5 in 6 slashdotters are amazed that 1 in 6 americans can operate a computer AND use it to go online. The other 1 in 6 slashdotters didn't read the story yet.
A few years back around when Half-Life was first released I was very into downloading warez. So I hear about Half-Life and people tell me it's pretty damned good (and my computer sucks at the time so like it's hard to find anything that runs.) So I download a beta, install it, play it, love it. It ran pretty well on my computer (think it was a 233 AMD K6-2 with like 32 megs of RAM and some 2MB generic video card.) I spread it to all my friends and a few days later I reserved a copy at EB, I got a hat and a copy of the game the day it came out and my friends also bought a copy a few days later.
Since then I've spent most of my money on computer upgrades so I can run newer and better games (which I usually buy, unless it's not worth it.) All of my friends have done the same as well, I don't think I would have spent 1/10th the money I did on my computer if it wasn't for games, neither would my friends. We always want the highest frame rates in games at the highest resolutions our monitors are capable of. Most of my warez trading was on IRC and not P2P, which kind of helped (you can talk to people about your specific download easier when there's an entire channel based around similar downloads to talk to). Another thing, getting cable was because I wanted lower ping in all my online games (I didn't start playing those till I purchased half-life and I really got into them.)
Also, most of the records I download I can't find at local music stores half the time (when I do find them, I usually buy them). I wouldn't have bought them online either, so there isn't any lost sales. And most of the bands I listen to support giving their music away for free, which they do at shows most of the time. One of them even has instructions for stealing the album printed on the cover art.
Someone explained this before, but if you want a picture of the planets with stars, the planets will be overexposed. If you want the planets exposed correctly the stars will be too dark to see. Besides turning up contrast and brightness isn't going to expose the image more, if I take a picture with a 1/2000 shutter speed of a dark room, no amount of brightness, contrast, changing will make it a clear picture.
...some people will believe that aliens made this face a long time ago and some other stupid stuff. If aliens wanted to make something that looked like us, so we can see it and say "Wow aliens really do exist" they'd make somthing way more complex than a huge crater with two hills for eyes and a long hill for a mouth. They'd make something like Mount Rushmore, but on a much grander scale. Not a few natural things that form together to make a shape a 3 year old would draw. Or they'd leave giant complex geometric shapes. If they found a huge triangle, split down the middle to make two triangles, where one is split down the middle to make two more triangles, where one is split... till it forms a hundred small triangles or so, I'd deffinitely believe that aliens left some soft of symbols for us to find proving that they'd exist. Or maybe if there were crop circles on mars (dust circles?) I'd deffinitely believe. But until huge (complex, and not something that would occur naturally) alien symbols are left behind, on some planet other than our own, I'll keep believing that aliens exist but don't want to bother contacting us (or don't have the technology.)
It's about the history and importance of these items at the time of their creation. Why do we keep the Declaration of Independance so well preserved? Because it was a very historic document and was very important at the time.
When a kid creates a lego creation and feels it's important enough to keep then it must have been very good at the time of creation and has a story to go along with it. When they're 10 years older they can look back and say "Wow I've improved a whole lot" or maybe they'll think back to the time they created it and say "Wow I remember when I made this I just got my first lego set, it was during christmas..." and they'll connect some old memories to it.
Kind of like my old website which is on waybackmachine.org, I look at it every so often and think I haven't changed much in the time and I'm even suprised that I came up with such a good site at the time.
And the old computers help us remember how far we've come in such a short time, I have computers from '95 that are so bad compared to the machines of today and it reminds me how my knowledge of computers has changed. I used to own a 66MHz 486 DX2 with a 256 MB hard drive and 4 megs of ram that I bought for like $3,000. Now for $3,000 I can get a 3 GHz P4 with a gig of ram, a 20" flatscreen monitor, two 160 gig hard drives and an ATI Radeon 9500.
Same thing happened to me, my computer was supposed to have 4 megs of ram but it was like a few K short, I ended up getting like 8 megs for $70 on AOL. Hehe seems Doom is going to make me upgrade again (I need some more ram, a new video card, and a faster processor, gonna wait for the game to come out so I can get some pretty good prices on today's best hardware, which should run the game perfectly)
I don't exactly know what you mean by that. The copy protection is obviously failing since he COPIED the CD, not only did he copy it, but the copied CD was the only version that worked.
The turbo isn't controlled by the ECU though. You can put a turbo on anything with a timing belt and exhaust. You don't really need to over rev the engine but turbo boost comes in at a higher RPM. Which means that if you're taking your mum to the shops, you're probably not getting any turbo boost (why would you need high rpms going to a place that's nearby.) Now if they're racing it's a different story but if you totally killed their car it'd be like
"BRRRMMM!! (phssh) BRRRRRMMM ph...ZAP! SHAZAM! phsszzzppt. put...put......put. Oh shit I have no control over my car *smash into a tree, burst into flames, set the entire neighborhood ablaze*" and it'd be all your fault for killing some idiot's car.
Actually I would advise downloading this from AOL directly. This isn't some file hosted on a colleges T3, this is a file hosted on a site run by a HUGE corporation. They have insane amounts of bandwidth and we should use it up before relying on people like us who really need their bandwidth. I'm getting around 250K/sec from AOL so it seems like they don't have much of a bandwidth problem.
We couldn't afford the Pro version of the Universe which comes with 100% of the mass in a fully functional universe, so we settled with Universe Lite which is a toned down, cheaper, consumer market version. Most of the missing mass is in gas and small particles anyway so we didn't need it that badly.
Wow you're getting ripped off. Where are you buying this stuff?
256 megs of good ram is 35 euros or less or 25 euros for some cheap PC100 ram. If you can't call that cheap, let me remind you that years ago it was $70 (62 euros) for 8 megs of ram. And a 200 gig Western Digital drive is less than 200 euros on New Egg which is a very good computer hardware site. 60 Gigs is like 50 euros. I'm sorry you have to live in a country where hardware is so expensive, but where I live it's incredibly cheap.
Forget that crap about PDAs making you more productive by keeping useless contact lists and appointment reminders. Here is the real reason PDAs exist
This isn't the reason PDAs exist, it's just the real reason why most geeks will never get laid.
Geek 1: I can either save that girls number on my PDA, or free the memory up so I can use it for my train controlling app.
Geek 2: There are girls, and phone numbers all over this planet, how many train controlling PDAs are there!?!?
Geek 1: You're right! Train controlling app it is!
If I decide half way through a DVD that I'm too tired, or something comes up, I can power off the player and come back the following night and carry on as though nothing had happened. I don't believe VoD offers this kind of flexibility.
Actually... yesterday I was watching a movie on demand and my father had to go get his new car. So I was kind of annoyed, stopped the movie and changed the channel (my mother was going to watch TV.) We went to get his new car, drop off a rental car, got some lunch and came back home a few hours later. I sat down on the couch, went back to the movie I was watching, hit play, and it resumed just where I left off. I was amazed that it would keep track of that stuff for so long even after stopping the movie and changing the channel.
Wow... just... wow...Never saw so much stupidity radiating from one person, please just let me catch my breath here.
Do the owners of the music lose it after you steal it? if not, it's not stealing. Looks like the people you are accusing of not knowing the basics know the basics better than you do!
The owners of the music lose money from you downloading their entire album and burning it to CD instead of going out and buying the album, not saying the CD's are reasonably priced, or that the artist loses that much money, but they do lose money. And you're sharing copyrighted materials with the public, not to people you know personally, just everyone, that's illegal. Not saying the RIAA is right, just that you're wrong.
What it boils down to is that companies who don't want to admit that their methods are outdated and move on to better systems are trying to clamp down on any form of progress, and punish forward-thinking individuals.
Yeah a much better way of making money off of record sales would be to stop selling the music entirely and give it away free on file sharing networks, right... Still, not saying there isn't a better way, just that you're saying p2p networks are that better way with nothing that would back it up in any way, and the way the p2p networks are now, it's not a better way.
Imagine if, in the 1930s, the powers that be decided that car companies were just becoming too big for comfort and decided to put a stop to it. I can see it now:
What the hell are you talking about... The people who made money off other methods of transportation during the 1930s would have nothing to say against car companies, sure they're losing a lot of money due to car sales, but it wasn't illegal. It was completely fair competition and has nothing to do with p2p networks today. Besides in 1930 the car companies were rather large and would have the money to fight off any claims that their method of transportation is illegally taking away money from people who make horse drawn carriages.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well so is jailing MP3 file traders.
Your whole post is ridiculous, jailing MP3 file traders is more valid than jailing people who manufacture cars. Car manufacturers make cars legally, it's like making computers, telivision sets, lawn chairs, or any other product that can be manufactured. MP3 trading is taking a copyrighted work that you don't own and illegally sharing it with millions of people.
It's a bit off topic but I think it needs to be said in reply to your message.
For example, bring the price of plasma television screens down by a huge amount and BELIEVE ME, people will storm each and every Circuit City, Best Buy, etc and buy them.
Think about it, if they sell the plasma screens now at a huge price, like $10,000 (and they do) tons of rich people will go out and buy them because they're new and not many people can afford them so it makes them feel elite. When they lower the price by $2,000 more people will buy them but maybe just the upper middle class. Take off another $2,000 or $3,000 and you'll start seeing alot of middle class people buying them, when the price gets to around $1,000-$3,000 tons and tons of people will buy them (like big screen projection TVs.)
If they started out in the $1,000-$3,000 price range, the super rich wouldn't buy them cause they're too cheap and wouldn't be such a sought out specialty item that's only available to few people. Kind of like a rolex watch or maybe a porsche, the rich wouldn't buy these if they were economy items and the companies would lose tons of money that comes in from wealthy people who don't care what kind of insane markup the products they buy have as long as they're rare items.
Doesn't have much to do with the price of CDs but remember you don't always need to buy the new CDs as soon as they come out, wait a while till they're in the $1 bin. You'll end up realizing the music wasn't very good in the first place and spend your hard earned cash on something more usefull.
They'll stop sending you that check when you don't look for a job. Or when you miss out on 2 interviews with the unemployment officers. My friend was unemployed, it sounds nice, $400 a week for doing absolutely nothing but there's alot of work involved.
You mean the crudely drawn image of a clamshell with a dial from a rotary phone on it attached to a wire? That's a fine picture? I'd rather have a nice picture of a prototype than that.
In a traditional wheel mouse, the wheel moves forward, backwards or down. This is more like a d-pad it can move forward, backwards, left, right, or down which is significantly different than any other scroll mouse I've ever seen.
I was wondering, but if this might be a two buttom mouse from apple, where would the first button go? I hope it's not around it because it'd be kind of annoying. With a usual 3 button scroll mouse the scroll wheel is in the middle and there's 2 other buttons to the side so you have 3 places for 3 fingers to sit comfortably. With this kind of mouse, there would be a spot for your pointer finger, and middle finger but your ring finger would be off to the side, kind of ackward. I dunno maybe I'm just seeing this the wrong way but it looks like a bad design.
No she won't, if it was a public place than anyone is allowed in. But it is a private buisiness, she can say that black people aren't allowed in and that's fine.
Ummm actually... if you legally own a gun, you can do whatever you want with it on your own property. You can point it at your wife, your dog, your foot, take it apart, shove it up your ass, it's your gun. Now if you shoot someone and cause bodily harm, that's illegal, if you kill them, that's even worse. Same with a car, you wanna drive around in your private parking lot for hours in circles? Have fun! Go onto a public road and drive like a maniac and you're putting other people at risk, that's illegal. You can drive your car into a cement wall, if you own the car, the wall, and the land the wall's on. But you can't drive it into the house of someone you dislike. Restricting a black person from entering your night club is completely legal, it's your club let in whoever you'd like. Taking them inside and beating the crap out of them before kicking them out is illegal though.
My grandmother owns a restaurant/bar, she's allowed to chose who comes in, it's her buisiness. If she doesn't want to let a black man in she's allowed to do that. If she doesn't want to let you use cell phones, she's allowed to do that. If she wants to make everyone do 20 jumping jacks before they order, she can do that. It might be bad for buisiness (well the cell phone thing she does, cell phones are just annoying) but it's completely legal. She isn't allowed to deny a person a job based on race/religion/sex, that's illegal (at least I'm pretty sure it is.)
Slashdot Mirror
5 in 6 slashdotters are amazed that 1 in 6 americans can operate a computer AND use it to go online. The other 1 in 6 slashdotters didn't read the story yet.
Actually...
A few years back around when Half-Life was first released I was very into downloading warez. So I hear about Half-Life and people tell me it's pretty damned good (and my computer sucks at the time so like it's hard to find anything that runs.) So I download a beta, install it, play it, love it. It ran pretty well on my computer (think it was a 233 AMD K6-2 with like 32 megs of RAM and some 2MB generic video card.) I spread it to all my friends and a few days later I reserved a copy at EB, I got a hat and a copy of the game the day it came out and my friends also bought a copy a few days later.
Since then I've spent most of my money on computer upgrades so I can run newer and better games (which I usually buy, unless it's not worth it.) All of my friends have done the same as well, I don't think I would have spent 1/10th the money I did on my computer if it wasn't for games, neither would my friends. We always want the highest frame rates in games at the highest resolutions our monitors are capable of. Most of my warez trading was on IRC and not P2P, which kind of helped (you can talk to people about your specific download easier when there's an entire channel based around similar downloads to talk to). Another thing, getting cable was because I wanted lower ping in all my online games (I didn't start playing those till I purchased half-life and I really got into them.)
Also, most of the records I download I can't find at local music stores half the time (when I do find them, I usually buy them). I wouldn't have bought them online either, so there isn't any lost sales. And most of the bands I listen to support giving their music away for free, which they do at shows most of the time. One of them even has instructions for stealing the album printed on the cover art.
Your 16 port hub and 8 port switch both make noise? You should seriously have that checked out.
Someone explained this before, but if you want a picture of the planets with stars, the planets will be overexposed. If you want the planets exposed correctly the stars will be too dark to see. Besides turning up contrast and brightness isn't going to expose the image more, if I take a picture with a 1/2000 shutter speed of a dark room, no amount of brightness, contrast, changing will make it a clear picture.
...some people will believe that aliens made this face a long time ago and some other stupid stuff. If aliens wanted to make something that looked like us, so we can see it and say "Wow aliens really do exist" they'd make somthing way more complex than a huge crater with two hills for eyes and a long hill for a mouth. They'd make something like Mount Rushmore, but on a much grander scale. Not a few natural things that form together to make a shape a 3 year old would draw. Or they'd leave giant complex geometric shapes. If they found a huge triangle, split down the middle to make two triangles, where one is split down the middle to make two more triangles, where one is split... till it forms a hundred small triangles or so, I'd deffinitely believe that aliens left some soft of symbols for us to find proving that they'd exist. Or maybe if there were crop circles on mars (dust circles?) I'd deffinitely believe. But until huge (complex, and not something that would occur naturally) alien symbols are left behind, on some planet other than our own, I'll keep believing that aliens exist but don't want to bother contacting us (or don't have the technology.)
It's about the history and importance of these items at the time of their creation. Why do we keep the Declaration of Independance so well preserved? Because it was a very historic document and was very important at the time.
When a kid creates a lego creation and feels it's important enough to keep then it must have been very good at the time of creation and has a story to go along with it. When they're 10 years older they can look back and say "Wow I've improved a whole lot" or maybe they'll think back to the time they created it and say "Wow I remember when I made this I just got my first lego set, it was during christmas..." and they'll connect some old memories to it.
Kind of like my old website which is on waybackmachine.org, I look at it every so often and think I haven't changed much in the time and I'm even suprised that I came up with such a good site at the time.
And the old computers help us remember how far we've come in such a short time, I have computers from '95 that are so bad compared to the machines of today and it reminds me how my knowledge of computers has changed. I used to own a 66MHz 486 DX2 with a 256 MB hard drive and 4 megs of ram that I bought for like $3,000. Now for $3,000 I can get a 3 GHz P4 with a gig of ram, a 20" flatscreen monitor, two 160 gig hard drives and an ATI Radeon 9500.
Same thing happened to me, my computer was supposed to have 4 megs of ram but it was like a few K short, I ended up getting like 8 megs for $70 on AOL. Hehe seems Doom is going to make me upgrade again (I need some more ram, a new video card, and a faster processor, gonna wait for the game to come out so I can get some pretty good prices on today's best hardware, which should run the game perfectly)
I don't exactly know what you mean by that. The copy protection is obviously failing since he COPIED the CD, not only did he copy it, but the copied CD was the only version that worked.
The turbo isn't controlled by the ECU though. You can put a turbo on anything with a timing belt and exhaust. You don't really need to over rev the engine but turbo boost comes in at a higher RPM. Which means that if you're taking your mum to the shops, you're probably not getting any turbo boost (why would you need high rpms going to a place that's nearby.) Now if they're racing it's a different story but if you totally killed their car it'd be like
"BRRRMMM!! (phssh) BRRRRRMMM ph...ZAP! SHAZAM! phsszzzppt. put...put......put. Oh shit I have no control over my car *smash into a tree, burst into flames, set the entire neighborhood ablaze*" and it'd be all your fault for killing some idiot's car.
Evil monsters, sudden death, are you talking about the slashdot affect?
Actually I would advise downloading this from AOL directly. This isn't some file hosted on a colleges T3, this is a file hosted on a site run by a HUGE corporation. They have insane amounts of bandwidth and we should use it up before relying on people like us who really need their bandwidth. I'm getting around 250K/sec from AOL so it seems like they don't have much of a bandwidth problem.
I think those links are wrong, I only tried the large one. Here's some new links -
Large 640x272 - 138 MB
Medium 480x204 - 87 MB
Small 320x136 - 31 MB
Or you can go here.
We couldn't afford the Pro version of the Universe which comes with 100% of the mass in a fully functional universe, so we settled with Universe Lite which is a toned down, cheaper, consumer market version. Most of the missing mass is in gas and small particles anyway so we didn't need it that badly.
Wow you're getting ripped off. Where are you buying this stuff?
256 megs of good ram is 35 euros or less or 25 euros for some cheap PC100 ram. If you can't call that cheap, let me remind you that years ago it was $70 (62 euros) for 8 megs of ram. And a 200 gig Western Digital drive is less than 200 euros on New Egg which is a very good computer hardware site. 60 Gigs is like 50 euros. I'm sorry you have to live in a country where hardware is so expensive, but where I live it's incredibly cheap.
Forget that crap about PDAs making you more productive by keeping useless contact lists and appointment reminders. Here is the real reason PDAs exist
This isn't the reason PDAs exist, it's just the real reason why most geeks will never get laid.
Geek 1: I can either save that girls number on my PDA, or free the memory up so I can use it for my train controlling app.
Geek 2: There are girls, and phone numbers all over this planet, how many train controlling PDAs are there!?!?
Geek 1: You're right! Train controlling app it is!
If I decide half way through a DVD that I'm too tired, or something comes up, I can power off the player and come back the following night and carry on as though nothing had happened. I don't believe VoD offers this kind of flexibility.
Actually... yesterday I was watching a movie on demand and my father had to go get his new car. So I was kind of annoyed, stopped the movie and changed the channel (my mother was going to watch TV.) We went to get his new car, drop off a rental car, got some lunch and came back home a few hours later. I sat down on the couch, went back to the movie I was watching, hit play, and it resumed just where I left off. I was amazed that it would keep track of that stuff for so long even after stopping the movie and changing the channel.
Wow... just... wow...Never saw so much stupidity radiating from one person, please just let me catch my breath here.
Do the owners of the music lose it after you steal it? if not, it's not stealing. Looks like the people you are accusing of not knowing the basics know the basics better than you do!
The owners of the music lose money from you downloading their entire album and burning it to CD instead of going out and buying the album, not saying the CD's are reasonably priced, or that the artist loses that much money, but they do lose money. And you're sharing copyrighted materials with the public, not to people you know personally, just everyone, that's illegal. Not saying the RIAA is right, just that you're wrong.
What it boils down to is that companies who don't want to admit that their methods are outdated and move on to better systems are trying to clamp down on any form of progress, and punish forward-thinking individuals.
Yeah a much better way of making money off of record sales would be to stop selling the music entirely and give it away free on file sharing networks, right... Still, not saying there isn't a better way, just that you're saying p2p networks are that better way with nothing that would back it up in any way, and the way the p2p networks are now, it's not a better way.
Imagine if, in the 1930s, the powers that be decided that car companies were just becoming too big for comfort and decided to put a stop to it. I can see it now:
What the hell are you talking about... The people who made money off other methods of transportation during the 1930s would have nothing to say against car companies, sure they're losing a lot of money due to car sales, but it wasn't illegal. It was completely fair competition and has nothing to do with p2p networks today. Besides in 1930 the car companies were rather large and would have the money to fight off any claims that their method of transportation is illegally taking away money from people who make horse drawn carriages.
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well so is jailing MP3 file traders.
Your whole post is ridiculous, jailing MP3 file traders is more valid than jailing people who manufacture cars. Car manufacturers make cars legally, it's like making computers, telivision sets, lawn chairs, or any other product that can be manufactured. MP3 trading is taking a copyrighted work that you don't own and illegally sharing it with millions of people.
It's a bit off topic but I think it needs to be said in reply to your message.
For example, bring the price of plasma television screens down by a huge amount and BELIEVE ME, people will storm each and every Circuit City, Best Buy, etc and buy them.
Think about it, if they sell the plasma screens now at a huge price, like $10,000 (and they do) tons of rich people will go out and buy them because they're new and not many people can afford them so it makes them feel elite. When they lower the price by $2,000 more people will buy them but maybe just the upper middle class. Take off another $2,000 or $3,000 and you'll start seeing alot of middle class people buying them, when the price gets to around $1,000-$3,000 tons and tons of people will buy them (like big screen projection TVs.)
If they started out in the $1,000-$3,000 price range, the super rich wouldn't buy them cause they're too cheap and wouldn't be such a sought out specialty item that's only available to few people. Kind of like a rolex watch or maybe a porsche, the rich wouldn't buy these if they were economy items and the companies would lose tons of money that comes in from wealthy people who don't care what kind of insane markup the products they buy have as long as they're rare items.
Doesn't have much to do with the price of CDs but remember you don't always need to buy the new CDs as soon as they come out, wait a while till they're in the $1 bin. You'll end up realizing the music wasn't very good in the first place and spend your hard earned cash on something more usefull.
They'll stop sending you that check when you don't look for a job. Or when you miss out on 2 interviews with the unemployment officers. My friend was unemployed, it sounds nice, $400 a week for doing absolutely nothing but there's alot of work involved.
You mean the crudely drawn image of a clamshell with a dial from a rotary phone on it attached to a wire? That's a fine picture? I'd rather have a nice picture of a prototype than that.
In a traditional wheel mouse, the wheel moves forward, backwards or down. This is more like a d-pad it can move forward, backwards, left, right, or down which is significantly different than any other scroll mouse I've ever seen.
I was wondering, but if this might be a two buttom mouse from apple, where would the first button go? I hope it's not around it because it'd be kind of annoying. With a usual 3 button scroll mouse the scroll wheel is in the middle and there's 2 other buttons to the side so you have 3 places for 3 fingers to sit comfortably. With this kind of mouse, there would be a spot for your pointer finger, and middle finger but your ring finger would be off to the side, kind of ackward. I dunno maybe I'm just seeing this the wrong way but it looks like a bad design.
No she won't, if it was a public place than anyone is allowed in. But it is a private buisiness, she can say that black people aren't allowed in and that's fine.
Maybe with an infinite number of GWB's and an infinite number of keyboards you'd get one post on slashdot with proper spelling.
Ummm actually... if you legally own a gun, you can do whatever you want with it on your own property. You can point it at your wife, your dog, your foot, take it apart, shove it up your ass, it's your gun. Now if you shoot someone and cause bodily harm, that's illegal, if you kill them, that's even worse. Same with a car, you wanna drive around in your private parking lot for hours in circles? Have fun! Go onto a public road and drive like a maniac and you're putting other people at risk, that's illegal. You can drive your car into a cement wall, if you own the car, the wall, and the land the wall's on. But you can't drive it into the house of someone you dislike. Restricting a black person from entering your night club is completely legal, it's your club let in whoever you'd like. Taking them inside and beating the crap out of them before kicking them out is illegal though.
My grandmother owns a restaurant/bar, she's allowed to chose who comes in, it's her buisiness. If she doesn't want to let a black man in she's allowed to do that. If she doesn't want to let you use cell phones, she's allowed to do that. If she wants to make everyone do 20 jumping jacks before they order, she can do that. It might be bad for buisiness (well the cell phone thing she does, cell phones are just annoying) but it's completely legal. She isn't allowed to deny a person a job based on race/religion/sex, that's illegal (at least I'm pretty sure it is.)