I agree with you, Americans have a very high opinion of sport. I think this is because the US motto is "let the best one win", which is exactly what sport is about. Sport (competition) and capitalism are close things - no wonder the US likes sport so much.
Problem is, you can't put a different watermark on every CD you produce. Since all CDs are perfect copy, they would all carry the same watermark. So what this watermark would be good for ? To know that a MP3 files has been ripped from a CD ? You already know that. Even if the watermark is different for every CD, there will be no link between the watermark and the CD buyer, so you can't use it to prevent piracy.
To me watermarking is only good when selling music online, because you can put the name of the buyer in the watermark. But for CD it is really useless.
Nope, I think it's the RIAA thing again : "we can control things". They still don't understand that you can't control MP3 because it is a basic and "open" (ahem) technology. Any decent programmer can make a ripper or port it's own version of the reference ISO MPEG encoder. Then the results is just a file you can save/archive/upload/download on other open medium such as HTTP or FTP.
So there's no way they can enforce their system. As long as music is made of sound waves, it will be possible to record it, compress it and distribute it digitally, without any control. For the RIAA scheme to work, they would have to control one part of the MP3 chain :
- sound source : at one moment or another it still is plain sound (digital or analog), so even if it is crypted/signed there's always a way to get it "in clear". Beside, rippers still work on 100% of the audio CD on the market at this time, which still leaves a huge quantity of unsecured audio - encoder : the source is public, even if patents are in it, you can still make an illegal one or distribute it in a software patent free country (see BladeEnc). Beside, other format than MP3 could be made as audio compression is more and more mainstream - storage : hard drive/CDR/tapes, no way to control that - distribution : FTP/HTTP are not controllable - players : the source code is out too, so anyone with decent programming skill can make one
So I don't see how they can stop anyone from ripping CD's a trading MP3. Illegal as it is, it is impossible to enforce.
Well yes, but they still are in a dead-end, they know it. And as WWI has shown, living in trenches under endless bombing (artillery at this time) doesn't make a good moral. WWI was famous for all the rebellion that were crushed by mass death-penalty. I think NATO should work more on psychological warfare, it's cheap and painless. No army likes having to hide endlessly without even the possibility to fire-back.
That's what I do - setting the threshold to -1 . Yet the whole idea of "moderation" is bugging me. I agree with you that this is the best moderation system around, yet best is not perfect.
It's a little like the Web content rating. Making it optionnal and on a voluntary basis sounds a good idea at first : people who want to filter can filter, those who don't want don't. People who don't want to rate their pages don't have to either. Problem is : what if a governement (China/Iran/whatever) decides to filter it's big Web gateway using this system ? People who don't want to filter end up having filtered (= censored) content, and people who rated their page thinking they participated into an open/free filtering system end-up helping bad guys censor information "by force".
My point is : the less easy it is to censor the Internet, the better it is. Keep this moderation away !!!
MySQL is fast but it has some severe limitation, especially NO NESTED SELECT (damn, how can you make anything serious without that ? What's so difficult implementing this ?)
I think this whole moderation stuff is wrong. The only thing that needs moderation on the Internet is advertisement. As for flamebait and such, if you don't like it, don't read it or don't reply to it.
I think you forget the "moral" factor. You won't have to remove the 10% of the forces because after some time most soldiers will flee and send Milosevic propaganda to hell. It's one thing to defend your country against an agressor (as they think they are doing), it's another thing fight the whole world with some outdated equipement. They know they don't stand a chance against NATO.
Yes, never underestimating the enemy is important, but Linux is different from all the threats Microsoft faced, as it can't be killed (it's open source, and there's always be people wanting to play with it), it can't be bought too, and it is as cheap as a product can be (free !). This all defeat most commercial strategies guys un suits can think of.
There's still one good weapon effective against Linux : software patents. If one day opperating systems require the use of an algorithm patented by Microsoft, Linux will be in deep troubles. Imagine IPv74 (whatever it is) becomes de-facto network standard and use a patented Microsoft algorithm : Linux can't support it.
A company that has over 90% of market share, buy competition instead of competing with it, and use it's control over a standard (win32) to control other computer market is not "playing fair" and has to be stopped. You don't let an adult beat a kid because "it's fair competition". Why would you let Microsoft beat smaller defenseless companies ?
Yes, and even with that you are supposed to retire (pretty soon compared to Civilization).
I don't know why there is a time limit there. Some people play agressively and win fast, some people (me included) prefer to develop first, then crush the enemy with high-tech weapons. That takes time, and I don't know why this strategy should be penalized.
Well, all the civ are limited to one planet, that could be cool to have several planets to control (with a switch button to move through planets). Also starbases would be usefull.
And a REALLY important feature I want : unlimited time to play ! I hate having to hurry to win because of this stuppid "retirement" time. I'm a slow player, so what, if I win ?
K6, k?-2 and k6-III all have SMP, but it's OpenPIC standard instead of the Intel one (don't remember the name). Since Intel was the only company to design affordable Socket 7 SMP chipset (that good old 430HX chipset) there are no SMP k6, but it is theorically feasible.
Well, if you buy one of those bi-processor motherboard with a Ultra 2 SCSI chip integrated, it cost as much as the Ultra 2 SCSI card by Adaptec alone ! With the same SCSI chipset. So if you go for high-end equipement 2 CPU is definitely cheaper speed/$ than 1 CPU (it used to be the opposite a few years ago).
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It isn't just you - racism against white males is considered "politically correct".
http://www.theonion.com/onion3520/second_amendm
They can't say it better
I agree with you, Americans have a very high opinion of sport. I think this is because the US motto is "let the best one win", which is exactly what sport is about. Sport (competition) and capitalism are close things - no wonder the US likes sport so much.
Problem is, you can't put a different watermark on every CD you produce. Since all CDs are perfect copy, they would all carry the same watermark. So what this watermark would be good for ? To know that a MP3 files has been ripped from a CD ? You already know that. Even if the watermark is different for every CD, there will be no link between the watermark and the CD buyer, so you can't use it to prevent piracy.
To me watermarking is only good when selling music online, because you can put the name of the buyer in the watermark. But for CD it is really useless.
Nope, I think it's the RIAA thing again : "we can control things". They still don't understand that you can't control MP3 because it is a basic and "open" (ahem) technology. Any decent programmer can make a ripper or port it's own version of the reference ISO MPEG encoder. Then the results is just a file you can save/archive/upload/download on other open medium such as HTTP or FTP.
So there's no way they can enforce their system. As long as music is made of sound waves, it will be possible to record it, compress it and distribute it digitally, without any control. For the RIAA scheme to work, they would have to control one part of the MP3 chain :
- sound source : at one moment or another it still is plain sound (digital or analog), so even if it is crypted/signed there's always a way to get it "in clear". Beside, rippers still work on 100% of the audio CD on the market at this time, which still leaves a huge quantity of unsecured audio
- encoder : the source is public, even if patents are in it, you can still make an illegal one or distribute it in a software patent free country (see BladeEnc). Beside, other format than MP3 could be made as audio compression is more and more mainstream
- storage : hard drive/CDR/tapes, no way to control that
- distribution : FTP/HTTP are not controllable
- players : the source code is out too, so anyone with decent programming skill can make one
So I don't see how they can stop anyone from ripping CD's a trading MP3. Illegal as it is, it is impossible to enforce.
Well yes, but they still are in a dead-end, they know it. And as WWI has shown, living in trenches under endless bombing (artillery at this time) doesn't make a good moral. WWI was famous for all the rebellion that were crushed by mass death-penalty. I think NATO should work more on psychological warfare, it's cheap and painless. No army likes having to hide endlessly without even the possibility to fire-back.
That's what I do - setting the threshold to -1 . Yet the whole idea of "moderation" is bugging me. I agree with you that this is the best moderation system around, yet best is not perfect.
It's a little like the Web content rating. Making it optionnal and on a voluntary basis sounds a good idea at first : people who want to filter can filter, those who don't want don't. People who don't want to rate their pages don't have to either. Problem is : what if a governement (China/Iran/whatever) decides to filter it's big Web gateway using this system ? People who don't want to filter end up having filtered (= censored) content, and people who rated their page thinking they participated into an open/free filtering system end-up helping bad guys censor information "by force".
My point is : the less easy it is to censor the Internet, the better it is. Keep this moderation away !!!
MySQL is fast but it has some severe limitation, especially NO NESTED SELECT (damn, how can you make anything serious without that ? What's so difficult implementing this ?)
I think this whole moderation stuff is wrong. The only thing that needs moderation on the Internet is advertisement. As for flamebait and such, if you don't like it, don't read it or don't reply to it.
I think you forget the "moral" factor. You won't have to remove the 10% of the forces because after some time most soldiers will flee and send Milosevic propaganda to hell. It's one thing to defend your country against an agressor (as they think they are doing), it's another thing fight the whole world with some outdated equipement. They know they don't stand a chance against NATO.
Yes, never underestimating the enemy is important, but Linux is different from all the threats Microsoft faced, as it can't be killed (it's open source, and there's always be people wanting to play with it), it can't be bought too, and it is as cheap as a product can be (free !). This all defeat most commercial strategies guys un suits can think of.
There's still one good weapon effective against Linux : software patents. If one day opperating systems require the use of an algorithm patented by Microsoft, Linux will be in deep troubles. Imagine IPv74 (whatever it is) becomes de-facto network standard and use a patented Microsoft algorithm : Linux can't support it.
Free market is like free communism. Nice idea. Doesn't work.
Murphy's law :
"Things let to themselves tend to go to from bad to worse." That's why market has to be regulated by somebody or someone.
A company that has over 90% of market share, buy competition instead of competing with it, and use it's control over a standard (win32) to control other computer market is not "playing fair" and has to be stopped. You don't let an adult beat a kid because "it's fair competition". Why would you let Microsoft beat smaller defenseless companies ?
Yes, and even with that you are supposed to retire (pretty soon compared to Civilization).
I don't know why there is a time limit there. Some people play agressively and win fast, some people (me included) prefer to develop first, then crush the enemy with high-tech weapons. That takes time, and I don't know why this strategy should be penalized.
Well, all the civ are limited to one planet, that could be cool to have several planets to control (with a switch button to move through planets). Also starbases would be usefull.
And a REALLY important feature I want : unlimited time to play ! I hate having to hurry to win because of this stuppid "retirement" time. I'm a slow player, so what, if I win ?
K6, k?-2 and k6-III all have SMP, but it's OpenPIC standard instead of the Intel one (don't remember the name). Since Intel was the only company to design affordable Socket 7 SMP chipset (that good old 430HX chipset) there are no SMP k6, but it is theorically feasible.
Well, if you buy one of those bi-processor motherboard with a Ultra 2 SCSI chip integrated, it cost as much as the Ultra 2 SCSI card by Adaptec alone ! With the same SCSI chipset. So if you go for high-end equipement 2 CPU is definitely cheaper speed/$ than 1 CPU (it used to be the opposite a few years ago).