"Windows is getting more stable all the time. However, an improvement from 0.01 acceptable to 0.5 acceptable isn't going to impress anyone, even if it's a 50-fold improvement."
It's acceptable when you have an easy to use computer that everything runs on (including hardware).
"More likely two years, given Blizzard's track record on meeting projected shipping dates..."
Blizzard can get away with it. They release their games when it's ready to be released.
Personally, I'd prefer companies take a cue from Blizzard and consider the quality of their games instead of trying to meet trade-shows. With all the crap out there, there's room for companies that actually care.
'Could someone please remind me if we hate blizzard this week?"
Well, Blizzard hasn't sued anybody attempting to do stuff they really shouldn't be doing, so you can focus on the important part which is making good games.
(Ah, good thing I killed the lead Orc. Now I have +3 Flame protection against comments like that!)
"Well, personally, I prefer to read text without AA, because anti-aliased text is too blurry. Sure it looks pretty on screenshots and you can impress al your friends, but really, when I have to read large amounts of text from a pc screen my eyes get tired twice as wuickly with AA switched on. Sharp edges help."
Hrmm. Does Windows 2000 do it's font anti-aliasing differently then? (no, not Cleartype, just basic anti-aliasing) I haven't used Linux a whole lot so I can't really compare the two. I'm just curious if Win2k's idea of AA is different than KDE or Gnome's?
Anybody comment on that? If they are different, and Windows looks noticably better (My text isn't blurry), then what's MS doing different?
I know you probably meant that as funny, but I bet you anything there's somebody working on a solid-state server.
My coworkers and I were going to get Apache running on a Zaurus and place a 'Hello World' page on the net for Slashdot to see. We were beat by about a week when somebody got HTTP running on a PocketPC. Doh.
Before I say anything, I want to let you know I appreciate your reformatting your post. I worked a little too late tonight. I'll work on being less abrasive.
"You don't need a great quality copy to preview a song and WMA is supported most of the time. It's no more difficult. Another flimsy excuse."
I disagree. Unfortunately, this is not a debate that can be scientifically decided. I guess all that can be said is 'some people will be turned off by it', and I'm one of them. As a matter of fact, I tried out an album over at Mp3.com. Now I can't get them to stop sending me unsolicited mail.
"The RIAA has the right to do business anyway they choose within the law. That means they they can give you music in any form they damn well choose. You do NOT have a right to tell anyone how to do business."
That's a fair comment. However, I'm not advocating that everybody should go download music. All I was saying was that I don't feel motivated to try it. I don't care if it's stealing or not. It's not that I don't want to pay for it, it's that I don't want to do business with the RIAA.
Is it stealing? Sure, whatever. I have no desire to impress anybody. I just wanted to express my dissatisfaction with the way they do business. They are extremely inflexible, they don't respond to supply and demand, and they don't care about customer satisfaction. So I have no guilt about duplicating bits. Money is not the issue. Don't assume it's a matter of my not wanting to pay for music. Despite how easy it is to get music from Kazaa, I'd much rather have a legit source with guaranteed quality.
"They have no obligation to give you what you want and in whatever format you demand."
I'm not demanding a particular format, I'm demanding better service. They got beaten out by that. If they were a legit business, they would have found a away to compete instead of sic'ing the lawyers on places like Napster.
You'll notice that the games industry isn't dealing with this problem. You'd think they'd have a much larger problem than the RIAA, but they don't. The reason is that despite the much higher price tag for games, the game industry responds to supply and demand. They provide games for rental at a fraction of the cost, they provide playable demos, and they don't pull stunts like trying to make you buy 5 games for $250.
If your assement of my character would imply that I have downloaded a bunch of games from Kazaa. Your assumption would be wrong. I have no pirated games. I have never even searched for a cracked game. I have plenty of game demos and I have plenty of games I have legally purchased.
Im not trying to be rude so much as with the fatigue and eye-strain I'm suffering from right now the possibility is very real that I will miss key sentences of your post. In other words, I may go off on misinformation.
"A lot of web sites provide previews for most if not all cd tracks now as well, so not knowing the quality of a song is a flimsy excuse too."
Not so flimsy. I can go to Kazaa, pop in a name, click a bunch of songs that are interesting to me and it'll go get them. Web sites don't make that so easy. You need real player or some other stupid app to stream it down. You have to register to get that service. You different sites for different songs. You get inferior quality recordings.
" Just because you buy cd's doesn't give you the right to pirate other music."
Just because there are a few music pirates out there doesn't give the RIAA the right to not respond to consumer demand. It also doesn't give them the right to grease up politicians for millions of dollars to lockdown computers. It also doesn't give them the right to attempt DoS attacks on people they think are pirating music.
"So, basically your arguements help show the validity of my statement, now that there is an option to buy people will just come up with new excuses to download music for free instead of buying it."
If that happens now, it's because the RIAA made an enemy out of people. If they had provided this service back in 98 or so, then they'd have a right to complain if people were downloading them for free. I'll say again: The RIAA has not lost a significant portion of sales due to MP3 trading. As a mtter of fact, at Napster's height, music sales had gone up.
"Morals aside, why would you pay $1 for a song when you can get a good enough quality copy for free?"
Why would I buy a guaranteed quality song off a single fast download site for a reasonable price? There wouldn't be much reason not to buy it if they provide a better service. Even today they could be more appealing than P2P through faster downloads and a huge collection of music. That window is closing rather rapidly though. It's their own fault for not being innovative.
"The issue is copyright, which should be respected regardless of profit/loss"
Consumers don't care about copyrights. They care about music. When the consumers said "we want individual songs sent straight to our computer", the RIAA said "Nope. You can only have over-priced albums with songs you don't want, and you can only play them on your CD players." The RIAA doesn't care about copyrights either. They're using copyright as an excuse, but they aren't treating copyright holders fairly either. If they were, then the copyright holders could decide if internet trading was okay or not.
"People keep saying they'll stop trading illegal copies when they have the option to pay for them online. Now that the day has come, they're making up stupid excuses to continue not paying."
You might have a point if the RIAA had a drastic loss in sales over it. They didn't. They've had a minor drop in sales which, coincidentally, happened during a time of high unemployment and no interesting music coming out.
So those people 'pirating' music are still buying stuff from the RIAA. Therefore, the RIAA's unwillingness to enter into a new market is based on an unfounded assumption.
Call it 'making excuses to continue not paying' if you like, the simple fact of the matter is that the RIAA is not responding to supply and demand. If you're on your high-horse because you're buying CD's and not downloading music, you are the one getting screwed the most. Don't believe me? Buy a CD, listen to it for an evening, then take it back because there's only one song you liked on it. You'll get told 'no because the package is opened.' You'll be crying over not knowing what was on the CD until you bought it. Well, sorry friend, it's too bad you didn't go hear the album on the web before you made your purchase. Damn P2P for ensuring customer satisfaction.
"Honestly, from this point on, if I want an mp3, I'll check to see if one of those labels are the labels that the artist in question is on, if so, they get my 99 cents."
You know, a couple of years ago when this started to heat up, I would have been the first customer in line to use this service in order to prove that I'm willing to be legit about music. When they started doing things like proposing the SSSCA and accusing Apple of promoting piracy, they made me mad. So now my attitude is 'screw them'.
Am I being rational? Not really. Consider this my way of saying "I want the RIAA to apologize to Apple for their accusations, and to all of us legit consumers who were never given a chance to show their good will." I doubt that'll happen. Hopefully I'll grow up one day. heh.
I think you have a good point. I don't have anything interesting to add to it other than I thought you'd appreciate knowing that I read your post and nodded. Heh.:)
"The thing that bugs me more than anything are these stupid kids with their new cell phones that have to play through every damned ringer on their phone 3 times to be sure which one they want."
Part of that may have to do with a questionable design of the interface. I bought an Ericsson T-68 and found it kind of annoying that all the ringer choices were 'melodies'. All I wanted was "beep beep" not the 1812 overture. It wasn't until I got to the end of the list that I found those.
Unfortunately, there was no volume control for the ringer. So after about 3 loud melodies, I had to cancel out of that menu, turn the ringer down, then go back and play with the ringer tones again.
They need to make the default ring volume low, test the volume when you adjust the volume. This is my third phone like that.
'Now, my experience with people who get annoyed by people talking on cells is thus; they are simply annoyed by people carrying on a conversation with another party that they cannot see/hear. Perhaps it looks unnatural seeing someone going about their business talking to noone, but the personal feelings of the annoyed are, nonetheless, irrational.'
I had an experience like that once. I was at a McDonald's having a little dinner while I talked to my Dad on the phone. He lives 2,0000 miles away so I don't get a whole lot of time to talk with him. This old woman kept glaring at me. She mouthed a not-so-subtle comment about how I needed to get off the phone and eat my dinner. (no, I wasn't talking too loud.) She just had this thing about cell phone use.
I think that she was mad at me because other people with cell phones had riled her up. I got the feeling it wasn't me specifically she had a problem with, but other people had annoyed her and I was 'one of them'.
I'm not a big fan of being guilty of other people's crimes. I take extra care not to be annoying with my phone. As a matter of fact, right now my phone is on a low ring mode and set to vibrate. When it rings, my cubicle neighbor can't even hear it. I let my voice-mail get the call if I'm in the middle of a convo. I make a point of putting my phone on silent at a movie. I don't know about most places, but the theaters here ask you to make them silent.
As you can see, I put a great deal of effort into not being a nuisance. So hopefully you can understand why I don't take too kindly to stories about how some public places (like malls) are considering the jamming of cell phones. That'd essentially 'ground' the offenders, but what about all the people out there who aren't being offensive?
Half of the population of the US has a cell phone. If 110 million cell phones were ringing, I would understand the problem. We all know the number's nowhere near that high. In other words: Find a better solution.
Are these people business types, or lower income types, yuppies, or..uh.. school kids? heh.
Seriously though, is there a correleation to the type of people they are? Are the 'Can you hear me now?" Sprint commercials having a drastic impact on people's behaviour there perhaps?
Slashdot Mirror
"Windows is getting more stable all the time. However, an improvement from 0.01 acceptable to 0.5 acceptable isn't going to impress anyone, even if it's a 50-fold improvement."
It's acceptable when you have an easy to use computer that everything runs on (including hardware).
"You mean like Daikatana? And Duke Nukem Forever?"
No, I mean like Star Craft, Warcraft III, Super Mario 64, Diablo II (I think that one was late....), etc.
"More likely two years, given Blizzard's track record on meeting projected shipping dates..."
Blizzard can get away with it. They release their games when it's ready to be released.
Personally, I'd prefer companies take a cue from Blizzard and consider the quality of their games instead of trying to meet trade-shows. With all the crap out there, there's room for companies that actually care.
'Could someone please remind me if we hate blizzard this week?"
Well, Blizzard hasn't sued anybody attempting to do stuff they really shouldn't be doing, so you can focus on the important part which is making good games.
(Ah, good thing I killed the lead Orc. Now I have +3 Flame protection against comments like that!)
"Well, personally, I prefer to read text without AA, because anti-aliased text is too blurry. Sure it looks pretty on screenshots and you can impress al your friends, but really, when I have to read large amounts of text from a pc screen my eyes get tired twice as wuickly with AA switched on. Sharp edges help."
Hrmm. Does Windows 2000 do it's font anti-aliasing differently then? (no, not Cleartype, just basic anti-aliasing) I haven't used Linux a whole lot so I can't really compare the two. I'm just curious if Win2k's idea of AA is different than KDE or Gnome's?
Anybody comment on that? If they are different, and Windows looks noticably better (My text isn't blurry), then what's MS doing different?
"1. Install a distro that actually cares about fonts. Eg, Red Hat 8."
Makes ya wonder why an OS with such a strong CLI has taken so long to worry about fonts. heh.
It's funny, laugh!
"P.S. If you turn round you'll knock that can off your desk - just a friendly warning ;)"
While you're watching the Simpsons tonight, the phone will ring. Don't answer it. Bwahahahaha
Okay, that joke was deritive. Sue me. I want to write for SNL one day.
"How about Beowulf of Palm Pilot PDAs?"
I know you probably meant that as funny, but I bet you anything there's somebody working on a solid-state server.
My coworkers and I were going to get Apache running on a Zaurus and place a 'Hello World' page on the net for Slashdot to see. We were beat by about a week when somebody got HTTP running on a PocketPC. Doh.
"So try posting your offtopic crap without your Score:2 default, idiot. Hopefully, your whining will get moderated down as well."
I didn't read your post. Try posting without using the word 'idiot' and maybe I'll pay attention to what you say.
Before I say anything, I want to let you know I appreciate your reformatting your post. I worked a little too late tonight. I'll work on being less abrasive.
"You don't need a great quality copy to preview a song and WMA is supported most of the time. It's no more difficult. Another flimsy excuse."
I disagree. Unfortunately, this is not a debate that can be scientifically decided. I guess all that can be said is 'some people will be turned off by it', and I'm one of them. As a matter of fact, I tried out an album over at Mp3.com. Now I can't get them to stop sending me unsolicited mail.
"The RIAA has the right to do business anyway they choose within the law. That means they they can give you music in any form they damn well choose. You do NOT have a right to tell anyone how to do business."
That's a fair comment. However, I'm not advocating that everybody should go download music. All I was saying was that I don't feel motivated to try it. I don't care if it's stealing or not. It's not that I don't want to pay for it, it's that I don't want to do business with the RIAA.
Is it stealing? Sure, whatever. I have no desire to impress anybody. I just wanted to express my dissatisfaction with the way they do business. They are extremely inflexible, they don't respond to supply and demand, and they don't care about customer satisfaction. So I have no guilt about duplicating bits. Money is not the issue. Don't assume it's a matter of my not wanting to pay for music. Despite how easy it is to get music from Kazaa, I'd much rather have a legit source with guaranteed quality.
"They have no obligation to give you what you want and in whatever format you demand."
I'm not demanding a particular format, I'm demanding better service. They got beaten out by that. If they were a legit business, they would have found a away to compete instead of sic'ing the lawyers on places like Napster.
You'll notice that the games industry isn't dealing with this problem. You'd think they'd have a much larger problem than the RIAA, but they don't. The reason is that despite the much higher price tag for games, the game industry responds to supply and demand. They provide games for rental at a fraction of the cost, they provide playable demos, and they don't pull stunts like trying to make you buy 5 games for $250.
If your assement of my character would imply that I have downloaded a bunch of games from Kazaa. Your assumption would be wrong. I have no pirated games. I have never even searched for a cracked game. I have plenty of game demos and I have plenty of games I have legally purchased.
Repost that with line breaks and I'll read it.
Im not trying to be rude so much as with the fatigue and eye-strain I'm suffering from right now the possibility is very real that I will miss key sentences of your post. In other words, I may go off on misinformation.
... is that AMD chips run on smoke, and IBM chips run on Carbon Monoxide.
"Translation: You still want an excuse to download music over P2P. Hey, that's fine, but don't try to cloak it in self-righteousness."
Self righteousness doesn't contain phrases like "Am I being rational? Not really." and "Hopefully I'll grow up one day."
Trnaslation: You didn't really read my post.
"A lot of web sites provide previews for most if not all cd tracks now as well, so not knowing the quality of a song is a flimsy excuse too."
Not so flimsy. I can go to Kazaa, pop in a name, click a bunch of songs that are interesting to me and it'll go get them. Web sites don't make that so easy. You need real player or some other stupid app to stream it down. You have to register to get that service. You different sites for different songs. You get inferior quality recordings.
" Just because you buy cd's doesn't give you the right to pirate other music."
Just because there are a few music pirates out there doesn't give the RIAA the right to not respond to consumer demand. It also doesn't give them the right to grease up politicians for millions of dollars to lockdown computers. It also doesn't give them the right to attempt DoS attacks on people they think are pirating music.
"So, basically your arguements help show the validity of my statement, now that there is an option to buy people will just come up with new excuses to download music for free instead of buying it."
If that happens now, it's because the RIAA made an enemy out of people. If they had provided this service back in 98 or so, then they'd have a right to complain if people were downloading them for free. I'll say again: The RIAA has not lost a significant portion of sales due to MP3 trading. As a mtter of fact, at Napster's height, music sales had gone up.
"Morals aside, why would you pay $1 for a song when you can get a good enough quality copy for free?"
Why would I buy a guaranteed quality song off a single fast download site for a reasonable price? There wouldn't be much reason not to buy it if they provide a better service. Even today they could be more appealing than P2P through faster downloads and a huge collection of music. That window is closing rather rapidly though. It's their own fault for not being innovative.
"The issue is copyright, which should be respected regardless of profit/loss"
Consumers don't care about copyrights. They care about music. When the consumers said "we want individual songs sent straight to our computer", the RIAA said "Nope. You can only have over-priced albums with songs you don't want, and you can only play them on your CD players." The RIAA doesn't care about copyrights either. They're using copyright as an excuse, but they aren't treating copyright holders fairly either. If they were, then the copyright holders could decide if internet trading was okay or not.
"People keep saying they'll stop trading illegal copies when they have the option to pay for them online. Now that the day has come, they're making up stupid excuses to continue not paying."
You might have a point if the RIAA had a drastic loss in sales over it. They didn't. They've had a minor drop in sales which, coincidentally, happened during a time of high unemployment and no interesting music coming out.
So those people 'pirating' music are still buying stuff from the RIAA. Therefore, the RIAA's unwillingness to enter into a new market is based on an unfounded assumption.
Call it 'making excuses to continue not paying' if you like, the simple fact of the matter is that the RIAA is not responding to supply and demand. If you're on your high-horse because you're buying CD's and not downloading music, you are the one getting screwed the most. Don't believe me? Buy a CD, listen to it for an evening, then take it back because there's only one song you liked on it. You'll get told 'no because the package is opened.' You'll be crying over not knowing what was on the CD until you bought it. Well, sorry friend, it's too bad you didn't go hear the album on the web before you made your purchase. Damn P2P for ensuring customer satisfaction.
I would have appreciated an answer to my question instead of an 'off-topic' moderation.
It certainly would have been more productive.
"Honestly, from this point on, if I want an mp3, I'll check to see if one of those labels are the labels that the artist in question is on, if so, they get my 99 cents."
You know, a couple of years ago when this started to heat up, I would have been the first customer in line to use this service in order to prove that I'm willing to be legit about music. When they started doing things like proposing the SSSCA and accusing Apple of promoting piracy, they made me mad. So now my attitude is 'screw them'.
Am I being rational? Not really. Consider this my way of saying "I want the RIAA to apologize to Apple for their accusations, and to all of us legit consumers who were never given a chance to show their good will." I doubt that'll happen. Hopefully I'll grow up one day. heh.
Totally OT, but did this story disappear and then reappear? For a while I was getting "NOthing to be seen here" when trying to preview my post.
I think you have a good point. I don't have anything interesting to add to it other than I thought you'd appreciate knowing that I read your post and nodded. Heh. :)
"The thing that bugs me more than anything are these stupid kids with their new cell phones that have to play through every damned ringer on their phone 3 times to be sure which one they want."
Part of that may have to do with a questionable design of the interface. I bought an Ericsson T-68 and found it kind of annoying that all the ringer choices were 'melodies'. All I wanted was "beep beep" not the 1812 overture. It wasn't until I got to the end of the list that I found those.
Unfortunately, there was no volume control for the ringer. So after about 3 loud melodies, I had to cancel out of that menu, turn the ringer down, then go back and play with the ringer tones again.
They need to make the default ring volume low, test the volume when you adjust the volume. This is my third phone like that.
"If he doesn't have his own office, what kind of executive is he?"
:P
He does have an office, and he has an 'open door' policy. Afterall, it wouldn't be good for the company if he kept all the noise he made secret.
"Literally, ten minutes ago, I got a letter from Verisign, telling me about changes I didn't make to a domain I don't have."
:)
That's the problem with being Anonymous. Maybe you should use a registerred nick so they can send you unsolicted mail for the domain you do have!
BTW, I did an experiment and having your email address without the Spam filtering will result in tons of SPAM.
I had an experience like that once. I was at a McDonald's having a little dinner while I talked to my Dad on the phone. He lives 2,0000 miles away so I don't get a whole lot of time to talk with him. This old woman kept glaring at me. She mouthed a not-so-subtle comment about how I needed to get off the phone and eat my dinner. (no, I wasn't talking too loud.) She just had this thing about cell phone use.
I think that she was mad at me because other people with cell phones had riled her up. I got the feeling it wasn't me specifically she had a problem with, but other people had annoyed her and I was 'one of them'.
I'm not a big fan of being guilty of other people's crimes. I take extra care not to be annoying with my phone. As a matter of fact, right now my phone is on a low ring mode and set to vibrate. When it rings, my cubicle neighbor can't even hear it. I let my voice-mail get the call if I'm in the middle of a convo. I make a point of putting my phone on silent at a movie. I don't know about most places, but the theaters here ask you to make them silent.
As you can see, I put a great deal of effort into not being a nuisance. So hopefully you can understand why I don't take too kindly to stories about how some public places (like malls) are considering the jamming of cell phones. That'd essentially 'ground' the offenders, but what about all the people out there who aren't being offensive?
Half of the population of the US has a cell phone. If 110 million cell phones were ringing, I would understand the problem. We all know the number's nowhere near that high. In other words: Find a better solution.
Are these people business types, or lower income types, yuppies, or ..uh.. school kids? heh.
Seriously though, is there a correleation to the type of people they are? Are the 'Can you hear me now?" Sprint commercials having a drastic impact on people's behaviour there perhaps?
Off-Topic? I was trying to relate a funny (true) story in response to a post that was modded +5 funny.
Talk about over-zealous moderation.