That's incorrect. MCE does record to a proprietary.dvr-ms file format, but the files can be transferred to and played on any other Windows XP or MCE machine. The data inside the files is just MPEG-2, and can be burnt to regular DVD format using an easy supported/non-hack third-party add-on.
You can also hack the files to convert them to normal MPEG-2 files, but that's not officially supported and takes a computer-literate user.
The "TV pundit" is clueless. First off, MCE has basically only been a full-fledged product for a couple of months, since the release of MCE 2005. Previous versions were unavailable to the public except as part of expensive prebuilt PCs for a very good reason--they were essentially public beta tests.
Microsoft has a long history of releasing barely-useful products, and refining them over several releases until they dominate the market. Windows, for example--1 and 2 were laughable graphical shells for DOS that paled next to the other GUI products; 3.11 started taking over the DOS GUI market; 95 killed the 3rd party DOS GUI market, became known as an OS (of sorts), and ate into Apple's position as having *the* graphical home computer. Office's win over formerly dominant WordPerfect and complementary apps/suites took much less time--early releases of Word and Office were laughed at, but within a few years and releases all other word processors, spreadsheets, etc., were taking a back seat.
I see the same happening with MCE. The first two releases were the feature-light prelims--MS sticking its toe in the water while quietly building its dingy into a warship. Early products were never even intended for widespread adoption--they were to whet the appetites of early-adopters while MS refined its offering. MCE 2005 is the first "real" release--the first with full features, refined responsiveness, and wide hardware support. The first release that totally trounces every other PC PVR option, with the possible exception of SageTV. And it beats every set-top-box DVR in usability and refinement with the exception of TiVo, but without any monthly or lifetime subscription charge and with far more flexibility.
MCE PC prices will be lowering, and indeed they're already competitive with TiVo when you add the price of a TiVo with DVD recorder (to approach a similar feature level to MCE hardware) to a lifetime subscription fee. MCE tuner hardware has already fallen to as little as $50 retail for an OEM card, and the cost of the MCE OS is only marginally higher than the cost of XP Pro. The real Holy Grail for MS is to undercut the cable/sat DVRs the same way the cable/sat DVRs have been undercutting TiVo--include MCE as a very cheap option on all new systems, and as standard on all more upscale systems.
That's going to be MS's trump card. The lukewarm reception of MS and Intel's "Digital Joy" or any future marketing campaign will be irrelevent as the cost to add MCE to any new PC slowly falls over the coming months to around $70--$20 extra over the cost of plain XP for the software, and $50 extra for the new cheaper hardware tuners. It could even go lower depending on market forces. And MCE is a lot more flexible than any "house brand" cable/sat DVR--worth the mall incremental cost over a new Windows PC without MCE. And thanks to a fairly affordable Media Center Extender set-top-box or Media Center Extender software with your Xbox or next-gen successor console, you can extend MCE's reach into all other rooms with TVs. Heck, you can even leave the MCE PC in another room and only need an Extender or Xbox in your TV room...
But wait! There's another trump card. Intel and Microsoft have been working hard to provide a secure hardware/software path to make next-gen media like Blu-ray and HD-DVD available for PC playback. Those formats will emerge in 2005 and become a real factor in 2006. Now, picture the method for PC playback of these formats as a PC with a new Intel chipset to enforce hardware security and maybe--just maybe--a new version of MCE to enable security on the software end. Once again, picture this ability costing incrementally less as an option on a new PC than it would to buy an expensive dedicated set-top-box. And you can connect one box to your TV instead of daisy-chaining a cable/sat receiver, a TiVo, and a Blu-ray/HD-DVD player--and maybe other things.
That doesn't even begin to touch on MCE as a wedge Microsoft can use to compete with cable/sat providers directl
So, you never use USENET (newsgroups) either, since most child porn probably gets posted there eventually? And you never use IRC or IM since most of the hardcore child porn reportedly originates there, traded between pedophiles? And you never use the WWW since most softcore child porn allegedly originates on Russian/Slovenian/etc. pay web sites? And you never use e-mail since pedophiles use it to lure young girls to be molested?
Hmmm. If we don't use things for good or neutral purposes just because others are using them for negative purposes, we'd have to live naked (because of shirts like this ) in caves. But then again children have probably been molested or photographed exploitively in caves, too, so we can't have anything to do with caves either...
> I used to be a bit more sympathetic to this stuff, but I know too > many people who view it as their RIGHT to access other people's > work for free, without their permission.
Actually it is. Traditionally, once you showed something publicly, anyone who saw it had a fundamental natural right to copy it. This is both a common-sense approach and in the roots of Common Law. For 99% of human history that's how it was, yet it didn't keep Shakespeare from writing his plays even though they were pirated at each first performance.
Modern copyright law is a social contract--explicitly so in the Constitution at least in the U.S.--whereby the public *temporarily* trades its natural right to copy anything it sees to give creators more incentive to create more things. But it is not the creator's natural right to prevent everyone else from copying his inventions.
Copyright laws are being abused and the public is clearly interested in revoking its social contract creating this artificial right in order to reclaim its natural right to copy. Unfortunately we have a corporate government now, so that won't be allowed to happen.
It starts with a "U" and rhymes with "BLUESNET".;-) Seriously, *everything* gets posted there a day or two after it's released. Just follow the white rabbit to a big premium news server provider and download anything you want without the possibility of the MPAA or RIAA ever seeing your IP.
Funny how Europeans always complain about not getting American shows in a timely manner, when most of what I want are Canadian and British shows I can't get here (or can't get uncensored, like Degrassi), or U.S. shows that were cancelled here before showing all episodes but have all the episodes shown overseas (like the sexiest teen show ever on American network TV, The Opposite Sex). The new *Battlestar Galactica* is the only exception, but it's a joint U.S.-British production shown in Britain first...
I'd gladly pay for subscrptions to premium British and Canadian TV services if I could, but I'm not allowed thanks to geographically discriminatory content licensing. Content providers need to be pushed into broader worldwide same-date (or at least close--not many months or years difference) availability. Funny how in the era of "free trade" the multimedia content industry is the only one erecting more barriers to trade instead of tearing them down. While geographically I can't just subscribe to Britain's Sky Digital since their satellites aren't positioned for this side of the world, there's no technological reason I shouldn't be able to subscribe to Canadian services. I'm not permitted to by Draconian content licensing.
Artificial trade borders are gone on the Net, but instead of adjusting to exploit it the content industry is trying to protect the old fiefdoms. Instead, it should be doing for downloadable TV what iTunes did for downloadable music. But it's too complacent and protectionist to adapt.
> However, you are forgetting the well known exception to the > racist term rule that allows one to use it on one's own race.
Bullshit. That's a very recent liberal apologia for the uneducated/gangsta segment of the black community's penchant for using the word "nigger". It's a post hoc rationalization for a behavior most middle class African Americans are themselves offended by. It's not a "well known exception" and as a white person I'm offended at Le Guin's self-hating anti-white racist language. "Honky"? Fuck anyone using racist language in this day and age, especially someone who acknowledges her writings come from the mythic tradition of the same people she's disparaging.
Think of it this way. A black writer draws on African tribal traditions in creating her fantasy novels, but mentions all the characters are white. She sells film rights and gives up creative control, and the producers turn it into a miniseries for the Black Entertainment Television channel. Since their audience is mostly black and the story draws from African tribal lore, and race isn't central to the story, they make most of the cast black. The author then complains loudly all over the place about how the producers made her characters "niggers" when they're supposed to be white.
Don't you think blacks would be justifiably upset about such an artificial racial construct and the author's self-effacing racism? Absolutely. LeGuin effectively did the same thing. The only difference is that the white community has a thicker skin and more tolerant, apologist attitude regarding self-referential anti-white racism. But I am offended, and so are many others. Racism, even against one's own race, is wrong. Le Guin is a politically correct liberal anti-white apologist relic.
> I thought the skin-color issue was a clever touch in the books, and it > was certainly a bad sign that it was removed from the movies
As you've pointed out, skin color was never a central issue in the books. It was merely descriptive and mentioned in passing, and not part of the plot. Because of that I don't think it's at all significant that most of the actors cast were white--this wasn't an Ellison or Angelou book, after all, so complaining about race smacks of PC bitching. Nobody complains when blacks or hispanics or Asians are cast in roles written with whites in mind, so why in this case? Since race isn't a plot point, naturally I'd expect SciFi Channel to cater to its mostly-white audience by casting mostly whites, just as I'd expect a Black Entertainment Network production of Cinderella to have a mostly black cast even though the characters were conceived as white Europeans.
To make race an issue is just political correctness rearing its ugly head. With due respect to LeGuin and her writing talent, the fact that she complains about the cast's race more than anything else paints her as a politically correct self-hating white. Screw that culturally denying self-effacing bullshit, especially since she admits her writings derive from a Northern European mythic tradition.
I understand full well that commercial revenues, even for cable shows, underwrite everything and decrease our cable fees. But given the breadth of TV programming it's impossible to watch everything at airtime and recording everything potentially great would require about six tuners and recorders. And when it comes to new series, you don't know what's great ahead of time.
Case in point, I thought *Desperate Housewives* would be either girlish crap or dumb sexploitation *V.I.P* style. Only after hearing good buzz and grabbing the first few eps off BT did I realize I liked the show's ongoing air of mystery and many episodic intrigues. I'm now a regular viewer of a show, on first broadcast commercials-and-all every week, which I'd never have watched, thanks to P2P downloading.
To think that media companies aren't filling this niche themselves by allowing some sort of download (DRM, commercials, fine--just dip into the market) of previous episodes, to recruit new viewers, is remarkable. To think that they may want to sue me for using the only means I had to catch up on a new series and become one of their ratings-inflating viewer drones is even more so. My experience with TV on P2P has made me watch more commercials, not less, because it's gotten me hooked on new shows I would have missed the boat on otherwise. And when I'm hooked, I need my fix at broadcast time, not a day or two later when the XviD encodes appear.
> Expiration, disabling the game and such - actually, if > you want to just play the single player game (there is no > multiplayer, BTW, just CounterStrike: Source bundled), you > need to activate the game once and then do not need to connect > to Steam. You can play in "offline" mode without problem. So, > even if Valve goes under, you can still play.
Until you upgrade your PC or OS and need to reinstall the game. No activation server, no more game. Now, I'm sure Valve would release a no-activation patch before that happens--but hey, maybe not. Tried playing DiVX (not the codec, the early DVD competitor) discs lately? As soon as the activation servers went down, millions of discs became useless coasters. But hey, that could never happen to a big company like Valve's products, right? DiVX was only being supported by little companies like Circuit City and Disney, after all.;-)
Beware of any JVC "prosumer" deck with a model number beginning with anything less than a "6" though. There are many complaints of poor flimsy plastic build quality leading to early deaths within ~2 years of purchase. The older JVCs and the newer professional models with numbers beginning >6 are well-built; others are questionable. Even their D-VHS line has had build quality complaints...
Hehe, I though E3 was where the best booth babes lived.;-) Since I mentioned 3dfx above, and since you mentioned booth babes, that puts me in mind of the fact that 3dfx unarguably had the best booth babes and the best showmanship at most expos. Who can forget all those delicious Lara Croft lookalikes running through the halls shooting people and crouching suggestively? Or the intimidating 3dfx banners plastered everywhere, with throngs of near-worshipful gamers giddy as fans at their favorite band's concert?
I kinda miss the old days. The reason I was searching ebay earlier for 3dfx and quantum3d cards is that I'd heard some old-timey gamers are actually collecting them. Makes sense, nostalgia for more exciting gaming days I guess. One guy called 3dfx "the best of the golden age of gaming" and while they didn't continue having the best graphics chips and lost the race, I can see where that attitude comes from. Companies like 3dfx had a showmanship that's lacking today in PC graphics.
Ah well. Maybe PC gaming's days are numbered anyway, with the console market destined to kill all but the highest end. But I miss the excitement that even a pro-leaning expo like SIGGRAPH used to have in the old days.
Is it just me or have expos like SIGGRAPH gotten less exciting over the years? It just seems like there's less fire, and that the innovations are more incremental. OpenGL 2.0 is certainly great but it's not a real "wow" moment.
I was browsing eBay and ran across auctions for some Quantum3D pro graphics cards, and it reminded me that "wow" moments used to happen every year at these expos. Like, 3dfx demonstrated its huge Voodoo5 6000 and its FSAA capabilities first at SIGGRAPH using special hardware from sister company Quantum3D. In retrospect the Voodoo5 6000 didn't even get in production, but the FSAA and other effects demonstrated by them at SIGGRAPH impressed everyone and changed the industry--now they're standard on even low-end 3D cards
I've been reading about this year's SIGGRAPH and I don't see any real "wow" moments. In fact, when was the last time any of the major computer graphics expos really had something new and revolutionary and not just incremental? Even though these conventions skew towards professional equipment and uses, it used to be that every year something truly exciting for the consumer would be demonstrated and trickle its way down to everyone. Are there any revolutions in the industry left, or are we advanced to the point that it's all incremental steps toward realism from here?
It would be more expensive because HP and most other big manufacturers do not build computers to order, they have assembly lines. If you're only installing one OS, that's simple. If you're installing two, then you have to fork the assembly line and keep separate inventories of the same machines with different OSes. Forking the assembly line adds cost because you need extra equipment and extra workers to handle the extra OS. Keeping separate inventories of the same PC with different OSes causes overhead.
And no, there are no diagnostics done. Why would anyone do that? This is an economy of scale--you set up one PC to have a crisp OS install, and since the hardware in all the others for that model will be identical, you image the drive and duplicate it down to the bit for each and ever PC that has the same hardware. If the hardware is imperfect the store or buyer will send it back--it's cheaper that way than testing each PC, since they churn them out by the thousands and only a tiny fraction will be flawed.
So the point is, it doesn't benefit most companies anything to add a Linux option. It adds cost to have two OSes instead of just one, even if the second OS is free it still costs an incredible amount of overhead compared to just having to install one, since we're talking about having to fork one assembly process into two. If there were a large enough demand for Linux desktop PCs, then companies like HP would make them. But there is not enough demand to offset their costs, since almost all customers want Windows--as I pointed out, few geeks buy desktop systems from big manufacturers, and geeks and their associates are the only end users who would run Linux in all likelihood. So, there's no profit. Hell, even VA Linux just got out of the hardware business--not enough geeks were buying Linux machines from them for them to make a profit from it, and we're talking VA Linux here, the company whose banners have been right here in the heart of geekdom since before they even bought/. So if enough geeks aren't willing to buy VA Linux hardware for them to stay in the hardware business, then enough geeks definitely wouldn't buy HP Linux desktops to make it worth them even considering maybe possibly doing it sometime in the distant future. Be realistic.
You've got it right. No one *has* to buy the damned operating system. Linux can do whatever you want it to. If you somehow *need* to buy a copy of Windows, which I've never actually heard of anyone being forced to pay for Windows out of their own pockets with no other alternatives whatsoever, then Win95 pre-IE integration will still run 99% of Win9x apps--and if the concept of a Web browser as a file browser doesn't disgust you, which it shouldn't since KDE and many others do the same thing now anyway, Win98 will run all win9x apps. And of course if you want better stability, without the frills of (oh dear God, the horror) a media player, a firewall, and all the other goodies of XP, then get NT or again if the Web/file browser doesn't make you cringe, 2k.
Of course, I repeat, no one ever gets forced to buy Windows. Your company may buy it for you and make you use it. It may come pre-installed on a PC you want. So what. Build your own PC or build a PC for the friend/relative who wants one, and install Linux, *BSD, BeOS, Solaris, DR-DOS, or whatever the fuck you want. Just stop the whiney bitching about how MS is evil for giving its OS customers firewalls and media players and Web browsers and all the stuff that every single modern operating system offers. Linux has them all if you want them. And don't say Windows has them even if you don't want them, because just because it gets installed doesn't mean you can't install and use something better. I do on my Win partition.
Last time this argument came up someone started complaining that OS users shouldn't have to pay for this extra stuff that they may not use. Well, then don't buy Windows, and don't buy a machine pre-installed with it. Lord knows anyone who can handle a screwdriver can assemble a better computer more inexpensively than HP, Packard-Hell (glad they left the US PC market, aren't you), Compaq, and the rest. And if you're incompetent to handle a screwdriver, then you can get your local small PC shop to build that better machine for you. Again, no one *forces* you to pay for Windows or any of its components.
And beside, Apple is ahead of Microsoft in most forms of application/OS integration, yet they don't get demonized for it. Let's face it--people want their PCs to just work. They want to have a CD burner built into the OS, a la what Apple and MS are doing, not have to buy one or figure out how to install and use the one that came with their new drive. Ditto for firewalls--it's great that MS is finally including one, since most PC users wouldn't ever get one. If it's easy to configure and has reasonable defaults, then intrusions and DDOS should go down measurably--and isn't that a good thing? And people want a media player. Why should Joe Schmoe have to find and download and install one, and then find and download and install all the codecs? Bullshit. It should be on the PC already in the case of everyday users, and corporate users who don't want it don't have to use it, and corporations who don't want it used will disable it. And if you want to use QuickTime or some open-source thing instead, no one is stopping you from installing it. There will be incompatibility problems with the new OS at first, but they'll get fixed.
The long and the short of it is that integration is *good* from the perspective of the average user. The only reason people bitch about it on/. is that most of us dislike Microsoft and its shady practices. And I agree that it's a predatory monoploly that should be broken up or regulated severely. But even if it were split right now into an OS company and an application company, nothing would change. Integration is the future, so the OS company would license the apps and integrate them anyway, at least till they could re-write and replace them. Again, Apple is integrating everything with the OS, too, because that's what the average consumer wants--a computer that has everything one needs there already, without hunting down third-party apps and codecs just to watch a damned video clip, or installing and figuring out a conmplicated CD burning app designed for powerusers when a simplified one in the OS would do. Power users can still get their complicated third-party apps, while the simplified versions will make the lives of Joe Averages everywhere much easier. And again, no one is forcing you to buy it. Stick to Linux, build your friends and grandma Linux boxes, and let the rest of the world have their easy-to-use OS with everything there already. But I have to point out the hypocrisy of a Linux community which on the one hand is schizophrenic about whether they even want to make Linux easy enough for Grandma to use, and on the other hand bashes MS (Apple is doing the same thing) for making an OS designed to eventually be easy enough for Grandma to burn songs to CD, watch streaming video, and even have a firewall to protect her even if she doesn't understand what it's doing and why.
I'm a Windows user because I want ease of use, and I want stuff to work with minimal fiddling, and I want the platform which has the widest game compatibility. I also dislike some of MS' behavior, especially Bill Gates' despicable crap during the trial, which puts me between a rock and a hard place. I'd be willing to give up much of my gaming, if only Linux were as easy to install, use, update, and configure, as Windows. Yet after waiting almost 3 years, Linux still is not ready for us point-and-click types who don't want to have to type unless we're writing something. Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer, not a programmer. I've installed Linux four times in the last three years, and it's impressive, but not ready for everyday use by people who don't want to have to fret every time we add a new piece of hardware or want to see a video in an odd codec. And the way I see it, Linux will fall behind even more unless projects like Nautilus go further and faster. Integration is the future, at least for non-programmers, and bitching about it won't change it. In fact, while I was waiting for Linux to get ready for my desktop, Apple came out with OS X and it's so promising that the next time I buy hardware, it might have the Apple logo, and it'll probably never see the Linux I was so looking forward to a couple years ago.
A USENET newsgroup is not a Web site. A newsgroup is like a meeting place. Let's say that people who gather at such and such an address IRL are trading copyrighted movie screeners, for instance. Do you go in with a wrecking ball and remove the address because something illegal has happened, or even happens frequently, there? No. You go after the individuals who are doing the illegal thing, not the building they happen to gather in front of.
Let's say that you live in a brownstone on the corner of your street in a city, and crack dealers are hanging out selling drugs right in front. Do you think your house should get torn down because of that, or that the law enforcers should do their job and arrest the guys one by one?
What it boils down to is that the copyright owners are too lazy and don't want to spend the money to enforce their copyrights, by nailing the individual violators. So instead, they've been strong-arming ISPs to "tear down the house" instead of "arresting the crack dealers".
That's how it is, not your pedantic BS. Evidently you studied too much Hegel at University.
Easynews has average retention of over 14 days in the binaries groups I frequent when accessed via their NNTP servers. They also have a Web-based (yuck, I know) access point which has the pre-decoded binaries (but only binaries, no text) with retention of 7-10 days. I like my NNTP, but for grabbing a file in the 100MB or more range it's nice to just go to their Web server and download it quicker, without the overhead UUencoding adds. Easynews also offers a free 3 day trial to anyone with a verifiable credit card number--to prevent people from subscribing multiple times to the free trial period.
At any rate, fuck @Home. Most people who really care about and use USENET frequently get a premium server anyway. It's only about $10-$15 a month, and it supports the people whose business it is to provide us with USENET feeds. To @Home, USENET is a secondary thing. To Easynews, Supernews, Altopia, and the myriad others, it's their bread and butter. I like to support USENET and its providers, so I have accounts with two providers. If people really want USENET to stay around and stay unexpurgated, they should support real USENET providers.
Cinepak is a dreadful codec, quality-wise. I hear the new version of xanim supports Intel's Indeo 5 -- use Indeo 5. I compress a lot of AVIs, and play them back on a variety of players, and I almost always get best results from Indeo 5. Break them down frame-by-frame and you'll see that Cinepak frames are lower-quality, with a LOT of missing or misaligned information. The misalignment is very annoying, when something moves but Cinepak only moves part of it in a few given frames. It's especially bothersome when you're dealing with people, who can look malformed for a couple of seconds.
That being said -- Indeo 5 also tends to produce smaller file sizes. But, heck -- if you can, use MPEG encoding. It's far superior to any AVI in terms of quality and resultant file size.
To how things work. The BC decision will soon enough be reversed or otherwise nullified. The fact is, the Canadian authorities are too repressive in general to allow such a glaring thing as this to go on. The Court system has been liberal towards such matters the last few years because of judicial activism, but the legislators are always passing ever more restrictive laws regarding anything and everything sexual. As I said before, the BC Court ruling will mean absolutely nothing soon enough. This is after all the country which made it illegal to possess *fiction* about sex with minors. If you think this abberation will last long, you know *nothing* about Canada and its restrictive pornography laws. Don't you know that BBS computer systems have been seized in Canada for having cumshot archives??? Evidently, you *don't* know much about the see-sawing that has gone on between legislators and judges regarding these issues, and the fact that the legislators always swing the pendulum back when a higher Court won't. Fact is, this temporary lull will mean nothing in the long run. Lastly, don't forget that all it takes to ruin someone is prosecution on a sex crimes charge--conviction isn't even necessary to ruin someone's life, my friend. Just ask the Canadian BBS operators charged with obscenity whose businesses got shut down and who squandered all their savings on attorneys, all because of a few facial pics; just ask the guy who was prosecuted for childporn for having stories about young girls. Think about *them* before you render an opinion, mate...
Spammers often cry "Free Speech!"--and even here I've seen well-meaning opponents of censorship grudgingly concerned about this. But a couple of points:
1) I've always wondered how much valuable Net resources are leeched by Spamhounds like these. 200,000 e-mails a day just from this one spammer? All the spam taken together must use up so much bandwidth/server space that I shudder to think of how much it costs us. I say "us" because you can bet the Spam hogs don't pay enough for their accounts to pay for all these resources, so we who use less bandwidth/server space subsidize the spamming through higher service rates charged across the board. Don't forget to add in Usenet server space, either: I was disgusted to find porn spam on comp.security.pgp.discuss today.
2) E-mail and Usenet spam are different from junk-mail, and so should not be treated as junk-mail. Many spam-houses argue that since junk mail is okay, the e-junk should be too. Wrong: Spam mail/postings cost the sender essentially nothing, so some Canadian store like this which couldn't afford to mail 200,000 brochures *can* e-mail 200,000 adverts--the cost is borne out by the service providers/usenet feeds, which pass the costs on to *us*. So, the real life analogy would be if companies could send us junkmail for free, but we were forced to pay the Post Office for our mail boxes--with the price being very high in order to subsidize all the postal carriers and real estate needed to process all the junk mail.
3) Our time is valuable, and Spammers steal it. I can just get rid of all my real-life junk-mail in a few seconds, but not so with Spam. Whenever I post to newsgroups with a real address, I get flooded with so much crap that it takes a long time to wade through--especially when I get "real-looking" subject lines like "Re: your posting.." which are designed to *mislead* us into reading them--in essence, this steals our time. Not to mention Usenet, which can be impossible--Usenet was designed for USErs to NETwork, talk to each other, exchange ideas and binaries. So, the very presence of Spam is theft--theft of our time, as well as the resources which were not meant for it. It's analogous IRL to being barraged by demented salesmen hawking everything from pyramid schemes to doggie pr0n every time you go out in public--harrassment in real life, and it shouldn't be tolerated on usenet except in places like alt.commercial.sex.ads or alt.get.rich.quick or whatever would be an appropriate NG meant for commerce, not casual discussion.
Just my humble opinion.
* * * ERROR: DIVIDE BY CUCUMBER RESTART UNIVERSE [Y/N]?
"Unconstitutional" doesn't mean in Canada the same thing it does in the U.S., now does it? The BC ruling will not be around for long, you can be sure of it. And when things can't be plugged in the Court, they'll be plugged by new legislation.
As for the issue of "money shots, nor lesbian scenes, nor anal scenes"--no, it's not illegal to possess, and I never said it was. It is however illegal to distribute/sell such materials, which effectively makes them contraband. I have read many a complaint by Canucks in rec.arts.movies.erotica and the likes about this, so don't argue that it's still easy to come by this material in Canada, because you have to jump some hurdles my friend. People on the ng always complain that every great U.S. pr0nfilm we recommend is, if available, edited by around 20 minutes. It's not like here where I can go to the Capitol Video and get anything I want. Not to mention the poor souls who've been prosecuted. There have even been prosectutions for possession of written pornographic material about minors--i.e., stories, mere *words*. And as I said, the BC ruling is to be plugged soon. Count on it. And it hasn't helped the poor guy who's already been prosecuted and had his life ruined because of some words I could get from alt.se.stories right now.
What the He-double-hockey-stix are you talking about??? Canadian law has been even more strict on kinderporn than US law has been. Are you unaware that the f*cking Canucks even made *stories* featuring underage *characters* engaging in explicit sex illegal? I mean, childporn is evil and all, but a *story*, fiction, words on a monitor, should never be illegal. Until recently, this was the case in our fascistic neighbor to the North...
It's true that a few liberal judges up there have taken a position that even pictures in and of themselves should not be illegal, but this liberal position was never adopted as the lex loci... I can only assume that this is what you've made reference too, else that you're joking (poorly).
BTW, certain provinces are more liberal/conservative regarding pr0n of any sort: Quebec being French and all, they're liberal and anything in the U.S. is okay, but other provinces have made such things as "money shots," anal, and lesbian sex "obscene" and illegal in all pornography.
If there are any further pr0n inquiries, resident expert Sir Winston will happily answer them.;-) An old girl friend used to call me, in a very Mae West sort of voice, "The Porn King." But, I digress...:-)
Re:Some thoughts on Be's viability
on
Be Inc. IPO-bound
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· Score: 1
"It sounds as though you're miffed that your hardware isn't listed and haven't given Be a go because of this. I recommend you look into getting one of their demo CDs and see if it doesn't work with your system. You may be pleasantly surprised."
Dude, I *tried* it on a different system, and I like it. I am *not* miffed that my hardware isn't supported--I had my computer made-to-order just a month ago, so if I'd wanted to run BeOS on this particular box I could have used components which are explicitly supported. *I didn't want to*, because now that Linux is being GUI-fied I'm going to be putting Linux on it. Why? Because as much as I like Be, as good as it is, its lack of a ton of coders (which Linux has) means that I'm not going to get the stuff *I* specifically want for Be any time soon, whereas it's available for Linux *now*. Linux is going to expand in market share; Be won't, unless it starts being VOCAL. Now, I refrained from saying anything bad about Be in my above posts, because I *like* Be and because *there isn't anything bad* about Be. only mentioned some of its *drawbacks*, which are all true.
"Regrdless, please refrain from posting FUD like the content of the first paragraph of your post."
Well, FUD you, too! But seriously, don't mistake honest critique for FUD. The fact is, I think Bf*cked up by not being more vocal and shouting to the hills the merits of their product. That caused them to have fewer developers than they would have gotten if they'd garnered attention by saying "We're better than Windows, easier to use than a Mac, and as reliable as Linux." Lack of developers in turn (compared to, say, the Linux community) led to lack of broad hardware support. They specifically target themselves at high-end users which, even when they support mid-range users, is annoying. Like when they said that sh*t about AMD on their hardware compatibility page--they may be compatible with a fair number of AMD chipsets, but it still pisses me off that they'd say it. And *not all alternative chipsets work fine*, as you imply above. Many do. *Many don't*. Grow up and accept an honest critique as an honest critique, and look at the good ramifications of some of my suggestions instead of crying FUD.
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That's incorrect. MCE does record to a proprietary .dvr-ms file format, but the files can be transferred to and played on any other Windows XP or MCE machine. The data inside the files is just MPEG-2, and can be burnt to regular DVD format using an easy supported/non-hack third-party add-on.
You can also hack the files to convert them to normal MPEG-2 files, but that's not officially supported and takes a computer-literate user.
The "TV pundit" is clueless. First off, MCE has basically only been a full-fledged product for a couple of months, since the release of MCE 2005. Previous versions were unavailable to the public except as part of expensive prebuilt PCs for a very good reason--they were essentially public beta tests.
Microsoft has a long history of releasing barely-useful products, and refining them over several releases until they dominate the market. Windows, for example--1 and 2 were laughable graphical shells for DOS that paled next to the other GUI products; 3.11 started taking over the DOS GUI market; 95 killed the 3rd party DOS GUI market, became known as an OS (of sorts), and ate into Apple's position as having *the* graphical home computer. Office's win over formerly dominant WordPerfect and complementary apps/suites took much less time--early releases of Word and Office were laughed at, but within a few years and releases all other word processors, spreadsheets, etc., were taking a back seat.
I see the same happening with MCE. The first two releases were the feature-light prelims--MS sticking its toe in the water while quietly building its dingy into a warship. Early products were never even intended for widespread adoption--they were to whet the appetites of early-adopters while MS refined its offering. MCE 2005 is the first "real" release--the first with full features, refined responsiveness, and wide hardware support. The first release that totally trounces every other PC PVR option, with the possible exception of SageTV. And it beats every set-top-box DVR in usability and refinement with the exception of TiVo, but without any monthly or lifetime subscription charge and with far more flexibility.
MCE PC prices will be lowering, and indeed they're already competitive with TiVo when you add the price of a TiVo with DVD recorder (to approach a similar feature level to MCE hardware) to a lifetime subscription fee. MCE tuner hardware has already fallen to as little as $50 retail for an OEM card, and the cost of the MCE OS is only marginally higher than the cost of XP Pro. The real Holy Grail for MS is to undercut the cable/sat DVRs the same way the cable/sat DVRs have been undercutting TiVo--include MCE as a very cheap option on all new systems, and as standard on all more upscale systems.
That's going to be MS's trump card. The lukewarm reception of MS and Intel's "Digital Joy" or any future marketing campaign will be irrelevent as the cost to add MCE to any new PC slowly falls over the coming months to around $70--$20 extra over the cost of plain XP for the software, and $50 extra for the new cheaper hardware tuners. It could even go lower depending on market forces. And MCE is a lot more flexible than any "house brand" cable/sat DVR--worth the mall incremental cost over a new Windows PC without MCE. And thanks to a fairly affordable Media Center Extender set-top-box or Media Center Extender software with your Xbox or next-gen successor console, you can extend MCE's reach into all other rooms with TVs. Heck, you can even leave the MCE PC in another room and only need an Extender or Xbox in your TV room...
But wait! There's another trump card. Intel and Microsoft have been working hard to provide a secure hardware/software path to make next-gen media like Blu-ray and HD-DVD available for PC playback. Those formats will emerge in 2005 and become a real factor in 2006. Now, picture the method for PC playback of these formats as a PC with a new Intel chipset to enforce hardware security and maybe--just maybe--a new version of MCE to enable security on the software end. Once again, picture this ability costing incrementally less as an option on a new PC than it would to buy an expensive dedicated set-top-box. And you can connect one box to your TV instead of daisy-chaining a cable/sat receiver, a TiVo, and a Blu-ray/HD-DVD player--and maybe other things.
That doesn't even begin to touch on MCE as a wedge Microsoft can use to compete with cable/sat providers directl
So, you never use USENET (newsgroups) either, since most child porn probably gets posted there eventually? And you never use IRC or IM since most of the hardcore child porn reportedly originates there, traded between pedophiles? And you never use the WWW since most softcore child porn allegedly originates on Russian/Slovenian/etc. pay web sites? And you never use e-mail since pedophiles use it to lure young girls to be molested?
Hmmm. If we don't use things for good or neutral purposes just because others are using them for negative purposes, we'd have to live naked (because of shirts like this ) in caves. But then again children have probably been molested or photographed exploitively in caves, too, so we can't have anything to do with caves either...
> I used to be a bit more sympathetic to this stuff, but I know too
> many people who view it as their RIGHT to access other people's
> work for free, without their permission.
Actually it is. Traditionally, once you showed something publicly, anyone who saw it had a fundamental natural right to copy it. This is both a common-sense approach and in the roots of Common Law. For 99% of human history that's how it was, yet it didn't keep Shakespeare from writing his plays even though they were pirated at each first performance.
Modern copyright law is a social contract--explicitly so in the Constitution at least in the U.S.--whereby the public *temporarily* trades its natural right to copy anything it sees to give creators more incentive to create more things. But it is not the creator's natural right to prevent everyone else from copying his inventions.
Copyright laws are being abused and the public is clearly interested in revoking its social contract creating this artificial right in order to reclaim its natural right to copy. Unfortunately we have a corporate government now, so that won't be allowed to happen.
> How am I going to watch Enterprise now?
;-) Seriously, *everything* gets posted there a day or two after it's released. Just follow the white rabbit to a big premium news server provider and download anything you want without the possibility of the MPAA or RIAA ever seeing your IP.
It starts with a "U" and rhymes with "BLUESNET".
All these episodes of Hex and uncensored Degrassi: The Next Generation and advance Battlestar Galactica I'm watching in the U.S. have to come from somewhere...
Funny how Europeans always complain about not getting American shows in a timely manner, when most of what I want are Canadian and British shows I can't get here (or can't get uncensored, like Degrassi), or U.S. shows that were cancelled here before showing all episodes but have all the episodes shown overseas (like the sexiest teen show ever on American network TV, The Opposite Sex). The new *Battlestar Galactica* is the only exception, but it's a joint U.S.-British production shown in Britain first...
I'd gladly pay for subscrptions to premium British and Canadian TV services if I could, but I'm not allowed thanks to geographically discriminatory content licensing. Content providers need to be pushed into broader worldwide same-date (or at least close--not many months or years difference) availability. Funny how in the era of "free trade" the multimedia content industry is the only one erecting more barriers to trade instead of tearing them down. While geographically I can't just subscribe to Britain's Sky Digital since their satellites aren't positioned for this side of the world, there's no technological reason I shouldn't be able to subscribe to Canadian services. I'm not permitted to by Draconian content licensing.
Artificial trade borders are gone on the Net, but instead of adjusting to exploit it the content industry is trying to protect the old fiefdoms. Instead, it should be doing for downloadable TV what iTunes did for downloadable music. But it's too complacent and protectionist to adapt.
> However, you are forgetting the well known exception to the
> racist term rule that allows one to use it on one's own race.
Bullshit. That's a very recent liberal apologia for the uneducated/gangsta segment of the black community's penchant for using the word "nigger". It's a post hoc rationalization for a behavior most middle class African Americans are themselves offended by. It's not a "well known exception" and as a white person I'm offended at Le Guin's self-hating anti-white racist language. "Honky"? Fuck anyone using racist language in this day and age, especially someone who acknowledges her writings come from the mythic tradition of the same people she's disparaging.
Think of it this way. A black writer draws on African tribal traditions in creating her fantasy novels, but mentions all the characters are white. She sells film rights and gives up creative control, and the producers turn it into a miniseries for the Black Entertainment Television channel. Since their audience is mostly black and the story draws from African tribal lore, and race isn't central to the story, they make most of the cast black. The author then complains loudly all over the place about how the producers made her characters "niggers" when they're supposed to be white.
Don't you think blacks would be justifiably upset about such an artificial racial construct and the author's self-effacing racism? Absolutely. LeGuin effectively did the same thing. The only difference is that the white community has a thicker skin and more tolerant, apologist attitude regarding self-referential anti-white racism. But I am offended, and so are many others. Racism, even against one's own race, is wrong. Le Guin is a politically correct liberal anti-white apologist relic.
> I thought the skin-color issue was a clever touch in the books, and it
> was certainly a bad sign that it was removed from the movies
As you've pointed out, skin color was never a central issue in the books. It was merely descriptive and mentioned in passing, and not part of the plot. Because of that I don't think it's at all significant that most of the actors cast were white--this wasn't an Ellison or Angelou book, after all, so complaining about race smacks of PC bitching. Nobody complains when blacks or hispanics or Asians are cast in roles written with whites in mind, so why in this case? Since race isn't a plot point, naturally I'd expect SciFi Channel to cater to its mostly-white audience by casting mostly whites, just as I'd expect a Black Entertainment Network production of Cinderella to have a mostly black cast even though the characters were conceived as white Europeans.
To make race an issue is just political correctness rearing its ugly head. With due respect to LeGuin and her writing talent, the fact that she complains about the cast's race more than anything else paints her as a politically correct self-hating white. Screw that culturally denying self-effacing bullshit, especially since she admits her writings derive from a Northern European mythic tradition.
> true, but i wonder if leverage means what i think you think it means.
"You keep usin' tha word. I do na think it means wha you think it means."
I understand full well that commercial revenues, even for cable shows, underwrite everything and decrease our cable fees. But given the breadth of TV programming it's impossible to watch everything at airtime and recording everything potentially great would require about six tuners and recorders. And when it comes to new series, you don't know what's great ahead of time.
Case in point, I thought *Desperate Housewives* would be either girlish crap or dumb sexploitation *V.I.P* style. Only after hearing good buzz and grabbing the first few eps off BT did I realize I liked the show's ongoing air of mystery and many episodic intrigues. I'm now a regular viewer of a show, on first broadcast commercials-and-all every week, which I'd never have watched, thanks to P2P downloading.
To think that media companies aren't filling this niche themselves by allowing some sort of download (DRM, commercials, fine--just dip into the market) of previous episodes, to recruit new viewers, is remarkable. To think that they may want to sue me for using the only means I had to catch up on a new series and become one of their ratings-inflating viewer drones is even more so. My experience with TV on P2P has made me watch more commercials, not less, because it's gotten me hooked on new shows I would have missed the boat on otherwise. And when I'm hooked, I need my fix at broadcast time, not a day or two later when the XviD encodes appear.
> Expiration, disabling the game and such - actually, if
;-)
> you want to just play the single player game (there is no
> multiplayer, BTW, just CounterStrike: Source bundled), you
> need to activate the game once and then do not need to connect
> to Steam. You can play in "offline" mode without problem. So,
> even if Valve goes under, you can still play.
Until you upgrade your PC or OS and need to reinstall the game. No activation server, no more game. Now, I'm sure Valve would release a no-activation patch before that happens--but hey, maybe not. Tried playing DiVX (not the codec, the early DVD competitor) discs lately? As soon as the activation servers went down, millions of discs became useless coasters. But hey, that could never happen to a big company like Valve's products, right? DiVX was only being supported by little companies like Circuit City and Disney, after all.
Beware of any JVC "prosumer" deck with a model number beginning with anything less than a "6" though. There are many complaints of poor flimsy plastic build quality leading to early deaths within ~2 years of purchase. The older JVCs and the newer professional models with numbers beginning >6 are well-built; others are questionable. Even their D-VHS line has had build quality complaints...
> But you get that when your foreign policy is "Fuck the earth".
But Gaia looks so sexy in a thong...
> They didn't even have as many booth babes. :(
;-) Since I mentioned 3dfx above, and since you mentioned booth babes, that puts me in mind of the fact that 3dfx unarguably had the best booth babes and the best showmanship at most expos. Who can forget all those delicious Lara Croft lookalikes running through the halls shooting people and crouching suggestively? Or the intimidating 3dfx banners plastered everywhere, with throngs of near-worshipful gamers giddy as fans at their favorite band's concert?
Hehe, I though E3 was where the best booth babes lived.
I kinda miss the old days. The reason I was searching ebay earlier for 3dfx and quantum3d cards is that I'd heard some old-timey gamers are actually collecting them. Makes sense, nostalgia for more exciting gaming days I guess. One guy called 3dfx "the best of the golden age of gaming" and while they didn't continue having the best graphics chips and lost the race, I can see where that attitude comes from. Companies like 3dfx had a showmanship that's lacking today in PC graphics.
Ah well. Maybe PC gaming's days are numbered anyway, with the console market destined to kill all but the highest end. But I miss the excitement that even a pro-leaning expo like SIGGRAPH used to have in the old days.
Is it just me or have expos like SIGGRAPH gotten less exciting over the years? It just seems like there's less fire, and that the innovations are more incremental. OpenGL 2.0 is certainly great but it's not a real "wow" moment.
I was browsing eBay and ran across auctions for some Quantum3D pro graphics cards, and it reminded me that "wow" moments used to happen every year at these expos. Like, 3dfx demonstrated its huge Voodoo5 6000 and its FSAA capabilities first at SIGGRAPH using special hardware from sister company Quantum3D. In retrospect the Voodoo5 6000 didn't even get in production, but the FSAA and other effects demonstrated by them at SIGGRAPH impressed everyone and changed the industry--now they're standard on even low-end 3D cards
I've been reading about this year's SIGGRAPH and I don't see any real "wow" moments. In fact, when was the last time any of the major computer graphics expos really had something new and revolutionary and not just incremental? Even though these conventions skew towards professional equipment and uses, it used to be that every year something truly exciting for the consumer would be demonstrated and trickle its way down to everyone. Are there any revolutions in the industry left, or are we advanced to the point that it's all incremental steps toward realism from here?
It would be more expensive because HP and most other big manufacturers do not build computers to order, they have assembly lines. If you're only installing one OS, that's simple. If you're installing two, then you have to fork the assembly line and keep separate inventories of the same machines with different OSes. Forking the assembly line adds cost because you need extra equipment and extra workers to handle the extra OS. Keeping separate inventories of the same PC with different OSes causes overhead.
/. So if enough geeks aren't willing to buy VA Linux hardware for them to stay in the hardware business, then enough geeks definitely wouldn't buy HP Linux desktops to make it worth them even considering maybe possibly doing it sometime in the distant future. Be realistic.
And no, there are no diagnostics done. Why would anyone do that? This is an economy of scale--you set up one PC to have a crisp OS install, and since the hardware in all the others for that model will be identical, you image the drive and duplicate it down to the bit for each and ever PC that has the same hardware. If the hardware is imperfect the store or buyer will send it back--it's cheaper that way than testing each PC, since they churn them out by the thousands and only a tiny fraction will be flawed.
So the point is, it doesn't benefit most companies anything to add a Linux option. It adds cost to have two OSes instead of just one, even if the second OS is free it still costs an incredible amount of overhead compared to just having to install one, since we're talking about having to fork one assembly process into two. If there were a large enough demand for Linux desktop PCs, then companies like HP would make them. But there is not enough demand to offset their costs, since almost all customers want Windows--as I pointed out, few geeks buy desktop systems from big manufacturers, and geeks and their associates are the only end users who would run Linux in all likelihood. So, there's no profit. Hell, even VA Linux just got out of the hardware business--not enough geeks were buying Linux machines from them for them to make a profit from it, and we're talking VA Linux here, the company whose banners have been right here in the heart of geekdom since before they even bought
You've got it right. No one *has* to buy the damned operating system. Linux can do whatever you want it to. If you somehow *need* to buy a copy of Windows, which I've never actually heard of anyone being forced to pay for Windows out of their own pockets with no other alternatives whatsoever, then Win95 pre-IE integration will still run 99% of Win9x apps--and if the concept of a Web browser as a file browser doesn't disgust you, which it shouldn't since KDE and many others do the same thing now anyway, Win98 will run all win9x apps. And of course if you want better stability, without the frills of (oh dear God, the horror) a media player, a firewall, and all the other goodies of XP, then get NT or again if the Web/file browser doesn't make you cringe, 2k.
/. is that most of us dislike Microsoft and its shady practices. And I agree that it's a predatory monoploly that should be broken up or regulated severely. But even if it were split right now into an OS company and an application company, nothing would change. Integration is the future, so the OS company would license the apps and integrate them anyway, at least till they could re-write and replace them. Again, Apple is integrating everything with the OS, too, because that's what the average consumer wants--a computer that has everything one needs there already, without hunting down third-party apps and codecs just to watch a damned video clip, or installing and figuring out a conmplicated CD burning app designed for powerusers when a simplified one in the OS would do. Power users can still get their complicated third-party apps, while the simplified versions will make the lives of Joe Averages everywhere much easier. And again, no one is forcing you to buy it. Stick to Linux, build your friends and grandma Linux boxes, and let the rest of the world have their easy-to-use OS with everything there already. But I have to point out the hypocrisy of a Linux community which on the one hand is schizophrenic about whether they even want to make Linux easy enough for Grandma to use, and on the other hand bashes MS (Apple is doing the same thing) for making an OS designed to eventually be easy enough for Grandma to burn songs to CD, watch streaming video, and even have a firewall to protect her even if she doesn't understand what it's doing and why.
Of course, I repeat, no one ever gets forced to buy Windows. Your company may buy it for you and make you use it. It may come pre-installed on a PC you want. So what. Build your own PC or build a PC for the friend/relative who wants one, and install Linux, *BSD, BeOS, Solaris, DR-DOS, or whatever the fuck you want. Just stop the whiney bitching about how MS is evil for giving its OS customers firewalls and media players and Web browsers and all the stuff that every single modern operating system offers. Linux has them all if you want them. And don't say Windows has them even if you don't want them, because just because it gets installed doesn't mean you can't install and use something better. I do on my Win partition.
Last time this argument came up someone started complaining that OS users shouldn't have to pay for this extra stuff that they may not use. Well, then don't buy Windows, and don't buy a machine pre-installed with it. Lord knows anyone who can handle a screwdriver can assemble a better computer more inexpensively than HP, Packard-Hell (glad they left the US PC market, aren't you), Compaq, and the rest. And if you're incompetent to handle a screwdriver, then you can get your local small PC shop to build that better machine for you. Again, no one *forces* you to pay for Windows or any of its components.
And beside, Apple is ahead of Microsoft in most forms of application/OS integration, yet they don't get demonized for it. Let's face it--people want their PCs to just work. They want to have a CD burner built into the OS, a la what Apple and MS are doing, not have to buy one or figure out how to install and use the one that came with their new drive. Ditto for firewalls--it's great that MS is finally including one, since most PC users wouldn't ever get one. If it's easy to configure and has reasonable defaults, then intrusions and DDOS should go down measurably--and isn't that a good thing? And people want a media player. Why should Joe Schmoe have to find and download and install one, and then find and download and install all the codecs? Bullshit. It should be on the PC already in the case of everyday users, and corporate users who don't want it don't have to use it, and corporations who don't want it used will disable it. And if you want to use QuickTime or some open-source thing instead, no one is stopping you from installing it. There will be incompatibility problems with the new OS at first, but they'll get fixed.
The long and the short of it is that integration is *good* from the perspective of the average user. The only reason people bitch about it on
I'm a Windows user because I want ease of use, and I want stuff to work with minimal fiddling, and I want the platform which has the widest game compatibility. I also dislike some of MS' behavior, especially Bill Gates' despicable crap during the trial, which puts me between a rock and a hard place. I'd be willing to give up much of my gaming, if only Linux were as easy to install, use, update, and configure, as Windows. Yet after waiting almost 3 years, Linux still is not ready for us point-and-click types who don't want to have to type unless we're writing something. Damn it, Jim, I'm a writer, not a programmer. I've installed Linux four times in the last three years, and it's impressive, but not ready for everyday use by people who don't want to have to fret every time we add a new piece of hardware or want to see a video in an odd codec. And the way I see it, Linux will fall behind even more unless projects like Nautilus go further and faster. Integration is the future, at least for non-programmers, and bitching about it won't change it. In fact, while I was waiting for Linux to get ready for my desktop, Apple came out with OS X and it's so promising that the next time I buy hardware, it might have the Apple logo, and it'll probably never see the Linux I was so looking forward to a couple years ago.
http://www.churchofsatan.com/Pages/Apple.html
A USENET newsgroup is not a Web site. A newsgroup is like a meeting place. Let's say that people who gather at such and such an address IRL are trading copyrighted movie screeners, for instance. Do you go in with a wrecking ball and remove the address because something illegal has happened, or even happens frequently, there? No. You go after the individuals who are doing the illegal thing, not the building they happen to gather in front of.
Let's say that you live in a brownstone on the corner of your street in a city, and crack dealers are hanging out selling drugs right in front. Do you think your house should get torn down because of that, or that the law enforcers should do their job and arrest the guys one by one?
What it boils down to is that the copyright owners are too lazy and don't want to spend the money to enforce their copyrights, by nailing the individual violators. So instead, they've been strong-arming ISPs to "tear down the house" instead of "arresting the crack dealers".
That's how it is, not your pedantic BS. Evidently you studied too much Hegel at University.
Easynews has average retention of over 14 days in the binaries groups I frequent when accessed via their NNTP servers. They also have a Web-based (yuck, I know) access point which has the pre-decoded binaries (but only binaries, no text) with retention of 7-10 days. I like my NNTP, but for grabbing a file in the 100MB or more range it's nice to just go to their Web server and download it quicker, without the overhead UUencoding adds. Easynews also offers a free 3 day trial to anyone with a verifiable credit card number--to prevent people from subscribing multiple times to the free trial period.
At any rate, fuck @Home. Most people who really care about and use USENET frequently get a premium server anyway. It's only about $10-$15 a month, and it supports the people whose business it is to provide us with USENET feeds. To @Home, USENET is a secondary thing. To Easynews, Supernews, Altopia, and the myriad others, it's their bread and butter. I like to support USENET and its providers, so I have accounts with two providers. If people really want USENET to stay around and stay unexpurgated, they should support real USENET providers.
Cinepak is a dreadful codec, quality-wise. I hear the new version of xanim supports Intel's Indeo 5 -- use Indeo 5. I compress a lot of AVIs, and play them back on a variety of players, and I almost always get best results from Indeo 5. Break them down frame-by-frame and you'll see that Cinepak frames are lower-quality, with a LOT of missing or misaligned information. The misalignment is very annoying, when something moves but Cinepak only moves part of it in a few given frames. It's especially bothersome when you're dealing with people, who can look malformed for a couple of seconds.
That being said -- Indeo 5 also tends to produce smaller file sizes. But, heck -- if you can, use MPEG encoding. It's far superior to any AVI in terms of quality and resultant file size.
To how things work. The BC decision will soon enough be reversed or otherwise nullified. The fact is, the Canadian authorities are too repressive in general to allow such a glaring thing as this to go on. The Court system has been liberal towards such matters the last few years because of judicial activism, but the legislators are always passing ever more restrictive laws regarding anything and everything sexual. As I said before, the BC Court ruling will mean absolutely nothing soon enough. This is after all the country which made it illegal to possess *fiction* about sex with minors. If you think this abberation will last long, you know *nothing* about Canada and its restrictive pornography laws. Don't you know that BBS computer systems have been seized in Canada for having cumshot archives??? Evidently, you *don't* know much about the see-sawing that has gone on between legislators and judges regarding these issues, and the fact that the legislators always swing the pendulum back when a higher Court won't. Fact is, this temporary lull will mean nothing in the long run. Lastly, don't forget that all it takes to ruin someone is prosecution on a sex crimes charge--conviction isn't even necessary to ruin someone's life, my friend. Just ask the Canadian BBS operators charged with obscenity whose businesses got shut down and who squandered all their savings on attorneys, all because of a few facial pics; just ask the guy who was prosecuted for childporn for having stories about young girls. Think about *them* before you render an opinion, mate...
Spammers often cry "Free Speech!"--and even here I've seen well-meaning opponents of censorship grudgingly concerned about this. But a couple of points:
i les/page1.html
1) I've always wondered how much valuable Net resources are leeched by Spamhounds like these. 200,000 e-mails a day just from this one spammer? All the spam taken together must use up so much bandwidth/server space that I shudder to think of how much it costs us. I say "us" because you can bet the Spam hogs don't pay enough for their accounts to pay for all these resources, so we who use less bandwidth/server space subsidize the spamming through higher service rates charged across the board. Don't forget to add in Usenet server space, either: I was disgusted to find porn spam on comp.security.pgp.discuss today.
2) E-mail and Usenet spam are different from junk-mail, and so should not be treated as junk-mail. Many spam-houses argue that since junk mail is okay, the e-junk should be too. Wrong: Spam mail/postings cost the sender essentially nothing, so some Canadian store like this which couldn't afford to mail 200,000 brochures *can* e-mail 200,000 adverts--the cost is borne out by the service providers/usenet feeds, which pass the costs on to *us*. So, the real life analogy would be if companies could send us junkmail for free, but we were forced to pay the Post Office for our mail boxes--with the price being very high in order to subsidize all the postal carriers and real estate needed to process all the junk mail.
3) Our time is valuable, and Spammers steal it. I can just get rid of all my real-life junk-mail in a few seconds, but not so with Spam. Whenever I post to newsgroups with a real address, I get flooded with so much crap that it takes a long time to wade through--especially when I get "real-looking" subject lines like "Re: your posting.." which are designed to *mislead* us into reading them--in essence, this steals our time. Not to mention Usenet, which can be impossible--Usenet was designed for USErs to NETwork, talk to each other, exchange ideas and binaries. So, the very presence of Spam is theft--theft of our time, as well as the resources which were not meant for it. It's analogous IRL to being barraged by demented salesmen hawking everything from pyramid schemes to doggie pr0n every time you go out in public--harrassment in real life, and it shouldn't be tolerated on usenet except in places like alt.commercial.sex.ads or alt.get.rich.quick or whatever would be an appropriate NG meant for commerce, not casual discussion.
Just my humble opinion.
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RESTART UNIVERSE [Y/N]?
http://homestead.dejanews.com/user.sirwinston/f
"Unconstitutional" doesn't mean in Canada the same thing it does in the U.S., now does it? The BC ruling will not be around for long, you can be sure of it. And when things can't be plugged in the Court, they'll be plugged by new legislation.
As for the issue of "money shots, nor lesbian scenes, nor anal scenes"--no, it's not illegal to possess, and I never said it was. It is however illegal to distribute/sell such materials, which effectively makes them contraband. I have read many a complaint by Canucks in rec.arts.movies.erotica and the likes about this, so don't argue that it's still easy to come by this material in Canada, because you have to jump some hurdles my friend. People on the ng always complain that every great U.S. pr0nfilm we recommend is, if available, edited by around 20 minutes. It's not like here where I can go to the Capitol Video and get anything I want. Not to mention the poor souls who've been prosecuted. There have even been prosectutions for possession of written pornographic material about minors--i.e., stories, mere *words*. And as I said, the BC ruling is to be plugged soon. Count on it. And it hasn't helped the poor guy who's already been prosecuted and had his life ruined because of some words I could get from alt.se.stories right now.
What the He-double-hockey-stix are you talking about??? Canadian law has been even more strict on kinderporn than US law has been. Are you unaware that the f*cking Canucks even made *stories* featuring underage *characters* engaging in explicit sex illegal? I mean, childporn is evil and all, but a *story*, fiction, words on a monitor, should never be illegal. Until recently, this was the case in our fascistic neighbor to the North...
;-) An old girl friend used to call me, in a very Mae West sort of voice, "The Porn King." But, I digress... :-)
It's true that a few liberal judges up there have taken a position that even pictures in and of themselves should not be illegal, but this liberal position was never adopted as the lex loci... I can only assume that this is what you've made reference too, else that you're joking (poorly).
BTW, certain provinces are more liberal/conservative regarding pr0n of any sort: Quebec being French and all, they're liberal and anything in the U.S. is okay, but other provinces have made such things as "money shots," anal, and lesbian sex "obscene" and illegal in all pornography.
If there are any further pr0n inquiries, resident expert Sir Winston will happily answer them.
"It sounds as though you're miffed that your hardware isn't listed and haven't given Be a go because of this. I recommend you look into getting one of their demo CDs and see if it doesn't work with your system. You may be pleasantly surprised."
Dude, I *tried* it on a different system, and I like it. I am *not* miffed that my hardware isn't supported--I had my computer made-to-order just a month ago, so if I'd wanted to run BeOS on this particular box I could have used components which are explicitly supported. *I didn't want to*, because now that Linux is being GUI-fied I'm going to be putting Linux on it. Why? Because as much as I like Be, as good as it is, its lack of a ton of coders (which Linux has) means that I'm not going to get the stuff *I* specifically want for Be any time soon, whereas it's available for Linux *now*. Linux is going to expand in market share; Be won't, unless it starts being VOCAL. Now, I refrained from saying anything bad about Be in my above posts, because I *like* Be and because *there isn't anything bad* about Be. only mentioned some of its *drawbacks*, which are all true.
"Regrdless, please refrain from posting FUD like the content of the first paragraph of your post."
Well, FUD you, too! But seriously, don't mistake honest critique for FUD. The fact is, I think Bf*cked up by not being more vocal and shouting to the hills the merits of their product. That caused them to have fewer developers than they would have gotten if they'd garnered attention by saying "We're better than Windows, easier to use than a Mac, and as reliable as Linux." Lack of developers in turn (compared to, say, the Linux community) led to lack of broad hardware support. They specifically target themselves at high-end users which, even when they support mid-range users, is annoying. Like when they said that sh*t about AMD on their hardware compatibility page--they may be compatible with a fair number of AMD chipsets, but it still pisses me off that they'd say it. And *not all alternative chipsets work fine*, as you imply above. Many do. *Many don't*. Grow up and accept an honest critique as an honest critique, and look at the good ramifications of some of my suggestions instead of crying FUD.