repeating what they knew, but they certainly had it before the internet sites. (although some channels cough bbc didnt even pick it up until 20 mins later). TV is a much more logical way of delivering that sort of news - you can have as many people tuning in as you want with no degrading of the system.
Lets be honest, there are too types of people here, some are concerned about their rights and how these new laws will unfairly restrict them when they are trying to do perfectly legal things. The others are also worried about this, but they are also unhappy because they know they will be loosing a free ride that they've been enjoying for years. I'm the second type. While some people might settle for a compromise that could involve DRM, and P2P hacking, i don't like it and i think its bad enough with the (early generation) DRM in DVD, and with judges coming down on napster. Maybe you think im a total asshole who's out just for my self. Maybe you think that im just as bad as the RIAA or MPAA. These people can, and will put the laws into place, and even if it was very closely monitored to ensure that law abiding people were protected, can you honestly say that you wouldn't feel violated in some way?
Protecting Your Digital Restrictions Mechanisms Rights...?
How does this make any sense, do DRM systems now count as life-forms with rights? This is just a plot - when they start implementing hampsters that are glued to DVDs, trained to bite you if you try to copy the media, we wont be able to do anything because now they'll have 'rights' too. We wont be able to crack DRM systems because that will be a violation of privacy rights. First they want to stick Digital Restriction Mechanisms on us and now they want to give these things rights too??
Well, seeing as nowadays you can be prosecuted for things you did whilst outside a country i think its time that our governments came up with a system for warning you before you go to visit said country, that plans to arrest you when you land at the airport. Maybe there should even be a legal requirement/human right (UN etc.) to protect you from this and invalidate the charge if you weren't warned before entering the country.. or maybe im going on about a whole load of crap. (and obviously if you go to a bad bad country that doesnt give a crap about human rights *cough* america *cough* then your government should send some sectret soldiers in to break you out of prison and take you home.:)
Can we cut the crap here and start calling them Digital Restriction Mechanisms or something. If the whole of slashdot starts doing it, then maybe other sites/media will take it up. If anyone asks you what it stands for its not Rights Management, this is a cheap marketing tactic, dont let then get away with it.
How comfortably could you live off interest/investments from 1bn? (assuming you don't do anything risky) Don't forget, your going to need to pay wages for your servants and techs (your not going to maintain your 500 machine LAN yourself, especially when you have LAN-parties to host) and that big mansion doesn't come cheap. How much is aviation fuel these days?
I knew it, its all a cheap tv marketing scam. They put 2 doors there so they get to do another live show.
Host: so, what is behind door number 2, is it?
a) A Mummy b) My Mummy or c) The Mummy's Rachel Weisz!
find out after the break!
yes, thats right, The Mummy star Rachel Weisz has been planted into the chamber just so she can pop out, and they get to have some sort of celeb to boost ratings (they blew the back wall off in secret - its television, thats what they do. And yes, she is thin enough to fit down that passage:)
Also planned is a little skit at the end to market coca-cola where a mummy chases them off the stage and accidently gets unwrapped to reveal a giant can... so exciting
No you listen to me you dumb fucking redard Bush voting red-neck. At one point the cable has to split to go to the 2 different ears for the headphones, so you tap the f-ing wires separately on those 2 branches, or you fucking tap the speaker coils themselves. Hey, why not listen in mono, the FBI does on your phone. Go stick a coil up your ass, im sure it will pick up loads of crap.
You dont even need to cut the wires and risk being discovered, you can use a pick-up coil to get the signal, or at the worst you could stick mics to the headphones. Ohh, and i hope they remembered to glue the screws on the back of the player, otherwise you could just take it apart, copy the disk and put it back together again.
I never really understood how you could review a song by britney spears any way. "Oops, I did it again, i crapped some music out my ass."?
I have to agree with all your points. But you missed the one good thing about DVD - you can rent a disk for hardly anything and then rip a perfect copy onto your pc. VHS is analog so you're gonna loose quality (and rental copies are bad anyway) and the laser disk video track is analog too (plus, its hard to rip a laser disk without some pretty good equipment).
Yes, there are some very bad compression artifacts on DVD, and yes its filled up with alsorts of stupid copy-protection, but until someone comes up with a better digital format with no compression, no protection and a 1TB+ CD-sized disk with lots of titles availiable, its the only digital format we have.
I once thought like you, but then i saw this narrated by William Shatner! sweet..
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Casio Cassiopea EM-500, and at the moment it serves as a very expensive alarm-clock (tapping buttons in the morning to stop it when your half asleep is very effective at waking you up). A games console (Mame, NES, Sega etc). A web browser (ah except i lost my Infrared phone so not anymore). With some more memory i could use it as an mp3 player, or run doom or quake on it. The calendar function is to messy for me to bother using, i have my phone to keep phone numbers (which is the more logical place for them). And notes are much better on paper, not on low res screens. Really the problem with these things is the clumsiness. When you grab a scrap of paper or a notepad you really dont care, its just a case of scribble whatever down, but with a PDA you have to take more care, its a droppable thing so you have to hold it carefully, and it usually takes more than one attempt at entering data (yes even with the better handwriting recognition installed). tapping a keyboard is not too bad, but its still hard. I think the people to blame are the designers, they have no concept of designing a piece of software that anyone will actually use. Ive seen so many scheduling programs, all the way from that old data-bank watch to the newest PDAs and every single one looks identical to the other, they just don't work for everyone.. or infact most people. Its about time the software changed.
Helecopters can glide in some situations, since the rotors dont stop spinning when the engine fails, you can adjust the pitch in cleaver ways to allow you to go down reasonably slowly.
Please stop this DRM misinformation. DRM does not stand for "Digital Rights Management" it stands for "Digital Restriction Mechanisms". This mistake has been circulating around the internet for several years now and its about time its corrected. People's opinions are being tainted by this blunder as "Rights Management" sounds like a good idea. If you don't want people to accuse you of spreading RIAA FUD please stop propagating this name.
Apple computers feature DRM-free environments, Palladium is a non-DRM free environment. which sounds better?
Dont worry everyone, this isnt about censoring the internet - you see, they are putting it under the "hate speech" banner, so no-one will protest against it (if you protest then your classed as a racist/sexist/homophobic etc etc. so whos going to speak up?) its really just a hack to take our general freedom of speech away. Im surprised their not using the terrorism excuse - i guess thats getting old
Ok maybe ive missed something, what exactly are tablet PCs? why are they revolutionary? this is just a notebook with a stylus and maybe a wireless card. Like my PDA its going to be a bugger to write on (even with amazing handwriting recognition, writing is still slower than typing for most geeks.) It has a bigger screen - so what? so does a laptop. It can be used on the move? like my PDA? yes. WTF?? why wernt these things around before if their so amazing.
How does the internet handle voip and other streaming? surely it puts a massive strain on the network or are the major lines and routers so high-bandwidth that it doesnt care? what would happen if more people started using voip instead of the phone?
and cant you just change ports anyway? if you were using some sort of IM system anyway it wouldnt take long to negotiate a port number semi randomly.
lol you forget - the telephone stole business from the postal services.
Sorry.. why dont you just secure your network with encryption? Triangulation is a neat idea, but its just not going to work with so many obsticles (some moving) in a building. Why bother calibrating 1000's of square feet when you can just use a password?
What do you think the mobile-phone networks are used for? Oh, and when GPS-equipped phones become popular you can forget about your privacy altogether (the GPS position can be requested remotely by the phone company etc without you ever knowing. The microphone can be activated, and the phones can even play dead and _pretend_ to be turned off)
Sometimes you love someone very much but they hurt you too much, and you have to just leave.
Why the hell would he ever want to go back to the USA ever in his entire life ever?
Well the government already knows where you are anyway if you have your phone on - obviously the phone has to logon to a cell and that connects it with your phone number (and potentially your name and address if your on a rental/contract). The government could be looking at this already without anyone's knowledge, certainly a technician or programmer for the phone company can, and probably they do, without anyone's knowledge. So already you can be tracked to with-in a cell, which could be quite close especially in a city.
When you physically move into another cell, the network must know witch transmitter to take over (this might only happen if your actually in a call im not sure) but that effectively means they are tracking signal strength of the surrounding transmitters so you could take a guess or use triangulation/geometry to figure out a more precise position - depending if a call is actually being made - this would be harder to pull off if you wanted to keep it secret (or avoid loosing your job) but its still possible.
Everyone knows that phones with GPS receivers will also take commands from the phone company/3rd party. At any time the phone is on, they'll be able to ask it for its position without the user even knowing. You never know, the phone could even _pretend_ to be turned off, yet still be giving out its position. You'd have to take out the battery or wrap it in foil.
Has anyone found any more sites with past future-predictions? I read one in 2000 on slashdot about future predictions from 1950 but i cant find the article, or any similar things on the net. I'm mainly looking for things from the mid 1900's. Some of them are pretty interesting, and even the bad ones are a great read.
As for helicopters, they are much harder to control than fixed-wing planes (well my only experiance is simulated). And its very easy to loose control. Back then, there was no way to make them easier to use, but now you could stick in a computer and reduce the controls to something easier than a car. Once everyone started using them then the sky would be just as crowded - dont forget, you cant stick helicopters in a traffic jam with a few feet between them, they need lots of space, and they need somewhere to land in an emergency, where? Also, the police cant try and stop them by fish-tailing or stinging, and no-one is going to agree to have police controllable remotes mandated in them.
Tivo did have some pretty evil marketing tactics - like updating software without users permission and removing features. Thats the sort of thing that makes me not want to buy a companies product. The media corporations dont want PVR's to be able to skip adverts, and record some premium content, so they would love to have them all chipped. Hopefully people will either build their own PVR or buy dodgy ones made in china etc that didnt have any restrictions (like DVD players). Although this is unlikely to happen. Whats most likely is that cable/digital/satelite providers will also provide PVRs built into their decoder boxes (well they already do) but make sure that they have control of what you can and cant record and do (they already do that too) with all these PVRs being given away free with subscriptions, they will saturate the market and we will all be stuck with peices of shit that dont do what we want.
Im pretty sure there are more TV's than Internet terminals. Plus lots of people gather round one tv where as they're less likely to do that with the internet. TV news is probably better for big events like september 11th because they interrupt normal programs. http://www.televisionarchive.org has all the major world tv channels on that morning - most of them had no idea what was going on, they just sat there repeating what they knew, but they certainly had it before the internet sites. (although some channels cough bbc didnt even pick it up until 20 mins later). TV is a much more logical way of delivering that sort of news - you can have as many people tuning in as you want with no degrading of the system.
Lets be honest, there are too types of people here, some are concerned about their rights and how these new laws will unfairly restrict them when they are trying to do perfectly legal things. The others are also worried about this, but they are also unhappy because they know they will be loosing a free ride that they've been enjoying for years. I'm the second type. While some people might settle for a compromise that could involve DRM, and P2P hacking, i don't like it and i think its bad enough with the (early generation) DRM in DVD, and with judges coming down on napster. Maybe you think im a total asshole who's out just for my self. Maybe you think that im just as bad as the RIAA or MPAA. These people can, and will put the laws into place, and even if it was very closely monitored to ensure that law abiding people were protected, can you honestly say that you wouldn't feel violated in some way?
And which person are you?
Protecting Your Digital Restrictions Mechanisms Rights...?
How does this make any sense, do DRM systems now count as life-forms with rights? This is just a plot - when they start implementing hampsters that are glued to DVDs, trained to bite you if you try to copy the media, we wont be able to do anything because now they'll have 'rights' too. We wont be able to crack DRM systems because that will be a violation of privacy rights. First they want to stick Digital Restriction Mechanisms on us and now they want to give these things rights too??
Well, seeing as nowadays you can be prosecuted for things you did whilst outside a country i think its time that our governments came up with a system for warning you before you go to visit said country, that plans to arrest you when you land at the airport. Maybe there should even be a legal requirement/human right (UN etc.) to protect you from this and invalidate the charge if you weren't warned before entering the country.. or maybe im going on about a whole load of crap. (and obviously if you go to a bad bad country that doesnt give a crap about human rights *cough* america *cough* then your government should send some sectret soldiers in to break you out of prison and take you home. :)
Can we cut the crap here and start calling them Digital Restriction Mechanisms or something. If the whole of slashdot starts doing it, then maybe other sites/media will take it up. If anyone asks you what it stands for its not Rights Management, this is a cheap marketing tactic, dont let then get away with it.
This is pretty offtopic i know..
I would be soo paranoid of loosing 1bn dollars. There are so many things that could go wrong. Well.. just like everything else in my life
How comfortably could you live off interest/investments from 1bn? (assuming you don't do anything risky) Don't forget, your going to need to pay wages for your servants and techs (your not going to maintain your 500 machine LAN yourself, especially when you have LAN-parties to host) and that big mansion doesn't come cheap. How much is aviation fuel these days?
Yep thats fine with me, i'll just strip them out. No problem.
I knew it, its all a cheap tv marketing scam. They put 2 doors there so they get to do another live show.
:)
Host: so, what is behind door number 2, is it?
a) A Mummy
b) My Mummy
or c) The Mummy's Rachel Weisz!
find out after the break!
yes, thats right, The Mummy star Rachel Weisz has been planted into the chamber just so she can pop out, and they get to have some sort of celeb to boost ratings (they blew the back wall off in secret - its television, thats what they do. And yes, she is thin enough to fit down that passage
Also planned is a little skit at the end to market coca-cola where a mummy chases them off the stage and accidently gets unwrapped to reveal a giant can... so exciting
No you listen to me you dumb fucking redard Bush voting red-neck. At one point the cable has to split to go to the 2 different ears for the headphones, so you tap the f-ing wires separately on those 2 branches, or you fucking tap the speaker coils themselves. Hey, why not listen in mono, the FBI does on your phone. Go stick a coil up your ass, im sure it will pick up loads of crap.
:)
ROFL
You dont even need to cut the wires and risk being discovered, you can use a pick-up coil to get the signal, or at the worst you could stick mics to the headphones. Ohh, and i hope they remembered to glue the screws on the back of the player, otherwise you could just take it apart, copy the disk and put it back together again.
I never really understood how you could review a song by britney spears any way. "Oops, I did it again, i crapped some music out my ass."?
I have to agree with all your points. But you missed the one good thing about DVD - you can rent a disk for hardly anything and then rip a perfect copy onto your pc. VHS is analog so you're gonna loose quality (and rental copies are bad anyway) and the laser disk video track is analog too (plus, its hard to rip a laser disk without some pretty good equipment).
Yes, there are some very bad compression artifacts on DVD, and yes its filled up with alsorts of stupid copy-protection, but until someone comes up with a better digital format with no compression, no protection and a 1TB+ CD-sized disk with lots of titles availiable, its the only digital format we have.
I once thought like you, but then i saw this narrated by William Shatner! sweet..