Oh.. and on the off chance that MS is reading any of this:
MS, if you like to ingratiate yourselves with all of us Windows system administrators, may I suggest having a single option somewhere (hide it if you like), which when selected would configure the user interface to be optimal for a system administrator's use... ie prominent links to explorer, command prompt & other system tools, default detail view on everything, bells and whistles turned off, replace all wizards with a real configuration interfaces, have OS assume that everything the user does is permitted (ok, you can still nag for deletions & format), etc.... Then allow us to customize this configuration and the make it EASILY portable. As for what exactly should be set/unset, take a poll. We will love you for it.
You have no idea how much time I've wasted during my professional careeer simply reconfiguring windows to make it useable for both myself and my users. (yes I know a lot of shortcuts now....however I still think there should be an 'admin friendly interface' available out of the box.)
I should have known better but my curiousity got the better of me.
I Installed RC2 on a Athlon 64 system with a Nforce 4 chipset & Geforce 6800 graphics just a few days ago and here's what happened....
Install went smooth at first... my system had a 160GB SATA primary drive/volume and a second volume made up of dual ATA drives in a RAID 0 config. Setup appeared (at first glance) to see the RAID volume and that's where I told it to install.
Unfortunately... it turns out that while it detected an Nvidia RAID controller and saw a single volume, it actually only saw ONE of the drives. It installed itself on this drive, totally hosing the RAID 0 set (well... actually I did recover a some of the data) and of course crapped out after the first re-boot.
Damn.... good thing nothing important was on the RAID volume. Oh well... I decided it was sort of my fault for not noticing that setup showed that size of the volume = the size of a single drive rather than two and realizing something was wrong at that point in the install.
Try #2... This time I resized my SATA drive partition to free up space for a second partition and re-installed there. This time the installation completed successfully and I had a working Vista install with the full Aero desktop. (Btw, it turns out you need a frickin Windows key to do the fancy 3D task switching. You know, the stupid and previous useless key that some MS marketing guy got keyboard makers to add to all their PC keyboards? I always pull mine off as it interferes with my FPS control setup. Nothing like having the start menu pop up when you're in a firefight. Anyway, this really put me off... but you can still sample the effect from one of the quick launch items)
Looking good... but wait! There's no sound and it sees my RAID set as two separate drives. I'm somewhat disturbed that RC2 doesn't support common Nvidia hardware that's a year or two old, but what the heck... Nvidia's been releasing Vista drivers, I'll just go download them.
All I can find on Nvidia's site are RC1 drivers and sure enough, they won't install. Even worse, here's what happened while trying....
The Nvidia drivers came zipped up and after downloading it, I browsed to the.zip in explorer and attempted to extract the files. Extraction starts then hangs. Then every other explorer related process hangs... and then, network connectivity ceases.
I can still launch apps and a command prompt (via task manager) , but there's no network and no explorer. Attempts to logout, shutdown, and reboot all fail. I try to kill explorer with task manager but it won't die. After about 10 minutes I finally have to press reset.
I repeat this about 3 times and then I give up in disgust. This is WAY worse than when explorer hangs in XP. Just kill it and and it usually restarts. With Vista RC2, it looks like you have to wait 30 minutes (maybe, I wasn't patient enough) or hit reset.
So.. I installed winrar instead, unzipped the drivers, and failed to install them as they were the wrong version.
And that's about all the time I was willing to waste... I'll take another look when Nvidia releases RC2 drivers but I'm not impressed at this point.
A few other annoyances during all of this:
I was repeatedly told that the computer need my permission to do something that I just directed it to. It was incredibly annoying. Just about everything I did triggered the request and if I said yes once, it would still ask the next time I tried.
Most of the management/system config stuff that I'm used to in XP have been hidden, moved, or obfucscated in Vista... though to be fair, I'd probably get used to this once I'm more familiar with the OS. No incentive to do that at present though.
The new explorer interface bites, at first glance anyway.
I used to... and it was a very enjoyable ritual until my local paper got so bad (SJ Merc News) that I felt obliged to cancel my sub. The Times and the Journal are available here but a bit pricey so I only read them online. The best print news IMO, is The Economist, even pricier but I usually buy it from the stand at least a few times a month.
US Newspapers are suffering the same problems that make network news so bad: media consolidation and pandering to advertisers & the lowest common demographic.
Most TV news available in the US is crap except perhaps BBC if you can get it. I do think TDS is great fun though, and I watch it regularly. For serious daily news the internet is where it's really at and news.google.com is the best place to start. Drudge, if you can get past the salacious, often misleading headlines and obvious bias is good for breaking news and he generally won't hold back on a good story no matter whos affected. He posts alot of crap but he does seem to get much of the good stuff first.
The call went out to fans and friends and it came from people (Doug Rushkoff, Boing-Boing editors) whom most fans and friends of Mr. Wilson have probably heard of and trust to some extent.
Nobody asked non-fans/non-friends to send money. So why does a non-fan/non-friend feel the need to interject FUD on behalf of the people who actually give a damn (and gave few bucks)?
I just don't get why someone who has apparently never heard of Robert Anton Wilson would warn us that he might be ripping us off and I'm somewhat saddened that it's the second comment one sees when viewing the article. I assume that means alot of folks agreed with him.
I'm a cynic myself but I would never presume to tell you that someone I've never heard of but whom you know and admire might be trying to screw you.
Someone please mod parent down. This should most certainly NOT be the first post one sees when clicking the article.
If you don't know the guy or his work then don't send him money. Nobody is asking you to. There's plenty of us fans that will and have, and we certainly don't need or want you looking out for our financial interests.
F#$% Reuters for running this lame ass article with no context, poor research, and sinister implications.
I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that we're talking about a multi-player game here.
How many such games produced in the west allow you to kill Muslims/Arabs/Chinese/Vietnamese/Germans/etc... and blow up their strategic assets?
How many of the gamers who play those games give an ideological shit which side they're playing on? (that's a good question, but I suspect that in the West, and certainly among the people I play online with every day, the number is miniscule)
And what the hell does this mean:
"A popular U.S. game, called "U.S. attacks Iran" or "Assault on Iran" and made by Kuma Reality games, revolved around a special forces mission to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities."
I can only assume that the writer was too lazy to find out what the name of the game actually is. (It's a free game called Kuma\War and most of the downloadable missions take place in Iraq though there is one named "Assault on Iran".) Kuma's website provides the following info:
"Kuma\War, the first Kuma Reality Game, is a totally free, first and third-person tactical squad-based game that provides multiple updates monthly to the consumer's computer to reflect unfolding events in the real world. Each month Kuma\War subscribers receive playable missions, video news shows, extensive intelligence gathered from news sources around the world, and insight from a decorated team of military veterans.
At Kuma, we are sensitive and respectful of American and coalition soldiers and the sacrifices they are making every day. We hope that by telling their stories with such a powerful medium that we enable the American public to gain a better appreciation of the conflicts and the dangers they face. As part of our mission, Kuma Reality Games provides military training to the United States Army (contract number 1435-04-05-CT-42872)."
That's pretty sinister if you ask me. And if it's not, why imply that the Iranian game is?
Nearly as sinister, the US tax-payer funded game, America's Army, is actually promoted as a US Army recruitment & training tool and is the only multi-player game I'm aware of where no matter which side you choose, you're an American and the other team looks like stereotypical, middle eastern 'terrorists'. (at least they did when I stopped playing it several years ago)
The existence of America's Army alone justifies the Iranian CounterStrike, assuming it's an actual propaganda tool and not just gamers making games they want to play.
I love wargames & shooters but I prefer them to be based firmly in historical or hypothetical land and not financed by a government. Wargames based on current events (esp. Govt funded or associated games) creep me out in the same way that pseudo -fictional movies and TV shows about 9/11 or any recent, traumatic event do. I don't trust the motives of their publishers and I won't support them. I'd hope the same from my Iranian counterparts.
Yeah... and to me, wireless=crap battery life. About the last feature I'd want in a mp3 player.
As for DRM, Apple's in trouble with or without Zune. All my iPod toting aquaintences are disuillusioned with itunes and royally pissed when they finally realize how many restrictions have been placed on the music they paid for.... (like when they're computer HD dies and they've got to jump through hoops to salvage any music) Same goes for users of similar DRM services.
I see a migration from DRM to no-DRM. Zune is doomed.
BTW any Underworld fans out there might like to know that they're selling new material in mp3 format with no drm at www.underworldlive.com. First time I've felt good about buying music in years.... wait... it IS the first time I've bought music in years. Those are my conditions.... No DRM and as direct from the artist as possible.
...and today it was anounced the the San Jose Mercury News paper will be changing their name to Hewlett Packard News.
They may as well...
I'm a bit tired of hearing about this. The issue has very few implications beyond HP.
On the one hand, If someone is leaking sensitive info, the Board has a responsibilty to stop the leak. On the other hand, they need to do it legally.
I'm not convinced anyone but the investigators broke any law and I'm not convinced that the people who hired the investigators should be held 100% culpable.
I'm really annoyed that there is any question that lying about your identity to obtain personal information on someone else might be illegal. I'm seriously annoyed that a whole new word needed to be invented (or at least dredged up) to describe what happened ('pretexting')
I'm really sick of the 5 articles per day that the Merc feels is necessary to cover the story.... but then this is the paper the relegated the Thailand coup story to page three while running "Is it possible that NYC could be safer than San Jose?" on the cover.
Anyone click on any of Google News' links the Yahoo/CBS streaming TV article yesterday? (Still on the front page this am...)
I had to to hit about five different articles before I found a link to the site that they were all reporting on, and I believe the site I found it on was new web media, not a traditional paper's site.
It blows me away how the printed media can consistently, even stubbornly, leave out hyperlinks (in both their web and print versions) when discussing events on the web itself.
I don't know that there is card on the market that will play some of the newer games (COD2, Quake4, F.E.A.R) at that resolution. Maybe dual 7800 GTXes?
I got 6800 GS 256MB PCIe card for x-mas and can only run COD2 at 800x600 for it to be truly playable online. Single player is ok at 1024x768.
I'd recommend the 6800 GS over the 6600GT. Seems to be the best bang for the buck right now, though I noticed some folks have 256 MB 7800GTs priced at $300 on pricewatch.com.
Unless you have the exact same samples/instruments that the original artist used, chances are your midi file playback will sound as much like the original as me whistling the tune... Not to mention vocals.
Creative sort of tried to work around this limitation of MIDI with their sound font idea but how may professional musicians are using sound fonts?
That said, I don't see why a midi file wouldn't fall under the same protection that a piece of sheet music would. Practically the same thing, no?
/I wouldn't say that. If so, why are they suing to/stop/ the process, not/suing to ensure they all get royalties?
Good point. It seems like it would be difficult to determine what royalties are owed and to whom. I don't fully understand their motives even after reading what they say. I don't see what they lose.... except maybe some control but I'd argue they don't really have that to begin with. Just because the law says you have it doesn't make it so.
There also seems to be something of a "if I'm not making any money off it, I'll mnake sure one else can either" attitude as well which just doesn't make sense to me.
A publishing company's opposition is more understandable. Assuming they own most of the rights to the works the publish (and I'm assuming the industry is similar to the movie and record industries, in this respect), as large coorporate entity they are in a position do do the same thing that Google is doing at some point in the future and reap the benefit themselves. They may just be trying to stave off the inevitable until they come up with a way to do it or something similar themselves. But individual authors? I really see no logical reason to oppose this.
If Google doesn't index the books. The authors neither lose nor gain money.
If Google does index the books, Google makes money indirectly but the authors don't necessarily lose any. In fact... the authors may very well make money due to increased exposure. (I'm assuming Google doesn't make it convenient to grab entire works)
While one could say that Google is profiting off of the authors, they are at least putting in some effort and probably adding value. In fact, I'd say they are creating something that didn't exist before, which will probably benefit many.
One could also say that the authors are now expecting additional income from Google's effort with no additional effort on their part. Income that they had not expected until Google came along. Income that they were content without until Google came along.
One of these seems way more greedy than the other.
This sort of unfairness is one of the inherhent problems with 'intellectual property' in general and why, IMO, there should be far shorter time limits than what we're currently facing. The original 14 years or so was sufficient.
Most of my video viewing is done on a small PC runing XP Pro which is hooked to a TV in the living room. I believe ffdshow is the only codec (more of a codec pack, really) I've installed.
I use Media Player Classic most of the time also but frequently have to switch between MPC, Zoom Player, and Windows Media Player 10 because quite often the files I'm playing (randomly downloaded off the net), work better in one than the others. MPC is generally the most stable and plays the widest variety of files I find. I have one or two other players as well but rarely use them.
I generally use Winamp only for Music. The lack of accessible video control (brightness/contrast) preclude it's use for video in my living room. I need to adjust these settings for nearly everything I play which is annoying. I assume that's the result of the hundreds or thousands of different sources I get my files from and the myriad of ways they are encoded. I wish MPC had easier access to those controls but as it is most often the only player that will play a file, I still use it the most. At least I can get to the ffdshow video settings a bit more easily than in winamp.
IMO, The best thing about WMP10 is the easy access to brightness/contrast. If it played more of my video without losing audio sync or simply refusing to play at all, I'd probably use it just for that.
Don't really care about organizing video or music. They're already organized in the file system.
"The major disruptions now are not caused by simple thrill-seekers."
Please name one serious, high-profile hacking case (to include authoring viriii & worms) in which the perpetrator was caught and didn't turn out to be a teenager or a still adolescent 20 something.
Inside jobs don't count.
I'm sure there must be a few but I honestly can't think of any.
Not to say that there aren't real bad guys out there... they just don't seem to get caught despite all the money thrown at computer and network security.
Speaking as a sys admin for almost 20 years, most hacking has been a source of annoyance (and sometimes amusement) rather than serious damage. The oft quoted "billions & billions of damage due to hackers' is a load of crap as far as I can tell. Kind of ike the y2k bug was.
They don't frighten me. The internet was never designed for privacy to begin with. If that's your aim then paying to "hack in" extra security is the price you pay.
And you know what...? sometimes the cure is even worse than the disease.
I read somewhere recently (sorry, can't remember where) where someone (a security "expert"?) criticized a nuculear power plant's network security by saying something along the lines of "they're so backward they aren't even connected to the internet". Sounds like good security to me.
1.) Any music you have for sale should be linked from your web site. Preferably, all of it would be there.
2.) No DRM, or at least a no DRM option.
Call me lazy, but if I can't go to www.yourband.com and purchase an unprotected MP3, (or at least be painlessly directed to a site where I can make such a purchase) the chances of me purchasing anything are reduced signficantly.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh.. and on the off chance that MS is reading any of this:
MS, if you like to ingratiate yourselves with all of us Windows system administrators, may I suggest having a single option somewhere (hide it if you like), which when selected would configure the user interface to be optimal for a system administrator's use... ie prominent links to explorer, command prompt & other system tools, default detail view on everything, bells and whistles turned off, replace all wizards with a real configuration interfaces, have OS assume that everything the user does is permitted (ok, you can still nag for deletions & format), etc.... Then allow us to customize this configuration and the make it EASILY portable. As for what exactly should be set/unset, take a poll. We will love you for it.
You have no idea how much time I've wasted during my professional careeer simply reconfiguring windows to make it useable for both myself and my users. (yes I know a lot of shortcuts now....however I still think there should be an 'admin friendly interface' available out of the box.)
I should have known better but my curiousity got the better of me.
I Installed RC2 on a Athlon 64 system with a Nforce 4 chipset & Geforce 6800 graphics just a few days ago and here's what happened....
Install went smooth at first... my system had a 160GB SATA primary drive/volume and a second volume made up of dual ATA drives in a RAID 0 config. Setup appeared (at first glance) to see the RAID volume and that's where I told it to install.
Unfortunately... it turns out that while it detected an Nvidia RAID controller and saw a single volume, it actually only saw ONE of the drives. It installed itself on this drive, totally hosing the RAID 0 set (well... actually I did recover a some of the data) and of course crapped out after the first re-boot.
Damn.... good thing nothing important was on the RAID volume. Oh well... I decided it was sort of my fault for not noticing that setup showed that size of the volume = the size of a single drive rather than two and realizing something was wrong at that point in the install.
Try #2... This time I resized my SATA drive partition to free up space for a second partition and re-installed there. This time the installation completed successfully and I had a working Vista install with the full Aero desktop. (Btw, it turns out you need a frickin Windows key to do the fancy 3D task switching. You know, the stupid and previous useless key that some MS marketing guy got keyboard makers to add to all their PC keyboards? I always pull mine off as it interferes with my FPS control setup. Nothing like having the start menu pop up when you're in a firefight. Anyway, this really put me off... but you can still sample the effect from one of the quick launch items)
Looking good... but wait! There's no sound and it sees my RAID set as two separate drives. I'm somewhat disturbed that RC2 doesn't support common Nvidia hardware that's a year or two old, but what the heck... Nvidia's been releasing Vista drivers, I'll just go download them.
All I can find on Nvidia's site are RC1 drivers and sure enough, they won't install. Even worse, here's what happened while trying....
The Nvidia drivers came zipped up and after downloading it, I browsed to the
I can still launch apps and a command prompt (via task manager) , but there's no network and no explorer. Attempts to logout, shutdown, and reboot all fail. I try to kill explorer with task manager but it won't die. After about 10 minutes I finally have to press reset.
I repeat this about 3 times and then I give up in disgust. This is WAY worse than when explorer hangs in XP. Just kill it and and it usually restarts. With Vista RC2, it looks like you have to wait 30 minutes (maybe, I wasn't patient enough) or hit reset.
So.. I installed winrar instead, unzipped the drivers, and failed to install them as they were the wrong version.
And that's about all the time I was willing to waste... I'll take another look when Nvidia releases RC2 drivers but I'm not impressed at this point.
A few other annoyances during all of this:
I was repeatedly told that the computer need my permission to do something that I just directed it to. It was incredibly annoying. Just about everything I did triggered the request and if I said yes once, it would still ask the next time I tried.
Most of the management/system config stuff that I'm used to in XP have been hidden, moved, or obfucscated in Vista... though to be fair, I'd probably get used to this once I'm more familiar with the OS. No incentive to do that at present though.
The new explorer interface bites, at first glance anyway.
And that's my Vista RC2 experience. Good luck.
I used to... and it was a very enjoyable ritual until my local paper got so bad (SJ Merc News) that I felt obliged to cancel my sub. The Times and the Journal are available here but a bit pricey so I only read them online. The best print news IMO, is The Economist, even pricier but I usually buy it from the stand at least a few times a month.
US Newspapers are suffering the same problems that make network news so bad: media consolidation and pandering to advertisers & the lowest common demographic.
Most TV news available in the US is crap except perhaps BBC if you can get it. I do think TDS is great fun though, and I watch it regularly. For serious daily news the internet is where it's really at and news.google.com is the best place to start. Drudge, if you can get past the salacious, often misleading headlines and obvious bias is good for breaking news and he generally won't hold back on a good story no matter whos affected. He posts alot of crap but he does seem to get much of the good stuff first.
Thoughtful yet crass & cynical, you mean.
The call went out to fans and friends and it came from people (Doug Rushkoff, Boing-Boing editors) whom most fans and friends of Mr. Wilson have probably heard of and trust to some extent.
Nobody asked non-fans/non-friends to send money.
So why does a non-fan/non-friend feel the need to interject FUD on behalf of the people who actually give a damn (and gave few bucks)?
I just don't get why someone who has apparently never heard of Robert Anton Wilson would warn us that he might be ripping us off and I'm somewhat saddened that it's the second comment one sees when viewing the article. I assume that means alot of folks agreed with him.
I'm a cynic myself but I would never presume to tell you that someone I've never heard of but whom you know and admire might be trying to screw you.
Someone please mod parent down. This should most certainly NOT be the first post one sees when clicking the article.
If you don't know the guy or his work then don't send him money. Nobody is asking you to. There's plenty of us fans that will and have, and we certainly don't need or want you looking out for our financial interests.
It's a magic book that's different every time you read it!
But seriously if Illuminatus is to much (and I agree it's dense and hard to read) try one of his others... especially Cosmic Trigger.
Bob is a wonderful guy. May he pass in peace.
F#$% Reuters for running this lame ass article with no context, poor research, and sinister implications.
I'm going to assume for the sake of argument that we're talking about a multi-player game here.
How many such games produced in the west allow you to kill Muslims/Arabs/Chinese/Vietnamese/Germans/etc... and blow up their strategic assets?
How many of the gamers who play those games give an ideological shit which side they're playing on? (that's a good question, but I suspect that in the West, and certainly among the people I play online with every day, the number is miniscule)
And what the hell does this mean:
"A popular U.S. game, called "U.S. attacks Iran" or "Assault on Iran" and made by Kuma Reality games, revolved around a special forces mission to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities."
I can only assume that the writer was too lazy to find out what the name of the game actually is. (It's a free game called Kuma\War and most of the downloadable missions take place in Iraq though there is one named "Assault on Iran".) Kuma's website provides the following info:
"Kuma\War, the first Kuma Reality Game, is a totally free, first and third-person tactical squad-based game that provides multiple updates monthly to the consumer's computer to reflect unfolding events in the real world. Each month Kuma\War subscribers receive playable missions, video news shows, extensive intelligence gathered from news sources around the world, and insight from a decorated team of military veterans.
At Kuma, we are sensitive and respectful of American and coalition soldiers and the sacrifices they are making every day. We hope that by telling their stories with such a powerful medium that we enable the American public to gain a better appreciation of the conflicts and the dangers they face. As part of our mission, Kuma Reality Games provides military training to the United States Army (contract number 1435-04-05-CT-42872)."
That's pretty sinister if you ask me. And if it's not, why imply that the Iranian game is?
Nearly as sinister, the US tax-payer funded game, America's Army, is actually promoted as a US Army recruitment & training tool and is the only multi-player game I'm aware of where no matter which side you choose, you're an American and the other team looks like stereotypical, middle eastern 'terrorists'. (at least they did when I stopped playing it several years ago)
The existence of America's Army alone justifies the Iranian CounterStrike, assuming it's an actual propaganda tool and not just gamers making games they want to play.
I love wargames & shooters but I prefer them to be based firmly in historical or hypothetical land and not financed by a government. Wargames based on current events (esp. Govt funded or associated games) creep me out in the same way that pseudo -fictional movies and TV shows about 9/11 or any recent, traumatic event do. I don't trust the motives of their publishers and I won't support them. I'd hope the same from my Iranian counterparts.
Yeah... and to me, wireless=crap battery life.
About the last feature I'd want in a mp3 player.
As for DRM, Apple's in trouble with or without Zune. All my iPod toting aquaintences are disuillusioned with itunes and royally pissed when they finally realize how many restrictions have been placed on the music they paid for.... (like when they're computer HD dies and they've got to jump through hoops to salvage any music) Same goes for users of similar DRM services.
I see a migration from DRM to no-DRM. Zune is doomed.
BTW any Underworld fans out there might like to know that they're selling new material in mp3 format with no drm at www.underworldlive.com. First time I've felt good about buying music in years.... wait... it IS the first time I've bought music in years. Those are my conditions.... No DRM and as direct from the artist as possible.
They may as well...
I'm a bit tired of hearing about this. The issue has very few implications beyond HP.
On the one hand, If someone is leaking sensitive info, the Board has a responsibilty to stop the leak.
On the other hand, they need to do it legally.
I'm not convinced anyone but the investigators broke any law and I'm not convinced that the people who hired the investigators should be held 100% culpable.
I'm really annoyed that there is any question that lying about your identity to obtain personal information on someone else might be illegal.
I'm seriously annoyed that a whole new word needed to be invented (or at least dredged up) to describe what happened ('pretexting')
I'm really sick of the 5 articles per day that the Merc feels is necessary to cover the story.... but then this is the paper the relegated the Thailand coup story to page three while running "Is it possible that NYC could be safer than San Jose?" on the cover.
Sorry for the rant...
My sole source of TV & movies has been alt.binaries.multimedia, alt.binaries.movies, and alt.binaries.movies.divx for going on about 4 years now.
Many thanks to all the posters for a commercial free viewing experience.
No... I don't feel guilty.
This new look... it's making my eyes water. Looks odd on 1280x1024 LCD. Hard to focus.
This one talks about Colbert's performance
Anyone click on any of Google News' links the Yahoo/CBS streaming TV article yesterday? (Still on the front page this am...)
I had to to hit about five different articles before I found a link to the site that they were all reporting on, and I believe the site I found it on was new web media, not a traditional paper's site.
It blows me away how the printed media can consistently, even stubbornly, leave out hyperlinks (in both their web and print versions) when discussing events on the web itself.
What's up with that?
I don't know that there is card on the market that will play some of the newer games (COD2, Quake4, F.E.A.R) at that resolution. Maybe dual 7800 GTXes?
I got 6800 GS 256MB PCIe card for x-mas and can only run COD2 at 800x600 for it to be truly playable online. Single player is ok at 1024x768.
I'd recommend the 6800 GS over the 6600GT. Seems to be the best bang for the buck right now, though I noticed some folks have 256 MB 7800GTs priced at $300 on pricewatch.com.
Unless you have the exact same samples/instruments that the original artist used, chances are your midi file playback will sound as much like the original as me whistling the tune... Not to mention vocals.
Creative sort of tried to work around this limitation of MIDI with their sound font idea but how may professional musicians are using sound fonts?
That said, I don't see why a midi file wouldn't fall under the same protection that a piece of sheet music would. Practically the same thing, no?
Devils advocate here...
If Google doesn't index the books. The authors neither lose nor gain money.
If Google does index the books, Google makes money indirectly but the authors don't necessarily lose any. In fact... the authors may very well make money due to increased exposure. (I'm assuming Google doesn't make it convenient to grab entire works)
While one could say that Google is profiting off of the authors, they are at least putting in some effort and probably adding value. In fact, I'd say they are creating something that didn't exist before, which will probably benefit many.
One could also say that the authors are now expecting additional income from Google's effort with no additional effort on their part. Income that they had not expected until Google came along. Income that they were content without until Google came along.
One of these seems way more greedy than the other.
This sort of unfairness is one of the inherhent problems with 'intellectual property' in general and why, IMO, there should be far shorter time limits than what we're currently facing. The original 14 years or so was sufficient.
Guess we won't be seeing these in Florida......
I recently tried VLC but experienced frequent crashes. I plan to keep an eye on it though.
Most of my video viewing is done on a small PC runing XP Pro which is hooked to a TV in the living room. I believe ffdshow is the only codec (more of a codec pack, really) I've installed.
I use Media Player Classic most of the time also but frequently have to switch between MPC, Zoom Player, and Windows Media Player 10 because quite often the files I'm playing (randomly downloaded off the net), work better in one than the others. MPC is generally the most stable and plays the widest variety of files I find. I have one or two other players as well but rarely use them.
I generally use Winamp only for Music. The lack of accessible video control (brightness/contrast) preclude it's use for video in my living room. I need to adjust these settings for nearly everything I play which is annoying. I assume that's the result of the hundreds or thousands of different sources I get my files from and the myriad of ways they are encoded. I wish MPC had easier access to those controls but as it is most often the only player that will play a file, I still use it the most. At least I can get to the ffdshow video settings a bit more easily than in winamp.
IMO, The best thing about WMP10 is the easy access to brightness/contrast. If it played more of my video without losing audio sync or simply refusing to play at all, I'd probably use it just for that.
Don't really care about organizing video or music. They're already organized in the file system.
Has there been some recent improvement or does Windows PE still boot slower than a snail on quaaludes?
Knoppix blew it a way in speed and functionality both as a rescue platform and as usable system.
Pretty Please?
"The major disruptions now are not caused by simple thrill-seekers."
Please name one serious, high-profile hacking case (to include authoring viriii & worms) in which the perpetrator was caught and didn't turn out to be a teenager or a still adolescent 20 something.
Inside jobs don't count.
I'm sure there must be a few but I honestly can't think of any.
Not to say that there aren't real bad guys out there... they just don't seem to get caught despite all the money thrown at computer and network security.
Speaking as a sys admin for almost 20 years, most hacking has been a source of annoyance (and sometimes amusement) rather than serious damage. The oft quoted "billions & billions of damage due to hackers' is a load of crap as far as I can tell. Kind of ike the y2k bug was.
They don't frighten me. The internet was never designed for privacy to begin with. If that's your aim then paying to "hack in" extra security is the price you pay.
And you know what...? sometimes the cure is even worse than the disease.
I read somewhere recently (sorry, can't remember where) where someone (a security "expert"?) criticized a nuculear power plant's network security by saying something along the lines of "they're so backward they aren't even connected to the internet". Sounds like good security to me.
Me to.
1.) Any music you have for sale should be linked from your web site. Preferably, all of it would be there.
2.) No DRM, or at least a no DRM option.
Call me lazy, but if I can't go to www.yourband.com and purchase an unprotected MP3, (or at least be painlessly directed to a site where I can make such a purchase) the chances of me purchasing anything are reduced signficantly.