The Academy Awards Best Actor award is not reserved for A-list actors. It is usually given for excellence in acting (imagine that!). It's a subjective call, of course, but I don't think any actor in ROTK did better than the nominees for the actual award this year. Sorry. But, note, that doesn't mean the acting in ROTK wasn't very good. Just that there were examples of even better acting to be found elsehwere.
When it comes to price, comparing a car to a MP3 player is apples and oranges. If you have to chose between a Mercedes and a Toyota, price (upwards of $20,000) is a big factor. When you're buying an MP3 player, which is in many ways a "splurge" item, you're going to go for the best rather then a slightly less priced, more clunky alternative.
I disagree. At every level of the consumer market, price does matter. Whether you are shopping for bread, CDs, video cards, MP3 players, or cars, price will be an important factor in decision making for most buyers. I currently do not own an MP3 player, but am in the market for one. There is a definite set of features I am looking for, but not at any price. The iPod, for me, misses on two counts: 1.)does not have all the features I want, and 2.) costs too much for what it offers. The iRiver does meet my feature requirements, but is still too pricey. Perhaps in time its price will come down or I can find a deal on eBay. Just like every buyer, this is a personal decision. Others clearly find the iPod is worth the money. But I think the majority of buyers would not consider a $250 - $350 MP3 player a "splurge item". Not if they are spending their own money and have other, very real financial obligations (car, mortgage, kids, etc).
I see...
- a person who really, really wants an iPod
- a person who would want that iPod at a discount
- a person who sees cheaper offerings from competitors
- a person who does not intend to buy said other offerings because he is
- a person who really, really wants an iPod
That could have been me about 8 months ago, but not anymore. I am now holding out for a player that meets my requirements. Right now, the iRiver iHP-120 is looking pretty good. Regardless, since the person you were describing has not actually purchased anything yet, it is very presumptuous to assume he really "does not intend to buy said other offerings...". The jury is certainly out on that one since the guy does not perceive the iPod as being worth the money.
The iRiver is, from its name on down, an iPod knockoff. Your opinion is your own, and you're welcome to it, but for some of us, the iPod is exactly what we're looking for: a small, well-rounded mp3 player that doesn't look like a tricorder.
I think this comment says a lot about what iPod fans really like about their favorite mp3 player: it's fashionable.
It also demonstrates how iPod fans are often highly defensive wrt their device whenever the merits of another, competing device are brought up.
How so? The only thing this would accomplish is making it riskier for the little guy to stand up for himself. Not only does he have to risk his life's savings to pay for his own legal defense, but now, if he looses(and going up against a megacorporation, they'll drag it out until he's homeless on the street), he's got to pay their legal expenses as well?
I don't see how this makes all that much difference to the little guy anyhow. In the present system as is, he already risks his life savings against the megacorporation. Once he is bankrupt, further debt is kindof splitting hairs. In fact, it is the present exhorbitant cost of dealing with the courts that forces so many little guys to settle. If it were changed so the loser had to pay, then the little guy would have a greater incentive to stay in the fight on principle, since a win would not break him. In the present system he has virtually no reason not to settle.
Wow, all that your postings on this subject show to me is that people can definately have very different opinions on the quality of movies. IMHO, Aliens does not hold a candle to Alien. Toy Story 2, while good, did not match Toy Story. The Return of the Jedi was significantly worse than the previous two (although The Empire Stikes Back was better than the original in many ways). The Gods Must Be Crazy was far better than the sequel. And I don't know how you can think Ghostbusters 2 was better than Ghostbusters.
But your overall point:
I mean, before making such generalizations, why not just think a little? 90% of all work stinks, as Theodore Sturgeon said, this includes many sequels, but it's hardly specific to sequels.
Indeed, think a little. If you have been paying attention to what has been coming out of Hollywood over the previous multiple decades, you would know that it is highly unusual for a sequel to match or exceed the original. The original statement, which you seem to take exception to, asks if Shrek 2 will "be a disappointment like most sequels". That is a completely fair thing to ask since, as you acknowledge, "90% of all work stinks".
What strikes me as strange about this is that Apple is allowing this news story to fester. It is popping up in several news sites now and is creating a lot of bad press for them, regardless of the facts. I thought Apple was smarter about marketing than that. All we have at the moment is "no comment".
I wonder what the sound of the dying server will be like? A bang or a hum?
A wimper?
Re:No one took your time in the first place.
on
Take Back Your Time!
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· Score: 2, Funny
A lot of people have escaped from the 'rat race' to start farms out in the boonies, backpack around the world, or live as a family out on the ocean waves.
From the article: "Any given car, in any given gear, will accelerate at a rate that *exactly* matches its torque curve". Since the electic motor here has an essentially flat torque curve, you get a constant maximum acceleration, whereas the torque of an IC engine will vary as the RPMs change (i.e. its torque curve is not flat).
My daughter did them [Venn diagrams] last year in the fourth grade.
Are you saying your 4th grade daughter talks like this? The Venn diagram of facts doesn't intersect. The intersection of all of those statements is the null set. Impressive!
I'm merely pointing out the large disconnect between it's actual, present importance as opposed to the importance ascribed to it by readers of slashdot.
Clarification noted. But, it does leave me wondering why the moderators thought your initial comment was "Interesting". Your sentiment can be applied to most bleeding-edge technology. Early adoptors pay attention to that stuff far, far sooner than the masses. I would wager that Slashdot has a rather large group of early adoptors wrt technology, thus the importance they ascribe to things like this.
Someone has to say this out loud: nobody * gives a rats behind about Ogg Vorbis.
Every freaking time an Ogg Vorbis story gets posted on Slashdot, we get at least one comment like this one. The point, apparently, is that Vorbis is a waste of time, virtually nobody cares about it, it has no market share, so whoop-de-doo. Well, based on that kind of thinking we could have drawn the same conclusions about Linus Torvold's efforts many years ago when he first posted his new kernel.
I'll never understand the logic behind shooting down a technology in its infancy because it is in its infancy. There are reasonable arguments for preferring Vorbis over mp3. Let them try to make it succeed and the market will make the final determination. Declaring it is dead before it truly is strikes me more as a fear-induced comment than anything.
But he also said that a takedown notice is in response to DMCA, which is completely bullshit.
Actually, what he said is a takedown notice is usually in response to DMCA. So I think his concern was that the headline could easily be misconstrued to mean MS was forcing their site to go down, much like we hear about in DMCA cases.;-)
Party A says to Party B that Party B is doing something that is wrong. Party A gives Party B an opportunity to cease doing something before Party A proceeds with legal action that will be very costly for both parties, but probably more so for Party B.
Which is essentially what he said:
Microsoft has no means of forcing Lindows to take the site down without a lengthy legal process.
On most cars, the "e-brake", is connected to the same brake mechanism in the rear wheel, so if the brake really did fail, the "e-brake" would fail as well.
When the brakes fail on most cars, it is a failure of the hydraulic system (a failure of the master cylinder, low level of brake fluid, overheating of brake fluid, etc.). Emergency brakes engage the rear brake via a brake cable, providing a redundant system for engaging the rear brakes for use in emergencies. Only if your actual brakes (pads, discs, calipers) malfunction do you still have that problem when trying to use the emergency brake. But even then, it would be rare indeed to have those kinds of problems on more than one wheel at a time, so your normal brake pedal would still be able to engage the remaining brakes in that situation.
So if you're rich you can ignore the law that everyone else has to live by, I don't see that as an improvement or even necessary in this case.
That wouldn't be true -- the law would specify that if you don't comply with a standard, you have to pay a fee. The fee could be pretty high. In this case, a couple of folks driving a 959 around are not going to make an iota of difference to the local levels of pollution.
Are people still hung up about ogg format? Give it up. It didn't make it.
[...]
It's really tiring when I see people on slashdot and elsewhere repeat the same thing over and over, in regards to ogg making headway into the consumer market. It's over. Neuros's support for ogg is just symbolic, and will eventually prove that vorbis feature doesn't really sell portables.
Well, I was just waiting for you to tell me when it was over...
Seriously, this is nothing that you (or anyone else, for that matter) can decide or declare and make it so. It is for the market to decide. There's no timetable for when Vorbis must catch on. And it doesn't necessarily mean one must win and the other lose. All there needs to be is sufficient interest in the format to make it compelling for player makers to include the codec for Vorbis along with their MP3 support (etc.). It might never happen, but it certainly won't if you simply decide it won't and quit.
I agree it is tiring to see the same old things over and over on Slashdot when this comes up. That includes post such as yours declaring that Vorbis "didn't make it." Sorry, not your call to make.
Why is it even a question whether they have violated IP rights? Isn't Vorbis an open standard? Can't they verify whether their IP has been violated by looking at the code?
Seems that Ogg is just different. Not really much better and not any worse.
Then you might want to re-read the previous reply. Specifically, it is free from royalty fees and encodes to a smaller file size for a given level of quality compared to mp3. That can translate to better quality sound if you find the current, typical mp3 file size acceptable, since you can encode at a higher level of quality and keep that file size. The main negative, which you correctly identified, is the general lack of files. This can be rectified over time as people adopt ogg. I encode my CDs now with Ogg Vorbis. I also have lots of mp3s. I look forward to the day when a decent portable music player is available that will play both, have a 20+GB capacity, a decent form factor, and a reasonable price (the iPod is not a reasonable price, IMHO).
Also, Ogg Vorbis does not circumvent IP issues. The issues are the same for both ogg and mp3.
Slashdot Mirror
The Academy Awards Best Actor award is not reserved for A-list actors. It is usually given for excellence in acting (imagine that!). It's a subjective call, of course, but I don't think any actor in ROTK did better than the nominees for the actual award this year. Sorry. But, note, that doesn't mean the acting in ROTK wasn't very good. Just that there were examples of even better acting to be found elsehwere.
I mean, do they have secret hand signs and stuff? Great...
It also demonstrates how iPod fans are often highly defensive wrt their device whenever the merits of another, competing device are brought up.
But your overall point:
I mean, before making such generalizations, why not just think a little? 90% of all work stinks, as Theodore Sturgeon said, this includes many sequels, but it's hardly specific to sequels.
Indeed, think a little. If you have been paying attention to what has been coming out of Hollywood over the previous multiple decades, you would know that it is highly unusual for a sequel to match or exceed the original. The original statement, which you seem to take exception to, asks if Shrek 2 will "be a disappointment like most sequels". That is a completely fair thing to ask since, as you acknowledge, "90% of all work stinks".
What strikes me as strange about this is that Apple is allowing this news story to fester. It is popping up in several news sites now and is creating a lot of bad press for them, regardless of the facts. I thought Apple was smarter about marketing than that. All we have at the moment is "no comment".
From the article: "Any given car, in any given gear, will accelerate at a rate that *exactly* matches its torque curve". Since the electic motor here has an essentially flat torque curve, you get a constant maximum acceleration, whereas the torque of an IC engine will vary as the RPMs change (i.e. its torque curve is not flat).
I'll never understand the logic behind shooting down a technology in its infancy because it is in its infancy. There are reasonable arguments for preferring Vorbis over mp3. Let them try to make it succeed and the market will make the final determination. Declaring it is dead before it truly is strikes me more as a fear-induced comment than anything.
Well, I was just waiting for you to tell me when it was over...
Seriously, this is nothing that you (or anyone else, for that matter) can decide or declare and make it so. It is for the market to decide. There's no timetable for when Vorbis must catch on. And it doesn't necessarily mean one must win and the other lose. All there needs to be is sufficient interest in the format to make it compelling for player makers to include the codec for Vorbis along with their MP3 support (etc.). It might never happen, but it certainly won't if you simply decide it won't and quit.
I agree it is tiring to see the same old things over and over on Slashdot when this comes up. That includes post such as yours declaring that Vorbis "didn't make it." Sorry, not your call to make.
Why is it even a question whether they have violated IP rights? Isn't Vorbis an open standard? Can't they verify whether their IP has been violated by looking at the code?
Then you might want to re-read the previous reply. Specifically, it is free from royalty fees and encodes to a smaller file size for a given level of quality compared to mp3. That can translate to better quality sound if you find the current, typical mp3 file size acceptable, since you can encode at a higher level of quality and keep that file size. The main negative, which you correctly identified, is the general lack of files. This can be rectified over time as people adopt ogg. I encode my CDs now with Ogg Vorbis. I also have lots of mp3s. I look forward to the day when a decent portable music player is available that will play both, have a 20+GB capacity, a decent form factor, and a reasonable price (the iPod is not a reasonable price, IMHO).
Also, Ogg Vorbis does not circumvent IP issues. The issues are the same for both ogg and mp3.
if someone could show how to install Ogg Vorbis support in the Nomad. Or better, support for MP3 and ogg.