Variety of business, technical, and legal reasons
on
IBM Won't Open-Source OS/2
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
"...a variety of business, technical, and legal reasons..."
Business - We're sorry, some businesses are still using OS/2 for some mission critical stuff, we've reviewed the code and it's got some major security flaws. By making it open source, these companies who still use the software will be open to all sorts of attacks as we've stopped supporting the software and won't be releasing any new patches.
Technical - We want to fix all the flaws but it's not worth our time, we could release the code and have the community do it but most of these businesses lack the IT guys to do the massive updates on all their systems (otherwise they'd be using something other than OS/2) so they'd be open to attacks of anyone who cares enough to try.
Legal - We didn't write all of our own code, we borrowed from a few places and signed some agreements that say we can't show anyone else the code. We could make half the project open source but that'd be pretty useless and people will get on our case about not releasing all the code, then there's the whole exposing all the flaws problem, which leaves no one happy in this scenario.
Yes I know security through obscurity doesn't usually work, but this product has reached it's end of life, there won't be any more updates. IBM realizes they have some big customers using OS/2 for some pretty major stuff and if they were to just show the world OS/2s exploits, it might end badly for a company still relying on OS/2. They're probably not going to trust the community submitted patches (they can't afford to have the systems go down, and as far as they know the systems are rock solid so why chance bringing everything down to close a hole that someone MIGHT use to cause damage.) Then when something happens and someone causes some damage exploiting a hole, the company is going to sue IBM for releasing the code and making the attack possible.
I don't think you get it, I can't take pictures of 12 tattooed people in Nike clothing and sell a Nike calendar. I can take the same 12 pictures of the same 12 tattooed people in the same Nike clothing and sell a tattoo calendar, do you get it now?
Ummm... what are you talking about? Is this a joke? Judging from your UID you should know that a decade ago the internet was full of lousy amateur web sites hosted on geocities, yahoo, AOL, or any number of free hosting places that would host your site absolutely free (now these people have myspace and think they're web developers because they found a script that makes it rain matrix code on their page). Then there were places that would give you free domain names (netzero, cjb, dydns.) I was on a small community IRC server that revolved around Half-Life and TFC, it had it's own website and gameserver that was all hosted from the owners house on a dual PII 300MHz machine and a cable internet connection. It hardly ever went down (it was VERY rare, I don't remember the server ever being down except when it was upgraded to a 600MHz PIII.) I also ran my own web server and built all of my websites with text editors (back then it was notepad), now I work at a large company doing much more advanced work with websites with all of the same tools (text editors and photoshop for graphics.)
I think you missed the part where he said watch Planet Earth in 1080p. I would love to post a screen capture to show you how amazing the documentary looks. I would hate to watch it on DVD (or SD TV) just because I've gotten so used to the gorgeous look you get from a 60fps 1920x1080 resolution.
Blu-ray offers one thing (and only one thing) over DVD, slightly improved video and audio.
Maybe you just haven't seen very good content? 1080p content looks much better than anything I've ever seen on a DVD. I was so disappointed watching my Lord of the Rings DVDs on my brand new 56" Sony 1080p HDTV with my PS3 and an HDMI cable even with upscaling. It's better than the watching the DVDs on a SD TV but not by much. My favorite benchmark for 1080p is any scene from Planet Earth on blu-ray. The photography in that documentary is amazing.
But it also has real downsides - constant firmware updates and the risk of incompatibility for new releases. Part of that is BD+, and part of that is that the Blu-ray spec seems to be in a state of constant flux. And it costs more money, and almost certainly always will.
I've never had any problems playing any blu-ray discs, I have 13 movies now which isn't a large collection, bought one a month since I first got my PS3, but I would think it's a large enough collection that if there were problems with blu-ray discs being played I'd notice them. Even if there were issues, I'm sure the PS3 would download an update and fix itself. As for more money, well yeah it costs more now but eventually the players will become so cheap the difference won't matter anymore and I've already purchased a couple of blu-ray movies for less than $20 (yes I know you can buy DVDs for less than $5, give blu-ray the same amount of time on the market and I'm sure the prices will eventually fall that low.)
I don't see any point in buying Blu-ray. DVD will always work without problems unlike Blu-ray, it's cheaper, and the difference in video and audio quality is just not great enough for most people to care, least of all me.
I didn't get a laserdisc player either...
Do you have any idea what you just said? Okay, let's replace "Blu-ray" with "DVD", "DVD" with "VHS" and "laserdisc" with "HD-DVD"
I don't see any point in buying DVD. VHS will always work without problems unlike DVD, it's cheaper, and the difference in video and audio quality is just not great enough for most people to care, least of all me.
I didn't get a HD-DVD player either...
laserdisc was the superior format to DVDs (based on your points system.) It had NO region encoding and NO copy protection, yet you chose DVD, which is (in reality) the better format that is now standard. HD DVD is going to be like laserdisc, it's going to die out and the only people left purchasing the players and discs are going to be die hard fans who made a bad decision, adopted early, and had to justify the money they spent buying into something that became the next betamax.
Now, if Blu-ray were to have the spec frozen within the next six months, with AACS made optional, managed copy made mandatory, and BD+ completely removed with disks that used it re-issued, I'd obviously change my mind. It would then have advantages over DVD (beyond not exactly compelling image and sound quality) and no disadvantages.
What you're saying here is "After much debate I realize HD-DVD is going to die, I'm going to probably buy a blu-ray player and will now set some not so strict guidelines so I can justify abandoning HD-DVD"
Also, I read that AACS IS optional on Blu-Ray, and every HD-DVD uses AACS. HD-DVD saying that AACS is optional is just their way of being a wolf in sheeps clothing. You know the movie studios are obviously going to use the strictest DRM in all of their movies, they don't want the pirates to get them. They're just trying to sway the geeks who are usually the early adopters by saying "Hey, look, we're not THAT evil, we make our copy protection optional! AND you can make a managed copy of your HD DVDs!" which you know is a bunch of crap because they're going to use really really strict DRM regardless of how optional it is.
Plus there's no argument that indy studios would be forced to use DRM and anti-co
bigger capacity and 'better quality' (really, is there much of a difference?).Yes... yes there is a difference in quality from 640x480 interlaced when compared to 1920x1080 progressive. Just go to apple's website and compare some HD trailers with the standard definition ones to notice the difference. The difference is even more obvious on a big screen TV (the whole reason they created the HD format, people thought standard definition looked ugly on their 50+" TVs, and it does.)
I'm sorry, how has blu-ray hurt PS3 owners? I have a system that can support game discs as large as 50GB, along with a blu-ray disc player AND I can install Linux on it. I've never been happier with a game system before, I think Sony did everything right with the PS3 for those who can afford it. People who can't, will be able to one day when the price drops down so it's not that big a deal.
I was expecting this to happen to HD DVD, as soon as I heard that the PS3 would play blu-ray discs it was just obvious to me that it would be the winning format just because every kid who buys a PS3 would have a blu-ray player. They'd get curious one day as to how good blu-ray really is, they'd buy a disc, watch some HD content on their 1080p TV (if they have one) and most likely get blown away by how amazing it looks. That was the general reaction from the dozens of people who've watched just 30 seconds of my Planet Earth blu-ray set. One or two of these people knew what 1080p meant, everyone else just knew that it looked amazing and had no idea HD DVD would look the same but they did know that when they bought a PS3 they'd have a blu-ray player.
Games not worth buying get 6s, 8-10 are for great games (think Gears of War, Call of Duty 4). The kind of games you should buy a console just to play. 5-7 are for standard games (Call of Juarez, Conan.) Nothing special, although it's still not something that'll make you want to gouge your eyes out. 1-4, you want to stab the store clerk in the face for allowing you to buy such a wretched pile of crap (think E.T.).
You don't get it, light can go through the center, as in you can see what's in the tunnel if you are in it already, or at one of the ends. When you observe it from the side, the tunnel will look completely invisible like there's nothing there. So it's a big round cylinder that's invisible from the sides.
As other's have pointed out before, the Samsung BD-P1000 is more than a PS3, the PS3 can be bought for $500 or $600, and the BD-P1000 is at least $700.
For me the PS3 is a $650 Bluray player. I have an HDTV, I'm buying a second one for my room, well a room in my attic that's basically going to be a lounge type area with a really high quality stereo system and TV. I'm getting a 55" Samsung TV that supports 1080p for about $1,600 or so, I have the link to the exact model on my desktop which I'm no where near. Plus I figure if I preorder 10 of the systems at different stores, I can sell them on ebay and cover the costs of the system and TV (yes I have the money to pre-order 10 PS3s.)
It's cause they started with really really ugly hybrids so the word hybrid leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people (the type that buy a V8 muscle car that gets 16mpg.)
A lot of bands I listened to on college radio became huge after their music video came out. None of them have half naked dancing women though. You're probably referring to rap videos. That's really the record companies way of showing the rapper "Look how good we treat you, half naked dancing women all around you for your music vide, we're letting you drive these nice cars, come make us more money while we pay you hardly anything." The bands I listen to become big because all the teenagers watch TRL or have it on in the background, and the record companies will pay to have the video shown on TRL, then all the teenagers fall in love with it and it's soon in the #1 spot and a band I used to go see at a small bar in Brooklyn for $10 is now on all the worst commercial radio stations and they're playing sold out shows in huge theaters where it costs $50 a ticket.
Well I'm only 24 but there were plenty of violent games around when I was a kid. Obviously you don't remember Time Killers, Lethal Enforcers, Night Trap or Mortal Kombat. Sure none of these let you have sex with a prostitute then kill her with a baseball bat to get your money back, but I don't see how that would fit into any of these stories anyway.
You either don't have a high speed card, or you have a slow card reader (or you have a high speed card and don't realize it.)
I have a 256MB card from SanDisk, when I bought the 20D I figured I'd go for a 1 gig SanDisk Extreme III, fastest card available at the time, and I went with their new USB 2.0 card reader. The difference was huge, it took me 30 minutes to clear the 256MB card, with the 1 gig it was taking under 2 minutes.
Also, with the 5fps the buffer fills real quick, especially when shooting raw, the buffer clears much faster with the Extreme III than the old SanDisk since the camera can write to the card much quicker. Now I have an EOS 5D and a 2 gig card and I'm so glad I don't have to wait a 30 seconds for the camera to write a 15 meg raw image to a slow card.
P.S. High performance cars suggest higher octanes because they're engineered to take advantage of them, Ferrari's recommend 91 and even my Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V (such a long title) asks for at least 89. So using regular gas in a Ferrari will almost guarantee engine failure down the line.
Why is this on slashdot exactly? This guy just tuned his car and followed some tips we've known about improving gas mileage for years. This isn't a new alternative to alternative fuels and vehicles, this is stuff car guys have been doing ever since the first ECUs were put into cars (and before that they'd have to change a mechanical system to tune the car.) Normally it's to improve performance but it can be used to improve gas mileage also.
Yes, yes, and YES! In fact most cities have such ordinances. Outdoor advertising of the likes of Times Square is illegal almost everywhere else, barring maybe Las Vegas. You certainly can't do it in my hometown (San Francisco). All billboards have to be licensed by the municipality -- this is true even in New York. These are community standards that under all circumstances should be determined by the residents, not corporate interests.
I can agree with that for a residential neighborhood where lots of lights might affect you, but in a commercial area it should be up to the business owner what kind of sign they'd like.
Suppose the ads were pornographic images? Would the kids "tune them out" then?
I really don't think you've thought this issue through.
*Thinks back to Italy and tries to remember that ad he saw*
In Italy I was in the car and we drove past a billboard with a naked woman on it, not America naked where she's curled up into a ball and all you see is her arms and legs, I mean European naked where she was completely naked standing up facing the camera. I don't remember what the ad said at all and it was only memorable because it showed why I'd rather live in europe, they understand there's nothing wrong with children seeing a naked person (remember, a long time ago no one had clothes.) Now if you meant pornography as in Debbie Does Dallas I'd have to objet to that, but I don't think there'd ever be a law passed to allow that to be displayed in public.
I also live in a major city (Manhattan) and don't have a liscense (I own two cars though) I'm guessing you're from the west coat because of the arrowhead reference (I only saw that water when I lived in Arizona for 6 months.) Anyway, I've never actually seen an ad on the concrete but I'm more bothered by the fact that there's concrete where there was once a forest bed (or desert in the case of Arizona) rather than there being an ad on the pavement (which I haven't seen.) What about the building the concrete is in front of? Isn't the sign like a giant advertisement to come inside, should those be allowed? Should we only allow a certain typeface a certain size, a certain number of lights? Prevent it from being an ad just make it an informative sign. Also, I don't much care if my kids see 10,000 ads on their walk home from school. They'll just learn to tune it out or they'll get used to the ad being in the same place, and it no longer becomes an ad it becomes a marker.
Tell it to the makers of Gatorade or Mountain Dew. If not Mountain Dew then how about Arrowhead bottled water? Or Soy Blossom Organic Tofu? Seriously, you think they wouldn't try it if it bought them enough market penetration for their messages?
Only in the case that they're sponsoring an event or protecting a piece of land do I expect a Gatorade logo in the woods. I know they would put it on all of the cars, the uniforms of the rangers, banners at the entrance to the parking lot but no person who's into outdoor activities wants to see the forest or the mountain painted over with a giant gatorade logo and the place would shut down in a week from something like that.
don't know how to feel about it. I'm somebody who hates ads. I watch a lot of PBS, tend to rent shows on DVD rather than watch them when broadcast on commercial television, or if I do watch them, I skip the ads in my DVR. Likewise, I run AdBlock and an aggressive set of filters in Firefox. My goal is to see no advertisements at all. Ironically, however, those same ads are my livelihood. Am I cutting my own throat?
What's wrong with ads exactly? If you don't like the products advertised don't buy them. If the ads take away from the TV show to the point where you can't enjoy it, don't watch that show. If advertising gets me the TV shows I enjoy and brings them to me for free, I'm all for it. There's no harm in having a bus with an ad on the side, it's not like it's taking away anything from the bus. The bus helps save the environment, the ad helps pay for the bus. Ad's on pavement aren't bad either, are they taking away from some beauty of paved ground? How about you take a trip into the forset? There's less advertising. When I'm on a hike and I see an ad for pepsi painted on a tree, or I'm rock climbing, and there's a sign that says "This bolt brought to you by Coca-Cola" I'd be very upset, but I don't see that happening. There's no money in it because the people who are hiking and rock climbing aren't big fans of soda and that'd cause a lot of bad publicity.
... Please tell me you don't actually believe the government had this conversation:
Government Guy 1: Let's fly planes into the twin towers and knock them over
Government Guy 2: I don't think a plane can take down a building
Government Guy 1: So let's plant explosives in the buildings and detonate them some time after the planes hit
Government Guy 2: Wait... what? Why don't we just use a plan that'll knock down the towers in one shot? Like a small nuke?
Government Guy 1: Damn it, I've got all these extra airplanes ok!
Government Guy 2: But planting a small nuke will take out the towers, cause more damage, and allow us to get away with ANYTHING in the name of fighting terrorism. People aren't very scared of airplanes, but imagine the fear they'd have if we used nuclear weapons?
Government Guy 1: Airplanes, airplanes, airplanes! *throws chair*
Government Guy 2: Mr. Ballmer, please, calm down. We'll use airplanes ok?
Government Guy 1: Good, now we're also going to fire a missle into the pentagon.
Government Guy 2: Uhhhhh... what? Why on earth would we do that?
Government Guy 1: Well I only have 2 airplanes ok? I mean we should hit 3 targets just to be safe right?
Government Guy 2: But we can just buy another airplane, we've got unlimited funds...
Government Guy 1: But I love missles!
Government Guy 2: Well who's going to believe terrorists fired a missle at the pentagon!
Government Guy 1: No one! That's why we're going to tell everyone it was an airplane.
Government Guy 2:...
Government Guy 1: I can tell from your silence you're amazed at my brilliance
Government Guy 2: Absolutely... so umm is that all?
Government Guy 1: OH! Wait! We can fire a missle into big open field!
Government Guy 2: Ok now why would we do that?
Government Guy 1: We can make up a hero story to show that all hope is not lost, say the passangers overtook the terrorists and flew the plane into the ground.
Government Guy 2: But there are going to be hundreds of witnesses, airline employees, everyday people, that'll know the flights weren't real. They'll know the people on the flights were made up. How are we going to deal with all of them?
Government Guy 1: We'll tell them to be quiet, there's never been leaks of information in the past, why would there be some now?
Well it works out nicely as an annoyance. I work part time for my friend's kitchen installation business and when we're working in the city (Manhattan) parking is frustrating. Being able to stay at a job for more than an hour before I have to go fill up the meter would be so nice.
Except the room will be my own bedroom in my house, I have a 20' ceiling so I built a second floor in the room that attaches to the attic. I'm buying a few old web cams, going to convert a few of them to show infrared light for nightvision type use, them I'm going to put infrared LEDs inside the room so I can take video with the lights out. There will be a switch to open and close XMMS, LCD screen and keypad to jump to songs, I'd be able to search through songs from the couch without taking out the mouse and keyboard. There's going to be a skylight that's motorized with a motorized screen too. A 56" Sony HDTV, I'm hooking it up to my computer, and PS3. Also going to get a nice stereo once I figure out which one to get. It'll have more appeal to females because it's not a dorm room at MIT, plus I have a bar that I built in my room, it's nice doing this stuff in your dorm, but even nicer in your own home:-).
Even if you get into the car and no one cares that the alarms going off, and no one cares that you just smashed in a car window (how many times have you observed someone smashing in a car window while spectators did nothing and just watched? No one's going to smash in a window with you looking) you still have to start the car which is going to be impossible without using the laptop (although I think in a luxury car smashing in the window will set off some kind of alarm that'll stop you from turning the car on anyway.) You can't just hot wire a luxury car, they have all kinds of lock outs for all the systems if the key isn't present. The laptop acts as a key if you use it properly (as in don't smash the window with it.)
Slashdot Mirror
"Yes, I've tried Google and Wikipedia."
Apparently you didn't look that hard - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle#Human_influences_on_the_nitrogen_cycle found that by typing "Nitrogen Cycle" in google. It was the first result.
"...a variety of business, technical, and legal reasons..."
Business - We're sorry, some businesses are still using OS/2 for some mission critical stuff, we've reviewed the code and it's got some major security flaws. By making it open source, these companies who still use the software will be open to all sorts of attacks as we've stopped supporting the software and won't be releasing any new patches.
Technical - We want to fix all the flaws but it's not worth our time, we could release the code and have the community do it but most of these businesses lack the IT guys to do the massive updates on all their systems (otherwise they'd be using something other than OS/2) so they'd be open to attacks of anyone who cares enough to try.
Legal - We didn't write all of our own code, we borrowed from a few places and signed some agreements that say we can't show anyone else the code. We could make half the project open source but that'd be pretty useless and people will get on our case about not releasing all the code, then there's the whole exposing all the flaws problem, which leaves no one happy in this scenario.
Yes I know security through obscurity doesn't usually work, but this product has reached it's end of life, there won't be any more updates. IBM realizes they have some big customers using OS/2 for some pretty major stuff and if they were to just show the world OS/2s exploits, it might end badly for a company still relying on OS/2. They're probably not going to trust the community submitted patches (they can't afford to have the systems go down, and as far as they know the systems are rock solid so why chance bringing everything down to close a hole that someone MIGHT use to cause damage.) Then when something happens and someone causes some damage exploiting a hole, the company is going to sue IBM for releasing the code and making the attack possible.
Anyway, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
I don't think you get it, I can't take pictures of 12 tattooed people in Nike clothing and sell a Nike calendar. I can take the same 12 pictures of the same 12 tattooed people in the same Nike clothing and sell a tattoo calendar, do you get it now?
Ummm... what are you talking about? Is this a joke? Judging from your UID you should know that a decade ago the internet was full of lousy amateur web sites hosted on geocities, yahoo, AOL, or any number of free hosting places that would host your site absolutely free (now these people have myspace and think they're web developers because they found a script that makes it rain matrix code on their page). Then there were places that would give you free domain names (netzero, cjb, dydns.) I was on a small community IRC server that revolved around Half-Life and TFC, it had it's own website and gameserver that was all hosted from the owners house on a dual PII 300MHz machine and a cable internet connection. It hardly ever went down (it was VERY rare, I don't remember the server ever being down except when it was upgraded to a 600MHz PIII.) I also ran my own web server and built all of my websites with text editors (back then it was notepad), now I work at a large company doing much more advanced work with websites with all of the same tools (text editors and photoshop for graphics.)
I think you missed the part where he said watch Planet Earth in 1080p. I would love to post a screen capture to show you how amazing the documentary looks. I would hate to watch it on DVD (or SD TV) just because I've gotten so used to the gorgeous look you get from a 60fps 1920x1080 resolution.
Blu-ray offers one thing (and only one thing) over DVD, slightly improved video and audio.
Maybe you just haven't seen very good content? 1080p content looks much better than anything I've ever seen on a DVD. I was so disappointed watching my Lord of the Rings DVDs on my brand new 56" Sony 1080p HDTV with my PS3 and an HDMI cable even with upscaling. It's better than the watching the DVDs on a SD TV but not by much. My favorite benchmark for 1080p is any scene from Planet Earth on blu-ray. The photography in that documentary is amazing.
But it also has real downsides - constant firmware updates and the risk of incompatibility for new releases. Part of that is BD+, and part of that is that the Blu-ray spec seems to be in a state of constant flux. And it costs more money, and almost certainly always will.
I've never had any problems playing any blu-ray discs, I have 13 movies now which isn't a large collection, bought one a month since I first got my PS3, but I would think it's a large enough collection that if there were problems with blu-ray discs being played I'd notice them. Even if there were issues, I'm sure the PS3 would download an update and fix itself. As for more money, well yeah it costs more now but eventually the players will become so cheap the difference won't matter anymore and I've already purchased a couple of blu-ray movies for less than $20 (yes I know you can buy DVDs for less than $5, give blu-ray the same amount of time on the market and I'm sure the prices will eventually fall that low.)
I don't see any point in buying Blu-ray. DVD will always work without problems unlike Blu-ray, it's cheaper, and the difference in video and audio quality is just not great enough for most people to care, least of all me.
I didn't get a laserdisc player either...
Do you have any idea what you just said? Okay, let's replace "Blu-ray" with "DVD", "DVD" with "VHS" and "laserdisc" with "HD-DVD"
I don't see any point in buying DVD. VHS will always work without problems unlike DVD, it's cheaper, and the difference in video and audio quality is just not great enough for most people to care, least of all me.
I didn't get a HD-DVD player either...
laserdisc was the superior format to DVDs (based on your points system.) It had NO region encoding and NO copy protection, yet you chose DVD, which is (in reality) the better format that is now standard. HD DVD is going to be like laserdisc, it's going to die out and the only people left purchasing the players and discs are going to be die hard fans who made a bad decision, adopted early, and had to justify the money they spent buying into something that became the next betamax.
Now, if Blu-ray were to have the spec frozen within the next six months, with AACS made optional, managed copy made mandatory, and BD+ completely removed with disks that used it re-issued, I'd obviously change my mind. It would then have advantages over DVD (beyond not exactly compelling image and sound quality) and no disadvantages.
What you're saying here is "After much debate I realize HD-DVD is going to die, I'm going to probably buy a blu-ray player and will now set some not so strict guidelines so I can justify abandoning HD-DVD"
Also, I read that AACS IS optional on Blu-Ray, and every HD-DVD uses AACS. HD-DVD saying that AACS is optional is just their way of being a wolf in sheeps clothing. You know the movie studios are obviously going to use the strictest DRM in all of their movies, they don't want the pirates to get them. They're just trying to sway the geeks who are usually the early adopters by saying "Hey, look, we're not THAT evil, we make our copy protection optional! AND you can make a managed copy of your HD DVDs!" which you know is a bunch of crap because they're going to use really really strict DRM regardless of how optional it is.
Plus there's no argument that indy studios would be forced to use DRM and anti-co
bigger capacity and 'better quality' (really, is there much of a difference?). Yes... yes there is a difference in quality from 640x480 interlaced when compared to 1920x1080 progressive. Just go to apple's website and compare some HD trailers with the standard definition ones to notice the difference. The difference is even more obvious on a big screen TV (the whole reason they created the HD format, people thought standard definition looked ugly on their 50+" TVs, and it does.)
I'm sorry, how has blu-ray hurt PS3 owners? I have a system that can support game discs as large as 50GB, along with a blu-ray disc player AND I can install Linux on it. I've never been happier with a game system before, I think Sony did everything right with the PS3 for those who can afford it. People who can't, will be able to one day when the price drops down so it's not that big a deal. I was expecting this to happen to HD DVD, as soon as I heard that the PS3 would play blu-ray discs it was just obvious to me that it would be the winning format just because every kid who buys a PS3 would have a blu-ray player. They'd get curious one day as to how good blu-ray really is, they'd buy a disc, watch some HD content on their 1080p TV (if they have one) and most likely get blown away by how amazing it looks. That was the general reaction from the dozens of people who've watched just 30 seconds of my Planet Earth blu-ray set. One or two of these people knew what 1080p meant, everyone else just knew that it looked amazing and had no idea HD DVD would look the same but they did know that when they bought a PS3 they'd have a blu-ray player.
Games not worth buying get 6s, 8-10 are for great games (think Gears of War, Call of Duty 4). The kind of games you should buy a console just to play. 5-7 are for standard games (Call of Juarez, Conan.) Nothing special, although it's still not something that'll make you want to gouge your eyes out. 1-4, you want to stab the store clerk in the face for allowing you to buy such a wretched pile of crap (think E.T.).
You don't get it, light can go through the center, as in you can see what's in the tunnel if you are in it already, or at one of the ends. When you observe it from the side, the tunnel will look completely invisible like there's nothing there. So it's a big round cylinder that's invisible from the sides.
As other's have pointed out before, the Samsung BD-P1000 is more than a PS3, the PS3 can be bought for $500 or $600, and the BD-P1000 is at least $700.
For me the PS3 is a $650 Bluray player. I have an HDTV, I'm buying a second one for my room, well a room in my attic that's basically going to be a lounge type area with a really high quality stereo system and TV. I'm getting a 55" Samsung TV that supports 1080p for about $1,600 or so, I have the link to the exact model on my desktop which I'm no where near. Plus I figure if I preorder 10 of the systems at different stores, I can sell them on ebay and cover the costs of the system and TV (yes I have the money to pre-order 10 PS3s.)
It's cause they started with really really ugly hybrids so the word hybrid leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people (the type that buy a V8 muscle car that gets 16mpg.)
Advertisers put up videos, and some people pay to have theirs up too.
A lot of bands I listened to on college radio became huge after their music video came out. None of them have half naked dancing women though. You're probably referring to rap videos. That's really the record companies way of showing the rapper "Look how good we treat you, half naked dancing women all around you for your music vide, we're letting you drive these nice cars, come make us more money while we pay you hardly anything." The bands I listen to become big because all the teenagers watch TRL or have it on in the background, and the record companies will pay to have the video shown on TRL, then all the teenagers fall in love with it and it's soon in the #1 spot and a band I used to go see at a small bar in Brooklyn for $10 is now on all the worst commercial radio stations and they're playing sold out shows in huge theaters where it costs $50 a ticket.
Well I'm only 24 but there were plenty of violent games around when I was a kid. Obviously you don't remember Time Killers, Lethal Enforcers, Night Trap or Mortal Kombat. Sure none of these let you have sex with a prostitute then kill her with a baseball bat to get your money back, but I don't see how that would fit into any of these stories anyway.
You either don't have a high speed card, or you have a slow card reader (or you have a high speed card and don't realize it.) I have a 256MB card from SanDisk, when I bought the 20D I figured I'd go for a 1 gig SanDisk Extreme III, fastest card available at the time, and I went with their new USB 2.0 card reader. The difference was huge, it took me 30 minutes to clear the 256MB card, with the 1 gig it was taking under 2 minutes. Also, with the 5fps the buffer fills real quick, especially when shooting raw, the buffer clears much faster with the Extreme III than the old SanDisk since the camera can write to the card much quicker. Now I have an EOS 5D and a 2 gig card and I'm so glad I don't have to wait a 30 seconds for the camera to write a 15 meg raw image to a slow card.
P.S. High performance cars suggest higher octanes because they're engineered to take advantage of them, Ferrari's recommend 91 and even my Nissan Sentra SE-R Spec V (such a long title) asks for at least 89. So using regular gas in a Ferrari will almost guarantee engine failure down the line.
Why is this on slashdot exactly? This guy just tuned his car and followed some tips we've known about improving gas mileage for years. This isn't a new alternative to alternative fuels and vehicles, this is stuff car guys have been doing ever since the first ECUs were put into cars (and before that they'd have to change a mechanical system to tune the car.) Normally it's to improve performance but it can be used to improve gas mileage also.
Yes, yes, and YES! In fact most cities have such ordinances. Outdoor advertising of the likes of Times Square is illegal almost everywhere else, barring maybe Las Vegas. You certainly can't do it in my hometown (San Francisco). All billboards have to be licensed by the municipality -- this is true even in New York. These are community standards that under all circumstances should be determined by the residents, not corporate interests.
I can agree with that for a residential neighborhood where lots of lights might affect you, but in a commercial area it should be up to the business owner what kind of sign they'd like.
Suppose the ads were pornographic images? Would the kids "tune them out" then? I really don't think you've thought this issue through.
*Thinks back to Italy and tries to remember that ad he saw*
In Italy I was in the car and we drove past a billboard with a naked woman on it, not America naked where she's curled up into a ball and all you see is her arms and legs, I mean European naked where she was completely naked standing up facing the camera. I don't remember what the ad said at all and it was only memorable because it showed why I'd rather live in europe, they understand there's nothing wrong with children seeing a naked person (remember, a long time ago no one had clothes.) Now if you meant pornography as in Debbie Does Dallas I'd have to objet to that, but I don't think there'd ever be a law passed to allow that to be displayed in public.
I also live in a major city (Manhattan) and don't have a liscense (I own two cars though) I'm guessing you're from the west coat because of the arrowhead reference (I only saw that water when I lived in Arizona for 6 months.) Anyway, I've never actually seen an ad on the concrete but I'm more bothered by the fact that there's concrete where there was once a forest bed (or desert in the case of Arizona) rather than there being an ad on the pavement (which I haven't seen.) What about the building the concrete is in front of? Isn't the sign like a giant advertisement to come inside, should those be allowed? Should we only allow a certain typeface a certain size, a certain number of lights? Prevent it from being an ad just make it an informative sign. Also, I don't much care if my kids see 10,000 ads on their walk home from school. They'll just learn to tune it out or they'll get used to the ad being in the same place, and it no longer becomes an ad it becomes a marker.
Tell it to the makers of Gatorade or Mountain Dew. If not Mountain Dew then how about Arrowhead bottled water? Or Soy Blossom Organic Tofu? Seriously, you think they wouldn't try it if it bought them enough market penetration for their messages?
Only in the case that they're sponsoring an event or protecting a piece of land do I expect a Gatorade logo in the woods. I know they would put it on all of the cars, the uniforms of the rangers, banners at the entrance to the parking lot but no person who's into outdoor activities wants to see the forest or the mountain painted over with a giant gatorade logo and the place would shut down in a week from something like that.
don't know how to feel about it. I'm somebody who hates ads. I watch a lot of PBS, tend to rent shows on DVD rather than watch them when broadcast on commercial television, or if I do watch them, I skip the ads in my DVR. Likewise, I run AdBlock and an aggressive set of filters in Firefox. My goal is to see no advertisements at all. Ironically, however, those same ads are my livelihood. Am I cutting my own throat?
What's wrong with ads exactly? If you don't like the products advertised don't buy them. If the ads take away from the TV show to the point where you can't enjoy it, don't watch that show. If advertising gets me the TV shows I enjoy and brings them to me for free, I'm all for it. There's no harm in having a bus with an ad on the side, it's not like it's taking away anything from the bus. The bus helps save the environment, the ad helps pay for the bus. Ad's on pavement aren't bad either, are they taking away from some beauty of paved ground? How about you take a trip into the forset? There's less advertising. When I'm on a hike and I see an ad for pepsi painted on a tree, or I'm rock climbing, and there's a sign that says "This bolt brought to you by Coca-Cola" I'd be very upset, but I don't see that happening. There's no money in it because the people who are hiking and rock climbing aren't big fans of soda and that'd cause a lot of bad publicity.
... Please tell me you don't actually believe the government had this conversation:
...
Government Guy 1: Let's fly planes into the twin towers and knock them over
Government Guy 2: I don't think a plane can take down a building
Government Guy 1: So let's plant explosives in the buildings and detonate them some time after the planes hit
Government Guy 2: Wait... what? Why don't we just use a plan that'll knock down the towers in one shot? Like a small nuke?
Government Guy 1: Damn it, I've got all these extra airplanes ok!
Government Guy 2: But planting a small nuke will take out the towers, cause more damage, and allow us to get away with ANYTHING in the name of fighting terrorism. People aren't very scared of airplanes, but imagine the fear they'd have if we used nuclear weapons?
Government Guy 1: Airplanes, airplanes, airplanes! *throws chair*
Government Guy 2: Mr. Ballmer, please, calm down. We'll use airplanes ok?
Government Guy 1: Good, now we're also going to fire a missle into the pentagon.
Government Guy 2: Uhhhhh... what? Why on earth would we do that?
Government Guy 1: Well I only have 2 airplanes ok? I mean we should hit 3 targets just to be safe right?
Government Guy 2: But we can just buy another airplane, we've got unlimited funds...
Government Guy 1: But I love missles!
Government Guy 2: Well who's going to believe terrorists fired a missle at the pentagon!
Government Guy 1: No one! That's why we're going to tell everyone it was an airplane.
Government Guy 2:
Government Guy 1: I can tell from your silence you're amazed at my brilliance
Government Guy 2: Absolutely... so umm is that all?
Government Guy 1: OH! Wait! We can fire a missle into big open field!
Government Guy 2: Ok now why would we do that?
Government Guy 1: We can make up a hero story to show that all hope is not lost, say the passangers overtook the terrorists and flew the plane into the ground.
Government Guy 2: But there are going to be hundreds of witnesses, airline employees, everyday people, that'll know the flights weren't real. They'll know the people on the flights were made up. How are we going to deal with all of them?
Government Guy 1: We'll tell them to be quiet, there's never been leaks of information in the past, why would there be some now?
Well it works out nicely as an annoyance. I work part time for my friend's kitchen installation business and when we're working in the city (Manhattan) parking is frustrating. Being able to stay at a job for more than an hour before I have to go fill up the meter would be so nice.
Except the room will be my own bedroom in my house, I have a 20' ceiling so I built a second floor in the room that attaches to the attic. I'm buying a few old web cams, going to convert a few of them to show infrared light for nightvision type use, them I'm going to put infrared LEDs inside the room so I can take video with the lights out. There will be a switch to open and close XMMS, LCD screen and keypad to jump to songs, I'd be able to search through songs from the couch without taking out the mouse and keyboard. There's going to be a skylight that's motorized with a motorized screen too. A 56" Sony HDTV, I'm hooking it up to my computer, and PS3. Also going to get a nice stereo once I figure out which one to get. It'll have more appeal to females because it's not a dorm room at MIT, plus I have a bar that I built in my room, it's nice doing this stuff in your dorm, but even nicer in your own home :-).
Even if you get into the car and no one cares that the alarms going off, and no one cares that you just smashed in a car window (how many times have you observed someone smashing in a car window while spectators did nothing and just watched? No one's going to smash in a window with you looking) you still have to start the car which is going to be impossible without using the laptop (although I think in a luxury car smashing in the window will set off some kind of alarm that'll stop you from turning the car on anyway.) You can't just hot wire a luxury car, they have all kinds of lock outs for all the systems if the key isn't present. The laptop acts as a key if you use it properly (as in don't smash the window with it.)