Nobody like efficiency because it's not fun. That's why we have idiots driving around in gas guzzling SUVs, people crying out for Ethanol as our next fuel, and tons of road blocks being thrown up to stymie electric car development. Centralized control is THE BEST approach to systems that have lots of users. The user doesn't know what's good for them and has a tendency towards selfishness rather than social responsibility. Just as improving public transportation would be a much better (and EFFICIENT) approach to the problems that we have with auto emissions in the United States, strong and centralized control of e-mail is the ONLY way to achieve efficiency in the workplace for large e-mail systems. Now, if you're only managing 25 users you can do whatever the hell you like because a centralized or distributed approach isn't going to make much difference. But when you're dealing with more than a few hundred, you MUST impose strong controls on your users otherwise you wind up with the nightmare that the original submitter is dealing with now. BTW, I should add that I also make sure that the only protocol available to users who want to break away from our support policy and use Thunderbird or Outlook is IMAP. To put it plainly, the data on their hard drives is disposable. They are notified of that. There is no way in hell that we are going to guarantee their data on their hard drives or attempt to get them to back up their own data (remember, they don't "get" this stuff and they WILL screw up or completely ignore the concept of backing up their data). With IMAP, the mail is centralized and gets backed up nightly. We've been running like this for five years. Our users may not be happy, but that's not what we're here for. We're here to make sure they have e-mail five minutes from now no matter what happens. Always keep this in mind: efficiency+stability+security and happy users are mutually exclusive. Care to give me a reasoned rebuttal? (Happy TT!);P
1. You'll get 10 megs and LIKE IT!!!! 2. If you hit your 10 meg limit, empty your Sent and Trash folders!! 3. If you empty those folders and still are at your 10 meg limit, save ALL attachments to your home directory ("G Drive")!! 4. If you can't get well below your 10 meg limit, then you can ask your supervisor to request more space from IT. But you must justify that your request is work related, or else... (we can read your mail) 5. Deny all users access to HTML mail 6. Do not provide support for anything other than a web based mail client
So far it's worked fine. I have 2000 mail users in a 13 gig mail store. They may not like it. But it works.
...how do you get ALL the data on the backup server to start with? Pushing the writes off to the backup server in real-time is identical to what the HP VA7410 SAN I work with does internally in RAID 1+0 except that this happens over the network. But how are the disks in the backup server ever going to get all the original filesystem data if that data already exists AFTER you build your backup server? Even if you have a log of writes, you can't reconstruct the data. You'll only be able to reconstruct recent changes.
Ahhh.. but grasshoppah... you make the mistake of thinking that the download count equates to quality in anyone's mind other than your own. It merely indicates popularity. And popularity doesn't mean anything other than, "we're doing a good job promoting our product with few resources compared to MS's unfair advantage of bundling IE with the OS". Anyone who takes it to mean more than that is, well... being a fool.
...is reporting stats immature or "fanboy" behavior. There are plenty of sites that report stats ad nauseum for things that other people care little about. Would you call those sorts of sites immature or "fanboy" sites? I personally think the submitter has an axe to grind... Too bad you can't mod the people who get their articles submitted when it's something as stupid as the main story here.
Inefficiency is relative Earthman. I've met beings several eons old who have done this sort of thing before. To them, such a terraforming process would be similar to your informal time unit known as "fractions of a second". Do not fall into the trap of measuring the universe by your own perspective.
Yeah. Well... maybe. But... at least a mule doesn't look freaky like that thing does. Before you know it, we'll have some overzealous scientists working on some kind of portal that opens to hell accidentally. Then that freaky looking mulebot will get a general's head and start shooting flames... So... um... take that!!;P
Interesting take since no one was discussing develompent models. However, the development model has no influence on repelling corporate involvement or at the very least heavily restricting it. You have to keep in mind that MOST of us are not into this because we want to make money or get into business. We're into it because we believe computers and software make a better life for EVERYONE and there should be no barriers to access. EVERYONE should have access to software at ALL levels, whether it be end-user or developer and there should be absolutely no restirctions other than keeping the hands of business out.
Personally (and only according to my ideals), the only reason I'm into this is because I like to do it and it does what I need it to with no artificial limitations imposed by business (including cost, but extending beyond that). I like the idea of NOT having to worry about licenses myself since the only thing I want to do is put a bunch of things together to get an interesting result. The Microsoft way, as many of us know, doesn't allow you to do that out of the box. The BSD way does, but with some concern that anything you add to a project may eventually benefit someone you don't ethically support (a private corporation). The GPL way allows you to work free of concern of corporate interference other than the occasional (ethically invalid) software patent suit that will likely arise in the future. At the point, I prefer to be labelled a "criminal" for creating software that does what a commercial program does since NO company truly has the right to control the ideas of others.
Speaking realistically, there is NO way to escape using a mix of software that uses GPL, BSD, or the other multitude of licenses out there and have a useful system. I grudgingly acknowledge that this will always be the case unless sufficient interest exists to write a similar program under a more preferred license. This goes both ways for proponents of BSD or GPL licenses. And if you think about it, it's ridiculous to duplicate effort to provide something that is compatible with your prefered license. So we'll always be stuck with this. My main point in my original post, however, was that the GPL will protect the code. Nautilus is still freely available and that had nothing to do with the development model and EVERYTHING to do with the license. What Oracle has proposed with MySQL will eventually turn into an "embrace and extinguish" campaign. They'll provide a migration path from MySQL to Oracle, or if they really are worried: MyOracle (free as in beer). Then they will eliminate MySQL. Thereby eliminating another competitor. The only reason this hasn't happened with say OpenBSD is that the other companies who use their work in commercial products don't want to lose the free development. Oracle doesn't care since they know their product is technically better in terms fo features than MySQL. Would anyone honestly say that Oracle would be able to gain some knowledge by looking at the MySQL source tree? Doubtful.
Oh yeah... like you should talk. Your guy (Joseph Smith: founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints AKA The Mormons) saw an angel named MORONi who told him that he needed to tell his wife that he must have more than one wife to follow the wishes of God. Think about it. Smith was a JACKASS. He just wanted to dip his wick in a bunch of women (many of the "wives" of mormons have been historically underaged and blood relations as well) and have it "sanctioned by god". At least the Flying Spaghetti Monster (my current deity of choice next to my wife ["The Goddess L"]) leaves teenaged relatives and non-relatives alone. (Don't mean to offend, but people here can check out what I've said, it's the truth.)
Anyone care to explain why the ball challenged moderator who marked me as troll did so? Simply because he disagrees with my honest view perhaps? Great work. You don't like someone's views so you demonize them in an attempt to get others to turn away. It works for the neocons, so it must work for anti-GPL nutjobs too. Why don't you actually point out what you percieve as flaws in my views, instead of wasting mod points?
...the GPL is the best answer when you DON'T want to get eaten up by a big corporation. If you use the GPL, then predatory criminals won't want to touch you with a ten foot pole. They might try and work the legal angle and try to bring software patents to bear on you, but that's only because of recent boneheaded legislation that was created by companies run by predatory criminals (see: Darl McBride).
...I know it. What's going to happen is that the proponents of AC power will use DC power supplies from server racks to power electric chairs and prove how poorly it works. No one will ever want to use DC again after that kind of fiasco. As the adage goes: "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it". You never know though... this could go the way of "second system syndrome".;P
"I know that people like Arlen Specter promise further hearings - but why pass what you know is flawed?"
Because... It's PROFITABLE. In one way or another, the people who pass the bill are either being paid to, or being threatened if they don't. Mark my words. The people who vote against it have committed political suicide. You won't see them in politics ever again. They might possibly not even live to the next election of their seat either with the Bush administration in charge...
Libertarians are the ones who rave on about liberty. Liberals only support uncontrolled, emotional, irrational behavior. Very different from the founding fathers. Frankly, the founding fathers were terrorists in my book. They wanted to divest themselves of the British monarchy, which was treasonous behavior. Were they alive today, they'd be hung for their crimes.
...you have nothing to worry about. In the post 9/11 world, security is king. And sometimes that means giving up certain freedoms and rights temporarily. It's all for a good cause: to root out the terrorists. If you're on the right side of this fight, you have nothing to worry about because the government won't be looking in on what you do at all. They are more concerned about finding people who support the terrorists by dissenting with the Bush administration. We have nutjob liberal bloggers out there who are trying to take the wind out of Bush's sails by repeatedly publishing false information known to come from terrorist operatives like Truth Out, MoveOn.org, IndieMedia, and the ACLU. If we just let them run rampant and change people's opinions about the War on Terror, how can we succeed? These people need to be shutdown because every word they publish against our president and his staff if a word in favor of Al Queda, The Taliban, Osama Bin Laden and the like. I don't worry myself about being investigated because I say the right things and align myself with people of character. If you do the same, you don't have anything to worry about either. But if you spend time tearing down the hard work of George W. Bush or associate with enemy combatants (yes even bloggers who hate Bush qualify in my book), then maybe you should be looking over your shoulder and re-evaluating your position. The War on Terror includes a domestic War on Liberals in my mind. It's time to finally shut down liberal voices before they can damage the progress we've made in America these past six years.
Ever been on a jury? The pressure to go with the majority opinion is HUGE and I would argue that virtually NO ONE in the United States would dissent with the rest of the jury if it means getting done with jury duty quicker and geting back to "real life". In many cases this isn't a problem because the lawyers make pretty good cases regardless if they are actually true or not. But there are some cases where there is just a little doubt and no one one the jury wants to spend days deliberating. The last jury I was on (I've been on three) had one person who felt uncomfortable with the opinions the rest of us held. Some of us (myself included) told her that if she didn't feel comfortable, then she should vote her conscience. But we had a few heavies who kept trying to convince her to agree with the rest of us. Eventually they succeeded. Even though she finally said, "OK I agree with everyone on this", she still followed up with, "But...". Personally, I think the jury system is even broken. I am certain that she was wrong in her thinking that this guy was innocent, and I think it was kind of an emotional issue on her part, but if she didn't feel right about the decision she should have stated so and broken the consensus.
Vile heathen!!! If you don't support Ogg Vorbis then you obviously support one of the false compression formats like MP3, WMA or AAC!!! There is only one TRUE LOSSY format and that is Ogg Vorbis. Those who do not accept the word of Xiph shall perish in the flames of WMA ear grinding hell! Please note: I do not condone any attacks on foreign embassies in the name of Ogg Vorbis.
...about the merits of Ogg Vorbis, but I feel that the time to do so has finally come. Many of the unwashed audio heathens have partaken of the lesser formats like MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV and the like. And they have all formed their own, oft incorrect, opinions on these formats. First I will start by dispelling some common myths:
1. MP3 is a LOSSY format. It doesn't matter WHAT bitrate you encode at or what your variable bitrate range is. It is LOSSY meaning that it LOOSES. MP3 is akin to the old wire recorders of the 60s that were the scourge of audiophiles like myself.
2. WMA is owned by Microsoft which immediately puts the taint of Bill Gates and his first wife Steve Ballmer on it. They tried and tried at Microsoft to outdo MP3 (which was already paltry to begin with) but they couldn't. They once again contacted their all to frequent business partner, Satan, to sell off a few more Microserf souls in exchage for WMA. This is why WMA sounds WORSE than MP3. It was made in HELL!!!!
3. AAC. What a joke! They CLAIM that it is an encrypted Dolby something or other with MPEG4 style encoding. But in reality, it's a nanoscale 8-track tape. Everytime you download more stuff from the iTunes store, you are just downloading 8-tracks for god sake. And rehashed ones at that!. If you listen VERY carefully, you can hear Conway Twitty bleed through (what a debasement!!) your supposedly shiny new Depeche Mode release.
4. WAV is NOT what CDs are based on. It never was and never will be! Get that through your head you dipshits. Back before Windows even had any concept of a CD burner (about 1996) there were tons of Macs burning CDs and they used AIFF as their format to burn to CD. But you know what... that's not even what CDs are based on. RedBook specs dictate that the audio must be 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz PCM audio. PCM being PULSE CODE MODULATED. That's a PURE digital format that can be represented in AIFF or WAV. If you want purity, you'd be better of with straight PCM files from... good old Unix boxes. (Which incidentatlly is what is used to mass produce CDs in big media houses)
The one true LOSSY format is, was and ever shall be Ogg Vorbis. The one true LOSSLESS format is, was and ever shall be FLAC. As my listening party proved to my friends and family so long ago, the only way to enjoy music is without DRM and with high quality audio sources. No one has yet beaten Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. Ever. Period. End of argument. If anyone is interested in data tapes of my Ogg Vorbis listening party sources or updated source material, you may post in my most recent journal. Thank you and good night.
Google with their egalitarian stance on how the internet should benefit every human on the planet + the ISP that guarantees no spam and employs geeks, elves, leprechauns, gnomes (oh wait... that's Travelocity), unicorns and pretty office women! The earth is saved! Now if they can get Bush out of office next election, then we'll know that the world is finally on the right track again.
Heh. Yeah. And it's ok to buy imitation Rolex watches and fake Gucci bags as you drive through the hood. Sorry, but there was a local record shop here that was REALLY excellent. They had tremendous selection of rare stuff and carried very little of the so-called "pop" crap that you find in mall stores. Unfortunately they got busted. Not for stolen or pirated music. But for having a little side business selling fake designer purses. The feds got involved and the store got shut down. That's what allofmp3.com is. They acquire one copy (most likely illegally) of the album and then rip it and sell it ad infinitum to slimy greaseballs or ignorant consumers who have no problem purchasing STOLEN music. I'm not fan of the RIAA but I believe it's fair to pay the original channel that the music came from and think it's wrong for someone else to jump in the middle and start funneling money off to the side. That's why I hate stock brokers too.
I forgot to mention that they're gonna close the analog hole faster than you can say Barbara Bush is Bob Goatse. And NO this is not a troll. It's a comment on an issue. A witty one at that I might add...;P
We're getting close. Read up on CableCard and DCHP for new HDTV "content". The ENTIRE signal path with Cable card is encrypted until it reaches the pixels on your display device. If your display device can't carry the encryption through the entire path, your device will NEVER display the content. All the criminals of the MPAA and RIAA need to do now is ensure the same thing through speakers. All the way to the + and - contacts on the speaker cone (I know the proper word is driver, but the computer geeks here will get confused) itself. If the amplified audio signal needs an encryption handshake from the speaker itself before it actually allows the sound to output and it checks the impedence of the circuit to make sure you're not using alligator clips, you're out of luck. Don't think I am exagerrating either. This stuff already exists and Joe and Jane Average are accepting the fact that it's there for "their protection". IF they actually questioned it, they'd get the pat response: "We are doing it to combat piracy. The pirates are why we have to charge so much for music and movies. If you buy these devices, you're protecting yourself"! And they'll believe it. Meanwhile all sorts of VERY CONVENIENT TO THE CONSUMER functionality is being hampered by this technology. Screw iPods. Wouldn't it be better if your entire music collection existed in a central location (either at your home or at a provider) and it could have ANY artist from any label recorded anytime from Thomas Edison's day to the present day and it just beamed the music wherever you wanted it, whenever you wanted it to WHOEVER you wanted to let listen to it?
Anyone who was buying and HDTV early on was warned by several sources that their device may not even be compatible with HDTV signals that come over the sir since the standard wasn't fully ratified at the time. There was NO spec for HD DVD and DRM was big news. Anyone who could put 2 and 2 together should have seen this coming. That's why I waited a good long time before even considering HDTV. It's also why I made sure that my HD device was a MONITOR ONLY. The DVI connectors on it support DCHP (yes that's correct) so that the monitor will be recognized as a legitimate viewing source. The only problem I've got now is that my current media center PC is Linux based. We'll have to see if there will be legit HD-DVD software for Linux... if not, I'll have to buy a set top box and use LiRC to control it.
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Nobody like efficiency because it's not fun. That's why we have idiots driving around in gas guzzling SUVs, people crying out for Ethanol as our next fuel, and tons of road blocks being thrown up to stymie electric car development. Centralized control is THE BEST approach to systems that have lots of users. The user doesn't know what's good for them and has a tendency towards selfishness rather than social responsibility. Just as improving public transportation would be a much better (and EFFICIENT) approach to the problems that we have with auto emissions in the United States, strong and centralized control of e-mail is the ONLY way to achieve efficiency in the workplace for large e-mail systems. Now, if you're only managing 25 users you can do whatever the hell you like because a centralized or distributed approach isn't going to make much difference. But when you're dealing with more than a few hundred, you MUST impose strong controls on your users otherwise you wind up with the nightmare that the original submitter is dealing with now. BTW, I should add that I also make sure that the only protocol available to users who want to break away from our support policy and use Thunderbird or Outlook is IMAP. To put it plainly, the data on their hard drives is disposable. They are notified of that. There is no way in hell that we are going to guarantee their data on their hard drives or attempt to get them to back up their own data (remember, they don't "get" this stuff and they WILL screw up or completely ignore the concept of backing up their data). With IMAP, the mail is centralized and gets backed up nightly. We've been running like this for five years. Our users may not be happy, but that's not what we're here for. We're here to make sure they have e-mail five minutes from now no matter what happens. Always keep this in mind: efficiency+stability+security and happy users are mutually exclusive. Care to give me a reasoned rebuttal? (Happy TT!) ;P
1. You'll get 10 megs and LIKE IT!!!!
2. If you hit your 10 meg limit, empty your Sent and Trash folders!!
3. If you empty those folders and still are at your 10 meg limit, save ALL attachments to your home directory ("G Drive")!!
4. If you can't get well below your 10 meg limit, then you can ask your supervisor to request more space from IT. But you must justify that your request is work related, or else... (we can read your mail)
5. Deny all users access to HTML mail
6. Do not provide support for anything other than a web based mail client
So far it's worked fine. I have 2000 mail users in a 13 gig mail store. They may not like it. But it works.
Err... thanks. I DID RTFA and I didn't see that section AT ALL.
...how do you get ALL the data on the backup server to start with? Pushing the writes off to the backup server in real-time is identical to what the HP VA7410 SAN I work with does internally in RAID 1+0 except that this happens over the network. But how are the disks in the backup server ever going to get all the original filesystem data if that data already exists AFTER you build your backup server? Even if you have a log of writes, you can't reconstruct the data. You'll only be able to reconstruct recent changes.
Ahhh.. but grasshoppah... you make the mistake of thinking that the download count equates to quality in anyone's mind other than your own. It merely indicates popularity. And popularity doesn't mean anything other than, "we're doing a good job promoting our product with few resources compared to MS's unfair advantage of bundling IE with the OS". Anyone who takes it to mean more than that is, well... being a fool.
...is reporting stats immature or "fanboy" behavior. There are plenty of sites that report stats ad nauseum for things that other people care little about. Would you call those sorts of sites immature or "fanboy" sites? I personally think the submitter has an axe to grind... Too bad you can't mod the people who get their articles submitted when it's something as stupid as the main story here.
Inefficiency is relative Earthman. I've met beings several eons old who have done this sort of thing before. To them, such a terraforming process would be similar to your informal time unit known as "fractions of a second". Do not fall into the trap of measuring the universe by your own perspective.
Yeah. Well... maybe. But... at least a mule doesn't look freaky like that thing does. Before you know it, we'll have some overzealous scientists working on some kind of portal that opens to hell accidentally. Then that freaky looking mulebot will get a general's head and start shooting flames... So... um... take that!! ;P
Interesting take since no one was discussing develompent models. However, the development model has no influence on repelling corporate involvement or at the very least heavily restricting it. You have to keep in mind that MOST of us are not into this because we want to make money or get into business. We're into it because we believe computers and software make a better life for EVERYONE and there should be no barriers to access. EVERYONE should have access to software at ALL levels, whether it be end-user or developer and there should be absolutely no restirctions other than keeping the hands of business out.
Personally (and only according to my ideals), the only reason I'm into this is because I like to do it and it does what I need it to with no artificial limitations imposed by business (including cost, but extending beyond that). I like the idea of NOT having to worry about licenses myself since the only thing I want to do is put a bunch of things together to get an interesting result. The Microsoft way, as many of us know, doesn't allow you to do that out of the box. The BSD way does, but with some concern that anything you add to a project may eventually benefit someone you don't ethically support (a private corporation). The GPL way allows you to work free of concern of corporate interference other than the occasional (ethically invalid) software patent suit that will likely arise in the future. At the point, I prefer to be labelled a "criminal" for creating software that does what a commercial program does since NO company truly has the right to control the ideas of others.
Speaking realistically, there is NO way to escape using a mix of software that uses GPL, BSD, or the other multitude of licenses out there and have a useful system. I grudgingly acknowledge that this will always be the case unless sufficient interest exists to write a similar program under a more preferred license. This goes both ways for proponents of BSD or GPL licenses. And if you think about it, it's ridiculous to duplicate effort to provide something that is compatible with your prefered license. So we'll always be stuck with this. My main point in my original post, however, was that the GPL will protect the code. Nautilus is still freely available and that had nothing to do with the development model and EVERYTHING to do with the license. What Oracle has proposed with MySQL will eventually turn into an "embrace and extinguish" campaign. They'll provide a migration path from MySQL to Oracle, or if they really are worried: MyOracle (free as in beer). Then they will eliminate MySQL. Thereby eliminating another competitor. The only reason this hasn't happened with say OpenBSD is that the other companies who use their work in commercial products don't want to lose the free development. Oracle doesn't care since they know their product is technically better in terms fo features than MySQL. Would anyone honestly say that Oracle would be able to gain some knowledge by looking at the MySQL source tree? Doubtful.
Oh yeah... like you should talk. Your guy (Joseph Smith: founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints AKA The Mormons) saw an angel named MORONi who told him that he needed to tell his wife that he must have more than one wife to follow the wishes of God. Think about it. Smith was a JACKASS. He just wanted to dip his wick in a bunch of women (many of the "wives" of mormons have been historically underaged and blood relations as well) and have it "sanctioned by god". At least the Flying Spaghetti Monster (my current deity of choice next to my wife ["The Goddess L"]) leaves teenaged relatives and non-relatives alone. (Don't mean to offend, but people here can check out what I've said, it's the truth.)
Anyone care to explain why the ball challenged moderator who marked me as troll did so? Simply because he disagrees with my honest view perhaps? Great work. You don't like someone's views so you demonize them in an attempt to get others to turn away. It works for the neocons, so it must work for anti-GPL nutjobs too. Why don't you actually point out what you percieve as flaws in my views, instead of wasting mod points?
...the GPL is the best answer when you DON'T want to get eaten up by a big corporation. If you use the GPL, then predatory criminals won't want to touch you with a ten foot pole. They might try and work the legal angle and try to bring software patents to bear on you, but that's only because of recent boneheaded legislation that was created by companies run by predatory criminals (see: Darl McBride).
...I know it. What's going to happen is that the proponents of AC power will use DC power supplies from server racks to power electric chairs and prove how poorly it works. No one will ever want to use DC again after that kind of fiasco. As the adage goes: "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it". You never know though... this could go the way of "second system syndrome". ;P
Because... It's PROFITABLE. In one way or another, the people who pass the bill are either being paid to, or being threatened if they don't. Mark my words. The people who vote against it have committed political suicide. You won't see them in politics ever again. They might possibly not even live to the next election of their seat either with the Bush administration in charge...
Libertarians are the ones who rave on about liberty. Liberals only support uncontrolled, emotional, irrational behavior. Very different from the founding fathers. Frankly, the founding fathers were terrorists in my book. They wanted to divest themselves of the British monarchy, which was treasonous behavior. Were they alive today, they'd be hung for their crimes.
...you have nothing to worry about. In the post 9/11 world, security is king. And sometimes that means giving up certain freedoms and rights temporarily. It's all for a good cause: to root out the terrorists. If you're on the right side of this fight, you have nothing to worry about because the government won't be looking in on what you do at all. They are more concerned about finding people who support the terrorists by dissenting with the Bush administration. We have nutjob liberal bloggers out there who are trying to take the wind out of Bush's sails by repeatedly publishing false information known to come from terrorist operatives like Truth Out, MoveOn.org, IndieMedia, and the ACLU. If we just let them run rampant and change people's opinions about the War on Terror, how can we succeed? These people need to be shutdown because every word they publish against our president and his staff if a word in favor of Al Queda, The Taliban, Osama Bin Laden and the like. I don't worry myself about being investigated because I say the right things and align myself with people of character. If you do the same, you don't have anything to worry about either. But if you spend time tearing down the hard work of George W. Bush or associate with enemy combatants (yes even bloggers who hate Bush qualify in my book), then maybe you should be looking over your shoulder and re-evaluating your position. The War on Terror includes a domestic War on Liberals in my mind. It's time to finally shut down liberal voices before they can damage the progress we've made in America these past six years.
...why must something be profitable if it's popular? Isn't popularity enough for some things? In general blogs seem to serve only a few purposes:
1. Attention whoring
2. Sharing useful information that doesn't have a wide audience
3. Family brag pages
I don't see any of those being a "business opportunity". And I think anyone trying to turn a blog into a money making machine is a fool.
Ever been on a jury? The pressure to go with the majority opinion is HUGE and I would argue that virtually NO ONE in the United States would dissent with the rest of the jury if it means getting done with jury duty quicker and geting back to "real life". In many cases this isn't a problem because the lawyers make pretty good cases regardless if they are actually true or not. But there are some cases where there is just a little doubt and no one one the jury wants to spend days deliberating. The last jury I was on (I've been on three) had one person who felt uncomfortable with the opinions the rest of us held. Some of us (myself included) told her that if she didn't feel comfortable, then she should vote her conscience. But we had a few heavies who kept trying to convince her to agree with the rest of us. Eventually they succeeded. Even though she finally said, "OK I agree with everyone on this", she still followed up with, "But...". Personally, I think the jury system is even broken. I am certain that she was wrong in her thinking that this guy was innocent, and I think it was kind of an emotional issue on her part, but if she didn't feel right about the decision she should have stated so and broken the consensus.
Vile heathen!!! If you don't support Ogg Vorbis then you obviously support one of the false compression formats like MP3, WMA or AAC!!! There is only one TRUE LOSSY format and that is Ogg Vorbis. Those who do not accept the word of Xiph shall perish in the flames of WMA ear grinding hell! Please note: I do not condone any attacks on foreign embassies in the name of Ogg Vorbis.
...about the merits of Ogg Vorbis, but I feel that the time to do so has finally come. Many of the unwashed audio heathens have partaken of the lesser formats like MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV and the like. And they have all formed their own, oft incorrect, opinions on these formats. First I will start by dispelling some common myths:
1. MP3 is a LOSSY format. It doesn't matter WHAT bitrate you encode at or what your variable bitrate range is. It is LOSSY meaning that it LOOSES. MP3 is akin to the old wire recorders of the 60s that were the scourge of audiophiles like myself.
2. WMA is owned by Microsoft which immediately puts the taint of Bill Gates and his first wife Steve Ballmer on it. They tried and tried at Microsoft to outdo MP3 (which was already paltry to begin with) but they couldn't. They once again contacted their all to frequent business partner, Satan, to sell off a few more Microserf souls in exchage for WMA. This is why WMA sounds WORSE than MP3. It was made in HELL!!!!
3. AAC. What a joke! They CLAIM that it is an encrypted Dolby something or other with MPEG4 style encoding. But in reality, it's a nanoscale 8-track tape. Everytime you download more stuff from the iTunes store, you are just downloading 8-tracks for god sake. And rehashed ones at that!. If you listen VERY carefully, you can hear Conway Twitty bleed through (what a debasement!!) your supposedly shiny new Depeche Mode release.
4. WAV is NOT what CDs are based on. It never was and never will be! Get that through your head you dipshits. Back before Windows even had any concept of a CD burner (about 1996) there were tons of Macs burning CDs and they used AIFF as their format to burn to CD. But you know what... that's not even what CDs are based on. RedBook specs dictate that the audio must be 16-bit stereo 44.1 kHz PCM audio. PCM being PULSE CODE MODULATED. That's a PURE digital format that can be represented in AIFF or WAV. If you want purity, you'd be better of with straight PCM files from... good old Unix boxes. (Which incidentatlly is what is used to mass produce CDs in big media houses)
The one true LOSSY format is, was and ever shall be Ogg Vorbis. The one true LOSSLESS format is, was and ever shall be FLAC. As my listening party proved to my friends and family so long ago, the only way to enjoy music is without DRM and with high quality audio sources. No one has yet beaten Ogg Vorbis or FLAC. Ever. Period. End of argument. If anyone is interested in data tapes of my Ogg Vorbis listening party sources or updated source material, you may post in my most recent journal. Thank you and good night.
Google with their egalitarian stance on how the internet should benefit every human on the planet + the ISP that guarantees no spam and employs geeks, elves, leprechauns, gnomes (oh wait... that's Travelocity), unicorns and pretty office women! The earth is saved! Now if they can get Bush out of office next election, then we'll know that the world is finally on the right track again.
Heh. Yeah. And it's ok to buy imitation Rolex watches and fake Gucci bags as you drive through the hood. Sorry, but there was a local record shop here that was REALLY excellent. They had tremendous selection of rare stuff and carried very little of the so-called "pop" crap that you find in mall stores. Unfortunately they got busted. Not for stolen or pirated music. But for having a little side business selling fake designer purses. The feds got involved and the store got shut down. That's what allofmp3.com is. They acquire one copy (most likely illegally) of the album and then rip it and sell it ad infinitum to slimy greaseballs or ignorant consumers who have no problem purchasing STOLEN music. I'm not fan of the RIAA but I believe it's fair to pay the original channel that the music came from and think it's wrong for someone else to jump in the middle and start funneling money off to the side. That's why I hate stock brokers too.
I forgot to mention that they're gonna close the analog hole faster than you can say Barbara Bush is Bob Goatse. And NO this is not a troll. It's a comment on an issue. A witty one at that I might add... ;P
We're getting close. Read up on CableCard and DCHP for new HDTV "content". The ENTIRE signal path with Cable card is encrypted until it reaches the pixels on your display device. If your display device can't carry the encryption through the entire path, your device will NEVER display the content. All the criminals of the MPAA and RIAA need to do now is ensure the same thing through speakers. All the way to the + and - contacts on the speaker cone (I know the proper word is driver, but the computer geeks here will get confused) itself. If the amplified audio signal needs an encryption handshake from the speaker itself before it actually allows the sound to output and it checks the impedence of the circuit to make sure you're not using alligator clips, you're out of luck. Don't think I am exagerrating either. This stuff already exists and Joe and Jane Average are accepting the fact that it's there for "their protection". IF they actually questioned it, they'd get the pat response: "We are doing it to combat piracy. The pirates are why we have to charge so much for music and movies. If you buy these devices, you're protecting yourself"! And they'll believe it. Meanwhile all sorts of VERY CONVENIENT TO THE CONSUMER functionality is being hampered by this technology. Screw iPods. Wouldn't it be better if your entire music collection existed in a central location (either at your home or at a provider) and it could have ANY artist from any label recorded anytime from Thomas Edison's day to the present day and it just beamed the music wherever you wanted it, whenever you wanted it to WHOEVER you wanted to let listen to it?
Anyone who was buying and HDTV early on was warned by several sources that their device may not even be compatible with HDTV signals that come over the sir since the standard wasn't fully ratified at the time. There was NO spec for HD DVD and DRM was big news. Anyone who could put 2 and 2 together should have seen this coming. That's why I waited a good long time before even considering HDTV. It's also why I made sure that my HD device was a MONITOR ONLY. The DVI connectors on it support DCHP (yes that's correct) so that the monitor will be recognized as a legitimate viewing source. The only problem I've got now is that my current media center PC is Linux based. We'll have to see if there will be legit HD-DVD software for Linux... if not, I'll have to buy a set top box and use LiRC to control it.