Back when I was in high school, my family lived in southern Florida. Miami, specifically. This kind of crap is extremely prevalent around there, and I'm not sure exactly why. At any rate, one year our neighbor, as usual, had up several thousands of lights, along with the usual array of motorized reindeer, inflatable Santa Claus, and of course a big plastic glowing Jesus (what Jesus has to do with a pagan/capitalist holiday I'm not sure).
Anyways, a huge ugly array of crap that probably took a lot of work to put up--a perfect target for neighborhood hooligans looking to spoil peoples' hard work, right? Not so. The neighbor's display remained untouched. Meanwhile over at our house, we had simply arranged some lights in the shape of a peace sign over our garage door. Within two days all the lights had been torn down and stomped on. Ah, America...
But not about the fact that they should switch to CFLs where possible. And they should, and I think people are starting to get that, for the fact that it'll save them money on their electric bill if nothing else. My family has been using them for the last decade at least (they used be to far less...compact....and didn't fit everywhere).
But they're also chock full of nasty chemicals, not the least of which is mercury, and ought to be recycled properly. But the public is not largely aware of this, and proper recycling facilities for them are not nearly as wide spread as in places like Japan (where boxes are set out for them at various stores). So when people just start tossing these things in the trash, we're going to have a huge mess on our hands.
If you want dim light just use candles. That's what I do:P
In all seriousness though, you're right that completely banning sale of incandescent bulbs is a bit extreme. Almost all my lights are CFLs or LEDs, but they can't replace everything. Not yet anyways.
Yeah jesus, I'm a total lefty in most respects. The difference between myself and a lot of "greenies" is that I'm not a luddite, and don't outright object to things like GMO crops or nuclear energy without really understanding the technology or issues involved.
There are people on both sides of the aisle who follow the herd on one thing or another.
Because for my salary to get paid, there has to be profit. And there can't be profit if the customers can't use the website. Believe me, we'd ALL love to just tell everyone, "Go away and don't come back until you're using a better browser." But until that happens, there's not enough profit to stay in business in the first place.
Thank goodness for internal only sites. Bah, I'm developing an internal only site. But there are no particular web browser requirements at my company. We have many sane people using Firefox or (in my case anyways) Opera. But we still have to support IE6 and 7, because people are using both. We even had one guy using IE5, but I was given a break on that one--we told him he'd just have to upgrade.
Beats me, since I've been off Comcast for a year. But of course, it's always been their policy that you can't run "a server" (not realizing how broad that really is). I'm surprised you were able to run one for as long as you did.
I wouldn't say useless. Widescreen would definitely be a big plus (and I don't see why it couldn't have it assuming it's well-coded). But this game, what with much of the gameplay revolving around brush strokes, was meant for the Wii. When I first heard about it my immediate thought was that it should have been a Wii game.
Yes, well, some of the other best schools and hospitals in the nation are secular, so that's irrelevant. The problem would be if all schools and hospitals were run by a single religious organization. Then we'd be in trouble.
I don't think anyone is arguing that it's not possible for faith and reason to coexist, both within a single person's mind, and within a large population.
The problem is when faith overpowers reasons--that never turns out well.
I should add to this by pointing out that Burgett himself thinks it's wrong that he should win over gorillas. From his blog:
Of the four people there only one is dealing with extinction. Dead is dead, anything else is negotiable. Vote for the gorillas. 25 grand and fame that id probably just piss away anyway is not worth a specie.
I don't know if it will help, but I'd feel like crap if I won and the gorillas went extinct.
I think we agree on more than we'd care to admit. And I thought you were suggesting by 'streaming' that you would never have anything stored locally, which is of course ridiculous. I'm not some snob who will only listen to music in a lossless format. I think I made the point early on that even CDs are not exactly the best-sounding music format ever. Though I certainly prefer it where possible, and if I'm going to *pay* for music I'm going to want it in a lossless format that can then go to CD (I do use a CD player in my car) or reencoded into lossy formats. Some online music stores are starting to offer lossless formats, but it's still rare. I don't mind paying to rent DVDs, because I'm getting the product at least in as high quality as is currently available (ignoring, for now HD formats, until and unless there is a single dominant format or a cross-format player), and in the case of DVDs the copy protection is at least easily defeatable. Of course, I still buy DVDs too because sometimes it's just less hassle, especially if it's something I know I'll watch again.
Now, as for your hypothetical about my music collection disappearing due to changing services or some other catastrophe, and listening to music while downloading, there's still the problem of telling it what to serve me. Is there a music download service that will allow me to just upload a list of all my albums and tell it "play from this list." It's possible...but I'd like to see it. If there were songs that I had on my previous service that are not available on the new one, then I'd have to go buy the CD anyways or pirate it--things I could have done just as easily in the first place. Then I lose money, having bought it twice (assuming I go with non-piracy).
As for the player, I think for most people WMP does fine. I know that it does allow burning and syncing music from different sources. For me it's not an option, but it'll do for most. I still just think that one would have to have limited tastes in music in order for it to be trivial and costless to replace one's entire music collection every time they change services. But maybe that's just me being an elitist snob.
It's also hyperbole--my point was that one must have a somewhat limited range in musical interests if it makes sense to them to redownload their entire music collections every time they move to a different service. It would be waste of time and bandwidth to re-download 100 GB of music, let alone figure out what music it is that you need to replace. Nevermind that no service is going to have the same selection anyways, and that lots of stuff is going to be obscure and/or eclectic (this also ignores that one's taste my change over time and they may not be interested in restoring the exact same music collection). So anyways, I was grossly exaggerating how limited one's music collection must be for that to make sense.
As for streaming everywhere, that could be a misinterpretation on my part. I know that with iTunes and a few other services you download to your hard drive (though it is still necessary for the player to phone home to get permission to play that file on that computer, etc). But from stories I've seen on slashdot there seems to be a trend toward pure streaming music services that may offer the option to download to hard drive/music player/CD. Most of these involve some sort of clumsy, third-party interface in order to do anything with the music (though that would also seem to be the case for music downloaded from iTMS and other like it).
And yes, I know you're not describing yourself, and I know that my preferences may not work for others and vice-versa. I'm arguing that given my listening prefences and how I use my music files, it is not even cost-effective in time or effort to use a music download service. It is only more cost effective if it can be used for the vast majority of your music collection, and if that collection is relatively small. If there were a music download service that let me copy that music to *any* device as well as stream it (like I do at home), worked with a variety of players (this is where you have a point about a standard like PlaysForSure being a good thing, even if there is DRM), had all the music I would ever listen to, and was in no danger of disappearing, then I might consider using such a thing. Sadly, no such thing exists at this time (eMusic shows the most promise in this respect, but it's not quite there yet as far as meeting my needs).
How is it less hassle to do things in more than one way? If I have to turn to CDs to get all the music that won't be available on the download service (read: probably most of it) then why even bother? Sure, I might save some money--those albums that I do buy from the download service might cost less. Or they might not, as I tend to try to buy used when possible anyways.
And again, if the files I download are in a proprietary, poorly-supported format, or are encumbered with DRM, I'm limited in how I can use it. Using CDs is hardly a hassle--I pop the disc in, and run a script to download its meta data from MusicBrainz (rarely do I have to enter it by hand), encode it into my desired formats, and save it where I want on my hard drive. From there I can do just about anything I want with it. The process rarely takes more than 5 minutes of my time (usually less if there is a good metadata source). The rest is automated. No need to deal with clumsy third party software (read:iTunes) and proprietary formats.
I think my time and money are better spent on CDs that give me the freedom (technologically, no DRM) to do with as I please and that have top sound quality to begin with (sure, there are formats with better sound than CDs, but none with anywhere near as wide support).
At home I have the bandwidth to stream CD-quality music, though I don't know who's even offering such a thing. Nevermind that sometimes I want to use my bandwidth for other things. Not having music stored locally makes no sense at all right now. At work I don't have the bandwidth, and the service would probably be blocked anyways.
I think that downloading a few hundred megabytes of CD-quality music *would* be a slowdown every time I want to burn a CD. Nevermind navigating some clumsy third-party interface to find the songs I want, or the trouble of making a CD with songs downloaded from multiple different services, plus from my hard drive.
No, I think it is far better worth my while to have a master copy on CD from which I can create files on my hard drive in DRM-unencumbered formats. FLAC for use where possible, mp3 everywhere else (would use ogg if more devices supported it). I'm sure there are plenty of people out there whose listening/music usage habits are such that downloading/streaming from online services makes sense. All power to them. But even then, unless you can get all your music needs fulfilled from one source, it is undeniably a huge hassle.
Re:Read between the lines
on
Halo 3 Review
·
· Score: 1
That would be pretty awesome. But yeah, I can't imagine Halo 3 having huge sales after all the existing fanbase picks it up. Sure they'll still trickle in. But everyone who would buy an XB360 for it already has or will soon. So MS will see a spike in sales, and then it will quickly return to the status quo.
a) It's called hyperbole, dipshit. b) Ah yes, it makes total sense for me to stream my music collection everywhere I listen to it, in a lossless format. Right. I *always* have a broadband internet connection on hand, and I totally love the idea of downloading stuff every single time I want to put it on a CD or a portable player, my computer at work, my laptop, or lend it to a friend. c) I definitely could not live exclusively off existing online music download services. And having to jump between different services and pay them all fees and use different technology that often won't be compatible is a GREAT way to fill one's music collection.
What, does that guy listen to like the same 100 songs on rotation? I don't see how it could possibly to be economical to download a several thousand album music collection over and over again. Nevermind that no one digital music store is going to necessarily even have half of such a collection in its libraries.
I guess whatever works for him. But I still can't see this as feasable for anyone remotely *interested* in music, and I'm not even talking about audiophiles. Just people who care about music instead of just listening to stuff 'cause they heard it on the radio and liked it.
Now, internet radio is another matter. That's worth listening to sometimes for variety and hearing new stuff. A good radio station is even worth paying for I think.
The only problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't know that Slashdot exists, or that we on it have been railing against DRM all this time. Nor do they realize what DRM is, or that there are alternatives. To them, when they get screwed by DRM, "it just doesn't work" and they move on the next source of DRM'd music, 'cause maybe it will work.
It's still pretty impressive how little most people understand about the technology that they use. It really might as well be magic.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, it is kinda flamebait.
Thanks, you took the words right out of my mouth.
Just making a tongue in cheek reference to two or three stories down. And to be more precise, it's about banning the sale of certain types of bulbs.
Back when I was in high school, my family lived in southern Florida. Miami, specifically. This kind of crap is extremely prevalent around there, and I'm not sure exactly why. At any rate, one year our neighbor, as usual, had up several thousands of lights, along with the usual array of motorized reindeer, inflatable Santa Claus, and of course a big plastic glowing Jesus (what Jesus has to do with a pagan/capitalist holiday I'm not sure).
Anyways, a huge ugly array of crap that probably took a lot of work to put up--a perfect target for neighborhood hooligans looking to spoil peoples' hard work, right? Not so. The neighbor's display remained untouched. Meanwhile over at our house, we had simply arranged some lights in the shape of a peace sign over our garage door. Within two days all the lights had been torn down and stomped on. Ah, America...
What's the point to banning some incandescent light bulbs if this bullshit is allowed?
Works for me--that's what we get for failing to RTFA.
But not about the fact that they should switch to CFLs where possible. And they should, and I think people are starting to get that, for the fact that it'll save them money on their electric bill if nothing else. My family has been using them for the last decade at least (they used be to far less...compact....and didn't fit everywhere).
But they're also chock full of nasty chemicals, not the least of which is mercury, and ought to be recycled properly. But the public is not largely aware of this, and proper recycling facilities for them are not nearly as wide spread as in places like Japan (where boxes are set out for them at various stores). So when people just start tossing these things in the trash, we're going to have a huge mess on our hands.
If you want dim light just use candles. That's what I do :P
In all seriousness though, you're right that completely banning sale of incandescent bulbs is a bit extreme. Almost all my lights are CFLs or LEDs, but they can't replace everything. Not yet anyways.
I do hope you realize that these are not the same thing as mini-Chernobyls.
Yeah jesus, I'm a total lefty in most respects. The difference between myself and a lot of "greenies" is that I'm not a luddite, and don't outright object to things like GMO crops or nuclear energy without really understanding the technology or issues involved.
There are people on both sides of the aisle who follow the herd on one thing or another.
Because for my salary to get paid, there has to be profit. And there can't be profit if the customers can't use the website. Believe me, we'd ALL love to just tell everyone, "Go away and don't come back until you're using a better browser." But until that happens, there's not enough profit to stay in business in the first place.
Beats me, since I've been off Comcast for a year. But of course, it's always been their policy that you can't run "a server" (not realizing how broad that really is). I'm surprised you were able to run one for as long as you did.
I wouldn't say useless. Widescreen would definitely be a big plus (and I don't see why it couldn't have it assuming it's well-coded). But this game, what with much of the gameplay revolving around brush strokes, was meant for the Wii. When I first heard about it my immediate thought was that it should have been a Wii game.
Yes, well, some of the other best schools and hospitals in the nation are secular, so that's irrelevant. The problem would be if all schools and hospitals were run by a single religious organization. Then we'd be in trouble.
I don't think anyone is arguing that it's not possible for faith and reason to coexist, both within a single person's mind, and within a large population.
The problem is when faith overpowers reasons--that never turns out well.
I think we agree on more than we'd care to admit. And I thought you were suggesting by 'streaming' that you would never have anything stored locally, which is of course ridiculous. I'm not some snob who will only listen to music in a lossless format. I think I made the point early on that even CDs are not exactly the best-sounding music format ever. Though I certainly prefer it where possible, and if I'm going to *pay* for music I'm going to want it in a lossless format that can then go to CD (I do use a CD player in my car) or reencoded into lossy formats. Some online music stores are starting to offer lossless formats, but it's still rare. I don't mind paying to rent DVDs, because I'm getting the product at least in as high quality as is currently available (ignoring, for now HD formats, until and unless there is a single dominant format or a cross-format player), and in the case of DVDs the copy protection is at least easily defeatable. Of course, I still buy DVDs too because sometimes it's just less hassle, especially if it's something I know I'll watch again.
Now, as for your hypothetical about my music collection disappearing due to changing services or some other catastrophe, and listening to music while downloading, there's still the problem of telling it what to serve me. Is there a music download service that will allow me to just upload a list of all my albums and tell it "play from this list." It's possible...but I'd like to see it. If there were songs that I had on my previous service that are not available on the new one, then I'd have to go buy the CD anyways or pirate it--things I could have done just as easily in the first place. Then I lose money, having bought it twice (assuming I go with non-piracy).
As for the player, I think for most people WMP does fine. I know that it does allow burning and syncing music from different sources. For me it's not an option, but it'll do for most. I still just think that one would have to have limited tastes in music in order for it to be trivial and costless to replace one's entire music collection every time they change services. But maybe that's just me being an elitist snob.
It's also hyperbole--my point was that one must have a somewhat limited range in musical interests if it makes sense to them to redownload their entire music collections every time they move to a different service. It would be waste of time and bandwidth to re-download 100 GB of music, let alone figure out what music it is that you need to replace. Nevermind that no service is going to have the same selection anyways, and that lots of stuff is going to be obscure and/or eclectic (this also ignores that one's taste my change over time and they may not be interested in restoring the exact same music collection). So anyways, I was grossly exaggerating how limited one's music collection must be for that to make sense.
As for streaming everywhere, that could be a misinterpretation on my part. I know that with iTunes and a few other services you download to your hard drive (though it is still necessary for the player to phone home to get permission to play that file on that computer, etc). But from stories I've seen on slashdot there seems to be a trend toward pure streaming music services that may offer the option to download to hard drive/music player/CD. Most of these involve some sort of clumsy, third-party interface in order to do anything with the music (though that would also seem to be the case for music downloaded from iTMS and other like it).
And yes, I know you're not describing yourself, and I know that my preferences may not work for others and vice-versa. I'm arguing that given my listening prefences and how I use my music files, it is not even cost-effective in time or effort to use a music download service. It is only more cost effective if it can be used for the vast majority of your music collection, and if that collection is relatively small. If there were a music download service that let me copy that music to *any* device as well as stream it (like I do at home), worked with a variety of players (this is where you have a point about a standard like PlaysForSure being a good thing, even if there is DRM), had all the music I would ever listen to, and was in no danger of disappearing, then I might consider using such a thing. Sadly, no such thing exists at this time (eMusic shows the most promise in this respect, but it's not quite there yet as far as meeting my needs).
How is it less hassle to do things in more than one way? If I have to turn to CDs to get all the music that won't be available on the download service (read: probably most of it) then why even bother? Sure, I might save some money--those albums that I do buy from the download service might cost less. Or they might not, as I tend to try to buy used when possible anyways.
And again, if the files I download are in a proprietary, poorly-supported format, or are encumbered with DRM, I'm limited in how I can use it. Using CDs is hardly a hassle--I pop the disc in, and run a script to download its meta data from MusicBrainz (rarely do I have to enter it by hand), encode it into my desired formats, and save it where I want on my hard drive. From there I can do just about anything I want with it. The process rarely takes more than 5 minutes of my time (usually less if there is a good metadata source). The rest is automated. No need to deal with clumsy third party software (read:iTunes) and proprietary formats.
I think my time and money are better spent on CDs that give me the freedom (technologically, no DRM) to do with as I please and that have top sound quality to begin with (sure, there are formats with better sound than CDs, but none with anywhere near as wide support).
At home I have the bandwidth to stream CD-quality music, though I don't know who's even offering such a thing. Nevermind that sometimes I want to use my bandwidth for other things. Not having music stored locally makes no sense at all right now. At work I don't have the bandwidth, and the service would probably be blocked anyways.
I think that downloading a few hundred megabytes of CD-quality music *would* be a slowdown every time I want to burn a CD. Nevermind navigating some clumsy third-party interface to find the songs I want, or the trouble of making a CD with songs downloaded from multiple different services, plus from my hard drive.
No, I think it is far better worth my while to have a master copy on CD from which I can create files on my hard drive in DRM-unencumbered formats. FLAC for use where possible, mp3 everywhere else (would use ogg if more devices supported it). I'm sure there are plenty of people out there whose listening/music usage habits are such that downloading/streaming from online services makes sense. All power to them. But even then, unless you can get all your music needs fulfilled from one source, it is undeniably a huge hassle.
That would be pretty awesome. But yeah, I can't imagine Halo 3 having huge sales after all the existing fanbase picks it up. Sure they'll still trickle in. But everyone who would buy an XB360 for it already has or will soon. So MS will see a spike in sales, and then it will quickly return to the status quo.
a) It's called hyperbole, dipshit.
b) Ah yes, it makes total sense for me to stream my music collection everywhere I listen to it, in a lossless format. Right. I *always* have a broadband internet connection on hand, and I totally love the idea of downloading stuff every single time I want to put it on a CD or a portable player, my computer at work, my laptop, or lend it to a friend.
c) I definitely could not live exclusively off existing online music download services. And having to jump between different services and pay them all fees and use different technology that often won't be compatible is a GREAT way to fill one's music collection.
What, does that guy listen to like the same 100 songs on rotation? I don't see how it could possibly to be economical to download a several thousand album music collection over and over again. Nevermind that no one digital music store is going to necessarily even have half of such a collection in its libraries.
I guess whatever works for him. But I still can't see this as feasable for anyone remotely *interested* in music, and I'm not even talking about audiophiles. Just people who care about music instead of just listening to stuff 'cause they heard it on the radio and liked it.
Now, internet radio is another matter. That's worth listening to sometimes for variety and hearing new stuff. A good radio station is even worth paying for I think.
The only problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't know that Slashdot exists, or that we on it have been railing against DRM all this time. Nor do they realize what DRM is, or that there are alternatives. To them, when they get screwed by DRM, "it just doesn't work" and they move on the next source of DRM'd music, 'cause maybe it will work.
It's still pretty impressive how little most people understand about the technology that they use. It really might as well be magic.