I continue to be amazed that people seem to be surprised and offended that other people do everything within their power to profit from their work and their creations.
YM "other people's work and creations". I don't think Hillary Rosen has written many songs.
You obviously haven't had the pleasure of trying to get by on whatever work you can drum up, be it Wal-Mart greeting or collecting chickens for slaughter.
I lived in a town where these were the only options once. I moved.
Almost all of the music I download is foreign: mostly Japanese and Korean. (Yes, I'm a USian.) I don't want any of the music the RIAA's "artists" have to offer. I never bought domestic CDs, even before the "Napster era."
Pay close attention to which labels your J-pop and Eurobeat bands are signed to. They may not be American, but a lot of them are still prepackaged, mass-marketed, and owned by the same multinational labels that our buying off our rights. I'm sure Sony (the evil **AA corporation, not the cool tech maker) alone owns half of the Japanese top-40!
if you are in the upper 5% of computer scientists you will always be employed making in the upper 1% wage group.
IHBT, but what does futzing around with Mainframes and FreeBSD boxen have to do with computer science? Are you really getting paid to analyze algorithms on this hardware?
I've been waiting for a Linux port for two years. Oskari's never going to port it[1], and there are about a billion "Linux Buzz" projects on SourceForge without a single line of code committed.
Anyone wanna recommend a good tracker for Linux?
-Eamon
1: That's his prerogative, and as a casual user of his product, I do appreciate the hard work he's done.
This argument is BULLSHIT. I would bet my entire life wages on this. Look what happened to the web. 8 years ago it was all "everyone has the power to publish". Now 90% of web traffic goes to 10% of websites. Corporations have co-opted the web.
Have you paid attention to the studies that show who's actually making money on the web? It's not the corporately-owned portals and news sites, it's porn.
If independant artists are going to start making money on the web (and I believe they can), they should follow the lead of three important internet trends: blogs, camgirls, and porn sites. The first two get traffic with virtually no advertising, and the third make money without corporate backing.
The RIAA isn't fighting P2P because of lost record sales. They're fighting it because it hints at a new model, where artists bring their music directly to their fans. No "breakage" clause in record contracts. No payola to Clearchannel. Just musicians making music and consumers supporting them while they do it.
Just wait until Apple starts selling MP3s of unsigned and indie-label bands for less than 99 cents a pop. These bands will probably get 10 cents a download instead of the fraction of a cent the big labels are offering. The RIAA has every reason to be scared. Unless they can get legislation passed that requires bands to sign to big labels, they won't be around much longer.
I was under the impression that the new source code is just the Slim driver (no MPEG-2 decoding) with some changes by Cox. I'm still holding off until VIA supports MPEG-2 decoding in Linux. Although this is definitely a step in the right direction, it's not quite enough.
With the Dual 1.25Ghz G4 and 20in Cinema display versus the Dell option, the Mac option was more than $400 cheaper.
High-end systems don't count -- I suppose we have different definitions of "limited budget"! I wouldn't be pinching pennies if I were buying something that nice. The eMac, for instance, is a couple hundred dollars more expensive than my system, and it's not even close in performance.
This exercise has only confirmed my initial suspicion: Apple hardware is fine for expensive stuff (laptops and graphics workstations), but in spite of the educational discounts, it's still not suitible for poor college kids. Oh well.
Actually, I just priced out a couple of machines to replace imaging workstations here in the lab with a preference for the Mac, but a limited budget. To my surprise, the Macs were less expensive than Dell, HP or even our local grey box builder.
I really want to believe this. I'd love to get a Mac, but have found they were far out of my price range. How about some links to back up this claim?
unless you are a gamer home computers are more than fast enough now for what we want (internet/email/minor word processing) this kind of tech will only benefit the "Power User" community..
False. Most improvements in processor design and fabrication have allowed processors to be made that are faster, smaller, and cheaper. Perhaps there aren't many users who care about faster, but everyone cares about smaller and cheaper.
For the record, you CAN get hardware acceleration under Linux with the built-in Trident chipset--it's not the normal trident.c driver in the kernel.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like the driver for TV-Out. I believe most of the complaints about the lack of "hardware acceleration" for the EPIA-M are aimed toward the lack of support for the MPEG-2 decoder in the CLE266 chipset.
I've been hoping that this thread would somehow make it to Slashdot. Hopefully, enough interested Linux users will let VIA know how much of a mistake they're making by not properly supporting our choice of operating system.
It really bothers me to see that VIA is claiming to support Linux, when this support is so poor. This review at Linuxathome.net only makes matters worse, since the reviewer tested most features on Windows, and verified Linux support by merely installing RedHat!
I really want to buy one of these boards, but I refuse to do so until VIA either releases decent drivers, or provides documentation for their hardware that would allow the open source community to build our own.
Try something truly lightweight, like twm or one of the early
incarnations of fvwm with something better than those miserable default
configurations, and watch your desktop scream, even with X's supposed
weight.
You don't even have to use anything old or overly-simple, either. I just
switched from KDE to fluxbox,
and the speed improvement is remarkable, even on my reasonably fast machine. I
don't have anything against Gnome or KDE, but they're definitely bloated with
features I wasn't using.
This (or something like it) will be extremely useful for building the next great P2P client. I believe that Audiogalaxy was the best service to fall to RIAA pressure. What made Audiogalaxy so great? The fact that they had a *database* of songs -- you find the track you wanted on Audiogalaxy, and then if another user who had it was online, you could start downloading it from them.
We (P2P users) are learning that any centralized service simply won't be able to dodge the legal bullet for very long. While we have yet to design a decentralized service that doesn't suffer from scaling problems, I'm confident that eventually, somebody will -- it's really the only place to go.
The only way a decentralized P2P network could match the ease-of-use of Audiogalaxy is for its clients to use a separate database of track information. This is exactly what MusicBrainz gives us. Music sharing will once again become as easy as browsing artists and albums, selecting a track, and downloading it from another person (or group of people) that has it.
Between NiGHTS and the Panzer Dragoon series[1], I'm actually tempted to pick up a used one. Graphically, they certainly weren't ground breaking, but the gameplay was phenomenal. Saturns are now a tiny fraction of $400, and buying one is the only way to play these great games...unless Satourne gets a lot better very soon.
[1] I never played Panzer Dragoon Saga, an RPG, but it is supposedly quite good.
You futz up the graphic card, clean the solder off, and bring it back to Best Buy. They don't look it, they just give you another, and prices go up.
But everyone doesn't take that into account when they bring it back.
You don't understand how capitalism works. ATI is charging significantly more for a Radeon 9700 than a Radeon 9500 (a difference of about $100), even though the hardware is almost exactly the same. It follows that they're setting the price at what they feel the market will bear. This has nothing to do with how much it costs to make these things.
A few returned units may cut into ATI's profits (insignificantly), but they will have no effect on that magic price at which their profit is maximized. The same argument has been used against shoplifting and file sharing -- while these activities may be illegal (unlike modifying your own hardware), the argument is just as flawed. Why do CDs/Computer Parts/foo cost so much? Because that's what people are willing pay.
Good point, although I wasn't implying that OGG support was a bad idea. I was simply suggesting that an MP3-only player would still be useful to Linux users who prefer OGG. I wouldn't mind one!
I haven't read the article (still/.ed), but I imagine that it outlines a procedure that starts with MP3s on your PC and ends with MP3s on your iPod. Since we're using Linux tools, it seems that it would be trivial to add a step (probably near the beginning) that will transcode your OGGs to MP3 before you send them to your iPod.
OGG may be a better format, but when you're listening to music through tiny earbuds while riding the bus or walking around downtown, it's unlikely that you'll notice any loss of quality. I don't have a "proper" portable MP3 player yet, but I do have one of those portable CD players that will play MP3s on CD-ROM -- and this is *exactly* what I do.
If only there was some type of organization programmers/engineers/tech workers could form to protect each other from this. We could, I don't know, "collectively bargain" with tech employers, and make sure everyone is following the same basic rules (e.g., fellow engineers who work for free, employers who expect them to). It would be like some kind of "union" of engineers.
I'm not into MMORPGs myself, but like many computer-geeks, I am getting into the classic board game Go.
The things that make Go most appealing to me as a newbie are it's unmatched handicapping and ranking systems. Players who are fairly certain of their own strength relative to that of their opponent--no matter what their skill level--can go into any game with a 50/50 chance of winning.
I try not to spend *too* much time online (I'm a busy guy), so one reason I've stayed away from games like Everquest is because I know there's no way I'll be able to compete with folks with more free time than me. The offline video games I enjoy most still present as many challenges today as they did when I first played them. An online game that offers dynamic and interesting play for *every* player would be enough to suck me in...
On second thought, nevermind. I don't get out enough as it is!
They already caught on. They know exactly why they're losing money. They're not stupid.
Having found a scapegoat for their decline in sales, they're using their money and a good dose of PR to get laws passed that will give them more control. That's what they're after, and it's all that they care about.
The RIAA and MPAA know that file-sharing won't cause lost sales in the short run. They fear that artists will wise up and bypass them, and sell directly to their fans. That's why they're fighting to stop this now, before the artists get smart.
Slashdot Mirror
YM "other people's work and creations". I don't think Hillary Rosen has written many songs.
I lived in a town where these were the only options once. I moved.
Pay close attention to which labels your J-pop and Eurobeat bands are signed to. They may not be American, but a lot of them are still prepackaged, mass-marketed, and owned by the same multinational labels that our buying off our rights. I'm sure Sony (the evil **AA corporation, not the cool tech maker) alone owns half of the Japanese top-40!
IHBT, but what does futzing around with Mainframes and FreeBSD boxen have to do with computer science? Are you really getting paid to analyze algorithms on this hardware?
I've been waiting for a Linux port for two years. Oskari's never going to port it[1], and there are about a billion "Linux Buzz" projects on SourceForge without a single line of code committed.
Anyone wanna recommend a good tracker for Linux?
-Eamon
1: That's his prerogative, and as a casual user of his product, I do appreciate the hard work he's done.
Have you paid attention to the studies that show who's actually making money on the web? It's not the corporately-owned portals and news sites, it's porn.
If independant artists are going to start making money on the web (and I believe they can), they should follow the lead of three important internet trends: blogs, camgirls, and porn sites. The first two get traffic with virtually no advertising, and the third make money without corporate backing.
Figuring out a new model that is beneficial to artists, consumers, and the corporations providing the content?
Artists? Definitely. Consumers? Absolutely. Corporations? WHY?!
The RIAA isn't fighting P2P because of lost record sales. They're fighting it because it hints at a new model, where artists bring their music directly to their fans. No "breakage" clause in record contracts. No payola to Clearchannel. Just musicians making music and consumers supporting them while they do it.
Just wait until Apple starts selling MP3s of unsigned and indie-label bands for less than 99 cents a pop. These bands will probably get 10 cents a download instead of the fraction of a cent the big labels are offering. The RIAA has every reason to be scared. Unless they can get legislation passed that requires bands to sign to big labels, they won't be around much longer.
I was under the impression that the new source code is just the Slim driver (no MPEG-2 decoding) with some changes by Cox. I'm still holding off until VIA supports MPEG-2 decoding in Linux. Although this is definitely a step in the right direction, it's not quite enough.
High-end systems don't count -- I suppose we have different definitions of "limited budget"! I wouldn't be pinching pennies if I were buying something that nice. The eMac, for instance, is a couple hundred dollars more expensive than my system, and it's not even close in performance.
This exercise has only confirmed my initial suspicion: Apple hardware is fine for expensive stuff (laptops and graphics workstations), but in spite of the educational discounts, it's still not suitible for poor college kids. Oh well.
I really want to believe this. I'd love to get a Mac, but have found they were far out of my price range. How about some links to back up this claim?
False. Most improvements in processor design and fabrication have allowed processors to be made that are faster, smaller, and cheaper. Perhaps there aren't many users who care about faster, but everyone cares about smaller and cheaper.
I don't know -- ask somebody who's played a Game Boy Advance!
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this looks like the driver for TV-Out. I believe most of the complaints about the lack of "hardware acceleration" for the EPIA-M are aimed toward the lack of support for the MPEG-2 decoder in the CLE266 chipset.
It really bothers me to see that VIA is claiming to support Linux, when this support is so poor. This review at Linuxathome.net only makes matters worse, since the reviewer tested most features on Windows, and verified Linux support by merely installing RedHat!
I really want to buy one of these boards, but I refuse to do so until VIA either releases decent drivers, or provides documentation for their hardware that would allow the open source community to build our own.
Wait, you mean to say that most of the programmers at your job aren't women? That's absurd!
Try something truly lightweight, like twm or one of the early incarnations of fvwm with something better than those miserable default configurations, and watch your desktop scream, even with X's supposed weight.
You don't even have to use anything old or overly-simple, either. I just switched from KDE to fluxbox, and the speed improvement is remarkable, even on my reasonably fast machine. I don't have anything against Gnome or KDE, but they're definitely bloated with features I wasn't using.
Yep, there's a similar effort at my university. Check out the Ray Engine: http://graphics.cs.uiuc.edu/~jch/papers/rt2/
This (or something like it) will be extremely useful for building the next great P2P client. I believe that Audiogalaxy was the best service to fall to RIAA pressure. What made Audiogalaxy so great? The fact that they had a *database* of songs -- you find the track you wanted on Audiogalaxy, and then if another user who had it was online, you could start downloading it from them.
We (P2P users) are learning that any centralized service simply won't be able to dodge the legal bullet for very long. While we have yet to design a decentralized service that doesn't suffer from scaling problems, I'm confident that eventually, somebody will -- it's really the only place to go.
The only way a decentralized P2P network could match the ease-of-use of Audiogalaxy is for its clients to use a separate database of track information. This is exactly what MusicBrainz gives us. Music sharing will once again become as easy as browsing artists and albums, selecting a track, and downloading it from another person (or group of people) that has it.
Between NiGHTS and the Panzer Dragoon series[1], I'm actually tempted to pick up a used one. Graphically, they certainly weren't ground breaking, but the gameplay was phenomenal. Saturns are now a tiny fraction of $400, and buying one is the only way to play these great games...unless Satourne gets a lot better very soon.
[1] I never played Panzer Dragoon Saga, an RPG, but it is supposedly quite good.
You futz up the graphic card, clean the solder off, and bring it back to Best Buy. They don't look it, they just give you another, and prices go up.
But everyone doesn't take that into account when they bring it back.
You don't understand how capitalism works. ATI is charging significantly more for a Radeon 9700 than a Radeon 9500 (a difference of about $100), even though the hardware is almost exactly the same. It follows that they're setting the price at what they feel the market will bear. This has nothing to do with how much it costs to make these things.
A few returned units may cut into ATI's profits (insignificantly), but they will have no effect on that magic price at which their profit is maximized. The same argument has been used against shoplifting and file sharing -- while these activities may be illegal (unlike modifying your own hardware), the argument is just as flawed. Why do CDs/Computer Parts/foo cost so much? Because that's what people are willing pay.
Good point, although I wasn't implying that OGG support was a bad idea. I was simply suggesting that an MP3-only player would still be useful to Linux users who prefer OGG. I wouldn't mind one!
I haven't read the article (still /.ed), but I imagine that it outlines a procedure that starts with MP3s on your PC and ends with MP3s on your iPod. Since we're using Linux tools, it seems that it would be trivial to add a step (probably near the beginning) that will transcode your OGGs to MP3 before you send them to your iPod.
OGG may be a better format, but when you're listening to music through tiny earbuds while riding the bus or walking around downtown, it's unlikely that you'll notice any loss of quality. I don't have a "proper" portable MP3 player yet, but I do have one of those portable CD players that will play MP3s on CD-ROM -- and this is *exactly* what I do.
Excellent point!
If only there was some type of organization programmers/engineers/tech workers could form to protect each other from this. We could, I don't know, "collectively bargain" with tech employers, and make sure everyone is following the same basic rules (e.g., fellow engineers who work for free, employers who expect them to). It would be like some kind of "union" of engineers.
Wouldn't that be neat?
I'm not into MMORPGs myself, but like many computer-geeks, I am getting into the classic board game Go.
The things that make Go most appealing to me as a newbie are it's unmatched handicapping and ranking systems. Players who are fairly certain of their own strength relative to that of their opponent--no matter what their skill level--can go into any game with a 50/50 chance of winning.
I try not to spend *too* much time online (I'm a busy guy), so one reason I've stayed away from games like Everquest is because I know there's no way I'll be able to compete with folks with more free time than me. The offline video games I enjoy most still present as many challenges today as they did when I first played them. An online game that offers dynamic and interesting play for *every* player would be enough to suck me in...
On second thought, nevermind. I don't get out enough as it is!
They already caught on. They know exactly why they're losing money. They're not stupid. Having found a scapegoat for their decline in sales, they're using their money and a good dose of PR to get laws passed that will give them more control. That's what they're after, and it's all that they care about. The RIAA and MPAA know that file-sharing won't cause lost sales in the short run. They fear that artists will wise up and bypass them, and sell directly to their fans. That's why they're fighting to stop this now, before the artists get smart.