That list looks pretty good. Mabey I didn't read enough into the links on the site, but I wonder where they got those list that they analyzed. It doesn't look like your usual, pop-music pushing fare. There are some good, and - gasp - original artists on there.
The White Stripes and The Strokes deserve their accolades, what with being the poster boys for the garage sound. Radiohead is, of course, always welcome in a top albums list. Blur was a welcome surprise, as I never heard much attention given to the album. Mabey I was asleep.
The real original artists on the list, however, are The Rapture and The Postal Service. Both have this techno rock blend going on that is great to hear in an era where most music sounds good. Definately buy both albums if you haven't. The Postal Service was a collaberation between two guys who sent tapes back and forth in the mail to create the album. One of them was the singer in Death Cab for Cutie. From what I heard, it was just sort of a fun side project never inteded for release, but they ended up liking the sound so they put out the record.
Man, give it a rest. You've been at this for years now, mabey a good resolution would be to give up. You've been banised to trolldom everywhere you post. I'm off to go drinking, woohoo!
Do you even know what you are talking about anymore?
Intermediate languages are essentialy a processor independant instruction set. You compile down to this instruction set and then let the virtual machine translate to the native instruction set, hence cross platform. These intermediate languages are binary and have no concept of decimal or hexidecimal.
Because we all know Apple has a proven track record of poorly designed products.
Come on. Quit posting lame, trollish comments. Apple products are consistently the most elegant pieces of equipment on the market, asthetically (and often technically).
It is perfectly acceptable spanish to refer to 13 as "once y tres" (pr: ohnsay ee tres) (tr: ten and three). There is also a shorter word "trece" (pr: treysay). Most people of course use the shorter word.
Note, I have no idea how to actually spell these Spanish words, and where the accents go, etc. The point still stands however.
Sorry about the spelling. I just got this new 23" Apple HD Cinema display, so when I read things that don't make sense, it tends to ooze out of the display and into my head.
Anyway, words have little meaning in relation to numbers. They are convieniences made up to allow us to refer to them better.
For instance, if we switched to hex, and had a 3E8 dollar bill ($1000) no one would go around saying three ee eight all the time. A new word to refer to it would probably evolve into our language. Much the same way as no one refers to animal species as their latin, scientific names. Its too much of a mouthful.
Also, I would imagine that there are languages that use the base numbers to refer to the entire numeric set. Do not assume English is universal. In spanish, most numbers are referred to by a ten and a one, for two digit numbers. (doce y tres) 23 (trans: twenty and three). Granted, words have come into use that represent the digits between 10 and 20. Again, I'd guess this is simply a convience of the language, as those numbers are very frequently used, for instance in referring to ages.
If you'd like, you could start pushing for everyone to pronounce numbers as a concatenation of single digits. That would keep everything in one base system. You might get a lot of people thinking you are even more crazy however, not to mention making mathematical discussions completely unintelligble.
Do you realise that that text is actually sent a series of high and low values representing binary.
Of course I realise that everything can be reduced down. But you need some sort of agreed upon structure to define where those images are located on the page, what page they are located on, should they be transformed before being rendered, etc. etc. etc.
This is much the same as the people who sat down and defined what the data in the jpeg represented and how it should be defined. Its just occuring at a higher level. The data itself is meaning less unless you know how to interpret it.
I agree with your point here. However, there is defiately a place for eBooks. In college, I longed for an electronic copy of my texts so I could search them on the computer. It was always a pain flipping through pages and skimming for info that I had read a week prior. Then, having to do it all over after realizing I had gone to far and must have missed what I was looking for.
It would have also been useful for printing out the problem at the top of the sheet of paper I was going to work the problem on. Its not fun having to flip back and forth between the problem at the end of the chaper and where it is detailed in the chapter's text.
Ebooks probably aren't suited for novels, but they could do wonders for school text books.
Which works well until you want to do anything as rudimentary as a children's novel, in which pictures are a good idea.
What's that? ASCII art you say? Tell that to a med student studying up on anatomy. I'd like to see the intricacies of the human nervous system represented in ASCII.
Why would I tip when I'm paying an idiotic "marketing pricing" x.99 for information?
The retail store determines what they will sell the CDs for. The artist has little to no say. Sounds right to give the artist the finger on that one. (Note the sarcasm.)
Will tipping make the information freely sharable?
I would bet 99% of the artists on Magnatune hold copyrights on the songs that are there. Thus, the information is not "freely sharable" as you say. They are distributed without DRM, but that is a different point altogether.
Why should I tip anyone who is far too cynical to ask for tips?
Tips are tips. No one asks for them, otherwise they wouldn't be tips. You deciding to send a tip to the artist does not imply they asked for it.
The donator should not be the one to go out of the way.
Fine. If the artist put up a paypal link or some web-based form, and let you donate that way, would that be easier. Would you donate after buying a CD, or a used CD even? Some artists offer up a couple of MP3s per album. Would you tip them a couple bucks for them if it were easy.
Suppose there was a competitor that didn't give us the garbage x.99 cent "marketing price". In fact, the fee paid was variable! So the extra amount is equivalent to a tip.
Look, even Magnatune has a minimum price. So, just think of.99 as Apple's minimum price. Want to tip the artists, fine, just send them some cash in the mail. I'm sure they are not going to turn it down. There is nothing stopping you.
As another poster pointed out, the average price paid is only slightly higher that the suggested price. At this point, you have to analyze Magnatunes customers. As a relatively small and niche site, they are probably only visited by people interested in DRM issues or people who are fans of the band and want to support them. This audience is likely to pay a little more to support their favorite artists.
Now, if every major, and non-major, band went to a system like this and promoted it to the general public, you'd have a better analysis of how the system would work. My guess is, the people paying the minimum would go up considerably, and the average paid would go down.
Wages being higher or not, it was simply an unsustainable system. The key factor in the equation is that productivity goes down. When this happens, no matter how much the wages are, the money with which to pay it will dry up. Its at that point that the system collapses.
The only ignorance here on display here is yours for only considering money in your analysis.
I'm not sure what this whole time thing is about, but you can keep track of it anyway you want. If you decrease the "hours" equivalent, you will simply have to increase the "minutes" equivalent. Whatever you do when making up new units, there equation needs to be balanced. That doesn't mean I'm going to use your equivalent, however.
I gaurantee you that whatever difference there is for a computer to convert from decimal to binary and from hex to binary, it is negligent, if it even exists at all. But in any case, if your math library uses hex, I'm gonna sit with a calculator and convert to decimal just to understand what the fuck is going on. This will take far longer than if you wrote it in decimal and let the compiler covert to hex. The compiler can do the conversion in nanoseconds, where it will probably take me a few seconds to hit keys on my calculator.
In short, standardizing on hex would be a huge waste of time. Now grow up.
It is based on the same system that killed many due to "patent protection" on AIDS drugs. Do not use or support an evil system, especially when alternatives are available.
What the "system" you refer to does is set up a risk-to-reward ratio that encourages ideas to be pursued and developed. It is a serious money risk to develop AIDS drugs, or any other complex product for that matter. To encourage the capital outlay required, the reward is granted to encourage development.
With out this "Evil" system, the AIDS drugs would likely not have even be pursued, and all the people would have died. Regardless of weather overpriced drugs cause some people to not be able to afford drugs, less people died with the current system than would have in a system in which no risk-reward ratio exists.
Take communist Russia for example. When people are guaranteed equal pay regardless of effort, the effort level of everyone goes down. Eventually, no work is being done and pay drops to zero, resulting in a very bad situation. If there were to be no return on AIDS drug research, there would be no research even started. Of course, governments could always fund it, but governments need resources too. And the best system in which to increase resources in one that encourages rewards.
I never asserted that there wasn't going to be interferance with this broadband over powerline scheme. The original poster stated that he was running data over powerlines in his house. I was just pointing out that there is a big difference between data on the power lines in his house and data on the lines that are strung accross the entire country.
Obviously when you try to move data two ways accross a system that was originally just one way, there are going to be serious issues to deal with. However, I doubt any radio operator is complaining because Joe Smith buys a HomePlug adapter to get his TiVo on his network via his in-home power cables.
Understand what people are saying before you go off on a rant that wasn't in dispute in the first place.
There is a difference between the HomePlug home powerline LAN solutions for running in your house and running broadband from the power company to all homes connected to its lines to form a WAN.
What the hell are you talking about. Equivalent numbers are not limiting, they are the fucking same. The only difference between them is that people, including scientists, much more readily recognize and work with decimal numbers. Hence, hexidecimal would probably be more encumbering due to the learning curve.
As far as computers crunching data, computers only work in binary. Any decimal or hexadecimal number is converted by the compiler and therefore has zero effect on performance.
Now quit bringing up this inane shit that has no basis in practicality.
That's why you should always wrap your fancy new GPS helmet in tin foil. Then the only one who can punish you for speeding is God herself, as she sends down a lighting bolt from the heavens. Bonus points at judgement time as well for wearing lighting attracting headwear.
Slashdot Mirror
- see subject -
That list looks pretty good. Mabey I didn't read enough into the links on the site, but I wonder where they got those list that they analyzed. It doesn't look like your usual, pop-music pushing fare. There are some good, and - gasp - original artists on there.
The White Stripes and The Strokes deserve their accolades, what with being the poster boys for the garage sound. Radiohead is, of course, always welcome in a top albums list. Blur was a welcome surprise, as I never heard much attention given to the album. Mabey I was asleep.
The real original artists on the list, however, are The Rapture and The Postal Service. Both have this techno rock blend going on that is great to hear in an era where most music sounds good. Definately buy both albums if you haven't. The Postal Service was a collaberation between two guys who sent tapes back and forth in the mail to create the album. One of them was the singer in Death Cab for Cutie. From what I heard, it was just sort of a fun side project never inteded for release, but they ended up liking the sound so they put out the record.
Run a google groups search to get some fun comments from thinkit's days of newgroup trolling. Or, click this link if you're lazy.
Google Group Search on comp.lang.c: thinkit
Man, give it a rest. You've been at this for years now, mabey a good resolution would be to give up. You've been banised to trolldom everywhere you post. I'm off to go drinking, woohoo!
Do you even know what you are talking about anymore?
Intermediate languages are essentialy a processor independant instruction set. You compile down to this instruction set and then let the virtual machine translate to the native instruction set, hence cross platform. These intermediate languages are binary and have no concept of decimal or hexidecimal.
Because we all know Apple has a proven track record of poorly designed products.
Come on. Quit posting lame, trollish comments. Apple products are consistently the most elegant pieces of equipment on the market, asthetically (and often technically).
I should have clarified in my original post.
It is perfectly acceptable spanish to refer to 13 as "once y tres" (pr: ohnsay ee tres) (tr: ten and three). There is also a shorter word "trece" (pr: treysay). Most people of course use the shorter word.
Note, I have no idea how to actually spell these Spanish words, and where the accents go, etc. The point still stands however.
Sorry about the spelling. I just got this new 23" Apple HD Cinema display, so when I read things that don't make sense, it tends to ooze out of the display and into my head.
Anyway, words have little meaning in relation to numbers. They are convieniences made up to allow us to refer to them better.
For instance, if we switched to hex, and had a 3E8 dollar bill ($1000) no one would go around saying three ee eight all the time. A new word to refer to it would probably evolve into our language. Much the same way as no one refers to animal species as their latin, scientific names. Its too much of a mouthful.
Also, I would imagine that there are languages that use the base numbers to refer to the entire numeric set. Do not assume English is universal. In spanish, most numbers are referred to by a ten and a one, for two digit numbers. (doce y tres) 23 (trans: twenty and three). Granted, words have come into use that represent the digits between 10 and 20. Again, I'd guess this is simply a convience of the language, as those numbers are very frequently used, for instance in referring to ages.
If you'd like, you could start pushing for everyone to pronounce numbers as a concatenation of single digits. That would keep everything in one base system. You might get a lot of people thinking you are even more crazy however, not to mention making mathematical discussions completely unintelligble.
Do you realise that that text is actually sent a series of high and low values representing binary.
Of course I realise that everything can be reduced down. But you need some sort of agreed upon structure to define where those images are located on the page, what page they are located on, should they be transformed before being rendered, etc. etc. etc.
This is much the same as the people who sat down and defined what the data in the jpeg represented and how it should be defined. Its just occuring at a higher level. The data itself is meaning less unless you know how to interpret it.
I agree with your point here. However, there is defiately a place for eBooks. In college, I longed for an electronic copy of my texts so I could search them on the computer. It was always a pain flipping through pages and skimming for info that I had read a week prior. Then, having to do it all over after realizing I had gone to far and must have missed what I was looking for.
It would have also been useful for printing out the problem at the top of the sheet of paper I was going to work the problem on. Its not fun having to flip back and forth between the problem at the end of the chaper and where it is detailed in the chapter's text.
Ebooks probably aren't suited for novels, but they could do wonders for school text books.
Which works well until you want to do anything as rudimentary as a children's novel, in which pictures are a good idea.
What's that? ASCII art you say? Tell that to a med student studying up on anatomy. I'd like to see the intricacies of the human nervous system represented in ASCII.
The very first thing you hear is essentially base sixteen floating point. As in--eight pounds, twelve ounces, being 8.C pounds.
Correction, the very virst thing you here is base-10 decimal. As in -- eight pounds, telve ounces.
12 is a decimal number.
Anything less than 10 is grandfathered in to base-16.
You are an idiot.
If you, the incessant proclaimer of switching to base 16, can't convert units yourself, why do you expect the rest of us to?
That's cool. Three posts higher someone clames that its the southbound thats open while northbound remains closed. Both posts get positive moderation.
Good thing moderators are willing to doll out points in spite of being completely ignorant.
That is all.
Scientists have figured out how to sucessfully reconstruct a circle given only two points.
And some other, related headlines...
Slashdot moderators continue to consume crack in mass quantities.
The parent post is decidedly not funny.
Why would I tip when I'm paying an idiotic "marketing pricing" x.99 for information?
The retail store determines what they will sell the CDs for. The artist has little to no say. Sounds right to give the artist the finger on that one. (Note the sarcasm.)
Will tipping make the information freely sharable?
I would bet 99% of the artists on Magnatune hold copyrights on the songs that are there. Thus, the information is not "freely sharable" as you say. They are distributed without DRM, but that is a different point altogether.
Why should I tip anyone who is far too cynical to ask for tips?
Tips are tips. No one asks for them, otherwise they wouldn't be tips. You deciding to send a tip to the artist does not imply they asked for it.
The donator should not be the one to go out of the way.
Fine. If the artist put up a paypal link or some web-based form, and let you donate that way, would that be easier. Would you donate after buying a CD, or a used CD even? Some artists offer up a couple of MP3s per album. Would you tip them a couple bucks for them if it were easy.
Suppose there was a competitor that didn't give us the garbage x.99 cent "marketing price". In fact, the fee paid was variable! So the extra amount is equivalent to a tip.
.99 as Apple's minimum price. Want to tip the artists, fine, just send them some cash in the mail. I'm sure they are not going to turn it down. There is nothing stopping you.
Look, even Magnatune has a minimum price. So, just think of
As another poster pointed out, the average price paid is only slightly higher that the suggested price. At this point, you have to analyze Magnatunes customers. As a relatively small and niche site, they are probably only visited by people interested in DRM issues or people who are fans of the band and want to support them. This audience is likely to pay a little more to support their favorite artists.
Now, if every major, and non-major, band went to a system like this and promoted it to the general public, you'd have a better analysis of how the system would work. My guess is, the people paying the minimum would go up considerably, and the average paid would go down.
Wages being higher or not, it was simply an unsustainable system. The key factor in the equation is that productivity goes down. When this happens, no matter how much the wages are, the money with which to pay it will dry up. Its at that point that the system collapses.
The only ignorance here on display here is yours for only considering money in your analysis.
I'm not sure what this whole time thing is about, but you can keep track of it anyway you want. If you decrease the "hours" equivalent, you will simply have to increase the "minutes" equivalent. Whatever you do when making up new units, there equation needs to be balanced. That doesn't mean I'm going to use your equivalent, however.
I gaurantee you that whatever difference there is for a computer to convert from decimal to binary and from hex to binary, it is negligent, if it even exists at all. But in any case, if your math library uses hex, I'm gonna sit with a calculator and convert to decimal just to understand what the fuck is going on. This will take far longer than if you wrote it in decimal and let the compiler covert to hex. The compiler can do the conversion in nanoseconds, where it will probably take me a few seconds to hit keys on my calculator.
In short, standardizing on hex would be a huge waste of time. Now grow up.
It is based on the same system that killed many due to "patent protection" on AIDS drugs. Do not use or support an evil system, especially when alternatives are available.
What the "system" you refer to does is set up a risk-to-reward ratio that encourages ideas to be pursued and developed. It is a serious money risk to develop AIDS drugs, or any other complex product for that matter. To encourage the capital outlay required, the reward is granted to encourage development.
With out this "Evil" system, the AIDS drugs would likely not have even be pursued, and all the people would have died. Regardless of weather overpriced drugs cause some people to not be able to afford drugs, less people died with the current system than would have in a system in which no risk-reward ratio exists.
Take communist Russia for example. When people are guaranteed equal pay regardless of effort, the effort level of everyone goes down. Eventually, no work is being done and pay drops to zero, resulting in a very bad situation. If there were to be no return on AIDS drug research, there would be no research even started. Of course, governments could always fund it, but governments need resources too. And the best system in which to increase resources in one that encourages rewards.
Dude, settle down.
I never asserted that there wasn't going to be interferance with this broadband over powerline scheme. The original poster stated that he was running data over powerlines in his house. I was just pointing out that there is a big difference between data on the power lines in his house and data on the lines that are strung accross the entire country.
Obviously when you try to move data two ways accross a system that was originally just one way, there are going to be serious issues to deal with. However, I doubt any radio operator is complaining because Joe Smith buys a HomePlug adapter to get his TiVo on his network via his in-home power cables.
Understand what people are saying before you go off on a rant that wasn't in dispute in the first place.
There is a difference between the HomePlug home powerline LAN solutions for running in your house and running broadband from the power company to all homes connected to its lines to form a WAN.
and you will end up with names like:
k
OpenKonqueror
FreeKontact
GNUKPDF
FreePlasti
etc.
The only thing worse than an overused prefix is two overused prefixes.
What the hell are you talking about. Equivalent numbers are not limiting, they are the fucking same. The only difference between them is that people, including scientists, much more readily recognize and work with decimal numbers. Hence, hexidecimal would probably be more encumbering due to the learning curve.
As far as computers crunching data, computers only work in binary. Any decimal or hexadecimal number is converted by the compiler and therefore has zero effect on performance.
Now quit bringing up this inane shit that has no basis in practicality.
They should claim ownership of all IP stacks and charge threaten to sue for damages of $0.99 for each and every packet sent from an unlicensed stack.
That's why you should always wrap your fancy new GPS helmet in tin foil. Then the only one who can punish you for speeding is God herself, as she sends down a lighting bolt from the heavens. Bonus points at judgement time as well for wearing lighting attracting headwear.