You assume that I meant "I hate Howard Stern". I meant what I said: I _could_ care less about him. I'm more or less neutral as to his presence on the service. Thanks for playing!
While I could honestly care less about Howard Stern, I am interested in this Internet streaming service of theirs. Does it have support for mobile clients, like PalmOS 5 and Windows Mobile 5?
The guy who sent in the question may not appreciate EVDO or HSDPA, because, IIRC, latencies are much higher. While this isn't a big deal for web or email usage, it's going to be painful on WoW.
Then again, if the business is paying for it, that's quite acceptable.
"Google would like the law to be interpreted for its intent, not necessarily the letter, and the believe they might have some footing."
Unless I'm missing something, I don't understand how Google is somehow following the intent of the law. Copyright is a limited monopoly granted to the work's owner to control distribution (hence "copy" "right"). The idea is that they presumably may want to sell this work, thus making it profitable to produce more such works (which, presumably, is to the benefit of their fellow citizens).
By scanning all these works in, Google is taking away the work's owner's right to control distribution by making unauthorized copies. It seems clear to me, then, that they are not following the intent of the copyright system. I'm sure others will (violently) disagree with me on this point, but they aren't the only party here with a case.
I must have missed the bill where the "everyone is doing it" defense was made valid. Pirates of the world, unite!
If my buddy and I violate someone's copyright, and the copyright holder sues me and not him, guess what? That's his or her decision. Their copyright does not somehow become "less valid" because of whom they take legal action against, or do not take such action against.
Now, for _trademarks_, it's a different story. But, clearly, scanning in entire books has far more to do with copyrights than trademarks, at least in this case.
The announcement was pretty clear that it was only coming out for Windows and Xbox 360, period. This seems reasonably plausible given the similarity between the two development environments (in terms of libraries and APIs).
From what I understand, White Knight is little more than a tech demo at this point. I'm reminded of Metal Gear Solid 4 - sexiest game ever when everyone first saw it, but once we started seeing "real" gameplay, it was less impressive (albeit still cool!). It's sort of unfair to compare tech demos at the 10% stage of development to games which are 90% complete (notice how I didn't haul out Halo 3?).
I didn't mention Culdcept Saga and Eternal Sonata (aka Trusty Bell), which are probably going to appeal to fewer people, but are still games which I think will be worth keeping track of.
Any way you slice it, there are some excellent-looking games coming out in all genres.
They've got to beat Gears of War, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Forza Motorsport 2, and Blue Dragon. Sony _wishes_ all they had to do was compete against Gears of War. Microsoft is obviously pulling out their AAA game on all fronts (including Japan - they've got a bunch of slick-looking JRPGs coming out), and Sony can't afford to ignore that.
I don't think _Microsoft_ is relying on Gears of War per se - they've got a lot of good stuff in the pipeline. Whether Microsoft needs to beat Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid is a better question...
Re:10 hours is a lot, really.
on
Yakuza Review
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· Score: 3, Interesting
The funny part about that sequence is that I recall even the author herself makes a backhanded joke at how long it goes, something along the lines of "I hope they heard that; I just spent two damn hours saying it all!"
However, I've got to disagree with you: even though I find some parts of Rand's philosophy to be awful (her hatred of freely-given charity comes to mind), she raises some interesting points and questions that deserve some thought. If you can't handle Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and We The Living are both excellent books.
"I only read things I agree with" is a terrible way to approach life.
It's not a matter of principle - it's a matter of legality. NSA and CIA (who are the two "big" intelligence agencies) are expressly prohibited _by law_ from operating against US citizens. The FBI could, I suppose, but do they even have resources to do it?
So, if either the NSA or CIA ever did do such a thing, they would be in hot water, legally - at least as far as I know.
I meant screwing around with mySQL and setting up the access to that in a secure fashion. Not everyone is a database administrator, and making that a pre-requisite for a good install is absolutely idiotic.
-Erwos
Re:Extender is expensive compared to Myth front en
on
MythTV 0.20 Released
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· Score: 1
You can use the Xbox as a media center extender, too. So, yes, I can find one for under $100, as you said.
Your magical apt-get trick only works if you're using Debian. Those of us who are running custom embedded hardware, such as the Hauppauge MediaMVP, really don't get that option.
Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition.
I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you. Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box. I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either. The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often.
This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal.
I sound like an MS shill, I know, but for all of MythTV's strengths, it's not for everyone.
"So, to say the Mac's threading support is "bad", is not consistant with my experiences on OS X. (I will agree that the threading support on OS 9 was really terrible.)"
I'm going to guess you're talking about like 2-5 threads. I'm talking about many, many more than that, like any normal web server would have.
"Slower than Linux or Windows? I'd like to see those numbers, please!"
MacOS X has infamously bad threading, which makes it an absolute dog for many important server apps. Anandtech, what I regard as one of the most trustworthy hardware sites on the Internet, has an article outlining the problems: http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&p =1
Unless MacOS X for Intel has gotten miraculous improvements in this area, and I'm not aware it has, you'd be an absolute fool to use MacOS X for any server apps requiring high performance threading.
First off, this is a trust _verification_ mechanism. If you've got such issues with your kid that you think they're going to start pulling stuff like you just described, the obvious answer is to just not hand them the car.
Making the assumption that all you can do is disable the GPS antenna, and not actually tamper with the logs or the device physically, don't you think the parent might notice something when the device points out that they didn't have a GPS lock (or even PRN sighting) at any time during their little trip? In other words, your scenario wouldn't work against an even-somewhat well designed device.
It surprises me how Slashdotters give teenagers the brilliance and skills of MacGyver, where no security measure could possibly work against them. Of course, it also makes me think there's a decent percentage of them who hated their parents, and considered themselves much, much smarter than them, which could be correlated with their apparent revulsion to just telling a kid "no, you can't".
It's sad and pathetic, honestly. My parents and I had an excellent relationship - I knew what they would say no to, so I didn't ask to do that stuff, and more importantly, I didn't actually do it, either. They trusted me because of that, so the sphere of "no" was relatively inconsquential anyways. It's a lesson many of my peers never really figured out.
The wife and I enjoy a good sci-fi series (she absolutely loved Firefly!). Is SG-1 and/or Atlantis worth getting on DVD? I guess we could watch reruns on sci-fi, but I'm spoiled - I can't stand watching these things out of order anymore.
I just want to point out that Assassin's Creed has long been rumored to be in parallel development for the 360 as well - and remarks from the developer have more or less confirmed that at this point.
Well, first of all, the blurb doesn't mention that one of the new Treos is going to be PalmOS-based - so WM5-haters should be placated somewhat. As for Symbian's greatness, that's only helpful if your cell provider is GSM - there are practically no Symbian CDMA phones. PalmOS and WM5 are much less rare in CDMA phones. So, I don't really get what's so cool about yet another Symbian device, either.
The article also doesn't mention that Sprint is (apparently) getting the Treo 700wx in September, which is supposed to resolve many of the problems that the first Treo 700 had (mainly in the way of memory). That's actually pretty neat.
One of the nice things about this is that you shouldn't even _need_ a 360 to do initial development on. A moderately good gaming PC and a wired 360 controller ought to tide you over until you've decided whether it's time to pony up the $99 fee (eg, game is finished, time to optimize for the 360).
I think this is an absolutely phenomenal idea, and I'm very excited about doing some hobbyist development with it.
I couldn't help but notice all his favorite consoles, excepting the Wii, are top-loaders (the NES gets this dubious distinction because of its door). Top-loading was a stupid idea that made consoles a pain to fit into entertainment centers. Using this particular metric, modern console design has gotten infinitely better - this generation, no one's got a top-loader.
I also think the 360's "ring of light" is both attractive and functional, so I'm not sure why he bags on that console so much.
Slashdot Mirror
You assume that I meant "I hate Howard Stern". I meant what I said: I _could_ care less about him. I'm more or less neutral as to his presence on the service. Thanks for playing!
While I could honestly care less about Howard Stern, I am interested in this Internet streaming service of theirs. Does it have support for mobile clients, like PalmOS 5 and Windows Mobile 5?
The guy who sent in the question may not appreciate EVDO or HSDPA, because, IIRC, latencies are much higher. While this isn't a big deal for web or email usage, it's going to be painful on WoW.
Then again, if the business is paying for it, that's quite acceptable.
"Google would like the law to be interpreted for its intent, not necessarily the letter, and the believe they might have some footing."
Unless I'm missing something, I don't understand how Google is somehow following the intent of the law. Copyright is a limited monopoly granted to the work's owner to control distribution (hence "copy" "right"). The idea is that they presumably may want to sell this work, thus making it profitable to produce more such works (which, presumably, is to the benefit of their fellow citizens).
By scanning all these works in, Google is taking away the work's owner's right to control distribution by making unauthorized copies. It seems clear to me, then, that they are not following the intent of the copyright system. I'm sure others will (violently) disagree with me on this point, but they aren't the only party here with a case.
I must have missed the bill where the "everyone is doing it" defense was made valid. Pirates of the world, unite!
If my buddy and I violate someone's copyright, and the copyright holder sues me and not him, guess what? That's his or her decision. Their copyright does not somehow become "less valid" because of whom they take legal action against, or do not take such action against.
Now, for _trademarks_, it's a different story. But, clearly, scanning in entire books has far more to do with copyrights than trademarks, at least in this case.
The announcement was pretty clear that it was only coming out for Windows and Xbox 360, period. This seems reasonably plausible given the similarity between the two development environments (in terms of libraries and APIs).
"Bioshock isn't a 360 exclusive. It'll be coming out for the PS3. Later. But it will nonetheless. I'm going to get the PC version."
Bioshock was confirmed as a 360 exclusive at X06.
From what I understand, White Knight is little more than a tech demo at this point. I'm reminded of Metal Gear Solid 4 - sexiest game ever when everyone first saw it, but once we started seeing "real" gameplay, it was less impressive (albeit still cool!). It's sort of unfair to compare tech demos at the 10% stage of development to games which are 90% complete (notice how I didn't haul out Halo 3?).
I didn't mention Culdcept Saga and Eternal Sonata (aka Trusty Bell), which are probably going to appeal to fewer people, but are still games which I think will be worth keeping track of.
Any way you slice it, there are some excellent-looking games coming out in all genres.
Sony doesn't need to beat Gears of War.
They've got to beat Gears of War, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Forza Motorsport 2, and Blue Dragon. Sony _wishes_ all they had to do was compete against Gears of War. Microsoft is obviously pulling out their AAA game on all fronts (including Japan - they've got a bunch of slick-looking JRPGs coming out), and Sony can't afford to ignore that.
I don't think _Microsoft_ is relying on Gears of War per se - they've got a lot of good stuff in the pipeline. Whether Microsoft needs to beat Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid is a better question...
The funny part about that sequence is that I recall even the author herself makes a backhanded joke at how long it goes, something along the lines of "I hope they heard that; I just spent two damn hours saying it all!"
However, I've got to disagree with you: even though I find some parts of Rand's philosophy to be awful (her hatred of freely-given charity comes to mind), she raises some interesting points and questions that deserve some thought. If you can't handle Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead and We The Living are both excellent books.
"I only read things I agree with" is a terrible way to approach life.
Do you have direct evidence of the president ordering this torture? If so, the friendly folks at the Washington Post might want to take a look at it.
-Erwos
It's not a matter of principle - it's a matter of legality. NSA and CIA (who are the two "big" intelligence agencies) are expressly prohibited _by law_ from operating against US citizens. The FBI could, I suppose, but do they even have resources to do it?
So, if either the NSA or CIA ever did do such a thing, they would be in hot water, legally - at least as far as I know.
-Erwos
What kind of advantage? You know our governor is the one fighting to have paper ballots, right?
-Erwos
I meant screwing around with mySQL and setting up the access to that in a secure fashion. Not everyone is a database administrator, and making that a pre-requisite for a good install is absolutely idiotic.
-Erwos
You can use the Xbox as a media center extender, too. So, yes, I can find one for under $100, as you said.
Your magical apt-get trick only works if you're using Debian. Those of us who are running custom embedded hardware, such as the Hauppauge MediaMVP, really don't get that option.
-Erwos
Problem is, TiVO isn't really their main competitor in that space - that honor goes to Windows Media Center Edition.
I'd also point out that I've installed MythTV on several boxes in the past year, and I'm not nearly so ecstatic about it as you. Doing a secure setup is an absolute pain in the neck if you want to use that fancy backend/frontend architecture, and only slightly less so if you keep everything on the same box. I also found performance and stability less than I would have preferred - not bad, mind you, but not really all that amazing, either. The protocol changes were the most frustrating, though - I had embedded extenders become unusable frequently because the MythTV folks would change protocols often.
This is not to say WMCE is all peaches and cream, because it's not - but for people who can tolerate its limitations (which aren't terribly bad - yet), the easy setup and relatively cheap (compared to a new PC) Media Center Extenders give it some appeal.
I sound like an MS shill, I know, but for all of MythTV's strengths, it's not for everyone.
-Erwos
Ridiculously high? I pay $15 for unlimited[1] 3G internet access for my phone. Maybe it's time you switched providers.
-Erwos
[1] You know what I mean.
"So, to say the Mac's threading support is "bad", is not consistant with my experiences on OS X. (I will agree that the threading support on OS 9 was really terrible.)"
I'm going to guess you're talking about like 2-5 threads. I'm talking about many, many more than that, like any normal web server would have.
-Erwos
"Slower than Linux or Windows? I'd like to see those numbers, please!"
p =1
MacOS X has infamously bad threading, which makes it an absolute dog for many important server apps. Anandtech, what I regard as one of the most trustworthy hardware sites on the Internet, has an article outlining the problems:
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436&
Unless MacOS X for Intel has gotten miraculous improvements in this area, and I'm not aware it has, you'd be an absolute fool to use MacOS X for any server apps requiring high performance threading.
-Erwos
First off, this is a trust _verification_ mechanism. If you've got such issues with your kid that you think they're going to start pulling stuff like you just described, the obvious answer is to just not hand them the car.
Making the assumption that all you can do is disable the GPS antenna, and not actually tamper with the logs or the device physically, don't you think the parent might notice something when the device points out that they didn't have a GPS lock (or even PRN sighting) at any time during their little trip? In other words, your scenario wouldn't work against an even-somewhat well designed device.
It surprises me how Slashdotters give teenagers the brilliance and skills of MacGyver, where no security measure could possibly work against them. Of course, it also makes me think there's a decent percentage of them who hated their parents, and considered themselves much, much smarter than them, which could be correlated with their apparent revulsion to just telling a kid "no, you can't".
It's sad and pathetic, honestly. My parents and I had an excellent relationship - I knew what they would say no to, so I didn't ask to do that stuff, and more importantly, I didn't actually do it, either. They trusted me because of that, so the sphere of "no" was relatively inconsquential anyways. It's a lesson many of my peers never really figured out.
-Erwos
The wife and I enjoy a good sci-fi series (she absolutely loved Firefly!). Is SG-1 and/or Atlantis worth getting on DVD? I guess we could watch reruns on sci-fi, but I'm spoiled - I can't stand watching these things out of order anymore.
I just want to point out that Assassin's Creed has long been rumored to be in parallel development for the 360 as well - and remarks from the developer have more or less confirmed that at this point.
-Erwos
Well, first of all, the blurb doesn't mention that one of the new Treos is going to be PalmOS-based - so WM5-haters should be placated somewhat. As for Symbian's greatness, that's only helpful if your cell provider is GSM - there are practically no Symbian CDMA phones. PalmOS and WM5 are much less rare in CDMA phones. So, I don't really get what's so cool about yet another Symbian device, either.
The article also doesn't mention that Sprint is (apparently) getting the Treo 700wx in September, which is supposed to resolve many of the problems that the first Treo 700 had (mainly in the way of memory). That's actually pretty neat.
One of the nice things about this is that you shouldn't even _need_ a 360 to do initial development on. A moderately good gaming PC and a wired 360 controller ought to tide you over until you've decided whether it's time to pony up the $99 fee (eg, game is finished, time to optimize for the 360).
I think this is an absolutely phenomenal idea, and I'm very excited about doing some hobbyist development with it.
I couldn't help but notice all his favorite consoles, excepting the Wii, are top-loaders (the NES gets this dubious distinction because of its door). Top-loading was a stupid idea that made consoles a pain to fit into entertainment centers. Using this particular metric, modern console design has gotten infinitely better - this generation, no one's got a top-loader.
I also think the 360's "ring of light" is both attractive and functional, so I'm not sure why he bags on that console so much.
-Erwos