Censorship regimes take many forms. You still have things to learn.
Xenophobia takes many forms too. And you also have things to learn.
Things in Japan work differently than they do here. In some ways, they have more freedoms than we do. In other ways, they may have fewer. On balance, their system works. It is different than ours, but it works. They have a low crime rate, one of the world's largest economies, very low poverty, and nobody who lives there ever complains about government oppression that I've ever seen. There is no "Patriot Act" in Japan, for example - nothing to the same extent, anyway.
One of the reasons their government probably works as well as it does is that election campaigns only last a matter of weeks, by law, and there are restrictions on how the press reports on them. There is not this free-for-all, superficial shrill screaming back and forth for literally years on end where people are forced to choose up sides and fight rather than work together.
I'm not arguing against freedoms of the press. What I'm saying is nothing is completely unregulated (the press here are not allowed to write libelous articles just because they don't like someone, for example), and it's wrong to assume that the restrictions Japan puts on its press or its citizens are somehow worse than the restrictions we put on our press or our citizens. We don't have some magic formula here that every other country has to copy. Other countries can do things their own way and still allow their citizens to live full and free lives.
Just like how those economies of scale kicked in and made all those high-def LCD screens so cheap? Sorry to rant on a tangent but I'm still waiting for LCD prices to drop like they're supposed to before I think about high-def disc formats.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Because, you know, 4-5 years ago, a 1080p 42" LCD would have cost $4,000. Today, if you pay more than $1,000 for a major brand, you've paid too much.
A 75% reduction in cost over a few year period is not enough for you? I think it's time to admit that you're probably just a cheapskate.
This was either a move by Qtrax to generate a burst of ad revenue from an influx of users or they're trying to force the labels' hands by making the announcement.
The real question in my mind is why nearly all of the mainstream press played along. QTrax obviously blasted out a press release, and without doing any fact-checking at all it seems like the story was reprinted on Reuters, the AP, CNN, MSNBC, the Drudge Report, and of course Slashdot, among others.
Not that media manipulation is anything new, but it is still a constant source of amazement to me when a company like this that is obviously just a big scam - not to mention nothing new even if it was real (anyone remember SpiralFrog?) - gets such immediate and widespread positive press among both mainstream and hardcore news outlets.
If you ask me, the news orgs have more egg on their face than QTrax does.
I agree, restricting access isn't the answer, but I don't know what is.
Restricting access may not be the *only* answer, but it is most assuredly *one* of them.
Whether or not you think it actually works (and it's a myth that access restrictions always don't work - plenty of things are restricted that you really can't get, like, say, an MX missile), that's no reason not to do it. There are things you do because they should be done, regardless of how effective they are.
There may be *other* things that can be done in addition that we haven't thought of yet in order to keep this kind of stuff out of the hands of crazy people (or really anyone), but access restrictions should certainly be the first step.
btw props to whoever gave this story the "oryxandcrake" tag - great book on just this subject, for anyone who hasn't read it.
First, there were MANY credible witnesses that swore they saw a missile shoot into the sky before the explosion.
a) no, they were not credible, and
b) they by and large didn't claim they saw "a missile".
What they claimed is that they saw a "streak of light" or some variation thereof. Only a few people claimed they saw "a missile", and those people by and large are the people that made it onto the news. So it probably seemed like there were more of them than there were. The news outlets chose the most radical, attention whoring witnesses to put on the air.
But if you read the NTSB report, they break down the witness statements. Out of something like 2,000 witnesses, only a relatively small percentage (I'm remembering it being something like 25%) saw a "streak of light". Of that percentage, about half saw the light going up, half saw it going down. Some saw it going to the left, some going to the right. In other words, none of them had any idea what they were looking at.
This is pretty normal for witnesses to an airliner crash. Nobody's expecting to see what they're seeing, so their mind initially doesn't record things correctly. What the NTSB has to do is filter out the crud and see if there's anything that everybody agrees on. If there is, then they investigate that. In this case, a large enough percentage of people indicated they saw a flash of light, and that ended up supporting the mid-air explosion theory.
But the NTSB never gave any real credence to it being a missile. Neither did the FBI, for that matter. There was just never any evidence. The FBI had pretty much ruled out terrorism within 2 days of the accident.
Yes it is likely. We are expected to believe that a single consumer grade device caused the simultaneous failure of both engines?
You're right that it's more likely than RF interference. But neither is likely at all.
A software glitch of this type (if that's what it was) has never happened in aviation history. Certainly not in the 10 year history of the 777, with more than 500 of them flying around the world, but not to any other type either.
Also, the engines didn't "fail". The engines were running both before and after the stall (and yes, the aircraft did stall, despite what the article summary says). "Failure" and "failure to respond" are two different things.
In some ways that's even more scary, because it rules out simple explanations like fuel exhaustion. It's one thing for engines to fail, quite another for them to simply ignore control inputs.
Umm, I don't know about that. I just got back from being in Israel for 2 weeks and although its not Europe, DVD prices were about the same as the US (price fixing is suspect though). I saw new movies for about 20$ US (80 NIS) if bought from legitimate stores and not bootlegged.
In Japan, one of the territories mentioned in the original post, DVD's are usually around $50 and *up*. So yes, this is a major consideration there.
People in Japan can take their HDD/DVD recorder, record a high-def broadcast of a Hollywood film onto their hard drives, then re-record that onto DVD. In the process, while they obviously won't get an HD-DVD out of it, they'll usually get a DVD that's at least as good in quality as the "official" release. No, it won't have official artwork or a jewel case or anything, but I imagine most people would consider the cost tradeoff worth it.
I guess the moral of the story is DVD recorders are just more *necessary* in certain territories than they are in the US. Most DVD's these days in the US are $10 or less. Even Blu-Ray discs list at $25 and can be found almost everywhere for less than that. And when you add in the free or very cheap DVR's given out by the cable companies, we just really have very little need for DVD recorders here.
Oh, one other thing - the PC is bigger in the US than it is in Japan. If people *really* want to record DVD's in the US, they'll often just do it on PC. That's less common in Japan, where a hell of a lot of people have a cell phone as their only computer, or at most a mini-laptop without an optical drive. (I'm not saying real computers with DVD recorders don't exist, just that there are fewer of them in use than here.)
Then get a MacBook. Sorry but you are not going to fit it into that form factor.
"Wah Wah Wah, I want a replaceable battery in the iPod."
An iPod is not comparable to a laptop.
First, an iPod is about $200. Still expensive for what amounts to a disposable device (for those who don't know how to or don't want to pay to replace the battery), but a lot less than $1,800. An $1,800 device is *not* disposable.
Also, again because of price and a fairly limited feature set, it's common to upgrade to new iPods every few years. But a lot of people use the same PC's for 5 years or more - all their stuff is on them, a lot of that stuff is hard to move, and anyway they still usually work fine after that time. That seems to be about the standard rule in my house; I just replaced a circa-2003 Dell for my wife, and my last unforced laptop purchase (ie. one not caused by my computer breaking out of warranty) was to replace a 1997 Thinkpad in 2002.
By that time, both of those machines had been rendered long-since un-portable due to totally dead batteries. I didn't care much, as neither my wife nor I are real road warriors and we use our laptops more as desktop replacements. But that's not the market for the Macbook Air - it's an ultra-portable, it's meant to be carried around.
It's patently ridiculous for an ultra-portable laptop to have a non-replaceable battery. The thing is basically going to be rendered useless to a lot of people within the span of 2 years. Oh I'm sure there will be a cottage industry popping up selling third-party batteries and the means to install them for the advanced. And I'm sure Apple will also provide this service... for a "nominal" fee. But that shouldn't be required; it's a freakin' subnotebook, for God's sake, it should have a replaceable battery.
It's kind of like selling a PDA without an LCD screen or a calculator without a numeric keypad. This thing's entire reason for existence is jeopardized by the lack of this feature.
While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie".:(
Your chances actually dropped to that level about 15 years ago.
I'm not normally one to drop the "!news" tag, but how do you guys think filmmakers have been creating these gigantic crowds over the past decade? There was a special feature on the Gladiator DVD that showed them doing exactly this - it went through the entire process of it. There were only ever about 40 people in the Colosseum during any given fight; they were digitally duplicated to create the illusion of a huge crowd. (It's pretty comical to watch the scenes as they were filmed, with one tiny little section of ravenous fans and the rest of the place empty.)
That wasn't the first time the technique has been used, it's just an easy one to reference. I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.
I don't know if they actually sound better, but I personally just love the physical action of putting on a record.
They can sound better if you have a good turntable with a good cartridge, a good preamp and amp, and good speakers that are capable of resolving the differences between digital and analog audio. The problem is, you're talking about $20,000 worth of high-end audio equipment there.
And that's not taking into account wear and tear. Vinyl degrades with each use; there is no getting around it. You're putting two physical parts in contact and moving them against each other; over time, your records will sound worse and there is nothing you can do about it.
People who make blanket statements about vinyl sounding better just haven't taken real-world considerations into account. In the real world and under most conditions, a 128kbps mp3 played on an iPod is probably going to sound better than a well-worn vinyl record of the same recording.
Did anyone here - including the submitter - bother reading beyond the first paragraph of the article?
This is not about the RIAA disappearing as in "going away". This is about the RIAA and IFPI merging operations. This would probably actually make things worse, because the combined agency would be larger, would have jurisdiction over more than just the United States, and would continue doing its current work.
It's about finding ways of consolidating operations. And like a company that does this successfully, the resulting agency could actually end up stronger than the RIAA as it currently exists.
This is how all companies work, good and bad. Leaked rumour, hedged denials.. and we fall for it every single time.
Yup. Let's not forget, people, that Warner just about a month ago posted a similar press release after rumors started swirling about them, using much the same language. Here's a story about it if you've forgotten.
Whenever you see words like "current plans" or "present policy" in a press release, it means they can - and usually will - change course as early as tomorrow.
Why? I've seen both, and not a huge amount has changed in bringing it across the ocean (if we ignore the William Shatner episodes).
Are you kidding?
The entire *point* of the Japanese show has been lost on Iron Chef America. It was always intended as a cheesy drama with serious cooking. The idea was basically to combine haute cuisine with professional wrestling.
Iron Chef America has kept the cooking but removed the cheesy drama, which is what made it so unique in the first place. There are dozens of competition cooking shows on these days (including the whole "Cooking Competition" series on Food Network itself); why would you watch Iron Chef America over any of the others?
At the same time, the show doesn't take itself seriously *enough*. In Japan, Fuji TV treated it as a huge honor to be named an Iron Chef. It meant nothing in the real culinary world, but the Iron Chefs were never referred to as anything *but* "Iron Chef", and the show created "rivals" for them to spar with; they took the show beyond the show, with the point being to use that both for humor and to increase the perceived drama on the show. Food Network doesn't do that; it's just a bunch of random chefs competing against each other for no real reason. Even Morimoto, who's an Iron Chef in both versions, says the US version is a lot more casual.
The original Iron Chef straddled that line perfectly between complete absurdity and real cooking chops. It was unique, and maybe uniquely Japanese. You could watch it and laugh, but at the same time you knew you were really watching some amazing skills. Iron Chef America doesn't even attempt to do that; it's like they realized they'd never get it right (the "Iron Chef USA" specials tried that tack and it didn't work), so they just watered the whole thing down to a generic competition show.
Somehow it is really hard for Americans to get the "absurd but serious" thing down. Japan does it, Europe does it, we just can't get it.
With their subscription rates skyrocketing and their history of rock solid journalism, I wouldn't think the NYT would be capable of mistakes.
Oh, I knew this was coming...
What, because Kotaku (who are linked here) are so much better? That story's been up 12 hours now without a correction. If it's somehow corrected by the time you read this, at the moment the headline reads "Xbox Live: 10 Million Gold Subscribers" which is incorrect according to Major Nelson himself - it's 10 million *total* XBL subscribers, including silver.
Or how about Slashdot, which just parroted the original NY Times story about the DS games without doing any fact checking at all?
I would wager that, even with the short little blurbs that most blogs post, and with a smaller number of stories per day, blogs like Slashdot and Kotaku probably make double the mistakes that a major publication like the NY Times does. I find at least one major mistake on Kotaku every day. And really, that's what you'd expect given that the NY Times is made up of trained and experienced journalists while Slashdot and Kotaku editors are mostly college kids, but the point is people criticize the Times as if there are better sources of news. There aren't. I mean, not unless you lean right, in which case I guess you consider sites like Drudge to be the bellwether - as if he's never posted an inaccurate story either.
Example 2. (Be sure to scroll down and read about the Israeli 757 that was fired upon in Kenya.)
Example 3. (Ok, not a passenger plane, but the terrorists apparently thought it was... and it is a common airliner.)
It's only a matter of time, and everybody knows it.
You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.
As this is the same system that's been used by the US military for years, and no other world armies we've faced have yet been able to adapt despite multi-billion dollar yearly defense budgets, what makes you think Al Qaeda's going to have better luck?
If defeating the system sounds so simple to you, perhaps you should pitch your idea to one of these foreign governments. Obviously, you've thought it through a lot more thoroughly than they have.
Why can you remotely control aircraft systems at all? There should be no network equipment to compromise in the first place!
The 787 is fly by wire, like most new aircraft designs. It's all computer controlled, not mechanical.
My guess is this - the "common core system" designed by Honeywell - has something to do with the various systems being connected. This is a system designed to simplify the airplane's various systems and reduce the number of separate systems (which means fewer failure points - usually a good thing in engineering). I do believe Boeing when they say that there are built-in separations and that the two systems are not completely tied together, but obviously it wasn't enough for the FAA. So they're fixing it. Nothing really all that unusual about a new airplane design; there are always various issues that need to be addressed before first flight.
It's not really over. There are still a number of studios, most notably Paramount, committed exclusively to HD-DVD.
70% of the industry (in market share terms) is now exclusively supporting Blu-Ray. BD software is outselling HD-DVD 3:1, standalone BD players are now outselling standalone HD-DVD players even at a higher price, and of course when you factor in the game consoles (which do count, because those people are a big part of the software advantage), it's no contest and never has been.
Moreover, Paramount is now reportedly looking for ways to get out of its deal with HD-DVD. (Scroll down, it's there.) No studio wants to be the last one holding the bag on a dying format while their competitors all jump ship.
The format war is over. It's funny to see people talking about "good sales" on HD-DVD players - how good does a sale need to be to make buying a piece of dead tech worth it? There are only a couple hundred movies on HD-DVD, and there aren't ever going to be many more than that.
It's fun to root for the "underdog", but come on, people - this is your own money. Why waste it?
You missed the point. Yes you can deliver reduced resolution movies over the web. Who is in a better position to do that, the cable companies or netflix? obviously the cable companies.
It doesn't matter who is in the better position to do it. It matters who is actually doing it better. And that's already Netflix.
Some of you guys have obviously never used Netflix and have no idea what they're doing. A couple of points - I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but apparently not:
a) You can still rent pretty much every non-pornographic DVD ever made b) You can also rent every HD-DVD available c) You can also rent every Blu-Ray movie available d) You can also stream movies over the internet
and all on the same plan, which costs the same as it ever did. This is *already* the case; the only new thing here is that LG is going to sell some DVD players with the streaming function built in. Tell me one cable company that offers this, at any price, let alone the $60+/month cable companies charge for DTV. Netflix charges me $17.99 and I can do all of those things.
Not to mention that Netflix' streaming absolutely crushes any cable company VOD offering, in every way. Netflix has 6,500 titles in their streaming service - no, not all of them are great, but that's no less true for cable VOD. Netflix also streams immediately up to DVD resolution, which again is not an option with cable. Cable companies *sometimes* offer HD VOD, but only with an extremely limited number of titles (usually about 20). Netflix also does not remove any of their titles month to month due to bandwidth issues; cable companies only ever have a hundred or so VOD movies at any given time.
And Netflix' service just works better. Smoother fast forward and rewind, more responsive controls, etc.
I mean, your point about the cable companies being in a better position than Netflix to deliver movies over the internet is the same as saying the RIAA is in a better position than Apple to deliver music over the internet. Maybe they would be if they could ever actually get their act together, but is that really where you're going to place your bets?
You could just organize your music in a meaningful way. I'd suggest Artist - Album/# - Title.Extension.
I've been doing this for ages with 25 GB of music on my iPod, and just use Amarok to generate playlists (plain M3U), and Perl scripts to adjust them accordingly.
That sounds so much easier than just dragging my mp3's into iTunes and, well, being done.
I sort of agree, with the addition that I really hope people don't outright *confuse* these with ThinkPads. Even to see a Slashdot post about them, mentioning them as some sort of adjunct to the ThinkPad line is kind of disturbing. This really doesn't even deserve a mention here, any more than a new line by Acer or ASUS would. I say that as a former ThinkPad owner.
ThinkPads were developed by IBM, produced for professionals and built like tanks. Lenovo has made a few changes, not all of them good, but basically that design philosophy is intact and a lot of the same people from IBM still work on ThinkPads. The "IdeaPad" line is a rebadge of Lenovo's *own* line (the 3000 series, etc.), which was developed wholly separately, by a different company and in a different country. If the previous lineup was anything to judge by, they're the same basic cheap junk laptops you might find from any second-tier Taiwanese or Chinese company. Adequate for most use, but not even in the same league as a ThinkPad. (I may be a former TP owner, but I'm also a *current* Acer owner, so I'm familiar with both ends of the spectrum here.)
It's not just a case of one being professional and the other consumer, which implies that the differences are mainly in the included software or security features. No, these laptops are built to completely different standards. They're as different as when IBM and Lenovo were making laptops separately. Would a new line from Lenovo have been compared to the ThinkPad in those days? Well, nothing much has changed, except that Lenovo's obviously trying to cash in on the ThinkPad name, and has managed to hoodwink sites like Slashdot into thinking the two lines are somehow related.
Slashdot Mirror
Censorship regimes take many forms. You still have things to learn.
Xenophobia takes many forms too. And you also have things to learn.
Things in Japan work differently than they do here. In some ways, they have more freedoms than we do. In other ways, they may have fewer. On balance, their system works. It is different than ours, but it works. They have a low crime rate, one of the world's largest economies, very low poverty, and nobody who lives there ever complains about government oppression that I've ever seen. There is no "Patriot Act" in Japan, for example - nothing to the same extent, anyway.
One of the reasons their government probably works as well as it does is that election campaigns only last a matter of weeks, by law, and there are restrictions on how the press reports on them. There is not this free-for-all, superficial shrill screaming back and forth for literally years on end where people are forced to choose up sides and fight rather than work together.
I'm not arguing against freedoms of the press. What I'm saying is nothing is completely unregulated (the press here are not allowed to write libelous articles just because they don't like someone, for example), and it's wrong to assume that the restrictions Japan puts on its press or its citizens are somehow worse than the restrictions we put on our press or our citizens. We don't have some magic formula here that every other country has to copy. Other countries can do things their own way and still allow their citizens to live full and free lives.
Just like how those economies of scale kicked in and made all those high-def LCD screens so cheap? Sorry to rant on a tangent but I'm still waiting for LCD prices to drop like they're supposed to before I think about high-def disc formats.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. Because, you know, 4-5 years ago, a 1080p 42" LCD would have cost $4,000. Today, if you pay more than $1,000 for a major brand, you've paid too much.
A 75% reduction in cost over a few year period is not enough for you? I think it's time to admit that you're probably just a cheapskate.
Given the problems that some people have had with 1.1 players, I think I'll wait for at least X-Ray 10.0
Or just buy a PS3 and don't worry about it.
I have a 60GB PS3 and there's not a BD or a special feature out there that it won't play. Nor will there ever be.
This was either a move by Qtrax to generate a burst of ad revenue from an influx of users or they're trying to force the labels' hands by making the announcement.
The real question in my mind is why nearly all of the mainstream press played along. QTrax obviously blasted out a press release, and without doing any fact-checking at all it seems like the story was reprinted on Reuters, the AP, CNN, MSNBC, the Drudge Report, and of course Slashdot, among others.
Not that media manipulation is anything new, but it is still a constant source of amazement to me when a company like this that is obviously just a big scam - not to mention nothing new even if it was real (anyone remember SpiralFrog?) - gets such immediate and widespread positive press among both mainstream and hardcore news outlets.
If you ask me, the news orgs have more egg on their face than QTrax does.
The news part is the fact that it's actively being discussed on a site like Slashdot.
Help me understand this.
It's news on Slashdot... because it's news on Slashdot?
That's a pretty meta way of determining newsworthiness...
So it also follows that if it was not news on Slashdot, then it wouldn't make it onto Slashdot?
I agree, restricting access isn't the answer, but I don't know what is.
Restricting access may not be the *only* answer, but it is most assuredly *one* of them.
Whether or not you think it actually works (and it's a myth that access restrictions always don't work - plenty of things are restricted that you really can't get, like, say, an MX missile), that's no reason not to do it. There are things you do because they should be done, regardless of how effective they are.
There may be *other* things that can be done in addition that we haven't thought of yet in order to keep this kind of stuff out of the hands of crazy people (or really anyone), but access restrictions should certainly be the first step.
btw props to whoever gave this story the "oryxandcrake" tag - great book on just this subject, for anyone who hasn't read it.
First, there were MANY credible witnesses that swore they saw a missile shoot into the sky before the explosion.
a) no, they were not credible, and
b) they by and large didn't claim they saw "a missile".
What they claimed is that they saw a "streak of light" or some variation thereof. Only a few people claimed they saw "a missile", and those people by and large are the people that made it onto the news. So it probably seemed like there were more of them than there were. The news outlets chose the most radical, attention whoring witnesses to put on the air.
But if you read the NTSB report, they break down the witness statements. Out of something like 2,000 witnesses, only a relatively small percentage (I'm remembering it being something like 25%) saw a "streak of light". Of that percentage, about half saw the light going up, half saw it going down. Some saw it going to the left, some going to the right. In other words, none of them had any idea what they were looking at.
This is pretty normal for witnesses to an airliner crash. Nobody's expecting to see what they're seeing, so their mind initially doesn't record things correctly. What the NTSB has to do is filter out the crud and see if there's anything that everybody agrees on. If there is, then they investigate that. In this case, a large enough percentage of people indicated they saw a flash of light, and that ended up supporting the mid-air explosion theory.
But the NTSB never gave any real credence to it being a missile. Neither did the FBI, for that matter. There was just never any evidence. The FBI had pretty much ruled out terrorism within 2 days of the accident.
Yes it is likely. We are expected to believe that a single consumer grade device caused the simultaneous failure of both engines?
You're right that it's more likely than RF interference. But neither is likely at all.
A software glitch of this type (if that's what it was) has never happened in aviation history. Certainly not in the 10 year history of the 777, with more than 500 of them flying around the world, but not to any other type either.
Also, the engines didn't "fail". The engines were running both before and after the stall (and yes, the aircraft did stall, despite what the article summary says). "Failure" and "failure to respond" are two different things.
In some ways that's even more scary, because it rules out simple explanations like fuel exhaustion. It's one thing for engines to fail, quite another for them to simply ignore control inputs.
Umm, I don't know about that. I just got back from being in Israel for 2 weeks and although its not Europe, DVD prices were about the same as the US (price fixing is suspect though). I saw new movies for about 20$ US (80 NIS) if bought from legitimate stores and not bootlegged.
In Japan, one of the territories mentioned in the original post, DVD's are usually around $50 and *up*. So yes, this is a major consideration there.
People in Japan can take their HDD/DVD recorder, record a high-def broadcast of a Hollywood film onto their hard drives, then re-record that onto DVD. In the process, while they obviously won't get an HD-DVD out of it, they'll usually get a DVD that's at least as good in quality as the "official" release. No, it won't have official artwork or a jewel case or anything, but I imagine most people would consider the cost tradeoff worth it.
I guess the moral of the story is DVD recorders are just more *necessary* in certain territories than they are in the US. Most DVD's these days in the US are $10 or less. Even Blu-Ray discs list at $25 and can be found almost everywhere for less than that. And when you add in the free or very cheap DVR's given out by the cable companies, we just really have very little need for DVD recorders here.
Oh, one other thing - the PC is bigger in the US than it is in Japan. If people *really* want to record DVD's in the US, they'll often just do it on PC. That's less common in Japan, where a hell of a lot of people have a cell phone as their only computer, or at most a mini-laptop without an optical drive. (I'm not saying real computers with DVD recorders don't exist, just that there are fewer of them in use than here.)
Then get a MacBook. Sorry but you are not going to fit it into that form factor.
"Wah Wah Wah, I want a replaceable battery in the iPod."
An iPod is not comparable to a laptop.
First, an iPod is about $200. Still expensive for what amounts to a disposable device (for those who don't know how to or don't want to pay to replace the battery), but a lot less than $1,800. An $1,800 device is *not* disposable.
Also, again because of price and a fairly limited feature set, it's common to upgrade to new iPods every few years. But a lot of people use the same PC's for 5 years or more - all their stuff is on them, a lot of that stuff is hard to move, and anyway they still usually work fine after that time. That seems to be about the standard rule in my house; I just replaced a circa-2003 Dell for my wife, and my last unforced laptop purchase (ie. one not caused by my computer breaking out of warranty) was to replace a 1997 Thinkpad in 2002.
By that time, both of those machines had been rendered long-since un-portable due to totally dead batteries. I didn't care much, as neither my wife nor I are real road warriors and we use our laptops more as desktop replacements. But that's not the market for the Macbook Air - it's an ultra-portable, it's meant to be carried around.
It's patently ridiculous for an ultra-portable laptop to have a non-replaceable battery. The thing is basically going to be rendered useless to a lot of people within the span of 2 years. Oh I'm sure there will be a cottage industry popping up selling third-party batteries and the means to install them for the advanced. And I'm sure Apple will also provide this service... for a "nominal" fee. But that shouldn't be required; it's a freakin' subnotebook, for God's sake, it should have a replaceable battery.
It's kind of like selling a PDA without an LCD screen or a calculator without a numeric keypad. This thing's entire reason for existence is jeopardized by the lack of this feature.
While that is cool technology, it also means my chance of ever being in a movie just dropped from "extremely slim" to "Nicole Richie". :(
Your chances actually dropped to that level about 15 years ago.
I'm not normally one to drop the "!news" tag, but how do you guys think filmmakers have been creating these gigantic crowds over the past decade? There was a special feature on the Gladiator DVD that showed them doing exactly this - it went through the entire process of it. There were only ever about 40 people in the Colosseum during any given fight; they were digitally duplicated to create the illusion of a huge crowd. (It's pretty comical to watch the scenes as they were filmed, with one tiny little section of ravenous fans and the rest of the place empty.)
That wasn't the first time the technique has been used, it's just an easy one to reference. I would doubt the LotR crowds were created any differently.
Are you really trying to say that a Slashdot poster should be held to the same level of expectations as the highest-level administrator at a school?
Probably not, but there are reasons why we have these sayings about black kettles and glass houses...
I don't know if they actually sound better, but I personally just love the physical action of putting on a record.
They can sound better if you have a good turntable with a good cartridge, a good preamp and amp, and good speakers that are capable of resolving the differences between digital and analog audio. The problem is, you're talking about $20,000 worth of high-end audio equipment there.
And that's not taking into account wear and tear. Vinyl degrades with each use; there is no getting around it. You're putting two physical parts in contact and moving them against each other; over time, your records will sound worse and there is nothing you can do about it.
People who make blanket statements about vinyl sounding better just haven't taken real-world considerations into account. In the real world and under most conditions, a 128kbps mp3 played on an iPod is probably going to sound better than a well-worn vinyl record of the same recording.
Did anyone here - including the submitter - bother reading beyond the first paragraph of the article?
This is not about the RIAA disappearing as in "going away". This is about the RIAA and IFPI merging operations. This would probably actually make things worse, because the combined agency would be larger, would have jurisdiction over more than just the United States, and would continue doing its current work.
It's about finding ways of consolidating operations. And like a company that does this successfully, the resulting agency could actually end up stronger than the RIAA as it currently exists.
This is how all companies work, good and bad. Leaked rumour, hedged denials.. and we fall for it every single time.
Yup. Let's not forget, people, that Warner just about a month ago posted a similar press release after rumors started swirling about them, using much the same language. Here's a story about it if you've forgotten.
Whenever you see words like "current plans" or "present policy" in a press release, it means they can - and usually will - change course as early as tomorrow.
This was not a denial.
Why? I've seen both, and not a huge amount has changed in bringing it across the ocean (if we ignore the William Shatner episodes).
Are you kidding?
The entire *point* of the Japanese show has been lost on Iron Chef America. It was always intended as a cheesy drama with serious cooking. The idea was basically to combine haute cuisine with professional wrestling.
Iron Chef America has kept the cooking but removed the cheesy drama, which is what made it so unique in the first place. There are dozens of competition cooking shows on these days (including the whole "Cooking Competition" series on Food Network itself); why would you watch Iron Chef America over any of the others?
At the same time, the show doesn't take itself seriously *enough*. In Japan, Fuji TV treated it as a huge honor to be named an Iron Chef. It meant nothing in the real culinary world, but the Iron Chefs were never referred to as anything *but* "Iron Chef", and the show created "rivals" for them to spar with; they took the show beyond the show, with the point being to use that both for humor and to increase the perceived drama on the show. Food Network doesn't do that; it's just a bunch of random chefs competing against each other for no real reason. Even Morimoto, who's an Iron Chef in both versions, says the US version is a lot more casual.
The original Iron Chef straddled that line perfectly between complete absurdity and real cooking chops. It was unique, and maybe uniquely Japanese. You could watch it and laugh, but at the same time you knew you were really watching some amazing skills. Iron Chef America doesn't even attempt to do that; it's like they realized they'd never get it right (the "Iron Chef USA" specials tried that tack and it didn't work), so they just watered the whole thing down to a generic competition show.
Somehow it is really hard for Americans to get the "absurd but serious" thing down. Japan does it, Europe does it, we just can't get it.
With their subscription rates skyrocketing and their history of rock solid journalism, I wouldn't think the NYT would be capable of mistakes.
Oh, I knew this was coming...
What, because Kotaku (who are linked here) are so much better? That story's been up 12 hours now without a correction. If it's somehow corrected by the time you read this, at the moment the headline reads "Xbox Live: 10 Million Gold Subscribers" which is incorrect according to Major Nelson himself - it's 10 million *total* XBL subscribers, including silver.
Or how about Slashdot, which just parroted the original NY Times story about the DS games without doing any fact checking at all?
I would wager that, even with the short little blurbs that most blogs post, and with a smaller number of stories per day, blogs like Slashdot and Kotaku probably make double the mistakes that a major publication like the NY Times does. I find at least one major mistake on Kotaku every day. And really, that's what you'd expect given that the NY Times is made up of trained and experienced journalists while Slashdot and Kotaku editors are mostly college kids, but the point is people criticize the Times as if there are better sources of news. There aren't. I mean, not unless you lean right, in which case I guess you consider sites like Drudge to be the bellwether - as if he's never posted an inaccurate story either.
Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
Only through dumb luck.
Example 1.
Example 2. (Be sure to scroll down and read about the Israeli 757 that was fired upon in Kenya.)
Example 3. (Ok, not a passenger plane, but the terrorists apparently thought it was... and it is a common airliner.)
It's only a matter of time, and everybody knows it.
You know what the FAA does when it has a situation that it knows will eventually result in a disaster costing hundreds of lives? They try to fix it. That's part of their job.
As this is the same system that's been used by the US military for years, and no other world armies we've faced have yet been able to adapt despite multi-billion dollar yearly defense budgets, what makes you think Al Qaeda's going to have better luck?
If defeating the system sounds so simple to you, perhaps you should pitch your idea to one of these foreign governments. Obviously, you've thought it through a lot more thoroughly than they have.
Why can you remotely control aircraft systems at all? There should be no network equipment to compromise in the first place!
The 787 is fly by wire, like most new aircraft designs. It's all computer controlled, not mechanical.
My guess is this - the "common core system" designed by Honeywell - has something to do with the various systems being connected. This is a system designed to simplify the airplane's various systems and reduce the number of separate systems (which means fewer failure points - usually a good thing in engineering). I do believe Boeing when they say that there are built-in separations and that the two systems are not completely tied together, but obviously it wasn't enough for the FAA. So they're fixing it. Nothing really all that unusual about a new airplane design; there are always various issues that need to be addressed before first flight.
It's not really over. There are still a number of studios, most notably Paramount, committed exclusively to HD-DVD.
70% of the industry (in market share terms) is now exclusively supporting Blu-Ray. BD software is outselling HD-DVD 3:1, standalone BD players are now outselling standalone HD-DVD players even at a higher price, and of course when you factor in the game consoles (which do count, because those people are a big part of the software advantage), it's no contest and never has been.
Moreover, Paramount is now reportedly looking for ways to get out of its deal with HD-DVD. (Scroll down, it's there.) No studio wants to be the last one holding the bag on a dying format while their competitors all jump ship.
The format war is over. It's funny to see people talking about "good sales" on HD-DVD players - how good does a sale need to be to make buying a piece of dead tech worth it? There are only a couple hundred movies on HD-DVD, and there aren't ever going to be many more than that.
It's fun to root for the "underdog", but come on, people - this is your own money. Why waste it?
You missed the point. Yes you can deliver reduced resolution movies over the web. Who is in a better position to do that, the cable companies or netflix? obviously the cable companies.
It doesn't matter who is in the better position to do it. It matters who is actually doing it better. And that's already Netflix.
Some of you guys have obviously never used Netflix and have no idea what they're doing. A couple of points - I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but apparently not:
a) You can still rent pretty much every non-pornographic DVD ever made
b) You can also rent every HD-DVD available
c) You can also rent every Blu-Ray movie available
d) You can also stream movies over the internet
and all on the same plan, which costs the same as it ever did. This is *already* the case; the only new thing here is that LG is going to sell some DVD players with the streaming function built in. Tell me one cable company that offers this, at any price, let alone the $60+/month cable companies charge for DTV. Netflix charges me $17.99 and I can do all of those things.
Not to mention that Netflix' streaming absolutely crushes any cable company VOD offering, in every way. Netflix has 6,500 titles in their streaming service - no, not all of them are great, but that's no less true for cable VOD. Netflix also streams immediately up to DVD resolution, which again is not an option with cable. Cable companies *sometimes* offer HD VOD, but only with an extremely limited number of titles (usually about 20). Netflix also does not remove any of their titles month to month due to bandwidth issues; cable companies only ever have a hundred or so VOD movies at any given time.
And Netflix' service just works better. Smoother fast forward and rewind, more responsive controls, etc.
I mean, your point about the cable companies being in a better position than Netflix to deliver movies over the internet is the same as saying the RIAA is in a better position than Apple to deliver music over the internet. Maybe they would be if they could ever actually get their act together, but is that really where you're going to place your bets?
So I can't have a collection? Just a list of filenames I need to pay for each time I access one of them?
New to this whole "video rental" thing, I guess?
You could just organize your music in a meaningful way. I'd suggest Artist - Album/# - Title.Extension.
I've been doing this for ages with 25 GB of music on my iPod, and just use Amarok to generate playlists (plain M3U), and Perl scripts to adjust them accordingly.
That sounds so much easier than just dragging my mp3's into iTunes and, well, being done.
Oh wait, no it doesn't.
I sort of agree, with the addition that I really hope people don't outright *confuse* these with ThinkPads. Even to see a Slashdot post about them, mentioning them as some sort of adjunct to the ThinkPad line is kind of disturbing. This really doesn't even deserve a mention here, any more than a new line by Acer or ASUS would. I say that as a former ThinkPad owner.
ThinkPads were developed by IBM, produced for professionals and built like tanks. Lenovo has made a few changes, not all of them good, but basically that design philosophy is intact and a lot of the same people from IBM still work on ThinkPads. The "IdeaPad" line is a rebadge of Lenovo's *own* line (the 3000 series, etc.), which was developed wholly separately, by a different company and in a different country. If the previous lineup was anything to judge by, they're the same basic cheap junk laptops you might find from any second-tier Taiwanese or Chinese company. Adequate for most use, but not even in the same league as a ThinkPad. (I may be a former TP owner, but I'm also a *current* Acer owner, so I'm familiar with both ends of the spectrum here.)
It's not just a case of one being professional and the other consumer, which implies that the differences are mainly in the included software or security features. No, these laptops are built to completely different standards. They're as different as when IBM and Lenovo were making laptops separately. Would a new line from Lenovo have been compared to the ThinkPad in those days? Well, nothing much has changed, except that Lenovo's obviously trying to cash in on the ThinkPad name, and has managed to hoodwink sites like Slashdot into thinking the two lines are somehow related.