apparently they combined the names of the xbox, gamecube, and playstation for the name.:D other than that, this seems kinda cool. wish it were more powerful, but this could be somethihg good for ROMs.
i really dont think anyone is losing money over this. like you said, if someone wants to read it for free, they can just go to the library. the only reason i would grab a book off the internet is because its just eaisier in some situations. if someone honestly thinks theyre "sticking it to the man" by pirating books, then they should rethink their whole strategy of fighting the machine whatever the hell theyre trying to accomplish.
the main reason books on computer suck is because of the way computers are set up by default. when most people think of books on computer, they dont immediately think of putting a book on a PDA. also, it kinda strains the eyes after looking at the screen so much, because of the default colors. change the colors to white text on black background, and youll feel much better after a night of reading when you should be sleeping. which would be an advantage for computers, as you dont need an external light source for that.
of course, there was an older slashdot sotry about electronic paper. looks just like regular paper, but when you send an electrical signal to it, it prints a new image on the paper. the image stays for something like 10 years when the power is taken away, but a new signal will re-write on the paper. i imagine ebook piracy will become a bigger problem once they start making ebooks out of those.
looking for mates on slashdot? wow, thats a prime location. i, myself, was going to go to a local LAN counter-strike tournament to pick up chicks. im sure well both soon have more than we know what to do with.
wow. 2 threads up, someone posted this exact same thing, and even admited it might whore them some karma. his moderation:
40% Informative
60% Overrated
this guy does the same thing. his moderation:
30% Informative
30% Underrated
20% Redundant
i know its slashdot and all, but im suprised that that can happen anywhere.:P
id feel bad about it, if it werent for the fact that the majority of artists make many, many times more money off their concerts than off their CD sales. ive went to see a few different bands whose CDs i dont own, and would have never heard them in the first place if it werent for napster (now kazaa lite).
its the amperage, not the volts, that hurt you. regardless, this is why youre supposed to disconnect the battery before doing any electrical work in your car. im one to talk, though, as ive had a few shocks because of working on my computer while it was plugged in and running.:P
you prove my point exactly. see how pissed everyone got towards sirrus? "they should just use another frequency", "this will affect all of our stuff, how dare they?", etc.
well, just because you dont know people who cant afford cable TV, doesnt mean there arent any. i know several people who dont have the money for a cable bill each month, and would rather see the stuff on the local channels anyways.
people bring up an interesting point about giving very very basic cable access for free to those who cant afford it. just try taht in rural areas, though, and see how expensive the whole project becomes as you wire cable for miles and miles.
since when is any other use of the spectrum a right?
the point is, its not fair to take something away from one group of people to give to another group of people who dont really need it. imagine if the FCC wanted to disallow all use of the 2.4Ghz because a few rich guys want to use it for their own purposes, or for some new form of public television (if that were more technically possible). the whole slashdot community would be yelling its head off.
ah, i heard otherwise. youre probably right. id imagine youd need the "paste" variety instead of the "gel" variety, then. anyways, just telling what i heard. of course, that would mean that it wouldnt be able to do the job on very deep scratches, which if usually my main problem.
if you have the space, you might want to try using a lossless codec, like FLAC. re-ripping all those CDs multiple times sounds like it could be a bitch of a process, but you could just do a batch conversion of codecs with a lossless codec.
of course, you said you had a 160 GB drive, so you may not have the space. id still recommend ogg vorbis for a lossy codec, but im sure youve researched the options for your own situation, so go with what you think is best.
be careful about that one. toothpaste just fills in the cracks, making them readable by a laser again. however, some older cd-roms run a bit hot, causing a CD with a lot of toothpaste on it to have the toothpaste melt out. its *very* rare, but it could do some damage to your hardware.
on the same note, i hear of something that will work in the same way but to a much better degree. go to a plastics/glass shop in your area, and ask if they have any polishs or waxes with the same refractive index as CDs (1.55, i think). i heard somewhere before of someone owning a floor polish with that exact same refractive index, and it worked beautifully on every CD he tried it on. he was in the floor care industry, though, so whatever he used wasnt directly available to consumers. supposedly, glass/plastic shops will sell something like that, since a polish with that refractive index will make certain plastics look the best.
this is all from memory or something from a year or two ago, though, so i could be a bit wrong about the details.
personally, i think this feature should be an option, and that insurance companies should give a discount rate for having one of these functional in your car. it would be like how automatic seatbelts give you lowered insurance rates. that way, if you didnt want this option, you might pay less for your car, but more for insurance. makes enough sense.
why would car companies add this feature if there were no reason for the consumer to want it? with all the cost-cutting things the car comopanies already go through to keep the price of a vehical down, this would probably be something those companies would want to avoid. i dunno, though, just my 2 cents.
EVERYTHING in retail is done to make things *appear* better. items on the shelves are all pushed forward to make the shelves appear more full. ambient music is put at a volume that is just enough to make the store appear more friendly. major retail chains have even spent huge amounts of money on studies to find out which forms of lighting make the items appear better.
prices follow the same rules. psychologically, $9.99 seems like a better deal than $10, even though its only a penny more. however, when your shopping for enough things, you take prices into account more quickly, so youre more apt to buy something for $9.99 than for $10.
on another note, many prices now are something like $3.19. this makes it so that you want to feel like your actually paying $3 for a product, because that extra change "doesnt really matter". however, for the company selling millions of that product, that extra change equates to a huge sum. of course, this whole idea was kinda taken from the gasoline industry, whos the only place you can find that can get away with charging an extra 9/10 of a cent per gallon.
what i dont get, though, is why our dollars and cents systems are not identical to each other. penny is to dollar, nickel is to $5, dime is to $10 bill, but why is there no $25 bill? or a 20 cent coin?
we could have just made everything eaisier, by going to a base-8 or base-16 number system. damn us humans and our 10 fingers!:P
i had to mod you up. i was going to sy the exact same thing, espically when i saw that no posts had yet been made, but by the time i had clicked on "read more" you had already posted.:P
you must not have went to high school in a long time. teachers give out grades based almost entirely on effort anymore. 90% of the people in my high school who got above 3.0 GPAs, got them while doing almost no work, skipping classes often, and just copying any work they had to do from others. in highschool (at least, mine was like this), your homework only gets graded on how much of it is completed.
also, teachers feel that a lack of knowledge can be made up for by showing strong determination. unfortunately, this has become so out of hand that having all the knowledge required for the class (in some cases, having *more* than the teacher) doesnt get you anywhere in high school, anymore.
where, exactly, was this proven? ive heard this statement be used countless times (mainly in making fun of someone in my school who got a 9), but i find it hard to believe that a monkey can fill in those damn tiny circles with a pencil well enough to even score, let alone score a 12.:P ill just let it go as rumor.
go figure, i forget to add paragraph tags to my comment. im too used to vBulletin and phpBB.:P
also, im not saying the ACT and SAT are perfect. however, ill put more faith in test scores than in grades (in highschool, anyways) anyday.
as opposed to what, grades? high school GPAs are based on your ability to do acedimic work, not to learn (these days, anyways). theres really very little based on testing anymore; most teachers will let you make up poor tests with extra homework, but not let you make up missing homework by proving you know the material. i found that at least half of the people who complained about tests were the ones that didnt actually know the information.
if it wasnt for tests, i wouldnt be going to college in the fall. i had a horrible GPA, but my test scores on the ACT and SAT was able to get me into one of the lesser colleges in my state. it always depressed me that i could get straight As on my tests and still fail a class, yet others could fail almost all the tests and still pass with at least a C grade.
Slashdot Mirror
apparently they combined the names of the xbox, gamecube, and playstation for the name. :D other than that, this seems kinda cool. wish it were more powerful, but this could be somethihg good for ROMs.
i really dont think anyone is losing money over this. like you said, if someone wants to read it for free, they can just go to the library. the only reason i would grab a book off the internet is because its just eaisier in some situations. if someone honestly thinks theyre "sticking it to the man" by pirating books, then they should rethink their whole strategy of fighting the machine whatever the hell theyre trying to accomplish.
the main reason books on computer suck is because of the way computers are set up by default. when most people think of books on computer, they dont immediately think of putting a book on a PDA. also, it kinda strains the eyes after looking at the screen so much, because of the default colors. change the colors to white text on black background, and youll feel much better after a night of reading when you should be sleeping. which would be an advantage for computers, as you dont need an external light source for that. of course, there was an older slashdot sotry about electronic paper. looks just like regular paper, but when you send an electrical signal to it, it prints a new image on the paper. the image stays for something like 10 years when the power is taken away, but a new signal will re-write on the paper. i imagine ebook piracy will become a bigger problem once they start making ebooks out of those.
looking for mates on slashdot? wow, thats a prime location. i, myself, was going to go to a local LAN counter-strike tournament to pick up chicks. im sure well both soon have more than we know what to do with.
40% Informative
60% Overrated
this guy does the same thing. his moderation:
30% Informative
30% Underrated
20% Redundant
i know its slashdot and all, but im suprised that that can happen anywhere. :P
haha. its gets the best if you wait it out, as the gif doesnt actually loop. i was about to hit the back button before i saw it.
id feel bad about it, if it werent for the fact that the majority of artists make many, many times more money off their concerts than off their CD sales. ive went to see a few different bands whose CDs i dont own, and would have never heard them in the first place if it werent for napster (now kazaa lite).
thats, um... what i said... :P
its the amperage, not the volts, that hurt you. regardless, this is why youre supposed to disconnect the battery before doing any electrical work in your car. im one to talk, though, as ive had a few shocks because of working on my computer while it was plugged in and running. :P
you prove my point exactly. see how pissed everyone got towards sirrus? "they should just use another frequency", "this will affect all of our stuff, how dare they?", etc.
people bring up an interesting point about giving very very basic cable access for free to those who cant afford it. just try taht in rural areas, though, and see how expensive the whole project becomes as you wire cable for miles and miles.
the point is, its not fair to take something away from one group of people to give to another group of people who dont really need it. imagine if the FCC wanted to disallow all use of the 2.4Ghz because a few rich guys want to use it for their own purposes, or for some new form of public television (if that were more technically possible). the whole slashdot community would be yelling its head off.
ah, i heard otherwise. youre probably right. id imagine youd need the "paste" variety instead of the "gel" variety, then. anyways, just telling what i heard. of course, that would mean that it wouldnt be able to do the job on very deep scratches, which if usually my main problem.
of course, you said you had a 160 GB drive, so you may not have the space. id still recommend ogg vorbis for a lossy codec, but im sure youve researched the options for your own situation, so go with what you think is best.
on the same note, i hear of something that will work in the same way but to a much better degree. go to a plastics/glass shop in your area, and ask if they have any polishs or waxes with the same refractive index as CDs (1.55, i think). i heard somewhere before of someone owning a floor polish with that exact same refractive index, and it worked beautifully on every CD he tried it on. he was in the floor care industry, though, so whatever he used wasnt directly available to consumers. supposedly, glass/plastic shops will sell something like that, since a polish with that refractive index will make certain plastics look the best.
this is all from memory or something from a year or two ago, though, so i could be a bit wrong about the details.
why would car companies add this feature if there were no reason for the consumer to want it? with all the cost-cutting things the car comopanies already go through to keep the price of a vehical down, this would probably be something those companies would want to avoid. i dunno, though, just my 2 cents.
prices follow the same rules. psychologically, $9.99 seems like a better deal than $10, even though its only a penny more. however, when your shopping for enough things, you take prices into account more quickly, so youre more apt to buy something for $9.99 than for $10.
on another note, many prices now are something like $3.19. this makes it so that you want to feel like your actually paying $3 for a product, because that extra change "doesnt really matter". however, for the company selling millions of that product, that extra change equates to a huge sum. of course, this whole idea was kinda taken from the gasoline industry, whos the only place you can find that can get away with charging an extra 9/10 of a cent per gallon.
what i dont get, though, is why our dollars and cents systems are not identical to each other. penny is to dollar, nickel is to $5, dime is to $10 bill, but why is there no $25 bill? or a 20 cent coin?
we could have just made everything eaisier, by going to a base-8 or base-16 number system. damn us humans and our 10 fingers! :P
you know, i knew that, but i was too tired to remember. sorry. :(
i had to mod you up. i was going to sy the exact same thing, espically when i saw that no posts had yet been made, but by the time i had clicked on "read more" you had already posted. :P
and yeah, my school did suck like that. but, im out of it now, so its all good.
also, teachers feel that a lack of knowledge can be made up for by showing strong determination. unfortunately, this has become so out of hand that having all the knowledge required for the class (in some cases, having *more* than the teacher) doesnt get you anywhere in high school, anymore.
where, exactly, was this proven? ive heard this statement be used countless times (mainly in making fun of someone in my school who got a 9), but i find it hard to believe that a monkey can fill in those damn tiny circles with a pencil well enough to even score, let alone score a 12. :P ill just let it go as rumor.
go figure, i forget to add paragraph tags to my comment. im too used to vBulletin and phpBB. :P
also, im not saying the ACT and SAT are perfect. however, ill put more faith in test scores than in grades (in highschool, anyways) anyday.
as opposed to what, grades? high school GPAs are based on your ability to do acedimic work, not to learn (these days, anyways). theres really very little based on testing anymore; most teachers will let you make up poor tests with extra homework, but not let you make up missing homework by proving you know the material. i found that at least half of the people who complained about tests were the ones that didnt actually know the information. if it wasnt for tests, i wouldnt be going to college in the fall. i had a horrible GPA, but my test scores on the ACT and SAT was able to get me into one of the lesser colleges in my state. it always depressed me that i could get straight As on my tests and still fail a class, yet others could fail almost all the tests and still pass with at least a C grade.
and, first post beat *him* :P ...