Either the iPod (=iPod Soap and iPod Mini) meets the "should have a display" criteria or it meets the "should be flash based" criteria (=iPod Shuffle).
Not two days ago almost everyone agreed with Apple about the lawsuit against the guy who leaked a *beta* of Tiger. Now suddenly there are 3/4 comments questioning if this Swede was even stealing...
That's not inconsistency regarding copyrights, it's the Apple-fanboy factor. Steve Jobs could start shipping a version of Linux, without source, and sue Linus for copyright infringement and people would defend it.
Why is GPLed code any different than the one distributed under a proprietary license???
Well, if we could sue companies violating the GPL for hundreds of billions of dollars or put the execs in jail for years I think a lot of people would demand less ridiculous sentences. But the way it is now, if you're caught by the RIAA you're done for, if you're caught violating the GPL you open up the source and everything's fine.
One reason the PS2 was so successful was that it is also a DVD player. This helped sell lots and lots of PS2s especially in the beginning.
Re:I just wrote my local paper about this
on
PSP Launch Coverage
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· Score: 1
Sony's learned, they did everything right with Blu-Ray as far as I can see, hey, they even made a Microsoft codec part of the specs, they've also started to ship mp3-players with the ability to play *mp3s*. Both decisions haven't been easy for sure.
Now they've introduced their UMDs (Universal Media Discs), a proprietary new medium , yet ANOTHER proprietary format?!? It's almost unbelievable -- they're kind of like the Microsoft of the electronics industry except they don't have near the control and monopoly. No thanks, I don't need their proprietary solutions that are incompatible with anything else I own....
The reason Nintendo and every other (every?) handheld have used solid state memory instead of discs is battery lifetime. One of the most taxing things on the PSP is swirling the disc around, the developer toolkits even have a disc monitor so developers can optimize the times they need the drive running. If you look at the alternatives you have 8cm CDs/DVDs but they just need too much power and minidiscs but even Hi-MD is larger, has only half the space on disc and needs a larger drive.
I don't know about wobbly windows but KDE 3.4 offers some addictive transparency options based on the composite extension (kcontrol->desktop->window behaviour->transparency). I'm getting timeouts on the article so I can't tell you more until I know what that article is all about. =)
Depends, on my machine Knoppix and cds based on it have always worked better and I know I'm not alone, now perhaps that's different for you, I don't even want to imply that Knoppix is always better or even on the majority of systems, but you shouldn't make such claims without proof either.
I also remember that a few years ago the people here complained how every KDE application was just a generic word with a K in front and hailed every app that niftily used a word with a built-in K. (I kid you not). I always preferred apps with descriptive names, Linux has too many mutts, emacses, vis, nautiluses, amaroks, and libserwthese-3.6-4c34ses and programs with ridiculous, too often recursive, acronyms (Grapple, The GNU remote authenticated potato-peeler library for emacs =) -- stolen from a brilliant/. post when Adobe sent a cease and desist to the killustrator guys. Unfortunately I've saved the full text on a Linux partition and am currently stuck with Windows. Perhaps later =)
The reason the Wing Commander movie was so dissappointing was that WC3+4 had shown that you *could* do it better. One of less than a dozen games that used FMVs and didn't suck.
At least we have Battlestar Galactica. It just feels like a Wing Commander series done right. Even without Kilrathi =)
These bad fundies are the ones I spit on. I have relatives like that. I have given up trying to even co-exist with them. They are not interested in co-existence with evil people like me any more than they are interested in co-existence with moldy bread or spoiled milk.
I -and I believe many other/.ers- on the other hand am very tolerant. I not only tolerate the twisted worldview of a friend of mine who thinks that vi is superior to emacs, no I also tolerate the moldy bread in my kitchen. The three year old milk in my fridge actually became self-aware last september and we're now best buddies. It's name is Joe.
If Apple were to go bankrupt, assuming they didn't issue a universal authenticator or provide a method for removing the DRM
Which they wouldn't. Because if you're bankrupt the last thing you want to do is start a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the RIAA
there are already programs to allow one to transfer their certificates without a net connection.
Are they legal? I can see lots of ways to abuse the system without a central authority managing the number of PCs allowed to use one certificate.
Of course, even failing that, there's always the option to burn the files to audio CD and re-rip them.
What can you do with your napster streams? They'll probably tell you the whole deal only after you've joined. So perhaps someone with insider knowledge could enlighten us. Can you burn CDs? I assume not, but I'm not sure.
oh yeah and we all know Steve would never do something he said he wouldn't some years later "because know we can do it right." Don't you listen to that guy? I appreciate people who are ready to adjust their personal worldview to the reality of the world around them so I'm not criticising Steve the God, err, the Good;) But the Apple fanboys who preach the Gospel of Mac with all fervor dismissing any competing ideas as stupid, useless and "soooo, not-in" just to turn aroung 180 degrees and tell us all how it's the best thing that's ever happened to humanity and how we should thank Steve for making it happen, once Apple announces it, are getting on my nerves (that's why I like threads about Apple and things like this, I love a good flamewar =)
Oh, completely offtopic but before someone points out how Linux fanboys are just as hypocritical regarding copyright law, despise it when it's about mp3s and Disney while demanding blood when someone violates the GPL (there was a thread about it earlier today); the difference is that if some company get's caught violating the GPL they have to open up the source, if some guy gets caught with a few hundred mp3s lying around he's ruined. I don't think I'd be as happy with the GPL as I am if -let's say Sony ripped of some GPLed player when creating a replacement for that abomination called SonicStage- the FSF went out seeking $400 billion in punitive damages
Generally if you encode a wma and an aac the wma will sound like crap and the aac won't.
*BUT* that's not all that important in this case. Important are the sources, the professional encoder used (or not) by the store and the care they took.
c't, Germany's most prestigious computer magazine, tested a number of different online stores recently and the quality differences between different stores, all using wma at the same bitrate, were staggering. It was also remarkable that Sony's Atrac, that's normally not considered to be an exceptionally good audio codec, offered some of the best quality. Apparently it's not the codec bitstream that's the problem in this case but the encoders offered, especially the software encoder in SonicStage seems to be optimized for speed and apparently doesn't really care about quality. Other example: mp3. If you compare the Fraunhofer reference encoder to the latest lame you're gonna think you listen to two different codecs. IOW codecs important, encoders even more important.
Moral of the story: AAC may be better when we look at the freely available encoders but that doesn't necessarily mean that the differences aren't a lot smaller if we look at music stores or that the codec has to be clearly better respectively.
So what? There'll be a new subscription-service-of-the-week around. You didn't buy anything so you don't lose anything.
What happens if Apple goes bankrupt? No trolling, real interest because I don't know how it's handled. How are the certificates for the iTMS files managed? Do they have to be renewed? Can you transfer them from PC to PC without a central authority?
I've downloaded the kubuntu preview today and it had neither a graphical network configuration client (you could install one from a different repository but a lack of answers in the channel leads me to the conclusion that there's no gui way to change repositories) nor a way to change the (apparently hardcoded) settings for your monitor (I had to switch to a different virtual terminal, stop kdm, adjust xorg.conf and restart kdm to get 1280x1024 at a reasonable refresh) while the ark screenshots at least make me hopeful that it offers just that.
Oh and they should really disable kde's ipv6 support by default, it makes some web pages incredibly slow because afaik it spams your nameserver with ipv6 lookups and it can be disabled with a simple environment var (reuters.com took 40s (!!!) to load with standard kubuntu and 6-7 with the variable set). I've already written that in the channel and I'm also aware that I've tested a preview version and I am hopeful that they'll do a lot of polishing in the weeks ahead. Just wanted to mention it.
The EU can fine whatever they want. The law says 5% of global revenue (at least that's what I assume from your post) but they'll be fining the European subsidiaries. The law could also say "5% of the GDP of the Netherlands" or "1.94523 billion Yen" or something else. But when the EU passed that law they thought five percent of the global revenues of a corporation would be fair.
Now as I said they can only fine (or more exactly actually collect the money) parts of the corporation that are conducting business in the EU. If Microsoft wanted to they could let their European subsidiaries go belly up and start new ones (if the financial structure of Microsoft is like I assume it is). But the EU could fine the new ones too, the PR damage of a stunt like that would be a catastrophe worse than even hundreds of millions of dollars so they'll comply (or better: they won't comply less blatantly) or pay
It's easy to bring any Linux, even Debian, on a machine with IDE to its knees. Just saturate the IDE interface.
I've had numerous occasions where one process (k3b did it rather often some years ago, they fixed it thank God) simply started to spam the hard disk and everything else stopped. One day when I had a lot of time on my hands I tested how long it would take me to execute Ctrl+Alt+F2, log in and kill k3b. 1 1/2h - I kid you not.
Now it's rather easy to limit the CPU time a process can hog. But *how* do I limit the IDE access to reasonable levels.
Is somewhat stable (I believe that Warty is stabler than Sid)
Actually the first time I tried Debian, unstable was broken rather often. Only for a few hours in most cases but broken nevertheless. I switched back to Debian when Knoppix came out (point in case: forget Ubuntu; use Knoppix to get a Debian unstable configured and installed in less than an hour =) and I haven't seen a unusably broken package since (In two years? Not sure how long it's been. Did a system reinstall after a hard disk crash). Recently the autofs package's post-install didn't work but the program itself worked just fine.
if your cd comes out when pressing the button while the power's off you have a very strange PC indeed. If that's standard behaviour on Dell's I'm glad I've never encountered one =)
Now while you're more or less right there definitely *are* some expenses that just cry to be cut. If you count the supplementary budgets for Iraq that we'll see over the next months the US is currently spending more on its military than the rest of the world *combined*. And I assume at least half of the remaining amount is by NATO countries that won't be a threat to you even if Bush gets elected a third time.
And the US military answers with staged court martials because if they revealed how the pictures were doctored we would learn that the pictures of the Iraqi elections were done the same way =)
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Either the iPod (=iPod Soap and iPod Mini) meets the "should have a display" criteria or it meets the "should be flash based" criteria (=iPod Shuffle).
That's not inconsistency regarding copyrights, it's the Apple-fanboy factor. Steve Jobs could start shipping a version of Linux, without source, and sue Linus for copyright infringement and people would defend it.
Why is GPLed code any different than the one distributed under a proprietary license???
Well, if we could sue companies violating the GPL for hundreds of billions of dollars or put the execs in jail for years I think a lot of people would demand less ridiculous sentences. But the way it is now, if you're caught by the RIAA you're done for, if you're caught violating the GPL you open up the source and everything's fine.
Siemens is German
One reason the PS2 was so successful was that it is also a DVD player. This helped sell lots and lots of PS2s especially in the beginning.
Now they've introduced their UMDs (Universal Media Discs), a proprietary new medium , yet ANOTHER proprietary format?!? It's almost unbelievable -- they're kind of like the Microsoft of the electronics industry except they don't have near the control and monopoly. No thanks, I don't need their proprietary solutions that are incompatible with anything else I own....
The reason Nintendo and every other (every?) handheld have used solid state memory instead of discs is battery lifetime. One of the most taxing things on the PSP is swirling the disc around, the developer toolkits even have a disc monitor so developers can optimize the times they need the drive running. If you look at the alternatives you have 8cm CDs/DVDs but they just need too much power and minidiscs but even Hi-MD is larger, has only half the space on disc and needs a larger drive.
I don't know about wobbly windows but KDE 3.4 offers some addictive transparency options based on the composite extension (kcontrol->desktop->window behaviour->transparency). I'm getting timeouts on the article so I can't tell you more until I know what that article is all about. =)
Being right should count for something, even on /.
Depends, on my machine Knoppix and cds based on it have always worked better and I know I'm not alone, now perhaps that's different for you, I don't even want to imply that Knoppix is always better or even on the majority of systems, but you shouldn't make such claims without proof either.
I also remember that a few years ago the people here complained how every KDE application was just a generic word with a K in front and hailed every app that niftily used a word with a built-in K. (I kid you not). I always preferred apps with descriptive names, Linux has too many mutts, emacses, vis, nautiluses, amaroks, and libserwthese-3.6-4c34ses and programs with ridiculous, too often recursive, acronyms (Grapple, The GNU remote authenticated potato-peeler library for emacs =) -- stolen from a brilliant /. post when Adobe sent a cease and desist to the killustrator guys. Unfortunately I've saved the full text on a Linux partition and am currently stuck with Windows. Perhaps later =)
At least we have Battlestar Galactica. It just feels like a Wing Commander series done right. Even without Kilrathi =)
I -and I believe many other /.ers- on the other hand am very tolerant. I not only tolerate the twisted worldview of a friend of mine who thinks that vi is superior to emacs, no I also tolerate the moldy bread in my kitchen. The three year old milk in my fridge actually became self-aware last september and we're now best buddies. It's name is Joe.
Which they wouldn't. Because if you're bankrupt the last thing you want to do is start a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the RIAA
there are already programs to allow one to transfer their certificates without a net connection.
Are they legal? I can see lots of ways to abuse the system without a central authority managing the number of PCs allowed to use one certificate.
Of course, even failing that, there's always the option to burn the files to audio CD and re-rip them.
What can you do with your napster streams? They'll probably tell you the whole deal only after you've joined. So perhaps someone with insider knowledge could enlighten us. Can you burn CDs? I assume not, but I'm not sure.
Oh, completely offtopic but before someone points out how Linux fanboys are just as hypocritical regarding copyright law, despise it when it's about mp3s and Disney while demanding blood when someone violates the GPL (there was a thread about it earlier today); the difference is that if some company get's caught violating the GPL they have to open up the source, if some guy gets caught with a few hundred mp3s lying around he's ruined. I don't think I'd be as happy with the GPL as I am if -let's say Sony ripped of some GPLed player when creating a replacement for that abomination called SonicStage- the FSF went out seeking $400 billion in punitive damages
*BUT* that's not all that important in this case. Important are the sources, the professional encoder used (or not) by the store and the care they took.
c't, Germany's most prestigious computer magazine, tested a number of different online stores recently and the quality differences between different stores, all using wma at the same bitrate, were staggering. It was also remarkable that Sony's Atrac, that's normally not considered to be an exceptionally good audio codec, offered some of the best quality. Apparently it's not the codec bitstream that's the problem in this case but the encoders offered, especially the software encoder in SonicStage seems to be optimized for speed and apparently doesn't really care about quality. Other example: mp3. If you compare the Fraunhofer reference encoder to the latest lame you're gonna think you listen to two different codecs. IOW codecs important, encoders even more important.
Moral of the story: AAC may be better when we look at the freely available encoders but that doesn't necessarily mean that the differences aren't a lot smaller if we look at music stores or that the codec has to be clearly better respectively.
What happens if Apple goes bankrupt? No trolling, real interest because I don't know how it's handled. How are the certificates for the iTMS files managed? Do they have to be renewed? Can you transfer them from PC to PC without a central authority?
Oh and they should really disable kde's ipv6 support by default, it makes some web pages incredibly slow because afaik it spams your nameserver with ipv6 lookups and it can be disabled with a simple environment var (reuters.com took 40s (!!!) to load with standard kubuntu and 6-7 with the variable set). I've already written that in the channel and I'm also aware that I've tested a preview version and I am hopeful that they'll do a lot of polishing in the weeks ahead. Just wanted to mention it.
Now as I said they can only fine (or more exactly actually collect the money) parts of the corporation that are conducting business in the EU. If Microsoft wanted to they could let their European subsidiaries go belly up and start new ones (if the financial structure of Microsoft is like I assume it is). But the EU could fine the new ones too, the PR damage of a stunt like that would be a catastrophe worse than even hundreds of millions of dollars so they'll comply (or better: they won't comply less blatantly) or pay
I've had numerous occasions where one process (k3b did it rather often some years ago, they fixed it thank God) simply started to spam the hard disk and everything else stopped. One day when I had a lot of time on my hands I tested how long it would take me to execute Ctrl+Alt+F2, log in and kill k3b. 1 1/2h - I kid you not.
Now it's rather easy to limit the CPU time a process can hog. But *how* do I limit the IDE access to reasonable levels.
A cookie for an useful answer =)
Actually the first time I tried Debian, unstable was broken rather often. Only for a few hours in most cases but broken nevertheless. I switched back to Debian when Knoppix came out (point in case: forget Ubuntu; use Knoppix to get a Debian unstable configured and installed in less than an hour =) and I haven't seen a unusably broken package since (In two years? Not sure how long it's been. Did a system reinstall after a hard disk crash). Recently the autofs package's post-install didn't work but the program itself worked just fine.
if your cd comes out when pressing the button while the power's off you have a very strange PC indeed. If that's standard behaviour on Dell's I'm glad I've never encountered one =)
I'd suggest iButton and iiButton on the new iSeeTwoButtons iMouse =)
*Don't* say *anything* against Nutella! What impertinence!!! =)
The PS3 will use Blu-Ray. That means prices will begin to fall mid-2006 (when it's released in Japan)
Now while you're more or less right there definitely *are* some expenses that just cry to be cut. If you count the supplementary budgets for Iraq that we'll see over the next months the US is currently spending more on its military than the rest of the world *combined*. And I assume at least half of the remaining amount is by NATO countries that won't be a threat to you even if Bush gets elected a third time.
And the US military answers with staged court martials because if they revealed how the pictures were doctored we would learn that the pictures of the Iraqi elections were done the same way =)