It looks like those crappy websites that every family put up when the Internet first started to spread into homes in the mid-90s. All that's missing is animated GIFs and blinking text to make this very bad web page into the worst.
I disagree - there is a world of difference between this design and the crap on GeoCities, and if you can't see that then I don't know what to tell you. It's your opinion, feel free to hate it, but if you can tell me what is wrong with the type or layout, I'm curious to hear it. There are rules for design and typography, believe it or not. Big fonts does not equal bad type.
It's the fucking worst website I've seen since the horror of mid-90's Geocities sites. It's fucking poncy, it screams "we think we are really clever" and not many people like that. big text and reduced character spacing is not big, it is not clever, it is near unreadable, and that is pretty retarded.
The nerds have spoken: I declare the design to be an unqualified success.
Honestly, I thought the look was refreshing and interesting. It's basically a flyer, after all. If you saw that printed on paper you wouldn't think twice about the design. Of course, web and paper design are not directly comparable, but for typography they are, and I see nothing wrong with their design.
But of course, it does not incorporate tiny aliased fonts, set in yellow on a transparent window alphablended over some tentacle porn. Also, it is insufficiently full of knicknacky doodads like silly polls, slashboxes, rss feeds, sci-fi-themed icons (that Bill Gates borg never gets old!) widgetry, countless superflouos hyperlinks and useless redundant headers. And it doesn't begin to compare to the timeless beauty that is X11.
For your MP3 player, there are several options, with Yahoo the best of all. If you're an iPod owner... then you're stuck with iTunes.'
They are all MP3 players. Some also play AAC or protected AAC. Some also play WMA or protected WMA.
They also all play WAV, most play AIFF. Note these formats span the entire player industry - there is no 'lock out' other than what the labels create for themselves.
It is not a given that this idea (selling unprotected music) is totally outlandish.
Keep this in mind next time you see the labels gnashing and wailing about vendor lock-in.
I understand the sentiment behind the USB drive but in a real disaster scenario it would be little use until your bigger problems were solved. (I understand that the writeup didn't explicitly mention a disaster but I think that is a clear subtext.)
I've been trying to think of a device suitable for such a situation for awhile now, although from a slightly different angle. The question is: if you had to take a very large amount of textual and perhaps audiovisual data with you, in a convenient and lightweight and protective format, what would it be?
First thing that comes to mind is a type of palm pilot device. This is the smallest, easiest way to transport a large amount of text (at minimum), in a very small and light format, and with the ability to read under dim conditions as bonus (backlight). You could store all the basics, from first aid info to maps to the personal info cited in the story write-up. However a palm pilot has two shortcomings: not enough memory and it needs power. The power situation is fairly easily rectified - palm devices are very efficient to begin with and you can charge them in a (bright) day with portable solar (like an iSun or comparable). Memory, little trickier but do-able; the device needs to accept some kind of card media. Buy as many as you need room for. Put the whole thing in a watertight shockproof case and you have a not bad solution for storing and accessing a lot of data in wilderness conditions.
Thing is, they stopped making palm devices that have any sort of regular battery system a long time ago. They all have internal rechargeable now. I have an old Handspring Visor that is very close, but monochrome (maybe a good thing, esp. for daylight reading) and lacks any real amount of memory. You could charge it via solar by way of car adaptor or some other crap but that is inelegant and cumbersome.
Because of the way the Nano is designed, emitting light in from the sides as well as the front, the black model will show scratches much more vividly than the white model.
Any company can make any product and sell it for how much they like, but if they are going to make a "CD" then it must be a CD, which in turn will play on a Mac or Linux or any CD player with the CD logo on it. If a company wants to create something else, say SACD, DVD-A, it must be labeled and sold as such, and not as a CD.
See, the thing is, they (the RIAA etc) have quietly been dropping the CD logo for some time now. It used to be fairly prominent on the exterior packaging and on the disc itself. Then, they started embossing it on the inside of the case (top right/lower left corners around the disc inlay). Now, they just leave it out entirely in many cases.
What you may see instead is the Copy Protected Disc logo, as seen here.
So it is no longer a Compact Disc, red book standard. It is a Copy Protected Disc.
On another note - that copy protected logo is a terrible piece of logo design. When I look at it I think "Play Record Play Record"... probably not the message they want to be sending...
You can't cut taxes for the poor. They don't pay any income taxes in the first place, since by definition they don't have any money. The poor have nothing to do with this discussion, though you and others keep bringing them up for some reason.
Of course not. Poor people don't pay any taxes, everyone knows that. Not sales tax, not gas tax, not anything.
Now I know where your head is at - I thought you were trying to have a serious discussion but you have revealed yourself. I'll hazard a guess: favourite movie, Wall Street? Greed is good, greed is right, greed works. What nonsense.
Rich people investing their money leads to unemployed people getting jobs, as the companies invested in use the money to expand their businesses and purchase goods and services. This is better than the government spending the money if you believe that the money will be spent more wisely by the person who earned it and worked for it rather than by some government functionary who decides based on who contributed the most to his re-election campaign.
Uh huh. Keep goin'.
The rich people who invested the money did invest it in their businesses, and they did hire unemployed people. Those people went and bought goods and services as you said - in fact they are incredibly good at finding the cheapest goods and services. They demand them. Because everyone wants to keep as much of their money as they can, right? Which leads to increased competition. Rich people then say, we need to make more money to prove to our shareholders that we rock and are competitive. Companies look for ways to reduce costs via globalization. Workers are cheaper in other places than Country A, so this is good business. Prices of goods sold come down, poor people get laid off. Even poorer people in Country B get Sniny! New! Jobs! - which are paid pathetically (to stay competitve) and are forced to work in horrible conditions because Country B has no workers' protection laws. Manufacturing leaves Country A bit by bit. Country B finds niche providing manufactured goods to the first country. Country B isn't so poor anymore - they start buying up our now-increasing debt, so that the original country's now-laid-off-again poor people can continue to buy their cheap stuff. Country A now makes nothing but software and entertainment.
Meanwhile, the now Richer people in Country A lobby some government functionary who decides based on who contributed the most to his re-election campaign that they can make things easier for them here, like say, eliminating the fair wage laws after a devastating hurricane.
You cannot just take a little snapshot of economic transaction and declare it to be a Great Thing when Rich People Get Richer. It's such a fallacy that it is almost below contempt. Look at what is happening in N.O. right now - it is just like the petri-dish economic experiments that had the corporatist types all lathered up about Iraq. I don't know how many times it has to fail before people figure out that it does not help anyone except a tiny tiny minority in the long run. Either you have empathy or you don't.
What's with the outbreak of rational, non left-wing thought on Slashdot? Is everybody trying to be ironic?
Why did you frame 'left' and 'irrational' together? Or do you conclude that any non 'right' argument is automatically irrational?
If so, then you needn't worry - the irrationality here is alive and well, thanks to your efforts. Kudos!:)
On topic, I don't think its irrational to ask the question: is climate change a factor in the hurricane season? The scientific consensus (i.e. peer-reviewed Science and Nature-type consensus) is that it is not a major factor, not the underlying cause. Hurricane seasons appear to be cyclical, historically.
However that same consensus says that global climate change is absolutely, inarguably, happening. The causes of that are measurable and observable. Whether the Earth itself goes through its own cycles or not - and it likely does - we have definitely fucked with that cycle and now the outcome/effects are unclear.
Why would people be *more* likely to buy an overpriced low-quality version of a movie that they can only watch on their PSP when they could just buy the DVD and watch it on their fantabulous home theater system?
Better question: Why would people be *more* likely to buy the home theater system when they can just buy some immersive 3D goggles?
Because: they are not the same thing at all!
We're talking about a portable system. I agree that they are overpriced (the UMDs); I don't buy 'em for my PSP, I just rip whatever I like from my existing collection. It has a memory card, and everything.:)
There are only two situations where I could see myself buying a UMD movie: if it is episodic, like a TV series (say, Lost) and I wanted to catch up on the subway. Or, if I was at the airport and I just wanted to pick something up for a flight. I would pay the premium then. If they make them cheaper that might change.
There are lots of reasons not to like UMD at the moment but comparing them to 'home theatre' is almost a non sequitur.
I haven't seen it mentioned here but it is worth reminding people: you can rip a DVD to your PSP. If you have the old (1.5) firmware, the quality is ok. If you have 2.0, you can use AVC and the quality is outstanding, very comparable to the UMDs (same codec). AVC takes longer to compress - but if you would rather let your computer chug away at night than pay for the (currently) overpriced UMDs, then it is a great option. Especially for episodic material (TV shows). A 512MB memory stick will fit a typical 93-minute movie; I have a 1GB which lets me fit a movie and a good chunk of music + photos.
My current setup uses PSPWare for Mac. I typically rip an episode of the Office or Six Feet Under from DVD each night to watch on the streetcar in the morning. Also with this sync goes a daily bookmarks file for the browser, a random selection of 50 songs from iTunes, whatever my last roll of photos taken was, and a podcast or two. Syncins a PSP only takes a few minutes even with this large amount of data (go USB2!). Its made a gigantic difference in my commute; sometimes you wanna play BurnOut, sometimes you just want to read, or watch something, or listen to music. I don't have to decide before I walk out the door which device to take - that is the appeal.
I understand the argument from the DS fans but these features are killer apps for me.
The Greek thing may not be the best idea... after the big storms the US has endured so far, I doubt anyone would bee looking forward to HURRICANE OMEGA.
Does anything? Should they hold up the release date and tack on another $100 -- at least -- to the price for HD-DVD when no one else has it and there's no software for it aside from games?
Well, we don't know what the price difference would be for sure but let's assume you are correct. Tacking on $100 would make the thing a lot less attractive.
However - I wanted to point something out. The format a console ships its software on is largely irrelevant. Look at Nintendo - up until the last gen they were still shipping games in little boxes of memory chips (cartridges). It could be the weirdest format in the world, but it doesn't matter, because it only works in one device.
Now, when the PS2 shipped they went with DVD when that was not yet super popular for home video. People did the fairly easy comparison of thinking 'hey it'll play PS2 games *and* DVDs, so its like getting two toys in one.'
The same thing will likely happen this time around with Blu-ray discs. The fact that the PS3 is guaranteed to ship millions in a short period of time (as is the X360) means an automatic foothold in the new video format that *will* have an installed base in the millions. Studios will then be able to point to that and see that they will be able to sell Blu-ray movies and make money.
Meanwhile Microsoft will be left out of this cycle because they 'only' have a DVD drive. And this has bad optics for the console that is pushing Hi Def Everything. So MS is faced with fracturing their market with two X360 versions (not the bundles, but with or without a HD optical drive) or just taking the hit - neither option looks good.
Essentially the HD format war was won at E3 when Sony announced that Blu-ray drive in the PS3. MS is pissed about it, they didn't think Sony would be able to pull it off. And don't forget, Sony also has a movie studio.
I take it "Silent Scope 360" will be a launch title so.
But will it be single-player, or a squad-based multiplayer???
I believe it will have multiplayer capabilities, with a camping spot located on a grassy knoll.
The developer has not yet announced whether they are going with the multiplayer option, or the revolutionary 'Magic Bullet' feature.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree - there is a world of difference between this design and the crap on GeoCities, and if you can't see that then I don't know what to tell you. It's your opinion, feel free to hate it, but if you can tell me what is wrong with the type or layout, I'm curious to hear it. There are rules for design and typography, believe it or not. Big fonts does not equal bad type.
The nerds have spoken: I declare the design to be an unqualified success.
Honestly, I thought the look was refreshing and interesting. It's basically a flyer, after all. If you saw that printed on paper you wouldn't think twice about the design. Of course, web and paper design are not directly comparable, but for typography they are, and I see nothing wrong with their design.
But of course, it does not incorporate tiny aliased fonts, set in yellow on a transparent window alphablended over some tentacle porn. Also, it is insufficiently full of knicknacky doodads like silly polls, slashboxes, rss feeds, sci-fi-themed icons (that Bill Gates borg never gets old!) widgetry, countless superflouos hyperlinks and useless redundant headers. And it doesn't begin to compare to the timeless beauty that is X11.
Spare me.
They are all MP3 players. Some also play AAC or protected AAC. Some also play WMA or protected WMA.
They also all play WAV, most play AIFF. Note these formats span the entire player industry - there is no 'lock out' other than what the labels create for themselves.
It is not a given that this idea (selling unprotected music) is totally outlandish.
Keep this in mind next time you see the labels gnashing and wailing about vendor lock-in.
I've been trying to think of a device suitable for such a situation for awhile now, although from a slightly different angle. The question is: if you had to take a very large amount of textual and perhaps audiovisual data with you, in a convenient and lightweight and protective format, what would it be?
First thing that comes to mind is a type of palm pilot device. This is the smallest, easiest way to transport a large amount of text (at minimum), in a very small and light format, and with the ability to read under dim conditions as bonus (backlight). You could store all the basics, from first aid info to maps to the personal info cited in the story write-up. However a palm pilot has two shortcomings: not enough memory and it needs power. The power situation is fairly easily rectified - palm devices are very efficient to begin with and you can charge them in a (bright) day with portable solar (like an iSun or comparable). Memory, little trickier but do-able; the device needs to accept some kind of card media. Buy as many as you need room for. Put the whole thing in a watertight shockproof case and you have a not bad solution for storing and accessing a lot of data in wilderness conditions.
Thing is, they stopped making palm devices that have any sort of regular battery system a long time ago. They all have internal rechargeable now. I have an old Handspring Visor that is very close, but monochrome (maybe a good thing, esp. for daylight reading) and lacks any real amount of memory. You could charge it via solar by way of car adaptor or some other crap but that is inelegant and cumbersome.
See here for more info.
Nice sig... although the difference is about 350 lbs. And she doesn't have gonorrea. And herpes.
Y2K6 = 4 keystrokes and confusing
2006 = 4 keystrokes
Funny site. Guy goes off on blog'ish rant about how fugly blogs are, on his own ridiculously fugly blog page. Without apparent irony.
Man, I went looking for that Wolfman ad - it was hilarious... but the web has let me down, I can't find a copy anywhere.
N... Net.... Netsca.... damn, can't quite remember the name of that outfit...
See, the thing is, they (the RIAA etc) have quietly been dropping the CD logo for some time now. It used to be fairly prominent on the exterior packaging and on the disc itself. Then, they started embossing it on the inside of the case (top right/lower left corners around the disc inlay). Now, they just leave it out entirely in many cases.
What you may see instead is the Copy Protected Disc logo, as seen here.
So it is no longer a Compact Disc, red book standard. It is a Copy Protected Disc.
On another note - that copy protected logo is a terrible piece of logo design. When I look at it I think "Play Record Play Record"... probably not the message they want to be sending...
I've never seen a poster get so completely flummoxed by such an accurate single-word verbal riposte. Nice job.
Of course not. Poor people don't pay any taxes, everyone knows that. Not sales tax, not gas tax, not anything.
Now I know where your head is at - I thought you were trying to have a serious discussion but you have revealed yourself. I'll hazard a guess: favourite movie, Wall Street? Greed is good, greed is right, greed works. What nonsense.
Wow. I give you the Smackdown of the Week award. Outstanding.
Uh huh. Keep goin'.
The rich people who invested the money did invest it in their businesses, and they did hire unemployed people. Those people went and bought goods and services as you said - in fact they are incredibly good at finding the cheapest goods and services. They demand them. Because everyone wants to keep as much of their money as they can, right? Which leads to increased competition. Rich people then say, we need to make more money to prove to our shareholders that we rock and are competitive. Companies look for ways to reduce costs via globalization. Workers are cheaper in other places than Country A, so this is good business. Prices of goods sold come down, poor people get laid off. Even poorer people in Country B get Sniny! New! Jobs! - which are paid pathetically (to stay competitve) and are forced to work in horrible conditions because Country B has no workers' protection laws. Manufacturing leaves Country A bit by bit. Country B finds niche providing manufactured goods to the first country. Country B isn't so poor anymore - they start buying up our now-increasing debt, so that the original country's now-laid-off-again poor people can continue to buy their cheap stuff. Country A now makes nothing but software and entertainment.
Meanwhile, the now Richer people in Country A lobby some government functionary who decides based on who contributed the most to his re-election campaign that they can make things easier for them here, like say, eliminating the fair wage laws after a devastating hurricane.
You cannot just take a little snapshot of economic transaction and declare it to be a Great Thing when Rich People Get Richer. It's such a fallacy that it is almost below contempt. Look at what is happening in N.O. right now - it is just like the petri-dish economic experiments that had the corporatist types all lathered up about Iraq. I don't know how many times it has to fail before people figure out that it does not help anyone except a tiny tiny minority in the long run. Either you have empathy or you don't.
Why did you frame 'left' and 'irrational' together? Or do you conclude that any non 'right' argument is automatically irrational?
If so, then you needn't worry - the irrationality here is alive and well, thanks to your efforts. Kudos! :)
On topic, I don't think its irrational to ask the question: is climate change a factor in the hurricane season? The scientific consensus (i.e. peer-reviewed Science and Nature-type consensus) is that it is not a major factor, not the underlying cause. Hurricane seasons appear to be cyclical, historically.
However that same consensus says that global climate change is absolutely, inarguably, happening. The causes of that are measurable and observable. Whether the Earth itself goes through its own cycles or not - and it likely does - we have definitely fucked with that cycle and now the outcome/effects are unclear.
Am I being 'irrational'?
Better question: Why would people be *more* likely to buy the home theater system when they can just buy some immersive 3D goggles?
Because: they are not the same thing at all!
We're talking about a portable system. I agree that they are overpriced (the UMDs); I don't buy 'em for my PSP, I just rip whatever I like from my existing collection. It has a memory card, and everything. :)
There are only two situations where I could see myself buying a UMD movie: if it is episodic, like a TV series (say, Lost) and I wanted to catch up on the subway. Or, if I was at the airport and I just wanted to pick something up for a flight. I would pay the premium then. If they make them cheaper that might change.
There are lots of reasons not to like UMD at the moment but comparing them to 'home theatre' is almost a non sequitur.
My current setup uses PSPWare for Mac. I typically rip an episode of the Office or Six Feet Under from DVD each night to watch on the streetcar in the morning. Also with this sync goes a daily bookmarks file for the browser, a random selection of 50 songs from iTunes, whatever my last roll of photos taken was, and a podcast or two. Syncins a PSP only takes a few minutes even with this large amount of data (go USB2!). Its made a gigantic difference in my commute; sometimes you wanna play BurnOut, sometimes you just want to read, or watch something, or listen to music. I don't have to decide before I walk out the door which device to take - that is the appeal.
I understand the argument from the DS fans but these features are killer apps for me.
Would you consider all the game the consoles in this argument? They are all 'proprietary' formats, for all intents and purposes.
The Greek thing may not be the best idea... after the big storms the US has endured so far, I doubt anyone would bee looking forward to HURRICANE OMEGA.
Nom du Keyboard: a slashdot poster with a flamebait sig attached
Here is the antenna they will be using... In other news, construction of the world's biggest Pringles can is now underway in Sudbury.
Perhaps you misunderstood - 'optics' is an expression, regarding the perceived appearance of something, usually media-related.
Does anything? Should they hold up the release date and tack on another $100 -- at least -- to the price for HD-DVD when no one else has it and there's no software for it aside from games?
Well, we don't know what the price difference would be for sure but let's assume you are correct. Tacking on $100 would make the thing a lot less attractive.
However - I wanted to point something out. The format a console ships its software on is largely irrelevant. Look at Nintendo - up until the last gen they were still shipping games in little boxes of memory chips (cartridges). It could be the weirdest format in the world, but it doesn't matter, because it only works in one device.
Now, when the PS2 shipped they went with DVD when that was not yet super popular for home video. People did the fairly easy comparison of thinking 'hey it'll play PS2 games *and* DVDs, so its like getting two toys in one.'
The same thing will likely happen this time around with Blu-ray discs. The fact that the PS3 is guaranteed to ship millions in a short period of time (as is the X360) means an automatic foothold in the new video format that *will* have an installed base in the millions. Studios will then be able to point to that and see that they will be able to sell Blu-ray movies and make money.
Meanwhile Microsoft will be left out of this cycle because they 'only' have a DVD drive. And this has bad optics for the console that is pushing Hi Def Everything. So MS is faced with fracturing their market with two X360 versions (not the bundles, but with or without a HD optical drive) or just taking the hit - neither option looks good.
Essentially the HD format war was won at E3 when Sony announced that Blu-ray drive in the PS3. MS is pissed about it, they didn't think Sony would be able to pull it off. And don't forget, Sony also has a movie studio.
The developer has not yet announced whether they are going with the multiplayer option, or the revolutionary 'Magic Bullet' feature.