IMHO, DivX died because much of The Industry actively opposed it. A couple big studios did DivX, but all the rest vehemently refused to do anything in DivX. Warner even dropped all their DVD prices and released most of the movies in their library into DVD. (Remember when The Matrix was $13 brand new release? Now DVDs are $24 new/$17 used.) Stores wouldn't sell DivX. Rental places sure as heck wouldn't sell DivX. So it just never got critical mass.
I'm sure some people were "creeped out" by the idea of the player phoning home. But in reality, most people won't care unless someone (like the DVD backers) tell them to care. Everyone that uses Windows Media Player is doing the same thing that DivX did. The public doesn't care that the video stores are keeping records. The public doesn't care that their credit cards leave a trail of everything they bought or rented. The public cares that they had to drive to Circuit City or Best Buy to get a DivX movie, and they coudn't get the James Bond movies on DivX.
After one day of calibration and one day of the patient being plugged in so his brain learns to interpret the signals, patient alpha got into a car and drove it around the parking lot. Sure it started at 1 FPS when they turned him on, but it is clearly operating at a much higher level than that, and all with only one eye calibrated.
IF she is willing, why not try something like this or this but in a women's style and size of course. Titanium seems fitting to me because it is so strong and tarnish/corrosion resistant, as one wants their love to be.
I have not purchased anything from these vendors, so I can't endorse them specifically. We were pretty "traditional" when we got married, in that I spent an irrational amount of money and bought her one big ring with a large center diamond and several smaller ones that served as both her wedding and engagement ring. To date, other than the house which the bank owns anyways, her ring is the most valuable thing that we own, at least in replacement cost. For an anniversarry present though, I think I will get us matching titanium rings.
But I don't think any judge is going to believe that Davezilla and Mozilla were named after the zilla plant, and have only coincidental similarity to Godzilla. Do you? I'm not saying that they are infringing on the trade mark, I'm just saying that it is obvious that they were named after Godzilla. I think there is a pretty strong chance that a judge will find that Toho is too late, that they have not defended their trademark, and that is has passed into speech not related to their property. But that is just my inexpert opinion.
"Learn to live without it, or please don't take some mythical high ground."
Wow, um, who is that is taking the mythical high ground? It sure sounds like you.
I want to take the digital movies that I made of my kids, edit them, and send them to my relatives in some way that is cheap and easy and that they can just plug in and play on their family room TV. Those TV's will soon be digital, and if "they" have their way, it won't talk to the computer, and it won't play anything that isn't "approved."
Oh, sure, I can run analog lines to a VCR and send them a VHS tape, but the tape and postage are relatively expensive. Or I can DivX encode it and put it on a CD-R, but then they have to have a computer, and I have to include the CODEC and a media player, with instructions to install them both...and my grandmother is 91.
And that is why the Entertainment industry is trying to stop the manufacture of anything that you could use to do anything they don't want you to do. If NOBODY can manufacture and distribute a DTV tuner that can interface with a computer, then it doesn't matter if people belive "I bought it, I own it" because they won't have the means.
It is not inevitable that freedom will win, it must be fought for.
My friend's pointy haired boss type once told him that something was a "moo point." When my friend asked him what a moo point was, he explained "you know, like a cow's opinion, it just doesn't matter."
You're painting with a broad brush there. Please take note that it is just The Directors that are raising a stink about this. The movie studios are "just keeping an eye on it." Which I take to mean that they see that every expurgated version that gets sold is still a sale for them. And I think that if the demand is high enough, and the directors don't have enough power to stop them, the studios will offer their own E versions and cut out the middle men in the future.
You have a valid viewpoint, but there are a lot more people that want their PS2 to last for 4 or 5 years. I still have a Pentium 3/850 and and a GeForce 2 GTS and I won't be upgrading it for at least another year, maybe two. I agree that the PS2 graphics will look dated by the time the PS3 comes out, but that won't keep people from buying them and buying games. PS1 graphics and processing power were VERY dated by the time the PS2 came out. But guess what: people still buy PS1's.
I think this is an excellent idea, but let me play devil's advocate for a minute here. One of the big selling points of Janis' proposal is that it is "no risk" because the music is just sitting in storage, so any income from the $.25 per song would only be a plus. However, there is a risk that people will like this service so much that they will be listening to the old OOP music instead of buying new releases for $17 each. What happens to the music industry's bread and butter when 15 year olds discover they like Bop instead of Pop? I think music industry executives will be afraid of this possibility.
Now personally, I think a download project like this would stimulate listener interest in music and growth in music buying, especially in people who will pay $.25 per song but won't pay $17 for a CD. Imagine the 15 year old discovers that they like Blues by listeing to the OOP stuff, then decides they want to hear more modern stuff, so they go buy a bunch of Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, which they never would have considered before. Thats a win for everyone, but getting music executives to take that risk is going to be pretty difficult.
This sounds perfect for TV. Granted, a mil is a bunch of money to me, but it seems like DARPA could sell the TV rights to this event for more than that, and therefore give a bigger prize and attract more effort from competitors. Plus they would be getting good video documentation of the performance of the competitors as a bonus. I think they could do that without making significant concessions in the rules or whatever to the TV people.
Drop a PDA or cellphone onto concrete from shoulder-height and you will subject it to over 2000 g's , yet the earth and moon are not knocked out of orbit.
The important point you are overlooking is that this fictional weapon generates a gravity RAY not a gravity FIELD. Much the way a 60w laser would cut through most anything that the small focused beam hit, even a long way off but not effecting stuff right next to it, while a 60w lightbulb would warm up everything very close to it.
It has usb ports, put any game controller on it that you want to. If you don't want to "lug around" a big keyboard, don't worry I'm sure someone will make a usb nifty little fold up keyboard like the ones for Palms. You don't need a mouse, it has a touch screen. Of course bigger screens and interface devices are better for prolonged use and I've got 2 words for you: docking station. Many people use a docking station with their laptops already. Your palm is synced to your desktop for todo list/calendar stuff, but one of these wouldn't need to SYNC, it could BE the main computer. This isn't a toy like the PocketPC things, it is a full computer. I don't travel, so this isn't for me, but you can bet that many people who do travel would love to have one device that would replace both their PDA and their laptop, even if they have to carry several batteries and a kit to plug it into the cigarette lighter in their car.
A PDA is still better at being a PDA than this thing is, and 2 hours is a serious problem, no doubt about it. But calling this an iPod with a pretty screen is close minded.
"They're essentially a low-grade computer in a small box. I don't see the point: it won't replace the desktop."
The same thing could be said of most laptops, and yet people use them. Sure, this palmtop isn't going to be a workstation, but it will be able to do nearly all the things that laptops do, and in a much smaller size. Battery life DOES suck, but laptop batteries sucked just as bad when they started out.
They could just take the blanket TiVo data, but Nielson wants much better data than that and they need the viewer's cooperation if they are going to get it. They don't want the just know that the show was being played on the TiVo, they want to know who was in the room watching it.
but "they" might be (in fact I'm sure they are) quite interested in reaching the specific demographic we can assume TiVo users represent. Nielson doesn't just extrapolate the viewing of the aggregate, but also breaks down viewing of sub sets.
The big thing that is new about TiVo data is that it covers non-live viewings, which has never been done before. Until they actually get the data, we don't know what that means.
While I think you are wise to consider the ways that we the public might get screwed, I would like to point out that both Neilson and TiVo have an established reputation of NOT screwing their customers. It seems like they understand that treating the public badly is poor business practice in the long run, so I don't think we should assume that these two parties will violate our privacy with impunity.
Hehe, "a brewery in Portland" doesn't narrow it down very much. Just counting the companys that actually bottle beer in Portland and not Hood River, Newport, or Bend, and none of the many brewpubs, we get" Portland Brewing Company Widmer Bros. Saxer Nor'Wester (now owned by Saxer) and last and best Bridgeport. Bridgeport makes a firkin IPA that is quite good, but I don't know of a Steam Pumper. I had a steamer (ale made with lager yeast) from a San Francisco brewery once. Portland really ought to call itself the Beer City instead of the Rose City.
Although there is no actual link, this reminds me of the Food for Peace project that the US did in Columbia. In that case the US gave them a bunch of grain, which wrecked the domestic market, which drove the farmers to cocaine as the only viable cash crop, since we also wouldn't let them stabilize the coffee market (which would be anti-free market.) The only way that this corn problem is similar is that our "gift" could potentially wreck their potential to make money growing corn. It is a sad situation really.
They have taken those "god" games to a whole new, strange level. Angry God Bowling: be wrathful. Worship: protect embodiments of Jesus from hordes of demons who would crucify and drag them away, similar to missle commmand. Another one whose name I forgot: convert people to believing in you, then kill them, multiplayer where the god with the most dead followers wins. Was Black & White this weird?
AT&T Broadband claim to give you unlimited use at least. They just ban most things that would use a lot of bandwidth. I can't decide which is worse, a hard cap on traffic volume or limited application. AT&T also does not do any domain (or vitual domain) hosting for home users. They also say in "required hardware" that you must have a windows or apple box, and no home network unless it is the kind they endorse. I would imagine that they are not interested in keeping anyone from using Linux or their own home network, but I still don't like the attitude.
Sorry no. It took some searching, but I found their Acceptable Use Policy and:
"Examples of prohibited programs and equipment include,
but are not limited to, mail, ftp, http, file sharing, game, newsgroup, proxy, IRC servers, multi-user interactive forums and Wi-Fi devices;"
so you are not allowed to run any servers, nor an open WAP node. I have no personal experience with them so I don't know if they even try to enforce this restriction, but it is there and they could. They want you to pay the business rate even if you aren't making money on it.
Star chart software in generally is pretty cool, but even someone who can only find the big dipper should be able to find this asteroid given the small map at the "trayjectory" link you provided. All you need to be able to find are Vega and Deneb. Vega will be the brightest star in the sky, and it will be pretty much staight up for most of the Northern Hemisphere at around midnight. Deneb will be the bright star just a short ways off to the north and east of Vega. There will be a 3rd bright star further south and a little farther off, called the eye of the eagle. These 3 bright stars make up the Summer Triangle that region of the night sky. You can't miss it, really. If you just look up and turn around in a circle, the 3 things that will stand out will be the big dipper, the summer triangle, and a bright orange star in the east called Arcturus.
If you are not in to astronomy a little bit though, seeing the asteroid may well be anticlimactic for you. It will just be a faint star that moves against the backround.
I still disagree, and I can turn your argument around on you. If I operate a distillery that sell Olde McDonald's Scotch Whiskey, trademarked or not, and I registered or came by mcdonalds.com before the resteraunt chain did, then THEY should go register mcdonaldsfoods.com or mcdonaldsinc.com or mickeyds.com or goldenarches.com. X/Open should go register unixos.com or unixsoftware.com or unixrocksyoursocks.com. If I was there first and I have a legitimate use for it, then it is and should stay mine. Trademark does not automatically entitle one to a domain, at least not in any law I know of. If I wasn't using the domain, then that would be a different story.
Furthermore, I think the com stands for commerce or commercial, not company. Since unix.com is a resource for commercial, public, and private use of unix o/s, it is perfectly fitting that they have the.com TLD.
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO, DivX died because much of The Industry actively opposed it. A couple big studios did DivX, but all the rest vehemently refused to do anything in DivX. Warner even dropped all their DVD prices and released most of the movies in their library into DVD. (Remember when The Matrix was $13 brand new release? Now DVDs are $24 new/$17 used.) Stores wouldn't sell DivX. Rental places sure as heck wouldn't sell DivX. So it just never got critical mass.
I'm sure some people were "creeped out" by the idea of the player phoning home. But in reality, most people won't care unless someone (like the DVD backers) tell them to care. Everyone that uses Windows Media Player is doing the same thing that DivX did. The public doesn't care that the video stores are keeping records. The public doesn't care that their credit cards leave a trail of everything they bought or rented. The public cares that they had to drive to Circuit City or Best Buy to get a DivX movie, and they coudn't get the James Bond movies on DivX.
After one day of calibration and one day of the patient being plugged in so his brain learns to interpret the signals, patient alpha got into a car and drove it around the parking lot. Sure it started at 1 FPS when they turned him on, but it is clearly operating at a much higher level than that, and all with only one eye calibrated.
IF she is willing, why not try something like this or this but in a women's style and size of course. Titanium seems fitting to me because it is so strong and tarnish/corrosion resistant, as one wants their love to be.
I have not purchased anything from these vendors, so I can't endorse them specifically. We were pretty "traditional" when we got married, in that I spent an irrational amount of money and bought her one big ring with a large center diamond and several smaller ones that served as both her wedding and engagement ring. To date, other than the house which the bank owns anyways, her ring is the most valuable thing that we own, at least in replacement cost. For an anniversarry present though, I think I will get us matching titanium rings.
But I don't think any judge is going to believe that Davezilla and Mozilla were named after the zilla plant, and have only coincidental similarity to Godzilla. Do you? I'm not saying that they are infringing on the trade mark, I'm just saying that it is obvious that they were named after Godzilla. I think there is a pretty strong chance that a judge will find that Toho is too late, that they have not defended their trademark, and that is has passed into speech not related to their property. But that is just my inexpert opinion.
"Learn to live without it, or please don't take some mythical high ground."
Wow, um, who is that is taking the mythical high ground? It sure sounds like you.
I want to take the digital movies that I made of my kids, edit them, and send them to my relatives in some way that is cheap and easy and that they can just plug in and play on their family room TV. Those TV's will soon be digital, and if "they" have their way, it won't talk to the computer, and it won't play anything that isn't "approved."
Oh, sure, I can run analog lines to a VCR and send them a VHS tape, but the tape and postage are relatively expensive. Or I can DivX encode it and put it on a CD-R, but then they have to have a computer, and I have to include the CODEC and a media player, with instructions to install them both...and my grandmother is 91.
And that is why the Entertainment industry is trying to stop the manufacture of anything that you could use to do anything they don't want you to do. If NOBODY can manufacture and distribute a DTV tuner that can interface with a computer, then it doesn't matter if people belive "I bought it, I own it" because they won't have the means.
It is not inevitable that freedom will win, it must be fought for.
"the nuclear worm has been welcomed into Chesapeake Bay bait buckets like a bloodworm wired on Viagra."
Say what? I don't think I'd be welcoming any worms on Viagra to anywhere.
My friend's pointy haired boss type once told him that something was a "moo point." When my friend asked him what a moo point was, he explained "you know, like a cow's opinion, it just doesn't matter."
You're painting with a broad brush there. Please take note that it is just The Directors that are raising a stink about this. The movie studios are "just keeping an eye on it." Which I take to mean that they see that every expurgated version that gets sold is still a sale for them. And I think that if the demand is high enough, and the directors don't have enough power to stop them, the studios will offer their own E versions and cut out the middle men in the future.
You have a valid viewpoint, but there are a lot more people that want their PS2 to last for 4 or 5 years. I still have a Pentium 3/850 and and a GeForce 2 GTS and I won't be upgrading it for at least another year, maybe two. I agree that the PS2 graphics will look dated by the time the PS3 comes out, but that won't keep people from buying them and buying games. PS1 graphics and processing power were VERY dated by the time the PS2 came out. But guess what: people still buy PS1's.
I think this is an excellent idea, but let me play devil's advocate for a minute here. One of the big selling points of Janis' proposal is that it is "no risk" because the music is just sitting in storage, so any income from the $.25 per song would only be a plus. However, there is a risk that people will like this service so much that they will be listening to the old OOP music instead of buying new releases for $17 each. What happens to the music industry's bread and butter when 15 year olds discover they like Bop instead of Pop? I think music industry executives will be afraid of this possibility.
Now personally, I think a download project like this would stimulate listener interest in music and growth in music buying, especially in people who will pay $.25 per song but won't pay $17 for a CD. Imagine the 15 year old discovers that they like Blues by listeing to the OOP stuff, then decides they want to hear more modern stuff, so they go buy a bunch of Buddy Guy, Robert Cray, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, which they never would have considered before. Thats a win for everyone, but getting music executives to take that risk is going to be pretty difficult.
This sounds perfect for TV. Granted, a mil is a bunch of money to me, but it seems like DARPA could sell the TV rights to this event for more than that, and therefore give a bigger prize and attract more effort from competitors. Plus they would be getting good video documentation of the performance of the competitors as a bonus. I think they could do that without making significant concessions in the rules or whatever to the TV people.
Drop a PDA or cellphone onto concrete from shoulder-height and you will subject it to over 2000 g's , yet the earth and moon are not knocked out of orbit.
The important point you are overlooking is that this fictional weapon generates a gravity RAY not a gravity FIELD. Much the way a 60w laser would cut through most anything that the small focused beam hit, even a long way off but not effecting stuff right next to it, while a 60w lightbulb would warm up everything very close to it.
The screen is almost the size of a 3x5 note card, and has 600 x 800 resolution.
That is big enough for web browsing, or email, or chat, or writing documents, and some people pay over $400 for a portable dvd player with the very same screen, and same battery life.
It has usb ports, put any game controller on it that you want to.
If you don't want to "lug around" a big keyboard, don't worry I'm sure someone will make a usb nifty little fold up keyboard like the ones for Palms.
You don't need a mouse, it has a touch screen.
Of course bigger screens and interface devices are better for prolonged use and I've got 2 words for you: docking station. Many people use a docking station with their laptops already.
Your palm is synced to your desktop for todo list/calendar stuff, but one of these wouldn't need to SYNC, it could BE the main computer.
This isn't a toy like the PocketPC things, it is a full computer. I don't travel, so this isn't for me, but you can bet that many people who do travel would love to have one device that would replace both their PDA and their laptop, even if they have to carry several batteries and a kit to plug it into the cigarette lighter in their car.
A PDA is still better at being a PDA than this thing is, and 2 hours is a serious problem, no doubt about it. But calling this an iPod with a pretty screen is close minded.
"They're essentially a low-grade computer in a small box. I don't see the point: it won't replace the desktop."
The same thing could be said of most laptops, and yet people use them. Sure, this palmtop isn't going to be a workstation, but it will be able to do nearly all the things that laptops do, and in a much smaller size. Battery life DOES suck, but laptop batteries sucked just as bad when they started out.
They could just take the blanket TiVo data, but Nielson wants much better data than that and they need the viewer's cooperation if they are going to get it. They don't want the just know that the show was being played on the TiVo, they want to know who was in the room watching it.
but "they" might be (in fact I'm sure they are) quite interested in reaching the specific demographic we can assume TiVo users represent. Nielson doesn't just extrapolate the viewing of the aggregate, but also breaks down viewing of sub sets.
The big thing that is new about TiVo data is that it covers non-live viewings, which has never been done before. Until they actually get the data, we don't know what that means.
While I think you are wise to consider the ways that we the public might get screwed, I would like to point out that both Neilson and TiVo have an established reputation of NOT screwing their customers. It seems like they understand that treating the public badly is poor business practice in the long run, so I don't think we should assume that these two parties will violate our privacy with impunity.
Hehe, "a brewery in Portland" doesn't narrow it down very much. Just counting the companys that actually bottle beer in Portland and not Hood River, Newport, or Bend, and none of the many brewpubs, we get"
Portland Brewing Company
Widmer Bros.
Saxer
Nor'Wester (now owned by Saxer)
and last and best Bridgeport.
Bridgeport makes a firkin IPA that is quite good, but I don't know of a Steam Pumper. I had a steamer (ale made with lager yeast) from a San Francisco brewery once.
Portland really ought to call itself the Beer City instead of the Rose City.
Although there is no actual link, this reminds me of the Food for Peace project that the US did in Columbia. In that case the US gave them a bunch of grain, which wrecked the domestic market, which drove the farmers to cocaine as the only viable cash crop, since we also wouldn't let them stabilize the coffee market (which would be anti-free market.) The only way that this corn problem is similar is that our "gift" could potentially wreck their potential to make money growing corn. It is a sad situation really.
They have taken those "god" games to a whole new, strange level. Angry God Bowling: be wrathful. Worship: protect embodiments of Jesus from hordes of demons who would crucify and drag them away, similar to missle commmand. Another one whose name I forgot: convert people to believing in you, then kill them, multiplayer where the god with the most dead followers wins. Was Black & White this weird?
AT&T Broadband claim to give you unlimited use at least. They just ban most things that would use a lot of bandwidth. I can't decide which is worse, a hard cap on traffic volume or limited application. AT&T also does not do any domain (or vitual domain) hosting for home users. They also say in "required hardware" that you must have a windows or apple box, and no home network unless it is the kind they endorse. I would imagine that they are not interested in keeping anyone from using Linux or their own home network, but I still don't like the attitude.
Sorry no. It took some searching, but I found their Acceptable Use Policy and:
"Examples of prohibited programs and equipment include, but are not limited to, mail, ftp, http, file sharing, game, newsgroup, proxy, IRC servers, multi-user interactive forums and Wi-Fi devices;"
so you are not allowed to run any servers, nor an open WAP node. I have no personal experience with them so I don't know if they even try to enforce this restriction, but it is there and they could. They want you to pay the business rate even if you aren't making money on it.
Star chart software in generally is pretty cool, but even someone who can only find the big dipper should be able to find this asteroid given the small map at the "trayjectory" link you provided. All you need to be able to find are Vega and Deneb. Vega will be the brightest star in the sky, and it will be pretty much staight up for most of the Northern Hemisphere at around midnight. Deneb will be the bright star just a short ways off to the north and east of Vega. There will be a 3rd bright star further south and a little farther off, called the eye of the eagle. These 3 bright stars make up the Summer Triangle that region of the night sky. You can't miss it, really. If you just look up and turn around in a circle, the 3 things that will stand out will be the big dipper, the summer triangle, and a bright orange star in the east called Arcturus.
If you are not in to astronomy a little bit though, seeing the asteroid may well be anticlimactic for you. It will just be a faint star that moves against the backround.
I still disagree, and I can turn your argument around on you. If I operate a distillery that sell Olde McDonald's Scotch Whiskey, trademarked or not, and I registered or came by mcdonalds.com before the resteraunt chain did, then THEY should go register mcdonaldsfoods.com or mcdonaldsinc.com or mickeyds.com or goldenarches.com. X/Open should go register unixos.com or unixsoftware.com or unixrocksyoursocks.com. If I was there first and I have a legitimate use for it, then it is and should stay mine. Trademark does not automatically entitle one to a domain, at least not in any law I know of. If I wasn't using the domain, then that would be a different story.
.com TLD.
Furthermore, I think the com stands for commerce or commercial, not company. Since unix.com is a resource for commercial, public, and private use of unix o/s, it is perfectly fitting that they have the