Ultimately, the reason HDTV isn't happening isn't the fault of the manufacturers or the broadcasters - it's because consumers don't really want it. What pisses me off is that it's being forced down my throat like forced bussing to desegregate schools! (And all of you in the Cleveland area in the 80s know how that went...)
Why is this necessary? Why am I not being allowed to vote for this with my wallet? How does entertainment (especially idiotic entertainment like TV) get to be this stinkin' important?
The Facts:
1) The quality isn't nearly as earth-shattering as I was led to expect, at least not on the demo TVs at Best Buy. (I suspect they aren't really showing a real HDTV signal, but some kind of enhanced analog simulation)
2) With the possible exception of sports, the improved quality certainly doesn't make the shows any better.
3) The set/tuner will cost >$1000.
4) Programming will include DRM and will be PPV.
Which item in this list makes me want to run out and buy one of these beauties? THIS SUCKS! It's my money, I want the control and I'd rather do without than pay my hard earned dough for this cheese.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - new stuff do not replace old stuff because it's better, but because it's cheaper. The market does a great job of figuring that out on its own without the government intrusion, thank you.
The esteemed senators can go to h-e-doublehockeysticks.
The Joker: I've been dead once already; it's very liberating. You might think of it as... therapy.
Sorry 'bout the long-term RAM refresh error.
Re:How To Respond to 'Touchy-Feely' Games @ work?
on
Managing Einsteins
·
· Score: 1
You decide to quit and seek work elsewhere?
Your options are kinda limited because the person that came up with this gem of an idea:
a)...has the power to put it in action, despite a profound lack of respect for coworkers and underlings;
b)...probably isn't where they are because they know what they're doing;
c)...is probably too sensitive to call your bluff on whatever shenanigans you decide to pull until it's way, WAY too late. (After all - you're quitting, right? What have you got to lose?)
In the words of The Joker, "Death can be quite liberating - you should try it sometime."
Seriously, though, this would be a great "Ask Slashdot" submission. If nothing else, it would generate interesting and amusing conversation.
There's a name for this - I think it's called the "Peter Pan Effect" or "The Peter Principle" or something to that effect. Basically, everyone rises to their own level of incompetence.
I don't understand the need to put Linux in EVERYTHING. Linux is a great operating system. We use for networking and for even in some 3D sim environments. But honestly... do i have to walk around with a watch that runs Linux, and talk on a Cell phone that uses Linux, while cooking dinner in a Microwave that's running Linux?
YEAH! You guys are getting almost as bad as those Java-weenies!!!!
Is anyone else getting sick and tired of the word 'experience'? It's become as useless a term as 'product' anymore because of the attitude the marketroids have of their target (with a bulls-eye) audience.
I also found it quietly ironic that in an article about companies screwing with your browser to 'enhance' usability (blech!), if you look at the site with OPERA (my browser of choice), the entire first paragraph of the article is obstructed by an ad for the MSN Titanium VISA card.
Great, but isn't the point of karoke that you stink and can't make it as a pro singer? I dunno, this kinds strikes me like Led Zeppelin on CD -- those hisses and pops and scratches from the vinyl are part of the music, man!
Next thing you know some evil M$ mole will expose 'rm' to shell scripting. Think of the security implications!
Ya know, now that you mention it... didn't MS and IBM work together at one point? Hmmmm.... OS2, I think it was....
WOW! Can you say, "CONSPIRACY"! What if IBM's newfound "leadership" role in establishing Linux is really a cleverly disguised ploy orchestrated by Bill Gates to establish MS-style data/code comingling on the Linux platform with the eventual intent of equalizing the IT security/stability playing field by crashing EVERYONE's boats on the rocks! Then you go out and buy NT^H^H XP anyway because, shoot, if it's gonna get infected and send all your credit card numbers to Nigeria anyway, you might as well do it in style with really groovy lookin' pastoral wallpaper!
Genius! Sheer GEEE-NEEEE-US! Muhuhahahahahaha!
If you can't beat 'em, show 'em how to beat themselves - odds are, they'll do it!
how about sequencing dna strands to hold music data. smaller storage mediums, and easier reproduction.
...but your kids would all violate the DMCA!
On the other hand, three extra arms, a set of gills on my back and prehensile earlobes might not be a bad exchange for tha capability of carrying my KC and the Sunshine Band CDs around without being seen.
Thirdly, there actually was a PS1 game a few years ago (I don't remember the name, unfortunately) that was kinda like Pokemon in that it featured monsters that battled. Anyway, this game was cool because you could drop in your favorite music CD and it could use the audio data coded in the tracks to generate new monsters to use in battle!
Look at the effect of the economy of the dot-com bust of the past couple years. Completely caused by the Internet.
Ummm.... Well.... I don't know... no, wait.... yeah, you're right.
If the Internet hadn't sucked up all of that investor venture capital, it wouldn't have been tied up in Aeron chairs in San Francisco, and we probably wouldn't have had a recession at all because it would have been invested in more reasonable ways.
Don't get me wrong - the internet's a great thing - but let's be realistic here. The Internet bubble was caused by a large number of investors willing to take big risks in an unproven market. "Foolish"? I prefer "risky". I just wish it hadn't been so painful for so many.
Here's the point: For the overwhelming majority of the world population, it is possible to lead a completely fulfilling, active, healthy life without ever logging on. The only way the Internet will become a necessity is if it can prove to provide things cheaper, not just better, but cheaper than the old non-Internet way of doing things. Except for email, it hasn't yet provided proof that this is the case.
Weird, isn't it? I went back and looked at it again because I thought I must have made a mistake when I commented earlier. Now that I look at it again, someone really pulled a boner here. The picture really looks like MS is trying to lure you BACK INTO THE MAZE. Someone in the art department is gonna get their twinkie pinched over this one when they figure that out. Maybe we should run a pool on how long the image stays up before they replace it?
OK, so you go to Cnet and read the story, then you follow the link to www.wehavethewayout.com to go to the home page for the MS/Unisys campaign. You stare at the image for a minute and then it hits you....
Did anyone else notice that the light shining through the window is originating inside the maze?
....the way they get around the problem of distibuting the private symmetric key dictionary is by having everyone download a copy?
....
Engineers designed this?
KING OF THE HILL - CLASSIC KB USERS UNITE!
on
More Ergonomic Keyboards
·
· Score: 2, Informative
When I bought my first MSDOS PC (a GW2K 386-25) in December of 1990, I used the crappy $20 Chicony keyboard for about 10 minutes before I called NORTHGATE and ordered one of their $110.00 Northgate OmniKey 101 Keyboards WITH THE FUNCTION KEYS ON THE LEFT SIDE LIKE GOD INTENDED! (ERGONOMICS?!?! Ain't no 'membranes' here - them are MECHANICAL switches!).
It's still my main KB at home - Subspace Continuum wouldn't be the same without it! My only gripe is the placement of the '\' key NOT being above ENTER, but right side of R-SHIFT, and no "Flying Windows" keys. Oh well, CTRL+ESC still works.
Interestingly, it came with a groovy keycap puller tool and every year or two, I have to pull all the keycaps off and clean them in alcohol and chip the crust off the underpanel.
Obviously, if someone's actually done it that trumps my blathering, but I wouldn't expect this to work -even with SCSI- unless the drives were geometrically identical because I don't know of a controller (IDE OR SCSI) that can re-init the drive inteface to refresh its own internal "picture" of the drive geometry on the fly.
The best bet would be to get a USB/IDE external tray/case (because USB was designed for these kinds of hot-swap shennanigans). THAT would work. Serial ATA might also be able to do this when it hits the streets.
I can't even see how you'd do it with single drive array in a RAID controller/cabinet with hot-swap trays because even though the array config data is written on the drives themselves (so you can swap controllers), pulling one drive and plugging in another, the controller would still expect to see the same array, which it wouldn't. You'd have to get the controller to refresh itself with the new array data.
This is what we *USED* to call "computer literacy". I think most people now equate the term with an understanding more along the lines of "tech guru" or "kernel hacker" or something.
It occurs to me as I read this, that the RIAA is not interested in making this work.
I think their real goal is to pay lip service to the online crowd and the DOJ by presenting an option no sane digital dude(ette) would pay for, then they can claim "...sorry,just can't make it work!" and get back to raising CD prices and doing things the old-fashioned way.
This has probably been stated before, but the Feds are investigating the wrong end of this. While the RIAA can hardly be described as a monopoly, this is CERTAINLY collusion: We have a small number of competitors in an exclusive business conspiring in a way to eliminate competition and fix prices. I doesn't matter how many Napster/RealOne subscription front-ends are on the system, the license structures have been set to make this unattractive. Real and Napster are stupid for even TRYING to play ball.
The fact is that the RIAA (like the telcos with ISDN and broadband and MS with virtually everyone else that writes software) wants this to go away and they're willing to flush a lot of $$ down the john to make it happen. There are really only three things that will stop this nonsense:
DOJ Breaks up RIAA (and MPAA for that matter)
Artists stop signing away their rights and produce "the stuff" themselves
We stop sending money to Hollywood and live without "the stuff"
Evolution (as in "altering of physical form of whole populations of individuals due to external factors") seems much more likely to happen over a few generations.
...only as natural selection kills off all of the munchkins that can't finish Pokemon.
Security is a compromise between security and ease-of-use. I use the similar same or similar passwords for different situations (low-med-high security) depending on the kind of info I'm protecting.
What I'm curious about is how the math-friendly sysadmin/consultant population generates passwords for math-impaired users. *I* have no trouble memorizing a randomly generated string of 32 ASCII charagers, but some of the people I work with have to write their password:'DOG' on the frame of their monitor - IN MAGIC MARKER - to make sure they don't forget. (Of course, they try to write real small, so it's not obvious...:)
I've found for these kinds of people, it's useful to take a favorite phrase/title/line from a favorite song and take the 1st letter from each word to generate a PW string. For example, for someone who's favorite song was "Talk Dirty To Me" by Poison, I'd have them take the line 'CC, pick up that guitar and talk to me' and generate: "CPUTGATTM"
1) It's longer than 4 characters.
2) It LOOKS random, but they'll remember it.
3) It's a LOT less obvious than their kid's/pet's/spouse's name, and you have to know them REAL well to even have a shot at guessing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ultimately, the reason HDTV isn't happening isn't the fault of the manufacturers or the broadcasters - it's because consumers don't really want it. What pisses me off is that it's being forced down my throat like forced bussing to desegregate schools! (And all of you in the Cleveland area in the 80s know how that went...)
Why is this necessary? Why am I not being allowed to vote for this with my wallet? How does entertainment (especially idiotic entertainment like TV) get to be this stinkin' important?
The Facts:
1) The quality isn't nearly as earth-shattering as I was led to expect, at least not on the demo TVs at Best Buy. (I suspect they aren't really showing a real HDTV signal, but some kind of enhanced analog simulation)
2) With the possible exception of sports, the improved quality certainly doesn't make the shows any better.
3) The set/tuner will cost >$1000.
4) Programming will include DRM and will be PPV.
Which item in this list makes me want to run out and buy one of these beauties? THIS SUCKS! It's my money, I want the control and I'd rather do without than pay my hard earned dough for this cheese.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - new stuff do not replace old stuff because it's better, but because it's cheaper. The market does a great job of figuring that out on its own without the government intrusion, thank you.
The esteemed senators can go to h-e-doublehockeysticks.
From the IMDB:
The Joker: I've been dead once already; it's very liberating. You might think of it as... therapy.
Sorry 'bout the long-term RAM refresh error.
You decide to quit and seek work elsewhere?
...has the power to put it in action, despite a profound lack of respect for coworkers and underlings; ...probably isn't where they are because they know what they're doing; ...is probably too sensitive to call your bluff on whatever shenanigans you decide to pull until it's way, WAY too late. (After all - you're quitting, right? What have you got to lose?)
Your options are kinda limited because the person that came up with this gem of an idea:
a)
b)
c)
In the words of The Joker, "Death can be quite liberating - you should try it sometime."
Seriously, though, this would be a great "Ask Slashdot" submission. If nothing else, it would generate interesting and amusing conversation.
There's a name for this - I think it's called the "Peter Pan Effect" or "The Peter Principle" or something to that effect. Basically, everyone rises to their own level of incompetence.
I don't understand the need to put Linux in EVERYTHING. Linux is a great operating system. We use for networking and for even in some 3D sim environments. But honestly... do i have to walk around with a watch that runs Linux, and talk on a Cell phone that uses Linux, while cooking dinner in a Microwave that's running Linux?
YEAH! You guys are getting almost as bad as those Java-weenies!!!!
[teethy grin]
Is anyone else getting sick and tired of the word 'experience'? It's become as useless a term as 'product' anymore because of the attitude the marketroids have of their target (with a bulls-eye) audience.
I also found it quietly ironic that in an article about companies screwing with your browser to 'enhance' usability (blech!), if you look at the site with OPERA (my browser of choice), the entire first paragraph of the article is obstructed by an ad for the MSN Titanium VISA card.
Great, but isn't the point of karoke that you stink and can't make it as a pro singer? I dunno, this kinds strikes me like Led Zeppelin on CD -- those hisses and pops and scratches from the vinyl are part of the music, man!
Next thing you know some evil M$ mole will expose 'rm' to shell scripting. Think of the security implications!
Ya know, now that you mention it... didn't MS and IBM work together at one point? Hmmmm.... OS2, I think it was....
WOW! Can you say, "CONSPIRACY"! What if IBM's newfound "leadership" role in establishing Linux is really a cleverly disguised ploy orchestrated by Bill Gates to establish MS-style data/code comingling on the Linux platform with the eventual intent of equalizing the IT security/stability playing field by crashing EVERYONE's boats on the rocks! Then you go out and buy NT^H^H XP anyway because, shoot, if it's gonna get infected and send all your credit card numbers to Nigeria anyway, you might as well do it in style with really groovy lookin' pastoral wallpaper!
Genius! Sheer GEEE-NEEEE-US! Muhuhahahahahaha!
If you can't beat 'em, show 'em how to beat themselves - odds are, they'll do it!
exposes native functionality to JavaScript
/*`
You mean things like `rm -rf
YOU SEE, YOU SEE! LINUX *IS* BECOMING MORE LIKE WINDOWS!!!!!!
how about sequencing dna strands to hold music data. smaller storage mediums, and easier reproduction.
...but your kids would all violate the DMCA!
On the other hand, three extra arms, a set of gills on my back and prehensile earlobes might not be a bad exchange for tha capability of carrying my KC and the Sunshine Band CDs around without being seen.
Thirdly, there actually was a PS1 game a few years ago (I don't remember the name, unfortunately) that was kinda like Pokemon in that it featured monsters that battled. Anyway, this game was cool because you could drop in your favorite music CD and it could use the audio data coded in the tracks to generate new monsters to use in battle!
... this is how you'd all be trading p0rn right now!
Look at the effect of the economy of the dot-com bust of the past couple years. Completely caused by the Internet.
Ummm.... Well.... I don't know... no, wait.... yeah, you're right.
If the Internet hadn't sucked up all of that investor venture capital, it wouldn't have been tied up in Aeron chairs in San Francisco, and we probably wouldn't have had a recession at all because it would have been invested in more reasonable ways.
Don't get me wrong - the internet's a great thing - but let's be realistic here. The Internet bubble was caused by a large number of investors willing to take big risks in an unproven market. "Foolish"? I prefer "risky". I just wish it hadn't been so painful for so many.
Here's the point: For the overwhelming majority of the world population, it is possible to lead a completely fulfilling, active, healthy life without ever logging on. The only way the Internet will become a necessity is if it can prove to provide things cheaper, not just better, but cheaper than the old non-Internet way of doing things. Except for email, it hasn't yet provided proof that this is the case.
Weird, isn't it? I went back and looked at it again because I thought I must have made a mistake when I commented earlier. Now that I look at it again, someone really pulled a boner here. The picture really looks like MS is trying to lure you BACK INTO THE MAZE. Someone in the art department is gonna get their twinkie pinched over this one when they figure that out. Maybe we should run a pool on how long the image stays up before they replace it?
OK, so you go to Cnet and read the story, then you follow the link to www.wehavethewayout.com to go to the home page for the MS/Unisys campaign. You stare at the image for a minute and then it hits you....
Did anyone else notice that the light shining through the window is originating inside the maze?
....the way they get around the problem of distibuting the private symmetric key dictionary is by having everyone download a copy?
....
Engineers designed this?
When I bought my first MSDOS PC (a GW2K 386-25) in December of 1990, I used the crappy $20 Chicony keyboard for about 10 minutes before I called NORTHGATE and ordered one of their $110.00 Northgate OmniKey 101 Keyboards WITH THE FUNCTION KEYS ON THE LEFT SIDE LIKE GOD INTENDED! (ERGONOMICS?!?! Ain't no 'membranes' here - them are MECHANICAL switches!).
It's still my main KB at home - Subspace Continuum wouldn't be the same without it! My only gripe is the placement of the '\' key NOT being above ENTER, but right side of R-SHIFT, and no "Flying Windows" keys. Oh well, CTRL+ESC still works.
Interestingly, it came with a groovy keycap puller tool and every year or two, I have to pull all the keycaps off and clean them in alcohol and chip the crust off the underpanel.
Obviously, if someone's actually done it that trumps my blathering, but I wouldn't expect this to work -even with SCSI- unless the drives were geometrically identical because I don't know of a controller (IDE OR SCSI) that can re-init the drive inteface to refresh its own internal "picture" of the drive geometry on the fly.
The best bet would be to get a USB/IDE external tray/case (because USB was designed for these kinds of hot-swap shennanigans). THAT would work. Serial ATA might also be able to do this when it hits the streets.
I can't even see how you'd do it with single drive array in a RAID controller/cabinet with hot-swap trays because even though the array config data is written on the drives themselves (so you can swap controllers), pulling one drive and plugging in another, the controller would still expect to see the same array, which it wouldn't. You'd have to get the controller to refresh itself with the new array data.
This is what we *USED* to call "computer literacy". I think most people now equate the term with an understanding more along the lines of "tech guru" or "kernel hacker" or something.
Maybe we need to start teaching CL again?
Yeah, then they all come over to *MY* company to work? FAT CHANCE! I'm gonna run right out and buy "Glitter" TODAY!
Correction:
In the first sentence, he sez "Two years ago I ripped my 270 CDs to MP3 and pawned them to get a bigger hard drive."
Where I come from, pawning is selling something you have for quick cash, which he apparently then used to buy the hard drive.
Five-hundred thousand.... SUBSCRIBERS? Are you sure they didn't mean "Downloaders"? That *can't* be right, can it?
UGH!
I think their real goal is to pay lip service to the online crowd and the DOJ by presenting an option no sane digital dude(ette) would pay for, then they can claim "...sorry,just can't make it work!" and get back to raising CD prices and doing things the old-fashioned way.
This has probably been stated before, but the Feds are investigating the wrong end of this. While the RIAA can hardly be described as a monopoly, this is CERTAINLY collusion: We have a small number of competitors in an exclusive business conspiring in a way to eliminate competition and fix prices. I doesn't matter how many Napster/RealOne subscription front-ends are on the system, the license structures have been set to make this unattractive. Real and Napster are stupid for even TRYING to play ball.
The fact is that the RIAA (like the telcos with ISDN and broadband and MS with virtually everyone else that writes software) wants this to go away and they're willing to flush a lot of $$ down the john to make it happen. There are really only three things that will stop this nonsense:
DOJ Breaks up RIAA (and MPAA for that matter)
Artists stop signing away their rights and produce "the stuff" themselves
We stop sending money to Hollywood and live without "the stuff"
Evolution (as in "altering of physical form of whole populations of individuals due to external factors") seems much more likely to happen over a few generations.
...only as natural selection kills off all of the munchkins that can't finish Pokemon.
Refresh my RAM - what's the "Ted Mail" commercial?
Security is a compromise between security and ease-of-use. I use the similar same or similar passwords for different situations (low-med-high security) depending on the kind of info I'm protecting.
What I'm curious about is how the math-friendly sysadmin/consultant population generates passwords for math-impaired users. *I* have no trouble memorizing a randomly generated string of 32 ASCII charagers, but some of the people I work with have to write their password:'DOG' on the frame of their monitor - IN MAGIC MARKER - to make sure they don't forget. (Of course, they try to write real small, so it's not obvious...:)
I've found for these kinds of people, it's useful to take a favorite phrase/title/line from a favorite song and take the 1st letter from each word to generate a PW string. For example, for someone who's favorite song was "Talk Dirty To Me" by Poison, I'd have them take the line 'CC, pick up that guitar and talk to me' and generate: "CPUTGATTM"
1) It's longer than 4 characters.
2) It LOOKS random, but they'll remember it.
3) It's a LOT less obvious than their kid's/pet's/spouse's name, and you have to know them REAL well to even have a shot at guessing it.
Anyone else do anything like this?