It seems you've been leading a double life Mr Nokilli. In one, you go to work, read slashdot, and lead a fairly regular life. In another, you're a genderly confused level 50 cleric named "Muffins" with a fetish for elves.
One of these lives, Mr Nokilli, has a future. One, does not.
Sometimes the problem is in identifying what's being sold. At the Starbucks in my hometown, they switched to 24-hours sometime ago. That's right, open all-day , every day.
Now, at $5 (CAD) for a cup of flavoured hot-chocolate, prices are a bit steep. Coffee ain't cheap either, but the HC tastes better. Their cookies are good as well and not too badly overpriced.
But there's the rub, my friends and I have decided that you're not really just paying for the product. During late hours you'll see students occupying all the tables well into the night during test-time. The don't kick out the regulars or the long-time table holders, so a few cups of coffee buys you space for several hours to visit with your friends. Really, when we go to Starbucks, we're renting space with our cup 'o' dark roast.
For those that buy and go. I suppose you're paying for a quick caffeine fix. But really you get the value from your dollar if you stay.
When the DNA could be carried as data in ones body, I'd be be super-paranoid about viruses. If you were captured, it could carry the 2900AD version of "this message will self destruct" causing you to crap your pants, go blind, mute, and then expire...
Integration of technology and biology has scary possiblities... especially in nanotech.
although changes to its chemistry are being repaired all the time
How about this for redundancy/error correction? DNA could yield almost inconceivably high storage values. Replication and repair could form a futuristic form of data integrity protection and duplication abilities. Want to copy your dish (petri, that is), have the DNA "replicate" itself - no hardware needed.
Petri-dish is a joke of course, but one wonders what the optimal instrument for storing such data would be?
You know what, he was asking a specific question for a specific use. I'm sure he knows about PS2 and gamecubes. I sure he knows that windows runs windows games better.
However, he wants to get decent performance game-wise out of linux. So responses such as "screw what you're doing and do entirely-different-thing-X" are not only useless, they're ignorant and trollish.
I use icewm personally, but you could use whatever you wanted. Have the links to a script which does the following:
-Take the startup parameters for the game, write them to an.xinitrc file. Make it restart normal X after.
-Write a custom XF86Config if needed too.
-Kill X
-Run startx pointing at your custom XF86Config as needed
-.xinitrc should load the game for you
Biggest issue is a little voodoo needed to have your script not die when X stops. Perhaps a file in one of the regular X init scripts that it checks for and runs after the server stops? Test -x ${SOMESCRIPTFILE} && ${SOMESCRIPTFILE}
It seems ATI has no problem abandoning the older hardware on windows, so I don't see them putting much effort into supporting hardware period in linux.
I just picked up a used ATI Rage II/PCI to add TV-in features to my PC, and discovered that it's not supporting in anything newer than Windows ME.
NVidia and others at least seems to support older cards a little better in newer OS's, and of course they've traditionally supported the alternate OS's (linux et al) better and longer than ATI.
Yes, particularly if it's a store-brand hardware, such as prebuilt machines.
Many of these that I've seen suck big floppy donkey wang. A homebuilt PC with components from trusted manufacturers will quite often trouce even the more reliable (Dell, etc) prebuilts of the same price, and be less of a proprietary nightmare to fix.
I haven't actually seen the epsons that do this yet either, but does anyone know if any other manufacturers are releasing such printers? Also, what's the price difference for a "coated" disc.
While one can burn oodles with a box of cheap discs, the more expensive ones do work/last better (some DVD players definately don't like the cheap discs, where they're fine with my more expensive ones) - but for 25c/disc I'd consider it worthy of buying a coated disc for those burns that I deem "permanent"
But why, if you've got a CD-rack you can just use a dual-disc case and use two discs.
There's a slight convenience in that can fit the single disc into your CD-folder instead of taking up two spaces. With a dual-sided disc you wouldn't be able to label well it since both sides=data, more easily scratched, and you still can only read/write a single side at a time. So basically you don't get 1.4 GB, you get 2 discs in 1.
If you've ever seen those movie DVD's that are dual-sided, they're a pain. Yes, they tend to have labels on the shiney band near the center, but you have to squint to read it. For a home DVD you probably wouldn't have so much luck putting a description in that band.
Wow... I've really written on about nothing. I wasn't trying to know your idea - it occurred to me once too and then I thought of all these reasons why it probably isn't done:-)
The lines between the media themselves are blurring. Games become like books with complex interweaving stories, and like movies in terms of realistic graphics or cinematics. Movies became more like games with the popularity of 3d... much of the techniques for 3d rendering can be applies between both - and in the future graphic cards may be able to render realtime that which is currently rendered by farms. MMORPG's can add on content like your weekly episodes or even - blah - sometimes like an online soap opera.
Seriously, I predict that smart companies in the future will merge the mediums (and hopefully produce some decent product). Think games with believeable characters, cinematic cutscenes/play, studio recorded music and more.
Inevitably ending in a wave of shit of course, but there are bound to be some real gems that shine through it all.
And that's why I think that when the current morass of same-ol-same-ol games dies down... the old Roger Wilco/Sam'n'Max/etc games will experience a rebirth. Probably they'll look rather different, but the theme will be there.
Many of the common encryption methods have been broken, or at the very least can be brute-forced by really powerful machines. Keep in mind that each layer of complexity to encryption costs your machine in CPU and thus speed. It costs them to break it too, but chances are they (the government) have better hardware than you, possibly even an existing crack to the used encryption method.
In short, good for protection from our common data-thieves, not so much from uncle sam. Of course, sometimes uncle Sam will pay you an unpleasant visit even if you don't have anything really to hide...
Basically they're saying "works for now, but it will probably be problem sometime" - where sometime is anywhere between now and the future.
If this protection became widespread, I'd bet on a compromise shortly after it does, possibly within weeks to a month. So how much would record companies have to pay for this, and how much are they going to jack up our CD prices because they did so?
I think this is where the real "cost of piracy" comes in. Not in the piracy itself, but in the idiotic measures they pay for in attempts to limit access to paid-for media.
And indeedy, the media is not the iPod itself, but the disc on the iPod - in reality not much different from a CD-ROM in function (magnetic read/write instead of laser).
Canada here, not sure how the laws are on this but: often I remember seeing ads that don't mention a competitor, but rather "30% whiter than the leading brand" or "20% more ply than the next leading brand."
Is this allowed in other countries? I do know that I'm seeing more directly comparing commericals nowadays, but that could just be the US sat stations...
I think it quite likely that terrorists don't hate you for your freedoms, it's either that they:
a) Have a specific grudge (for local terrorists)
b) Prefer not to have you touting your "freedoms" in their countries, particularly by providing armaments to various preferencial groups...
How about if the person asks you not to take/use the picture.
My g/f is a journalism student and at one time was photographing panhandlers are part of a photo-essay. Most didn't mind, one (who hadn't even had his picture taken), got quite belligerent about the picture-taking, going on about right-to-privacy, etc etc.
Since we hadn't taken the dude's picture there was nothing to erase anyways, but if he had requested it would we have been obligated to do so (the assignment was not distributed out of the class to my knowledge).
If you are supposed to remove such pictures, what about if somebody hits your car and you take his picture for evidence or other such situations?
a) Many of these camera are for monitoring. If they actively catch you shoplifting then they'll nab you... but not if they think you looked suspicious on a recording from 3 weeks ago
b) They don't refuse you service if you haven't been snapped by a camera yet
c) Many stores have membership cards to shop/get-discounts. Does this mean that it's fine with you if everywhere does? Propogation does not make something right, just popular.
Actually, I was surprised to see this on the front page of the news today (the Province, I think, for British Columbians).
Most articles of this nature usually end up being buried amongst other "lesser" news as technical mumby-jumbo etc etc.
It's really quite nice to see that not only has this stupid tax been repealed, but that the media are giving notice to it. I wish they'd do so more often when they try and slip these things in.
One thing I wonder though, as it mentions "keeping Xmas receipts" - is whether or not consumers can request a rebate on the tax if they've paid it already, as it's been ruled illegitimate.
But then we get back into the usual stupidity:
He said the Copyright Act clearly defines media that legally can be used for private duplication of copyrighted material and MP3 players no longer meet that criteria.
Sorry buddies, while this might mean you can't copy a disc from your friend, it certainly doesn't take away any rights I have to copy my CD to my own iPod. My music, my property, my right to do what I want with it (within my domain).
Yes, it's not only the taxation without representation, it's the fact that it is - in fact - a large amount. Not to me, not to you, but to the recipient. How many.net domains are there? If there were a million that's $750,000... but I'm willing to bet there are a lot more.
It's like stamps: a 2c fee in a billion stamps still equals a whole lotta money - but frankly you're getting a lot more from the stamps and postal agencies than you are from icann.
I guess the big question is, who is going to stop them... or how far can they go before somebody does?
Re:Shrinking condoms would be nice
on
Bad Science Awards
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Wouldn't the shrinking cause them to break easier though?
And what happens if one really has a large wang and it shrinks too much. You could find yourself in a real *pinch*
What with the price of RAM these days? Sorry, but even with a lot of RAM there's not any reason why one shouldn't have swap. What happens when you do overrun your RAM just that one time?
Besides, swap in 'nix isn't used unless you need to. Most of the time my laptop (256MB RAM) doesn't run into swap at all, so chances are I don't have to worry about that.
And as to the temp files, etc... if you do have the RAM to spare and you're really paranoid, mount a nice big 512MB ramdisk on loopback and a quick reboot will permanently lose anything you might not want to keep around (not to mention the speed advantages of RAMdisk vs Physical drivespace).
The max penalties, if applied, seem a bit extreme. Going with the assumption that it is the clerk that pays the fine...
up to 1year in jail or a $5000. Jailtime for selling a violent video-game? A bit much don't you think.
Now the obvious response is "don't sell the game," but I don't doubt that in some retail chains there is an unspoken onus to sell as many games as possible, or "sell what you can" which might otherwise result in a poor performance rating for employees.
There needs to be a financial penalty against the organization, not the guy at the front counter. If the desk-jocket gets the company nailed with a fine one can be assured that he'll be shortly unemployed, so it should be a deterrent to both company/employee in that case.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems you've been leading a double life Mr Nokilli. In one, you go to work, read slashdot, and lead a fairly regular life. In another, you're a genderly confused level 50 cleric named "Muffins" with a fetish for elves.
One of these lives, Mr Nokilli, has a future. One, does not.
Sometimes the problem is in identifying what's being sold. At the Starbucks in my hometown, they switched to 24-hours sometime ago. That's right, open all-day , every day.
Now, at $5 (CAD) for a cup of flavoured hot-chocolate, prices are a bit steep. Coffee ain't cheap either, but the HC tastes better. Their cookies are good as well and not too badly overpriced.
But there's the rub, my friends and I have decided that you're not really just paying for the product. During late hours you'll see students occupying all the tables well into the night during test-time. The don't kick out the regulars or the long-time table holders, so a few cups of coffee buys you space for several hours to visit with your friends. Really, when we go to Starbucks, we're renting space with our cup 'o' dark roast.
For those that buy and go. I suppose you're paying for a quick caffeine fix. But really you get the value from your dollar if you stay.
When the DNA could be carried as data in ones body, I'd be be super-paranoid about viruses. If you were captured, it could carry the 2900AD version of "this message will self destruct" causing you to crap your pants, go blind, mute, and then expire...
Integration of technology and biology has scary possiblities... especially in nanotech.
although changes to its chemistry are being repaired all the time
How about this for redundancy/error correction? DNA could yield almost inconceivably high storage values. Replication and repair could form a futuristic form of data integrity protection and duplication abilities. Want to copy your dish (petri, that is), have the DNA "replicate" itself - no hardware needed.
Petri-dish is a joke of course, but one wonders what the optimal instrument for storing such data would be?
You know what, he was asking a specific question for a specific use. I'm sure he knows about PS2 and gamecubes. I sure he knows that windows runs windows games better.
However, he wants to get decent performance game-wise out of linux. So responses such as "screw what you're doing and do entirely-different-thing-X" are not only useless, they're ignorant and trollish.
I use icewm personally, but you could use whatever you wanted. Have the links to a script which does the following:
.xinitrc file. Make it restart normal X after.
-Take the startup parameters for the game, write them to an
-Write a custom XF86Config if needed too.
-Kill X
-Run startx pointing at your custom XF86Config as needed
-.xinitrc should load the game for you
Biggest issue is a little voodoo needed to have your script not die when X stops. Perhaps a file in one of the regular X init scripts that it checks for and runs after the server stops? Test -x ${SOMESCRIPTFILE} && ${SOMESCRIPTFILE}
It seems ATI has no problem abandoning the older hardware on windows, so I don't see them putting much effort into supporting hardware period in linux.
I just picked up a used ATI Rage II/PCI to add TV-in features to my PC, and discovered that it's not supporting in anything newer than Windows ME.
NVidia and others at least seems to support older cards a little better in newer OS's, and of course they've traditionally supported the alternate OS's (linux et al) better and longer than ATI.
Yes, particularly if it's a store-brand hardware, such as prebuilt machines.
Many of these that I've seen suck big floppy donkey wang. A homebuilt PC with components from trusted manufacturers will quite often trouce even the more reliable (Dell, etc) prebuilts of the same price, and be less of a proprietary nightmare to fix.
I haven't actually seen the epsons that do this yet either, but does anyone know if any other manufacturers are releasing such printers? Also, what's the price difference for a "coated" disc.
While one can burn oodles with a box of cheap discs, the more expensive ones do work/last better (some DVD players definately don't like the cheap discs, where they're fine with my more expensive ones) - but for 25c/disc I'd consider it worthy of buying a coated disc for those burns that I deem "permanent"
But why, if you've got a CD-rack you can just use a dual-disc case and use two discs.
:-)
There's a slight convenience in that can fit the single disc into your CD-folder instead of taking up two spaces. With a dual-sided disc you wouldn't be able to label well it since both sides=data, more easily scratched, and you still can only read/write a single side at a time. So basically you don't get 1.4 GB, you get 2 discs in 1.
If you've ever seen those movie DVD's that are dual-sided, they're a pain. Yes, they tend to have labels on the shiney band near the center, but you have to squint to read it. For a home DVD you probably wouldn't have so much luck putting a description in that band.
Wow... I've really written on about nothing. I wasn't trying to know your idea - it occurred to me once too and then I thought of all these reasons why it probably isn't done
Shares of SCO stock?
The lines between the media themselves are blurring. Games become like books with complex interweaving stories, and like movies in terms of realistic graphics or cinematics. Movies became more like games with the popularity of 3d... much of the techniques for 3d rendering can be applies between both - and in the future graphic cards may be able to render realtime that which is currently rendered by farms. MMORPG's can add on content like your weekly episodes or even - blah - sometimes like an online soap opera.
Seriously, I predict that smart companies in the future will merge the mediums (and hopefully produce some decent product). Think games with believeable characters, cinematic cutscenes/play, studio recorded music and more.
Inevitably ending in a wave of shit of course, but there are bound to be some real gems that shine through it all.
And that's why I think that when the current morass of same-ol-same-ol games dies down... the old Roger Wilco/Sam'n'Max/etc games will experience a rebirth. Probably they'll look rather different, but the theme will be there.
Many of the common encryption methods have been broken, or at the very least can be brute-forced by really powerful machines. Keep in mind that each layer of complexity to encryption costs your machine in CPU and thus speed. It costs them to break it too, but chances are they (the government) have better hardware than you, possibly even an existing crack to the used encryption method.
In short, good for protection from our common data-thieves, not so much from uncle sam. Of course, sometimes uncle Sam will pay you an unpleasant visit even if you don't have anything really to hide...
Basically they're saying "works for now, but it will probably be problem sometime" - where sometime is anywhere between now and the future.
If this protection became widespread, I'd bet on a compromise shortly after it does, possibly within weeks to a month. So how much would record companies have to pay for this, and how much are they going to jack up our CD prices because they did so?
I think this is where the real "cost of piracy" comes in. Not in the piracy itself, but in the idiotic measures they pay for in attempts to limit access to paid-for media.
And indeedy, the media is not the iPod itself, but the disc on the iPod - in reality not much different from a CD-ROM in function (magnetic read/write instead of laser).
Canada here, not sure how the laws are on this but: often I remember seeing ads that don't mention a competitor, but rather "30% whiter than the leading brand" or "20% more ply than the next leading brand."
Is this allowed in other countries? I do know that I'm seeing more directly comparing commericals nowadays, but that could just be the US sat stations...
I think it quite likely that terrorists don't hate you for your freedoms, it's either that they:
a) Have a specific grudge (for local terrorists)
b) Prefer not to have you touting your "freedoms" in their countries, particularly by providing armaments to various preferencial groups...
How about if the person asks you not to take/use the picture.
My g/f is a journalism student and at one time was photographing panhandlers are part of a photo-essay. Most didn't mind, one (who hadn't even had his picture taken), got quite belligerent about the picture-taking, going on about right-to-privacy, etc etc.
Since we hadn't taken the dude's picture there was nothing to erase anyways, but if he had requested it would we have been obligated to do so (the assignment was not distributed out of the class to my knowledge).
If you are supposed to remove such pictures, what about if somebody hits your car and you take his picture for evidence or other such situations?
a) Many of these camera are for monitoring. If they actively catch you shoplifting then they'll nab you. .. but not if they think you looked suspicious on a recording from 3 weeks ago
b) They don't refuse you service if you haven't been snapped by a camera yet
c) Many stores have membership cards to shop/get-discounts. Does this mean that it's fine with you if everywhere does? Propogation does not make something right, just popular.
Actually, I was surprised to see this on the front page of the news today (the Province, I think, for British Columbians).
Most articles of this nature usually end up being buried amongst other "lesser" news as technical mumby-jumbo etc etc.
It's really quite nice to see that not only has this stupid tax been repealed, but that the media are giving notice to it. I wish they'd do so more often when they try and slip these things in.
One thing I wonder though, as it mentions "keeping Xmas receipts" - is whether or not consumers can request a rebate on the tax if they've paid it already, as it's been ruled illegitimate.
But then we get back into the usual stupidity:
He said the Copyright Act clearly defines media that legally can be used for private duplication of copyrighted material and MP3 players no longer meet that criteria.
Sorry buddies, while this might mean you can't copy a disc from your friend, it certainly doesn't take away any rights I have to copy my CD to my own iPod. My music, my property, my right to do what I want with it (within my domain).
Yes, it's not only the taxation without representation, it's the fact that it is - in fact - a large amount. Not to me, not to you, but to the recipient. How many .net domains are there? If there were a million that's $750,000... but I'm willing to bet there are a lot more.
It's like stamps: a 2c fee in a billion stamps still equals a whole lotta money - but frankly you're getting a lot more from the stamps and postal agencies than you are from icann.
I guess the big question is, who is going to stop them... or how far can they go before somebody does?
Wouldn't the shrinking cause them to break easier though?
And what happens if one really has a large wang and it shrinks too much. You could find yourself in a real *pinch*
What with the price of RAM these days? Sorry, but even with a lot of RAM there's not any reason why one shouldn't have swap. What happens when you do overrun your RAM just that one time?
Besides, swap in 'nix isn't used unless you need to. Most of the time my laptop (256MB RAM) doesn't run into swap at all, so chances are I don't have to worry about that.
And as to the temp files, etc... if you do have the RAM to spare and you're really paranoid, mount a nice big 512MB ramdisk on loopback and a quick reboot will permanently lose anything you might not want to keep around (not to mention the speed advantages of RAMdisk vs Physical drivespace).
The max penalties, if applied, seem a bit extreme. Going with the assumption that it is the clerk that pays the fine...
up to 1year in jail or a $5000. Jailtime for selling a violent video-game? A bit much don't you think.
Now the obvious response is "don't sell the game," but I don't doubt that in some retail chains there is an unspoken onus to sell as many games as possible, or "sell what you can" which might otherwise result in a poor performance rating for employees.
There needs to be a financial penalty against the organization, not the guy at the front counter. If the desk-jocket gets the company nailed with a fine one can be assured that he'll be shortly unemployed, so it should be a deterrent to both company/employee in that case.