for those of us stuck with regular DVD. I imagine studios will use the single layer at 4.7 gigs for dvd and the dual layer at 30 gigs for HD-DVD, meaning we'll get lousy picture. As an anime nerd, several of my favorite movies and shows got release on dvd-5 and are almost unwatchable (Nadesico being the worse, what with all the red).
businesses have been using the gov't to give them an edge for hundreds of years. Agribuisness corps were founded by gov't irrigation, car companies by gov't road projects, Pharmaceuticals get the gov't to do all the difficult/expensive research, etc, etc. There is a long and illustrious history of using your tax dollars to screw you over. It's like Gore Vidal said: capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.
Money is not scarce. There's plenty of it. Trillions and Trillions. Money is bits in a computer and paper in your wallet. Paper is cheap and information free. Money is an abstract concept in our society. There is no gold for your dollar in Fort Knox. We can make an unlimited amount of money. All it takes is a few keystrokes and a printing press. What we can't make is more doctors, nurses, cancer drugs, etc. Not anymore than society can physically produce.
I never proposed banning tobacco entirely. You're right, it's useless to try. Instead, I want tobacco which contains nicotine banned. Take away the addiction, and people will stop smoking. If anything I like tobacco. It's the finest ant poison money can buy.
As for banning tobacco in public, that's a pragmatic matter for me. Exposed to smoke, I and many others develope sore throats and eyes, headaches and nausea. I can't imagine that long term exposure wouldn't have long term conseqences.
And finally, on the subject of people who are overweight, I've just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, I'm reading more and more frightening things about MSG (companies are sneaking it into the food supply by including additives that cause it to form "naturally"), HFCS, Sodium Nitrate, Hydrolized and Hydrogenated vegetable protiens, sulfates, bromates and a slew of other nightmares common in our food supply and all perfectly legal. I'll be happy to take personal responsiblity for my diet when I can buy food that isn't coated, soaked and injected with poisons.
Because health care is a limited resource, and as such it doesn't matter how much you pay, there's still less of it. I wait months to see specialists for non-smoking related problems while smokers fill up the doctor's calender with problems that should never exist. Remember: Money is an abstract representation of wealth, it is not wealth in and of itself. Americans in general have a hard time with this concept.
but $40 bucks for an svideo cable is fsckin' nuts. $60 for a component cable is even worse. I paid $20 for my ps2 svideo, and can get a component for $25-$30 (oem Sony).
why companies do this? The stand to make far more money off thier own absurd patents since they're bound to have more of them (they've got lawyers who work all day to come up with them).
they're filtering a service. There's still no distinction in what you send, just how you send it. This is like saying ISPs can't filter spam without giving up common carrier. You want to send one or two unsolicited emails, ok then. Send 1 million? Then we've got a problem.
Haven't tried these cards yet (too poor:) ), but most dvd players I've used are pretty lousy at deinterlacing (xine wasn't too bad, but installing linux is more work than I want to do right now).
There's no reason to buy games new if you're a casual player. I've got 60+ ps2 games off ebay. Some have sucked, some have been really good. But at less then $10 dollars a head (many less than $6), I can afford to take some risks.
I've been wondering why New Orleans isn't calling for the Administration's head on a platter, now I know. Wow, that's brilliant. This is precicely why modern governments can't be overthrown.
Let me listen to the songs on my computer so I know if I like them enough to spend money, and when I do I'll buy the CD. Recently I went hunting for Power Metal bands (they're getting hard to find w/o mp3.com:( ) and couldn't find one band who didn't have either 30 second clips or edited their posted songs because, god forbid, I listen to an mp3 instead of buying their record. That might work for a truely excellant band like Freedom Call or Hammerfall, but for a middling band just hitting it's stride? It's just hard to get excited about a 30 second clip, and having the band yell at me "don't steal this mp3" half way through doesn't help either.
as the rest of the crap going on with our food supply. My personal favorite is Cambell's Soup, which has ingredients added to it soley to assit in the formation of Monosodium Glutamate, that way they can truthfully say "No MSG Added", because, hey, they didn't add any. All they did was wait till the other stuff they added created MSG on it's own.
last I heard, Vista wasn't going to be released as an upgrade, and the install process would be hardware specific images. Microsoft's biggest customers are OEMs, who are desparet for something to move units with. Besides, with 95% of the market, Microsoft can say to hell with inertia. I mean, what are you gonna do, buy a Mac? Not when Dell'll sell you an entire computer with a 19" flat panel for less than $500 dollars.
and Microsoft's winning it. They want to close the currently open PC architecure and elect themselves as gatekeeper to what's left. They've got hardware manufactures adding features that prevent code without digital signatures from running. You'll need and incredibly expensive compiler and certification to get that signature. It'll kill Open Source deader than dead. You'll lose all the hobbyists (who won't be able to afford the software and certification), and with them the OSS community. Before long only a few big projects will survive, and those will only be relevent to large companies (because they won't be able to secure enough funding to do the smaller stuff). OSS software won't be able to offer the features it needs to, people will stop using it, and it'll die out.
What can stop this is getting a large enough base of OSS and linux users now that hardware manufactures won't abandon us when Microsoft comes calling.
back in the good 'ole days of Sci-Fi monthlies, somebody happened to notice that the company that distributed their books had accumulated a ton of equity in real estate over the years. So he bought out the company and sold everything off, shutting it down in the process. He's a millionaire now. As a side effect, several monthlies went out of business in the resulting chaos when their distributer just disappeared overnight. You can thank the current state of Science Fiction on asshats like that.
and in 5 years, it'll be illegal to sell and impossible to find the hardware needed to build an hdtv mythtv box. Maybe 10 tops. Ah well, when it happens, I'm just going to stop consuming.
fighting a wizard in his keep. I just have my rouge hide in the shadows for a critical hit in round 3, my warrior hacks away with his axe, the Ranger with his bow, one wizard heals, one protects and one casts Gotterdamurung every turn. I find the same strategy works aganst lawyers, only they've got more HP.
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for those of us stuck with regular DVD. I imagine studios will use the single layer at 4.7 gigs for dvd and the dual layer at 30 gigs for HD-DVD, meaning we'll get lousy picture. As an anime nerd, several of my favorite movies and shows got release on dvd-5 and are almost unwatchable (Nadesico being the worse, what with all the red).
businesses have been using the gov't to give them an edge for hundreds of years. Agribuisness corps were founded by gov't irrigation, car companies by gov't road projects, Pharmaceuticals get the gov't to do all the difficult/expensive research, etc, etc. There is a long and illustrious history of using your tax dollars to screw you over. It's like Gore Vidal said: capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich.
Money is not scarce. There's plenty of it. Trillions and Trillions. Money is bits in a computer and paper in your wallet. Paper is cheap and information free. Money is an abstract concept in our society. There is no gold for your dollar in Fort Knox. We can make an unlimited amount of money. All it takes is a few keystrokes and a printing press. What we can't make is more doctors, nurses, cancer drugs, etc. Not anymore than society can physically produce.
I never proposed banning tobacco entirely. You're right, it's useless to try. Instead, I want tobacco which contains nicotine banned. Take away the addiction, and people will stop smoking. If anything I like tobacco. It's the finest ant poison money can buy.
As for banning tobacco in public, that's a pragmatic matter for me. Exposed to smoke, I and many others develope sore throats and eyes, headaches and nausea. I can't imagine that long term exposure wouldn't have long term conseqences.
And finally, on the subject of people who are overweight, I've just finished reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, I'm reading more and more frightening things about MSG (companies are sneaking it into the food supply by including additives that cause it to form "naturally"), HFCS, Sodium Nitrate, Hydrolized and Hydrogenated vegetable protiens, sulfates, bromates and a slew of other nightmares common in our food supply and all perfectly legal. I'll be happy to take personal responsiblity for my diet when I can buy food that isn't coated, soaked and injected with poisons.
Because health care is a limited resource, and as such it doesn't matter how much you pay, there's still less of it. I wait months to see specialists for non-smoking related problems while smokers fill up the doctor's calender with problems that should never exist. Remember: Money is an abstract representation of wealth, it is not wealth in and of itself. Americans in general have a hard time with this concept.
but $40 bucks for an svideo cable is fsckin' nuts. $60 for a component cable is even worse. I paid $20 for my ps2 svideo, and can get a component for $25-$30 (oem Sony).
they're probably a lot less worried about this patch breaking then, say, a critical networking component or one of IE's major dlls.
why companies do this? The stand to make far more money off thier own absurd patents since they're bound to have more of them (they've got lawyers who work all day to come up with them).
they're filtering a service. There's still no distinction in what you send, just how you send it. This is like saying ISPs can't filter spam without giving up common carrier. You want to send one or two unsolicited emails, ok then. Send 1 million? Then we've got a problem.
Haven't tried these cards yet (too poor :) ), but most dvd players I've used are pretty lousy at deinterlacing (xine wasn't too bad, but installing linux is more work than I want to do right now).
There's no reason to buy games new if you're a casual player. I've got 60+ ps2 games off ebay. Some have sucked, some have been really good. But at less then $10 dollars a head (many less than $6), I can afford to take some risks.
Where the guy you're prosecuting can afford to hire a good lawyer. About $80,000/year or so ( UK 40k/year ).
I've been wondering why New Orleans isn't calling for the Administration's head on a platter, now I know. Wow, that's brilliant. This is precicely why modern governments can't be overthrown.
That reminds me of the time I was shamed by getting your reference to yet another unrelated cartoon... { cut to zany flashback skit }
Huh, I'd certainly like to replace my porch light with a cheap CFT bulb. Any idea why the package tells you not to use them outside though?
The fact that I get this joke makes me a sad panda.
wish you could.
Let me listen to the songs on my computer so I know if I like them enough to spend money, and when I do I'll buy the CD. Recently I went hunting for Power Metal bands (they're getting hard to find w/o mp3.com :( ) and couldn't find one band who didn't have either 30 second clips or edited their posted songs because, god forbid, I listen to an mp3 instead of buying their record. That might work for a truely excellant band like Freedom Call or Hammerfall, but for a middling band just hitting it's stride? It's just hard to get excited about a 30 second clip, and having the band yell at me "don't steal this mp3" half way through doesn't help either.
as the rest of the crap going on with our food supply. My personal favorite is Cambell's Soup, which has ingredients added to it soley to assit in the formation of Monosodium Glutamate, that way they can truthfully say "No MSG Added", because, hey, they didn't add any. All they did was wait till the other stuff they added created MSG on it's own.
last I heard, Vista wasn't going to be released as an upgrade, and the install process would be hardware specific images. Microsoft's biggest customers are OEMs, who are desparet for something to move units with. Besides, with 95% of the market, Microsoft can say to hell with inertia. I mean, what are you gonna do, buy a Mac? Not when Dell'll sell you an entire computer with a 19" flat panel for less than $500 dollars.
and Microsoft's winning it. They want to close the currently open PC architecure and elect themselves as gatekeeper to what's left. They've got hardware manufactures adding features that prevent code without digital signatures from running. You'll need and incredibly expensive compiler and certification to get that signature. It'll kill Open Source deader than dead. You'll lose all the hobbyists (who won't be able to afford the software and certification), and with them the OSS community. Before long only a few big projects will survive, and those will only be relevent to large companies (because they won't be able to secure enough funding to do the smaller stuff). OSS software won't be able to offer the features it needs to, people will stop using it, and it'll die out.
What can stop this is getting a large enough base of OSS and linux users now that hardware manufactures won't abandon us when Microsoft comes calling.
back in the good 'ole days of Sci-Fi monthlies, somebody happened to notice that the company that distributed their books had accumulated a ton of equity in real estate over the years. So he bought out the company and sold everything off, shutting it down in the process. He's a millionaire now. As a side effect, several monthlies went out of business in the resulting chaos when their distributer just disappeared overnight. You can thank the current state of Science Fiction on asshats like that.
it's super intelligent web comics meets Tekkken 3! MMMmmm, it smells like money.
Now the only question is, what'll be worse, the GBA platformer or the Xbox beat 'em up?
who knows the difference between 'violent' and 'aggressive' actions and behaviour?
and in 5 years, it'll be illegal to sell and impossible to find the hardware needed to build an hdtv mythtv box. Maybe 10 tops. Ah well, when it happens, I'm just going to stop consuming.
fighting a wizard in his keep. I just have my rouge hide in the shadows for a critical hit in round 3, my warrior hacks away with his axe, the Ranger with his bow, one wizard heals, one protects and one casts Gotterdamurung every turn. I find the same strategy works aganst lawyers, only they've got more HP.