I am never buying another Sony product. Well maybe things from the Playstation line, but there I don't have much choice if there is a game I want to play.
In other words, you do have a choice. Don't play that game.
You're probably thinking I'm nitpicking on what you said. I'm not. If you believe strongly enough in what you said, then you have the choice to sacrifice your enjoyment of that game in favour of a boycotting Sony. Maybe this won't fix anything, but, you know, it's *not* a life-and-death thing. It's not a necessity. It's a game.
Sorry, but this has to be said; too many people here say "I'm going to boycott this and that", and then bail out when it comes to backing that up with anything approaching a sacrifice.
I don't want to get started with half-baked theories on mental conditioning in a consumer society (because I'm no psychologist, sociologist, or whatever, and would end up sounding pretentious), but *really*..... the more I think about this, the more it sums up people's flimsy will against the lure of consumer products.
Didn't mean that to come across as a major attack on you; you're just one of many with that attitude, and almost certainly not the worst (and I'm not particularly good in that respect myself).
But seriously; reread your last paragraph, and consider how it comes across.
The worst part about waiting for an entertainment item is that the customer's enthusiasm is easily defeated. Imagine being all hyped up about a console, spending several hundred dollars on the console, games, and accessories, only to be left embarrased having to go to a friends house.
See; the let-down occurs *after* Sony get your hard-earned cash. So unless someone makes a stink, why should Sony care?
They won't lose customers unless the disgruntled purchasers complain loudly enough in the right places.
Trust me; vinyl is easy to rip quickly, but to get acceptable sound quality, you have to have things properly set up and adjusted, then tweak and edit the final result.
Yeah, I'll bet it's possible to get sound quality approaching a CD with a good player and fairly unscratched vinyl, but it's no pushover.
Speaking personally, if you're talking about ripping a whole album that's available on CD at a decent price, it's probably better to buy the CD. I've ripped vinyl before; my time might have worked out slightly cheaper than buying it on CD, but not much by the time I'd put the effort into tidying up and remastering it. And the result was *still* disappointing compared to what the CD should have sounded like.
Of course, if you have lots of single tracks, or rare stuff not available on CD, it's a different kettle of fish. But never believe it's going to be easy to transfer music to anything approaching CD standard.
I can see the difference. The old ones are all in colour, and the new ones are all black and white. (Yeah, okay, the new ones *are* better, but let's face it; black and white gives instant 'serious' points).
By the way, what's going on at the top-right of 'old 16.jpg'? Did you accidentally upload some private bukkake pics?
EU goal is to enlarging to East Europe and to incorporate Russia.
Actually, the proposed enlargement of the EU to include countries such as Ukraine is what's seriously pissing Russia off; they want to create their own trading block.
The 'truckloads of paper' thing isn't that useful. I mean, I assume they mean digital documents printed at 10pt with 1 letter --> 1 byte and an average distribution of values (assuming the typeface is proportionate).
Know what the problem is? Paper can hold *lots* more at an acceptably reliable level if you print *very* small using (say) a laser printer. This isn't very good for humans to read, but it's still paper, it's still valid storage, and it reduces the amount of 'space' paper takes up by a factor of 10 or 20.
And who said we had to use letters anyway? What's wrong with miniscule dot patterns?
Re:Quality, convenience and tidiness
on
Digital Packrats
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· Score: 1
I hate those 'Home Improvement' shows (apparently, the BBC want to axe lots of them. NOT DAMN FAST ENOUGH....).
But I can totally relate to not wanting a house full of bloody VHS tapes. Is there a product that (in conjunction with suitable hardware), can produce a whole load of MPEG-encoded video with minimal inconvenience?
For example, it would spot the obvious gaps in the digitised footage (e.g. where there was a gap in the video signal caused by a different recording), and the not so obvious gaps, suggest break-points, have the user do any minor tweaks, and save the neatly encoded MPEGs to disk, or subsequently DVD.
Of course, a lot of people have tapes with one or two things they want to keep from many on a long tape; but copying VHS --> VHS is often more hassle than it's worth, and loses quality a lot. I'd guess 60-75% of the stuff on those tapes wouldn't get kept if it wasn't for the other stuff on the tapes.
And if people actually had to *decide* what they were going to keep, they'd realise that they didn't really want all that stuff anyway! Especially when you consider the small, but notable effort required to transfer VHS to MPEG.
I'm thinking of my parents here (or rather, my Dad). They have *lots* of VHS tapes. I'm sure they'd actually get more out of them if they could find the stuff they wanted much more easily.
Nasty trick to play on completists
on
Digital Packrats
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· Score: 1
I got a friend who is working on getting every single snes and nes rom. Not only is he downloading every rom he is also playing them long enough to atleast get a good screen shot.
Do me a favour and make up a fictitious NES game complete with screen-shots, and a box and cart picture that look realistic (at least when subjected to the low quality photography that you'd expect when someone took a quick photo of the box). Now put up a web page or two, and mention it in passing on Usenet (not under your own name, obviously).
I don't know how much of 'Western' is supposed to apply to every 'Western' country, or if you mean it to mean "mainly the US".
The fact you mention ths US by name later on suggests that you mean "US". Bear in mind I am not American. At the same time, I don't know enough about the American educational system to point out where it might differ (or not) from that in other western countries.
Rote learning is important to some extent, but it's a means to an end. I got fantastic pass marks on my driving theory test, but my driving lessons are still going badly because theory -|-> application.
I think it's important to balance these things out.
I wish I had the article or reference now, but it was something along the lines of the Japanese aren't really that much into technology *per se*.
Note that this *is* compatible with the Japanese gadget obsession; because you can still love technical gadgets if they do something you want.
BTW, VCRs are almost always badly designed. My parents first video (early 90s; yeah, they got one after everyone else) was gratuitously complex. You had 4 memories on the remote control, which you had to program, and *then* send it to a different memory on the VCR itself before putting it into timer mode. And the actual interface was pretty stupid too.
My parents later bought a more expensive version of my VCR which had on-screen programming. Mine didn't, and it was *easier* to program. Does that tell you something? VCRs are badly designed generally; it's not that big a deal if someone can't program it.
The problem is that people (especially Americans) buy on features that shops can plaster over their labels, and price, not ease of use, despite the fact that ease of use would be far more beneficial than something that the person wouldn't know how to access anyway.
Anyway, just because I *can* program a VCR, doesn't mean to say I like the way they have to be programmed.
I'm hypothesising here, but isn't some of the reason the Japanese gadgets are more successful is because the Japanese aren't as obsessed with the number of basic features as opposed to overall usability? Or are they prepared to *pay* for usability too?
Of course, there is always the Shinto religious aspect of Japanese life (Shinto being the Buddhism-'compatible' other religion in Japan) which says (IIRC) something about life force being in everything. (Don't use that in your religious studies homework:0 ).
Okay; but I wasn't criticising anything- just pointing out that in a US vs Japan discussion, criticising rote learning in US schools (as the message I *replied* to did) is kind of strange considering it's probably more commonplace in Japan.
Damn; irradiation was the 'GM' food of its day. I was watching an old episode of Red Dwarf (the first one, I think, made in 1987). They were going over a list of supplies, and one of the items was an "irradiated haggis".
And I realised I'd totally forgotten about that fiasco; irradiated food died a death. I remember complaints about the loss of nutritional value, but let's face it; *no-one* was going to buy food that sounded like it might be associated with *anything* radioactive.
There's a woman owning a Hummer in my neighbourhood.
Would it actually be legal to drive a Hummer in Britain?
I mean, part of the reason smaller cars are more popular in Europe is that the roads really aren't suitable for large cars (compare with the American stereotype; i.e. lots of freeways in Los Angeles (albeit with nowhere to walk) and large roads through the desert).
If you see someone driving a Hummer in Britain, it just looks ridiculous on anything other than a main road.
Yeah, according to the article, the Japanese high tech gizmo market is driven in no small part...
by teenage girls.
No. You misunderstand what that sentence meant; the Japanese teenage girls take their clothes off and perform various sexual acts with headless men. (*)
Then people buy the tech gadgets to watch all this.
(*) Seriously, you *never* see their damn heads. I'd guess this is because they're probably not that attractive, and it's easier to think of yourself in that position if you can't see it's someone else. I very much doubt it's because these guys would be ashamed of being seen fscking a cute Japanese girl.
The Japanese are more motivated into education and their cultural devotion shows through, even in US schools. That is probably why they develop more complex technologys and have the willpower and capacity to.
Aren't you being just a *little* rose-tinted about the Japanese obsession with technology?
I mean, sure, some of it is educational, but a lot of it is just flashy toys. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but let's not over-idealise it.
Remember that Slashdot story about giving conversational robots to old people in Japan? That isn't something I find desirable, personally.
And I'm fed up of the tech--> educational spin that goes around. I think the educational uses of computers (and other technologies) are *way* oversold. It's like BT's broadband advert in the UK, featuring pictures of Henry VIII and the like; "Use it for your homework". Of course they're trying to sell something, but I think too many people are guilty of believing them.
Slashdot Mirror
I am never buying another Sony product. Well maybe things from the Playstation line, but there I don't have much choice if there is a game I want to play.
In other words, you do have a choice. Don't play that game.
You're probably thinking I'm nitpicking on what you said. I'm not. If you believe strongly enough in what you said, then you have the choice to sacrifice your enjoyment of that game in favour of a boycotting Sony. Maybe this won't fix anything, but, you know, it's *not* a life-and-death thing. It's not a necessity. It's a game.
Sorry, but this has to be said; too many people here say "I'm going to boycott this and that", and then bail out when it comes to backing that up with anything approaching a sacrifice.
I don't want to get started with half-baked theories on mental conditioning in a consumer society (because I'm no psychologist, sociologist, or whatever, and would end up sounding pretentious), but *really*..... the more I think about this, the more it sums up people's flimsy will against the lure of consumer products.
Didn't mean that to come across as a major attack on you; you're just one of many with that attitude, and almost certainly not the worst (and I'm not particularly good in that respect myself).
But seriously; reread your last paragraph, and consider how it comes across.
The worst part about waiting for an entertainment item is that the customer's enthusiasm is easily defeated. Imagine being all hyped up about a console, spending several hundred dollars on the console, games, and accessories, only to be left embarrased having to go to a friends house.
See; the let-down occurs *after* Sony get your hard-earned cash. So unless someone makes a stink, why should Sony care?
They won't lose customers unless the disgruntled purchasers complain loudly enough in the right places.
Betamax, 197x
Elcaset, 197x
Okay, maybe not.
I remember seeing the 3.5" floppy mentioned (and reviewed) in an early-1983 British computer magazine.
By 1985, it was already in machines like the ST and Amiga; and I believe they went with that standard because IBM did.
You remember IBM? They used to make PCs.... (reference to the Lenovo story... never mind.)
Trust me; vinyl is easy to rip quickly, but to get acceptable sound quality, you have to have things properly set up and adjusted, then tweak and edit the final result.
Yeah, I'll bet it's possible to get sound quality approaching a CD with a good player and fairly unscratched vinyl, but it's no pushover.
Speaking personally, if you're talking about ripping a whole album that's available on CD at a decent price, it's probably better to buy the CD. I've ripped vinyl before; my time might have worked out slightly cheaper than buying it on CD, but not much by the time I'd put the effort into tidying up and remastering it. And the result was *still* disappointing compared to what the CD should have sounded like.
Of course, if you have lots of single tracks, or rare stuff not available on CD, it's a different kettle of fish. But never believe it's going to be easy to transfer music to anything approaching CD standard.
there are many CD ripping apps out there that will rip/encode your cds and fetch track info from the net...
I prefer to do it with shell-scripts and then add the track information using a Perl script that fetches the information from..... Amazon.com.
Bwa ha ha! The irony!
ROFL... credit due for admitting your mistake and not getting jumpy and defensive about it like some people might. :)
I can see the difference. The old ones are all in colour, and the new ones are all black and white. (Yeah, okay, the new ones *are* better, but let's face it; black and white gives instant 'serious' points).
By the way, what's going on at the top-right of 'old 16.jpg'? Did you accidentally upload some private bukkake pics?
I'm talking about well-formed XML, as opposed to a language created with it. Thus, either I was correct, or I wasn't.
.... {/mode}
Sure, I could create my own meta-language that allowed that, but it wouldn't be XML.
And, I'm still not convinced that
{mode=pedant level=extreme}
is valid; how can the element name itself have a value? (Note; I am *not* an XML expert, so I may be wrong here, but if so, please explain it).
I'm not sure about that 'mode=pedant' bit you have, but I do know that XML attributes are meant to be enclosed in quotes.
The only point I intended to convey in my post was that Russia did not like the enlargement of the EU; hence their joining would seem an odd prospect.
No judgement about whether Russia and Ukraine could work within the EU *if* they both wanted to join.
I'm not sure how such a large EU would work, though. It's already pretty damn big as it is.
EU goal is to enlarging to East Europe and to incorporate Russia.
Actually, the proposed enlargement of the EU to include countries such as Ukraine is what's seriously pissing Russia off; they want to create their own trading block.
At this rate, Russia's block will consist of:-
Russia, Turkmenistan and half of Ukraine.
The 'truckloads of paper' thing isn't that useful. I mean, I assume they mean digital documents printed at 10pt with 1 letter --> 1 byte and an average distribution of values (assuming the typeface is proportionate).
Know what the problem is? Paper can hold *lots* more at an acceptably reliable level if you print *very* small using (say) a laser printer. This isn't very good for humans to read, but it's still paper, it's still valid storage, and it reduces the amount of 'space' paper takes up by a factor of 10 or 20.
And who said we had to use letters anyway? What's wrong with miniscule dot patterns?
I hate those 'Home Improvement' shows (apparently, the BBC want to axe lots of them. NOT DAMN FAST ENOUGH....).
But I can totally relate to not wanting a house full of bloody VHS tapes. Is there a product that (in conjunction with suitable hardware), can produce a whole load of MPEG-encoded video with minimal inconvenience?
For example, it would spot the obvious gaps in the digitised footage (e.g. where there was a gap in the video signal caused by a different recording), and the not so obvious gaps, suggest break-points, have the user do any minor tweaks, and save the neatly encoded MPEGs to disk, or subsequently DVD.
Of course, a lot of people have tapes with one or two things they want to keep from many on a long tape; but copying VHS --> VHS is often more hassle than it's worth, and loses quality a lot. I'd guess 60-75% of the stuff on those tapes wouldn't get kept if it wasn't for the other stuff on the tapes.
And if people actually had to *decide* what they were going to keep, they'd realise that they didn't really want all that stuff anyway! Especially when you consider the small, but notable effort required to transfer VHS to MPEG.
I'm thinking of my parents here (or rather, my Dad). They have *lots* of VHS tapes. I'm sure they'd actually get more out of them if they could find the stuff they wanted much more easily.
I got a friend who is working on getting every single snes and nes rom. Not only is he downloading every rom he is also playing them long enough to atleast get a good screen shot.
Do me a favour and make up a fictitious NES game complete with screen-shots, and a box and cart picture that look realistic (at least when subjected to the low quality photography that you'd expect when someone took a quick photo of the box). Now put up a web page or two, and mention it in passing on Usenet (not under your own name, obviously).
He'll be searching for it for *years*!
Nowadays, your disk array isn't a closet, or even a yard. it's a fucking warehouse.
Given the pr0n stereotype of the average Slashdotter, 'whorehouse' would be a more accurate description.
I don't know how much of 'Western' is supposed to apply to every 'Western' country, or if you mean it to mean "mainly the US".
The fact you mention ths US by name later on suggests that you mean "US". Bear in mind I am not American. At the same time, I don't know enough about the American educational system to point out where it might differ (or not) from that in other western countries.
Rote learning is important to some extent, but it's a means to an end. I got fantastic pass marks on my driving theory test, but my driving lessons are still going badly because theory -|-> application.
I think it's important to balance these things out.
I wish I had the article or reference now, but it was something along the lines of the Japanese aren't really that much into technology *per se*.
:0 ).
Note that this *is* compatible with the Japanese gadget obsession; because you can still love technical gadgets if they do something you want.
BTW, VCRs are almost always badly designed. My parents first video (early 90s; yeah, they got one after everyone else) was gratuitously complex. You had 4 memories on the remote control, which you had to program, and *then* send it to a different memory on the VCR itself before putting it into timer mode. And the actual interface was pretty stupid too.
My parents later bought a more expensive version of my VCR which had on-screen programming. Mine didn't, and it was *easier* to program. Does that tell you something? VCRs are badly designed generally; it's not that big a deal if someone can't program it.
The problem is that people (especially Americans) buy on features that shops can plaster over their labels, and price, not ease of use, despite the fact that ease of use would be far more beneficial than something that the person wouldn't know how to access anyway.
Anyway, just because I *can* program a VCR, doesn't mean to say I like the way they have to be programmed.
I'm hypothesising here, but isn't some of the reason the Japanese gadgets are more successful is because the Japanese aren't as obsessed with the number of basic features as opposed to overall usability? Or are they prepared to *pay* for usability too?
Of course, there is always the Shinto religious aspect of Japanese life (Shinto being the Buddhism-'compatible' other religion in Japan) which says (IIRC) something about life force being in everything. (Don't use that in your religious studies homework
Okay; but I wasn't criticising anything- just pointing out that in a US vs Japan discussion, criticising rote learning in US schools (as the message I *replied* to did) is kind of strange considering it's probably more commonplace in Japan.
Dunno. I live in norway.
Not such a problem then; you're only likely to run over an elk or an escaped member of a death metal band.
Damn; irradiation was the 'GM' food of its day. I was watching an old episode of Red Dwarf (the first one, I think, made in 1987). They were going over a list of supplies, and one of the items was an "irradiated haggis".
And I realised I'd totally forgotten about that fiasco; irradiated food died a death. I remember complaints about the loss of nutritional value, but let's face it; *no-one* was going to buy food that sounded like it might be associated with *anything* radioactive.
There's a woman owning a Hummer in my neighbourhood.
Would it actually be legal to drive a Hummer in Britain?
I mean, part of the reason smaller cars are more popular in Europe is that the roads really aren't suitable for large cars (compare with the American stereotype; i.e. lots of freeways in Los Angeles (albeit with nowhere to walk) and large roads through the desert).
If you see someone driving a Hummer in Britain, it just looks ridiculous on anything other than a main road.
Yeah, according to the article, the Japanese high tech gizmo market is driven in no small part ...
by teenage girls.
No. You misunderstand what that sentence meant; the Japanese teenage girls take their clothes off and perform various sexual acts with headless men. (*)
Then people buy the tech gadgets to watch all this.
(*) Seriously, you *never* see their damn heads. I'd guess this is because they're probably not that attractive, and it's easier to think of yourself in that position if you can't see it's someone else. I very much doubt it's because these guys would be ashamed of being seen fscking a cute Japanese girl.
The Japanese are more motivated into education and their cultural devotion shows through, even in US schools. That is probably why they develop more complex technologys and have the willpower and capacity to.
Aren't you being just a *little* rose-tinted about the Japanese obsession with technology?
I mean, sure, some of it is educational, but a lot of it is just flashy toys. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but let's not over-idealise it.
Remember that Slashdot story about giving conversational robots to old people in Japan? That isn't something I find desirable, personally.
And I'm fed up of the tech--> educational spin that goes around. I think the educational uses of computers (and other technologies) are *way* oversold. It's like BT's broadband advert in the UK, featuring pictures of Henry VIII and the like; "Use it for your homework". Of course they're trying to sell something, but I think too many people are guilty of believing them.
Teaching here is almost all memorization and regurgitation.
You're talking about the United States, right? I thought you meant Japan!
Seriously, isn't "learning by rote" the stereotype of Japanese education (with some basis in truth), after all?