Something seems a bit fishy about the motives of CRIA and its not just this Canadia-taxpayer funded meal. Not only have most of the Canadian labels pulled out, but they don't seem to easily identify which labels they represent.
More telling though is this site http://www.cria.ca/stats.php which has their industry statistics on CD and DVD sales. I'm not an accountant or trained in business, but doesn't it feel funny to read this sentence? "Sales information is supplied by members of CRIA and tabulated by Grant Thornton without audit." I take their said statistics with a grain of salt.
Politician: So are you saying movies and music are being pirated? Do you have less sales records as proof? CRIA: Yes. Critic: So who tabulates the records? Is there an audit trail? CRIA: One person. Sorry no audits available. Politician: Enough! The proof is in the records! Critic: But they're not even responsibily tallied! We need more information. Politician: We're passing the law.
As a sociologist, I'm even more offended that Dvorak might attempt to make any sort of analysis of society let alone his take on modernity. I don't so much care that someone who isn't a sociologist is sharing an opinion. But I think there is a consensus here: Dvorak sucks!
I do not own an ISP company but I as I understand the profit margins can be quite low in the business once you pay your overhead (bandwidth) etc + the tech support costs.
If they want data rentention for 2+ years, that means hiring extra staff to take care of it and buy the infrastructure to take care of it. These additional costs might cause some smaller ISPs to get out of the business. If there isn't enough money to be made, why not leave? If you charge more $$$ you're left to compete against larger companies who might not raise their fees.
Will ISPs simply keep their offices outside of the US but provide services there? How is the information going to be passed to the authorities securely? More importantly, how does one know that the data being submitted is not altered? Suppose an ISP has a customer that they don't like. The authorities ask that information be submitted about him. How would they know wether the information on that customer's records are true or unaltered?
Maybe its an attempt to further strenghten their ties with AT&T and the other backbone providers who signed onto the NSA wiretap agreements.
Ok, fine.. the minimum requirements are a tad high but it probably means having all the eye candy turned off. Turn it off and you have the same system that ran XP.
That being said though, shouldn't there be a move towards getting OS's and Hardware to run on lower power requirments? The more RAM and CPU power used, the more electricity is needed. California has had its share of energy problems. And there's a limit of how much energy is to be had. It doesn't sound bad to the individual consumer buying one PC.... but there's millions of people potentially buying Vista.
Instead of getting an Xbox 360 or a PS3, I'm going to buy a PS2 this week. The price just dropped to $129 CAN. There are plenty of used games on the market. There are many reduced priced titles (since they're best-sellers). And I won't have to pay $69.95 + per game.
I REALLY like the idea of the OpenDocument format and can't wait to see it get implemented in various Word Processors.
I am a university student. As I starting my 4th year next year the research is going to be more 'intense' and I'm going to have to write longer papers. Stuff that I would like to present in a job interview to show my academic credentials, etc. And also be able to read it in 5 years' time.
I don't want to use plain text, HTML, or Tex/Latex (I've tried and its way too complex) and no thanks for Scribus suggestions.
I've been writing everything in MS Word for the last 6+ years. I don't care about my earlier work too much. But I don't want to be totally locked in. I'd use OpenOffice but the Mac version is too slow.
What word processor on Mac or Windows will use the OpenDoc format? To get nicely formatted (font, layout, etc) documents am I pretty much stuck to Word... or is there another suggestion? I've used Pages a bit but my main concern is that I want a program that will easily read the files 10+ years down the road.
Basically, his rationale is that because companies don't permit engineers to check patent portfolios and many companies don't actively check patents against their own products a lot of companies are in trouble.
Personally, though I'm not quite convinced. I believe it is a way to squeeze out the small players in the market. There's something about this guy that after seeing the video demonstrates one thing: not trustworthy. His body language and voice show through right away.
I wonder how much it costs to join the "club" and I wonder what kind of contract you have to sign to get in.
I see where the logic is going with this and I agree, somewhat. A reply to this thread gives the example of buying a used Ford.
I see software as being different. Whereas Ford has the -potential- of making money even from someone who bought a used car (e.g. spare parts, repairs) assuming they go to a Ford dealer, MS provides for free patches to its OS. So no income unless you make many support calls. So if you've paid nothing for it to MS, they still have to pay bandwidth to let you download the updates. This assumes, of course, that the software still has patches still availble.
For Windows 98 the patches don't amount to many MB. But for 2000, XP and 2003, the patches are several hundred MBs. Even when the support expires on all licences, the patches are still available for download.
That is pretty cool. I bet a lot of people don't know about it (myself included). Though, admittedly I don't do any portable gaming. I just use a console at home.
Usually in big companies, when a few products totally flop, heads roll. I don't seem to be seeing this with Sony. Its obvious in my mind that there's a huge collusion between their Media and Electronics devision (guess who always wins).
The Blu-Ray standard, I don't even know why they're even trying it. Look at how well their Memory Sticks are going once Flash memory has become commoditized (its 30 or 40% more). The UMD format is going to work because its linked to the PSP. Just not for movies. I don't see Nintendo trying to sell movies on Gameboy cartridges (they won't fit) but they just make the unit for gaming.
I have an MD player, and I must say its completely unusable. Not the hardware. The software. Everyone complains about SonicStage. I've thought of buying another MP3 player (I have one w/ bad sound quality right now), but I'm really hoping they can pull off the next MD software (and get it working on my Mac). Nothing, even flash MP3 players have been able to beat the Minidic for sound quality or battery life that I've been able to find. The quality in the MD player is gained from the audio processor I'm sure.
My complaint to Sony have really neglected me as a customer. I'm still satisfied with the product. Hopefully someone at Sony who has a clue will read this Slashdot thread and fix it. I'm sure they're putting off more people from their products then they think. IMO, PS3 is really the hit or sink product (esp if they will be losing as much money as predicted per unit) and they want the Blu-Ray stuff to succeed.
Preferably have an office in two countries. One where the currency is higher and lower Then when it costs too much, outsource to the other country and save some money.
Its all a numbers game isn't it? Maximizing profit while diminishing employee morale, the future economic well-being of your country all to stuff CEO's pockets so that they can get a "$15,000 umbrella rack instead of using bath tub." (Quoting George Carlin here).
I know Wal-Mart sells books. Most book stores that sell books cost too much. So is Wal-Mart going to sell the book? Or did the publisher say "No" to them too?!
I'm not going to speculate on your reliability questions, but I have to wonder, other than HDDs, what other affordable storage medium is there for several hundred GBs for SOHO or personal use.
For these purposes DVDs are less and less practical (reliability, access speed, finding the DVD the data was written to). Tape back ups are less practical and for personal use are a more expensive solution (the hardware cost anyways). I have a pile of DVDs and most are just duplicates of the same data for redundancy.
Fine Blueray and HD-DVD are coming out, soon. But there's uncertainty of the standard. And it suffers the same problem as DVD. Ditto probably for Holographic. And who knows how reliable it will be.
Is the best way just to buy two different HDDs from different manufacturers (to avoid a defective batch) and put them in a not always on external caddy the best solution? Is there a working consortium working on this problem? Or is there a forthcoming technology that promises to deliver (we've all heard that right??)
Not only that but the "converged" devices end up costing more than the equipment separately. And they might not do the job as well. I much prefer a dedicated stereo (better quality sound) then playing through my computer.
I'd wager a computer would burn more electricity anways.
All I'd like to see is a touch screen system ala iPod interface (w/o actually hooking up an iPod don't have one anyways) which can use to play music from instead of a remote control. I use DVDs which I've ripped a lot of the CDs I own to converge to one media esp for hit songs. Then I play it in my DVD player. I just find its more convienient then swithching CDs.
What really happened with the $50 bills was that there was a guy in Southern Ontario who was primarily responsible for counterfitting I think over 50% of the coutnerfits bills (there was a story in the Globe or Tor Star last year which appeared on-line). They became so widely distributed (network of crooks distributing across the country) that many retailer didn't have a choice but to bar accepting it. The counterfitter had bought a high-speed laser printer and had bought skids of paper to make the bills.
I should clarify though. On handing in the bills, its not that they question the money I'm handing them. Its more the look of shock and surprise - "What, you're not paying with a debit card?" type of look since probably 90% of their transactions are debit now.
I would think the one advantage that Flash drives have over HDds is they're more environmentally friendly (if you don't count the huge packaging they're packed in at retail).
They are small and lighters and take less space (doesn't use as much fuel to ship), don't produce much heat, use less electricity, and I think there's probably less wasteful throwing out a little stick when its bad than an HDD.
True. Also the pictures weren't stadardized across all banks since it was exclusive to Citibank.
But, playing the blame-game is fun!!
OTOH, bank security is a big issue. I hate punching in my pin for debit transactions. To limit my spending too, I usually try and pay with cash. The cashiers look at people in a funny way when you pay for $60 or $100 of stuff with $20's. This is even with the new Canadian $20 bills with the 'extra' security features.
I've thought as well of e-mailing the balance of my account on a daily basis - as long as it does not have my account number. But since e-mail is unencrypted I'm a bit leery. The banks often as what your balance is as a secruity question.
I don't understand why some banks are really using lame security to appeal to 99% of the population. Are the any banks accepting customers givem them say a public PGP key to send them their data electronically? Why can't more of the banks use finger-print I.D. or even put a picture of the user right on the cards?
Given all the money that's lost everyyear to fraud, people getting away with fraud, isn't it time they step-up and provide a real solution? Isn't 100,000+ cards being scammed enough?
I'd like to know if anyone has any other suggestions (never hurts to shop around).
I'd like a service which offers SFTP access (so I can run with a shell script or something on my Mac). I have a small amount of data (Max is about 200 MB for daily rotating backups). Just for peace of mind for backing up my university work.
G-Mail probably isn't a bad idea, just not sure on the gurantees for backup.
I'm also curious, how well would this benchmark on something like MySQL (assume its not being used as a media player). I have an iMac G5 which has constantly running background apps. I'd rather get a smaller, less power consuming system for the task. Any opinons?
I've toyed with the idea of getting one of these for a streaming audio player. I'm about to replace my stereo system and I figure why get all the fancy equipment when I'm going to be popping CD's, DVD's and MP3s into the thing.... might as well get a computer! Plus I can use it as a PVR box and control it from my TV.
I think the CIA would make us think they're not stupid enough to post this kind of information on the Internet. At least that's what I think...! I would realy question the validity of the information posted there.
Granted, the reporter found the information on the internet in publicly available information. Even if this information is not true, I think its more important to take steps not to publish this information found. The people that work for these agencies risk their lives to do what they do.
Slashdot Mirror
Something seems a bit fishy about the motives of CRIA and its not just this Canadia-taxpayer funded meal.
Not only have most of the Canadian labels pulled out, but they don't seem to easily identify which labels they represent.
More telling though is this site http://www.cria.ca/stats.php which has their industry statistics on CD and DVD sales. I'm not an accountant or trained in business, but doesn't it feel funny to read this sentence? "Sales information is supplied by members of CRIA and tabulated by Grant Thornton without audit." I take their said statistics with a grain of salt.
Politician: So are you saying movies and music are being pirated? Do you have less sales records as proof?
CRIA: Yes.
Critic: So who tabulates the records? Is there an audit trail?
CRIA: One person. Sorry no audits available.
Politician: Enough! The proof is in the records!
Critic: But they're not even responsibily tallied! We need more information.
Politician: We're passing the law.
Ah, Democracy!! (sigh)
As a sociologist, I'm even more offended that Dvorak might attempt to make any sort of analysis of society let alone his take on modernity. I don't so much care that someone who isn't a sociologist is sharing an opinion. But I think there is a consensus here: Dvorak sucks!
I do not own an ISP company but I as I understand the profit margins can be quite low in the business once you pay your overhead (bandwidth) etc + the tech support costs.
If they want data rentention for 2+ years, that means hiring extra staff to take care of it and buy the infrastructure to take care of it. These additional costs might cause some smaller ISPs to get out of the business. If there isn't enough money to be made, why not leave? If you charge more $$$ you're left to compete against larger companies who might not raise their fees.
Will ISPs simply keep their offices outside of the US but provide services there? How is the information going to be passed to the authorities securely? More importantly, how does one know that the data being submitted is not altered? Suppose an ISP has a customer that they don't like. The authorities ask that information be submitted about him. How would they know wether the information on that customer's records are true or unaltered?
Maybe its an attempt to further strenghten their ties with AT&T and the other backbone providers who signed onto the NSA wiretap agreements.
Surely, if this cloaking technology were working properly, the inventors would have cloaked themselves and the blueprints to their devious device.
At least I would have,
Dr. Evil
Ok, fine .. the minimum requirements are a tad high but it probably means having all the eye candy turned off. Turn it off and you have the same system that ran XP.
That being said though, shouldn't there be a move towards getting OS's and Hardware to run on lower power requirments? The more RAM and CPU power used, the more electricity is needed. California has had its share of energy problems. And there's a limit of how much energy is to be had. It doesn't sound bad to the individual consumer buying one PC.... but there's millions of people potentially buying Vista.
I've got 50,000 pirate copies to sell of your vacation video already. Not sending by FedEx.... suggestions anyone?
Instead of getting an Xbox 360 or a PS3, I'm going to buy a PS2 this week. The price just dropped to $129 CAN. There are plenty of used games on the market. There are many reduced priced titles (since they're best-sellers). And I won't have to pay $69.95 + per game.
I REALLY like the idea of the OpenDocument format and can't wait to see it get implemented in various Word Processors.
... or is there another suggestion? I've used Pages a bit but my main concern is that I want a program that will easily read the files 10+ years down the road.
I am a university student. As I starting my 4th year next year the research is going to be more 'intense' and I'm going to have to write longer papers. Stuff that I would like to present in a job interview to show my academic credentials, etc. And also be able to read it in 5 years' time.
I don't want to use plain text, HTML, or Tex/Latex (I've tried and its way too complex) and no thanks for Scribus suggestions.
I've been writing everything in MS Word for the last 6+ years. I don't care about my earlier work too much. But I don't want to be totally locked in. I'd use OpenOffice but the Mac version is too slow.
What word processor on Mac or Windows will use the OpenDoc format? To get nicely formatted (font, layout, etc) documents am I pretty much stuck to Word
Here's a video interview with him on CNET: http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/redir.php?jid=2185 46b58b244f4f&cat=52079c37c3706e15
Basically, his rationale is that because companies don't permit engineers to check patent portfolios and many companies don't actively check patents against their own products a lot of companies are in trouble.
Personally, though I'm not quite convinced. I believe it is a way to squeeze out the small players in the market. There's something about this guy that after seeing the video demonstrates one thing: not trustworthy. His body language and voice show through right away.
I wonder how much it costs to join the "club" and I wonder what kind of contract you have to sign to get in.
I see where the logic is going with this and I agree, somewhat. A reply to this thread gives the example of buying a used Ford.
I see software as being different. Whereas Ford has the -potential- of making money even from someone who bought a used car (e.g. spare parts, repairs) assuming they go to a Ford dealer, MS provides for free patches to its OS. So no income unless you make many support calls. So if you've paid nothing for it to MS, they still have to pay bandwidth to let you download the updates. This assumes, of course, that the software still has patches still availble.
For Windows 98 the patches don't amount to many MB. But for 2000, XP and 2003, the patches are several hundred MBs. Even when the support expires on all licences, the patches are still available for download.
Nevermind the fact that the job title would have to go on his/her resume.
That is pretty cool. I bet a lot of people don't know about it (myself included). Though, admittedly I don't do any portable gaming. I just use a console at home.
Usually in big companies, when a few products totally flop, heads roll. I don't seem to be seeing this with Sony. Its obvious in my mind that there's a huge collusion between their Media and Electronics devision (guess who always wins).
The Blu-Ray standard, I don't even know why they're even trying it. Look at how well their Memory Sticks are going once Flash memory has become commoditized (its 30 or 40% more). The UMD format is going to work because its linked to the PSP. Just not for movies. I don't see Nintendo trying to sell movies on Gameboy cartridges (they won't fit) but they just make the unit for gaming.
I have an MD player, and I must say its completely unusable. Not the hardware. The software. Everyone complains about SonicStage. I've thought of buying another MP3 player (I have one w/ bad sound quality right now), but I'm really hoping they can pull off the next MD software (and get it working on my Mac). Nothing, even flash MP3 players have been able to beat the Minidic for sound quality or battery life that I've been able to find. The quality in the MD player is gained from the audio processor I'm sure.
My complaint to Sony have really neglected me as a customer. I'm still satisfied with the product. Hopefully someone at Sony who has a clue will read this Slashdot thread and fix it. I'm sure they're putting off more people from their products then they think. IMO, PS3 is really the hit or sink product (esp if they will be losing as much money as predicted per unit) and they want the Blu-Ray stuff to succeed.
Run an outsourcing firm!
Preferably have an office in two countries. One where the currency is higher and lower Then when it costs too much, outsource to the other country and save some money.
Its all a numbers game isn't it? Maximizing profit while diminishing employee morale, the future economic well-being of your country all to stuff CEO's pockets so that they can get a "$15,000 umbrella rack instead of using bath tub." (Quoting George Carlin here).
I know Wal-Mart sells books. Most book stores that sell books cost too much. So is Wal-Mart going to sell the book? Or did the publisher say "No" to them too?!
I'm not going to speculate on your reliability questions, but I have to wonder, other than HDDs, what other affordable storage medium is there for several hundred GBs for SOHO or personal use.
For these purposes DVDs are less and less practical (reliability, access speed, finding the DVD the data was written to). Tape back ups are less practical and for personal use are a more expensive solution (the hardware cost anyways). I have a pile of DVDs and most are just duplicates of the same data for redundancy.
Fine Blueray and HD-DVD are coming out, soon. But there's uncertainty of the standard. And it suffers the same problem as DVD. Ditto probably for Holographic. And who knows how reliable it will be.
Is the best way just to buy two different HDDs from different manufacturers (to avoid a defective batch) and put them in a not always on external caddy the best solution? Is there a working consortium working on this problem? Or is there a forthcoming technology that promises to deliver (we've all heard that right??)
Not only that but the "converged" devices end up costing more than the equipment separately. And they might not do the job as well. I much prefer a dedicated stereo (better quality sound) then playing through my computer.
I'd wager a computer would burn more electricity anways.
All I'd like to see is a touch screen system ala iPod interface (w/o actually hooking up an iPod don't have one anyways) which can use to play music from instead of a remote control. I use DVDs which I've ripped a lot of the CDs I own to converge to one media esp for hit songs. Then I play it in my DVD player. I just find its more convienient then swithching CDs.
Damn, that answer really made me laugh. It was the last answer I ever expect. Is it really true. ;)
Thanks for the laugh.
What really happened with the $50 bills was that there was a guy in Southern Ontario who was primarily responsible for counterfitting I think over 50% of the coutnerfits bills (there was a story in the Globe or Tor Star last year which appeared on-line). They became so widely distributed (network of crooks distributing across the country) that many retailer didn't have a choice but to bar accepting it. The counterfitter had bought a high-speed laser printer and had bought skids of paper to make the bills.
I should clarify though. On handing in the bills, its not that they question the money I'm handing them. Its more the look of shock and surprise - "What, you're not paying with a debit card?" type of look since probably 90% of their transactions are debit now.
I would think the one advantage that Flash drives have over HDds is they're more environmentally friendly (if you don't count the huge packaging they're packed in at retail).
They are small and lighters and take less space (doesn't use as much fuel to ship), don't produce much heat, use less electricity, and I think there's probably less wasteful throwing out a little stick when its bad than an HDD.
True. Also the pictures weren't stadardized across all banks since it was exclusive to Citibank.
But, playing the blame-game is fun!!
OTOH, bank security is a big issue. I hate punching in my pin for debit transactions. To limit my spending too, I usually try and pay with cash. The cashiers look at people in a funny way when you pay for $60 or $100 of stuff with $20's. This is even with the new Canadian $20 bills with the 'extra' security features.
I've thought as well of e-mailing the balance of my account on a daily basis - as long as it does not have my account number. But since e-mail is unencrypted I'm a bit leery. The banks often as what your balance is as a secruity question.
I don't understand why some banks are really using lame security to appeal to 99% of the population. Are the any banks accepting customers givem them say a public PGP key to send them their data electronically? Why can't more of the banks use finger-print I.D. or even put a picture of the user right on the cards?
Given all the money that's lost everyyear to fraud, people getting away with fraud, isn't it time they step-up and provide a real solution? Isn't 100,000+ cards being scammed enough?
I'd like to know if anyone has any other suggestions (never hurts to shop around).
I'd like a service which offers SFTP access (so I can run with a shell script or something on my Mac). I have a small amount of data (Max is about 200 MB for daily rotating backups). Just for peace of mind for backing up my university work.
G-Mail probably isn't a bad idea, just not sure on the gurantees for backup.
I'm also curious, how well would this benchmark on something like MySQL (assume its not being used as a media player). I have an iMac G5 which has constantly running background apps. I'd rather get a smaller, less power consuming system for the task. Any opinons?
.... might as well get a computer! Plus I can use it as a PVR box and control it from my TV.
I've toyed with the idea of getting one of these for a streaming audio player. I'm about to replace my stereo system and I figure why get all the fancy equipment when I'm going to be popping CD's, DVD's and MP3s into the thing
I think the CIA would make us think they're not stupid enough to post this kind of information on the Internet. At least that's what I think...! I would realy question the validity of the information posted there.
Granted, the reporter found the information on the internet in publicly available information. Even if this information is not true, I think its more important to take steps not to publish this information found. The people that work for these agencies risk their lives to do what they do.