"So you listen to the audio snippits before hand on PriceGrabber.com or Amazon.com or Buy.com or dozens of other places, and you decide whether the whole album is worth buying."
The proper way to do this is allow returns of unsatisfactory albums. If they'd allow for that, I'd pipe down about the whole P2P thing.
"Unless you witnessed him first hand, or someone told you, you cannot know that."
I think it was Garfield who once observed that you cannot get a group of people to agree on the toppings of a pizza. It was meant as a joke, but individualistic tastes are very much a human trait. I feel quite safe in my statement.
"Often times the moderation on slashdot is not fair but then again there is no law saying we have to hang out here at all."
There's no law saying I can't bitch about it either.
"I don't know what your critism was but most of the time when I hear people critizise Mozilla here it's either based on total ignorance, out and lies,or something to the order of "mozilla has different key mappings then IE so therefore it sucks" or "it won't run activeX controls so it sucks". Critizing Mozilla for not acting EXACTLY like some other browser , critizing it for something they have publicly stated they will never support should legitemately be modded down."
I completely agree with what you say here. There's lots of that flying around on Slashdot, and not just about Mozilla either.
Arguably it is Redundant. But all the way down to -1? Bear in mind that when I originally wrote that, the original post was negatively modded. I came to his defense and that was what I was met with.
In any case, I'm going to alter my sig a little later today. It isn't conveying my intentions very well. Never write a sig while gritting your teeth.
"You didn't pay to get the music. Nobody seems to care that some human beings paid for a studio and recorded the music for a record label that distributed it for them. Instead, it's, "Down with RIAA!"
I just don't get the revolution, I guess."
No, you don't get it. The $0.00 price tag isn't what 'the pedantic slashbots' are defending. If that were true, iTunes would not be wildly successful. Instead, what we really want is for the Music Industry to realize there is demand here, and supply it. Instead, they insist we buy their content at a premium, thus paying for content we do not want. (I happen to know for a fact that at some point in your life, you bought an album and only liked a song or two on it.) Since the RIAA is an oligopoly, what they say goes, no matter what consumer demand is. Because that, they have no need to innovate. If they had any real competition whatsoever, we'd have had internet music legitimately for years now.
That's just one facet of the problem. Another one is the whole 'downloading == stealing' crap. Yes, there is a scenario where you can download music, not pay for it, and it would be rightfully called stealing. However, you cannot apply the term 'stealing' as an umbrella term encompassing everybody who downloads music. Why? Simple. How many people are downloading Mp3s of the music they already have so they can just have one big playlist instead of swapping CDs? How many people are downloading a song because they heard it on the radio a million times? Why would downloading the MP3 be worse than hooking a radio up to your computer and capturing it off the airwaves? How many people are browsing, looking for new music to get into? If they download the song, listen 2-3 times, then either stop listening or just delete it, have they really stolen?
Music in the digital age is being stifled. We want music in compressed format. We want our collection to be available at the click of a mouse. We want to be able to get new music off the internet. We want to have matchbook-sized MP3 players so we can toss those huge clunky CD players that only hold an hour music. We want the ability to search for new music and expand our tastes. We want to pay on a per-song basis instead of being forced to buy an album containing music we may not want.
None of these requests are unreasonable. However, the RIAA fought against providing them, calling people thieves in the process. So, the people felt the need to become independent and create their own delivery channel. Illegal? Yes. Immoral? Yes, in a sense. It was also immoral to abuse oligopoly power.
I doubt you'll read my post and instantly agree with me, but I do hope you'll at least reward the time I spent writing this by just considering some of the things I've said. It's really hard to call it stealing when people are obviously willing to spend lots of money on digital music. ($399 for an iPod, for example.)
That isn't what I'm referring to. That sig was written after getting mod-bombed for a legitimate criticism of Mozilla. I don't have an issue with Mozilla, I'd prefer to use it over IE, but here you have to sing its praises or be modded into negative land.
"hell I knew real dogs were faster, more agile, and in thier own way smarter than the robot dog. So whenever it got any screen time I'd get annoyed, and when he played a major part in any plot (the Lassie schtich) I'd get pissed; and I pretty much still feel that way."
You do realize that the reason he has that machine is because his real daggit (much like a dog from what I understand) died back at the home colony? From what I remember, they gave it to him so he wouldn't miss his dog so much, but they didn't have any live daggits to give him.
"Netscape had the perfect case against Microsoft: "we'll cut off their air supply." What came of that? MS was found guilty, but the govt. decided not to do anything about it. How do you go up against that?"
Netscape's case wasn't so strong.
The monopoly in this case was not found to have been illegally acquired, but only to have been illegally maintained. Therefore, rather than termination of the monopoly, the proper objective of the remedy in this case is termination of the exclusionary acts and practices related thereto which served to illegally maintain the monopoly.
That's why they 'decided not to do anything about it'. Netscape was able to hold 50% of the marketshare for quite a while despite Internet Explorer. If they had continued to innovate, they could have beaten MS. Notice Mozilla is making in-roads today.
"Real has a case there, because Microsoft is using the same tried-and-true approach that made IE what it is today."
You mean the tried-and-true approach of making a better product, then bundling it with Windows?
Maybe if WMP played Real's format I'd see the point of this case, but I can't help but feel like we're seeing a company frustrated because they're losing.
"In a conference call with reporters, Kimball said RealNetworks damages could exceed $1 billion measured in lost business stemming from Microsoft's actions. The suit also seeks injunctive relief to prevent "further illegal conduct" by Microsoft."
Lost revenue because Microsoft made an anti-trust move, or because Microsoft made a better product?
"I am downloading the file now, and it may indeed be compressed with DIVX, but it should be called an MPEG-4 video since that is the final output format, regardless of the AVI FOURCC marker."
MPEG4 files (i.e. files generated so that any MPEG4 compliant viewer can play them) have the extension MP4. DivX is a mutated version of MPEG4, thus it deserves the seperate distinction. In other words, I'm having trouble seeing the justification of your nitpick here.
"Maybe we should call "HTML" "MicroSoft Web Content" if I use Microsoft Notepad to generate it, but "Emacs Markup-language" if I use Emacs."
This is a bad example. There is, however, code that only works in IE and not in other browsers. It's code that only works in IE, so it wouldn't be all that improper to informally call it MSML. Nobody's doing that, but it'd be hard to nail them on it.
It's all about standards compliance here, and DivX does not conform to Mpeg4. You have to tell it specifically to make an MPEG4 file, and when it does, it saves it with the MP4 extension.
So, yeah, save it for when somebody calls an MP4 file DivX.
" Maybe the fact that they are using OSX immediately indicates that in many cases they are a more technical user and so are less likely to need support."
I would add that if they're using OSX, they're probably using it for a very specific reason, illustration for example. If all that Mac does is run Illustrator all day, then no, you're not going to need a lot of support calls on it unless something fails.
Anyway, the point of my post isn't to defend XP, but merely to point out that these numbers aren't qualified well enough to draw any real conclusions. An OSX zealot could bend them into the shape of "Windows is a crappy bug riddled OS", whereas a Windows zealot could spin it like "OSX has less software, therefore it has fewer chances to break." The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but since we don't know much more than the most drastic numbers in the vaguest sense, it would be ill advised to take this data and try to win an argument with it.
Heh. Well I'm not totally surprised ya did get flamebait modded. A mechanic can spend $1,200 to get a wrench set, but he can't spend $1,000 for a 'Gator grip' when he's got other tools that'll more or less do the same job. I can spend $1,500'ish for a TabletPC, but I have to get $1,500 worth of value out of it. If all I do is a few doodles on it, then it isn't worth the money. That $1,500, however, could buy me another dual processor machine to throw scenes at for rendering. I've only got so much to work with.
"Should we consider these creations of ours, no matter how sophisticated and intelligent nothing more than machines?"
I'll tackle that issue when a machine presents it to me. Until then, it is simply not an issue we can handle ATM. Why? Because we don't know what its programming will be. Even if these machines are sentient, they'll still have their program to adhere to. If that program has to be changed in order to suitably award a machine rights, then we're changing their actual being. In short, it's a big messy issue.
Not sure how clear my thoughts are being expressed here, the best I can do is give you a short "there are issues to solve before we can answer your question" summary. For example, if a robot is programmed to act as though it's feeling pain, is it feeling pain?
"With a UKP500 digital camera at its fastest shutter speed, all I got were some vague blurs"
There is already a means to fix this problem. It involes using a powered gyroscope to stabilize the camera. That's how helicopters get clean footage for movies.
"Iraq had nothing to do with 7-11 attack. Even Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense) can't say otherwise."
The Gov't has made it clear they do not feel Iraq was involved with 9-11. Iraq, however, would have been a good place for Al Qeada to flee to post 9-11.
"No massive destruction weapon was found yet in Iraq."
Nothing definitive here. Hussein knows WMD are a no-no, and finding them would mean a global smackdown. Hiding them would have been his highest priority. Even if they never existed, it's well established he'd love to have them. (*cough* Kuwait *cough*)
"AFTER USA invaded Iraq Bin Laden supposedly made some speechs urging iraquies to fight against coalition forces."
Not sure how this supports your argument. Bin Laden had targets show up in range of people motivated to listen to him. Surprise he wants them to attack.
"Terrorism in Iraq started from null to today situation since President Bush anounced end of fights."
Again, not sure how this supports your point. You could say the same for Afghanistan.
"Old Europe" countries foretold this situation will happen. USA reacted renaming french fries."
'Old Europe' refused to deal with a situation they sat on for too long. They responded instead by being critical of our government. Oh yeah, "freedom fries" was a playful reply. Freedom of expression.
"Of course Old Europe also had important economical interests an Iraq, like USA."
Okay.. maybe I'm just not understanding where you're coming from? Forgive me, I'm on heavy cold medicine, but it sounds like you're stating these reasons why the war shouldn't have happened. Am I misunderstanding you? If not, then can you explain the above point? The way I read it, this is a reason for 'Old Europe' to be snarky at us over the war, to the point of overriding the need to remove a nasty guy from power.
Just wanted to drop off a tip that has boosted my productivity tremendously. Multi-Pass rendering. My company got me a copy of After Effects, Adobe's compositing package. With it, I learned how to break up a scene into smaller elements and put them back together in After Effects. This has allowed me to do all kinds of things to save on rendering time. For example, I recently rendered an animation of a machine that has a fast moving piece on it. Motion blur is an expensive feature of a scene to render. However, it can be a waste of render time if only one element of the scene really really needs it. I was able to render the static elements of the scene sans motion blur, and render only the moving bits with the motion blur, thus saving a great deal of render time that could be dedicated to other things.
I just wanted to throw this bit of advice. If your animators don't have a compositing package, it would be a worthwhile expenditure, even if it costs a machine or two from the render farm. I can't speak for other compositing packages, but I can tell you that After Effects is a damn cool, useful app for rendering. Me personally, I'd rather have 1 machine in my render farm with After Effects, than 2 machines in it without AE. If that gives you an idea.
Slashdot Mirror
"I can beat that. I once bought a single I didn't like."
Damn I wish I had a mod point. Heh. +1, Doh!
"So you listen to the audio snippits before hand on PriceGrabber.com or Amazon.com or Buy.com or dozens of other places, and you decide whether the whole album is worth buying."
The proper way to do this is allow returns of unsatisfactory albums. If they'd allow for that, I'd pipe down about the whole P2P thing.
"Unless you witnessed him first hand, or someone told you, you cannot know that."
I think it was Garfield who once observed that you cannot get a group of people to agree on the toppings of a pizza. It was meant as a joke, but individualistic tastes are very much a human trait. I feel quite safe in my statement.
Hopefully the mods will take one of these pills before modding my jokes as off-topic.
"Often times the moderation on slashdot is not fair but then again there is no law saying we have to hang out here at all."
2 657
There's no law saying I can't bitch about it either.
"I don't know what your critism was but most of the time when I hear people critizise Mozilla here it's either based on total ignorance, out and lies,or something to the order of "mozilla has different key mappings then IE so therefore it sucks" or "it won't run activeX controls so it sucks". Critizing Mozilla for not acting EXACTLY like some other browser , critizing it for something they have publicly stated they will never support should legitemately be modded down."
I completely agree with what you say here. There's lots of that flying around on Slashdot, and not just about Mozilla either.
Here's the post that sparked the sig. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=88350&cid=765
Arguably it is Redundant. But all the way down to -1? Bear in mind that when I originally wrote that, the original post was negatively modded. I came to his defense and that was what I was met with.
In any case, I'm going to alter my sig a little later today. It isn't conveying my intentions very well. Never write a sig while gritting your teeth.
"You didn't pay to get the music. Nobody seems to care that some human beings paid for a studio and recorded the music for a record label that distributed it for them. Instead, it's, "Down with RIAA!"
I just don't get the revolution, I guess."
No, you don't get it. The $0.00 price tag isn't what 'the pedantic slashbots' are defending. If that were true, iTunes would not be wildly successful. Instead, what we really want is for the Music Industry to realize there is demand here, and supply it. Instead, they insist we buy their content at a premium, thus paying for content we do not want. (I happen to know for a fact that at some point in your life, you bought an album and only liked a song or two on it.) Since the RIAA is an oligopoly, what they say goes, no matter what consumer demand is. Because that, they have no need to innovate. If they had any real competition whatsoever, we'd have had internet music legitimately for years now.
That's just one facet of the problem. Another one is the whole 'downloading == stealing' crap. Yes, there is a scenario where you can download music, not pay for it, and it would be rightfully called stealing. However, you cannot apply the term 'stealing' as an umbrella term encompassing everybody who downloads music. Why? Simple. How many people are downloading Mp3s of the music they already have so they can just have one big playlist instead of swapping CDs? How many people are downloading a song because they heard it on the radio a million times? Why would downloading the MP3 be worse than hooking a radio up to your computer and capturing it off the airwaves? How many people are browsing, looking for new music to get into? If they download the song, listen 2-3 times, then either stop listening or just delete it, have they really stolen?
Music in the digital age is being stifled. We want music in compressed format. We want our collection to be available at the click of a mouse. We want to be able to get new music off the internet. We want to have matchbook-sized MP3 players so we can toss those huge clunky CD players that only hold an hour music. We want the ability to search for new music and expand our tastes. We want to pay on a per-song basis instead of being forced to buy an album containing music we may not want.
None of these requests are unreasonable. However, the RIAA fought against providing them, calling people thieves in the process. So, the people felt the need to become independent and create their own delivery channel. Illegal? Yes. Immoral? Yes, in a sense. It was also immoral to abuse oligopoly power.
I doubt you'll read my post and instantly agree with me, but I do hope you'll at least reward the time I spent writing this by just considering some of the things I've said. It's really hard to call it stealing when people are obviously willing to spend lots of money on digital music. ($399 for an iPod, for example.)
"My love affair with Mozilla is satisfying."
That isn't what I'm referring to. That sig was written after getting mod-bombed for a legitimate criticism of Mozilla. I don't have an issue with Mozilla, I'd prefer to use it over IE, but here you have to sing its praises or be modded into negative land.
"hell I knew real dogs were faster, more agile, and in thier own way smarter than the robot dog. So whenever it got any screen time I'd get annoyed, and when he played a major part in any plot (the Lassie schtich) I'd get pissed; and I pretty much still feel that way."
You do realize that the reason he has that machine is because his real daggit (much like a dog from what I understand) died back at the home colony? From what I remember, they gave it to him so he wouldn't miss his dog so much, but they didn't have any live daggits to give him.
Netscape's case wasn't so strong.
That's why they 'decided not to do anything about it'. Netscape was able to hold 50% of the marketshare for quite a while despite Internet Explorer. If they had continued to innovate, they could have beaten MS. Notice Mozilla is making in-roads today.
"Real has a case there, because Microsoft is using the same tried-and-true approach that made IE what it is today."
You mean the tried-and-true approach of making a better product, then bundling it with Windows?
Maybe if WMP played Real's format I'd see the point of this case, but I can't help but feel like we're seeing a company frustrated because they're losing.
"In a conference call with reporters, Kimball said RealNetworks damages could exceed $1 billion measured in lost business stemming from Microsoft's actions. The suit also seeks injunctive relief to prevent "further illegal conduct" by Microsoft."
Lost revenue because Microsoft made an anti-trust move, or because Microsoft made a better product?
"I am downloading the file now, and it may indeed be compressed with DIVX, but it should be called an MPEG-4 video since that is the final output format, regardless of the AVI FOURCC marker."
MPEG4 files (i.e. files generated so that any MPEG4 compliant viewer can play them) have the extension MP4. DivX is a mutated version of MPEG4, thus it deserves the seperate distinction.
In other words, I'm having trouble seeing the justification of your nitpick here.
"Maybe we should call "HTML" "MicroSoft Web Content" if I use Microsoft Notepad to generate it, but "Emacs Markup-language" if I use Emacs."
This is a bad example. There is, however, code that only works in IE and not in other browsers. It's code that only works in IE, so it wouldn't be all that improper to informally call it MSML. Nobody's doing that, but it'd be hard to nail them on it.
It's all about standards compliance here, and DivX does not conform to Mpeg4. You have to tell it specifically to make an MPEG4 file, and when it does, it saves it with the MP4 extension.
So, yeah, save it for when somebody calls an MP4 file DivX.
"How is the parent a Troll?"
Probably because these cases only seem to pop up when a company is teetering on the edge of going out of business.
" Maybe the fact that they are using OSX immediately indicates that in many cases they are a more technical user and so are less likely to need support."
I would add that if they're using OSX, they're probably using it for a very specific reason, illustration for example. If all that Mac does is run Illustrator all day, then no, you're not going to need a lot of support calls on it unless something fails.
Anyway, the point of my post isn't to defend XP, but merely to point out that these numbers aren't qualified well enough to draw any real conclusions. An OSX zealot could bend them into the shape of "Windows is a crappy bug riddled OS", whereas a Windows zealot could spin it like "OSX has less software, therefore it has fewer chances to break." The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but since we don't know much more than the most drastic numbers in the vaguest sense, it would be ill advised to take this data and try to win an argument with it.
"Personally, I'm looking forward to the show, as long as they stay away from monkeys in robot-dog suits!"
What was wrong with the daggit? Was this an attempt at humor, or did people genuinely hate that machine?
Heh. Well I'm not totally surprised ya did get flamebait modded. A mechanic can spend $1,200 to get a wrench set, but he can't spend $1,000 for a 'Gator grip' when he's got other tools that'll more or less do the same job. I can spend $1,500'ish for a TabletPC, but I have to get $1,500 worth of value out of it. If all I do is a few doodles on it, then it isn't worth the money. That $1,500, however, could buy me another dual processor machine to throw scenes at for rendering. I've only got so much to work with.
"...in Montana we have diamond-backed rattlesnakes."
I can't wait to find a tit mouse.
"Should we consider these creations of ours, no matter how sophisticated and intelligent nothing more than machines?"
I'll tackle that issue when a machine presents it to me. Until then, it is simply not an issue we can handle ATM. Why? Because we don't know what its programming will be. Even if these machines are sentient, they'll still have their program to adhere to. If that program has to be changed in order to suitably award a machine rights, then we're changing their actual being. In short, it's a big messy issue.
Not sure how clear my thoughts are being expressed here, the best I can do is give you a short "there are issues to solve before we can answer your question" summary. For example, if a robot is programmed to act as though it's feeling pain, is it feeling pain?
"Sorry to be sarcastic, but you could at least have searched the text for, say, 'violet' before commenting."
Like any of us macho men would search for a flower.
"I prefer Hydrogen Hydroxide." -- (Score:1, Funny)
We're such fun loving people. How come none of us have friends?
"Ok, what happens when these things lose their bearing and crashes into (say a) daycare, or someone's house."
An ordinary car can do that.
"With a UKP500 digital camera at its fastest shutter speed, all I got were some vague blurs"
There is already a means to fix this problem. It involes using a powered gyroscope to stabilize the camera. That's how helicopters get clean footage for movies.
"Iraq had nothing to do with 7-11 attack. Even Paul Wolfowitz (deputy secretary of defense) can't say otherwise."
The Gov't has made it clear they do not feel Iraq was involved with 9-11. Iraq, however, would have been a good place for Al Qeada to flee to post 9-11.
"No massive destruction weapon was found yet in Iraq."
Nothing definitive here. Hussein knows WMD are a no-no, and finding them would mean a global smackdown. Hiding them would have been his highest priority. Even if they never existed, it's well established he'd love to have them. (*cough* Kuwait *cough*)
"AFTER USA invaded Iraq Bin Laden supposedly made some speechs urging iraquies to fight against coalition forces."
Not sure how this supports your argument. Bin Laden had targets show up in range of people motivated to listen to him. Surprise he wants them to attack.
"Terrorism in Iraq started from null to today situation since President Bush anounced end of fights."
Again, not sure how this supports your point. You could say the same for Afghanistan.
"Old Europe" countries foretold this situation will happen. USA reacted renaming french fries."
'Old Europe' refused to deal with a situation they sat on for too long. They responded instead by being critical of our government. Oh yeah, "freedom fries" was a playful reply. Freedom of expression.
"Of course Old Europe also had important economical interests an Iraq, like USA."
Okay.. maybe I'm just not understanding where you're coming from? Forgive me, I'm on heavy cold medicine, but it sounds like you're stating these reasons why the war shouldn't have happened. Am I misunderstanding you? If not, then can you explain the above point? The way I read it, this is a reason for 'Old Europe' to be snarky at us over the war, to the point of overriding the need to remove a nasty guy from power.
I'm sure I could scrape together $10,000,000 for an xmas gift to our beloved Eisner.
Just wanted to drop off a tip that has boosted my productivity tremendously. Multi-Pass rendering. My company got me a copy of After Effects, Adobe's compositing package. With it, I learned how to break up a scene into smaller elements and put them back together in After Effects. This has allowed me to do all kinds of things to save on rendering time. For example, I recently rendered an animation of a machine that has a fast moving piece on it. Motion blur is an expensive feature of a scene to render. However, it can be a waste of render time if only one element of the scene really really needs it. I was able to render the static elements of the scene sans motion blur, and render only the moving bits with the motion blur, thus saving a great deal of render time that could be dedicated to other things.
I just wanted to throw this bit of advice. If your animators don't have a compositing package, it would be a worthwhile expenditure, even if it costs a machine or two from the render farm. I can't speak for other compositing packages, but I can tell you that After Effects is a damn cool, useful app for rendering. Me personally, I'd rather have 1 machine in my render farm with After Effects, than 2 machines in it without AE. If that gives you an idea.