Say you're travelling on a single lane road with two-way traffic. The limit is 70, and you come up behind a truck doing 68. Your relative speed on overtaking is therefore 2mph, so in order to cover, say the 100 (relative) yards to overtake the truck you would have to be on the opposite side of the road, facing oncoming traffic, for getting on for two minutes. During this time you would have travelled rather more than a mile (relative to the Earth, as opposed to the truck). As few roads in the UK are empty enough or straight enough for anybody to be able to do this, overtaking will become impossible/fatal, and the government will no doubt then begin scratching heads about why the number of head-on collisions has been climbing.
I don't think it is the fact of storing or copying the files that Real objects to. It is the transfer into another file format. Real bases its business on providing content in their file format. If said content can easily be converted to another format (like MP3) then they lose a competitive advantage in their eyes.
They sign contracts to have content available in their format. The fact that WIMP can play it back may be bad, but if the content provider goes to WIMP format then they lose money on both the format and playback. To a businessman it is intolerable that somebody could take their content, convert it to another format, and listen to it using a competitor's product. If such practice happened often enough they'd be out of business in the medium to long term. Since this is Real's only business they call the lawyers.
Microsoft will probably do the same if somebody converts their format to MP3 and it threatens to gain popular appeal.
I think Real will still lose. Although why such a crappy product succeeded in the first place is beyond me.
"...after all the next big thing on the Net will be high-bandwidth audio/video streams and a gradual convergence with TV, radio and telephone."
And notice how the other day Gates parroted Jobs about not wanting to create content, but merely provide the tools for its creation? And what do you think those tools will write?
I do agree strongly with your first paragraph though...
Well, actually developing distance learning courses for web delivery.
My employer has not decided on a technical standards set for our audio tracks in courses. I'm advocating Quicktime, which has good Mac support, decent Windows support, and appears to have the streamer ported to Linux (not sure of players since we don't have Linux customers yet). We don't pay a server tax and we get generally the same level of playback on our customer's platforms (90+% Win and ~5% Mac). But we're an NT only ('cept me) shop in house and I fear Real Player of WiMP will be chosen as standard.
I was wondering what people would like to see used in Distance Learning audio and video content.
Re:I really dislike this sort of article
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WTO + SDMI = NWO
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· Score: 1
Even if I were to agree with everything you said, why must I succomb to this? Why can't I have the option of not being in either system?
To survive in history you need one of two things: guns or money. Neither is a guaranteed winner and it is better to have both, but you need one or the other.
The thing about globalization is that it is an increase in vertical hierarchies. The common person has no means to change the system to his benefit. I may have some tenuous ability to change my country in the US, but it is many times more than some transnational corporation or international gov't agency.
nope. blink is a CSS spec. IE4.5 on Mac doesn't support it and I don't think it is supported on IE5 on PC either.
Not that blink is critical. But the original poster's gist - CSS standards are poorly or not even fully implemented on the leading edge browsers, is valid and causes no end of consternation to me.
Maybe not hospitals if the wireless protocol does indeed harm equipment (I'll defer to others that actually know such things). I'd like the wireless protocol to be a standard. I got the impression it was a standard based on headsets, not the one Apple's Airport is based on.
I think Doctor's offices would be game though. Not so much equipment to be affected in most exam rooms. Also manufacturing lines, especially in the QC phase. Demo meetings, prototype mockups (the image looked like a computer generated image rather than a photo) or even school lessons. Imagine being able to view that animation on your own screen rather than straining to see a far away monitor.
Also good for adding data into a database using forms. Customer Service reps, helpdesks etc could use this to log problems and possibly get recommended action without being stuck at the desk.
Just some ideas. I hope somebody can come out with one for under $200 in the next few years.
This is a chicken or the egg argument. Except that as others have said, there is no widespread support for PNG. IE on the PC supports it, more or less. It doesn't exist as far as IE Mac is concerned. Some versions of Netscape 4 (4.03 IIRC) support it, but it is buggy across platforms and versions. And of course, there is no animated version (MPNG isn't even finalized AFAIK).
Now, if you are a major site are you going to risk alienating your audience and advertisers with content your viewers cannot access, simply because some misunderstood argument about patent enforcement is being bandied about? I don't think so. You won't be a major site for long.
My volunteer group ran this last Friday as part of a Miyzaki film festival (only 8 cities in the US ran this festival).
Mononoke sold out (IIRC the theater only held like 200-250 people).
As part of Buena Vista's distribution deal with Studio Ghibli, they CANNOT edit any of Miyazaki's work. Unlike his other work Mononoke is seen as more mature, so it is actually being distributed by Miramax.
While unable to see Mononoke, I did see My neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso (been waiting years for that), and Laupta: castle in the Sky. All were very good.
Typical themes are female child/adolescent protagonists, change thru conflict (often nature vs man), and a notable abscence of good vs evil. Miyazaki is a big flight buff as well and you see a lot of that in several of his films.
As mentioned before, his films can run over 2 hours, but they are paced really well and a good mix of plot and characterizations.
That said, I get to see a sneak preview Wednsday and hear Gaiman speak afterward!
Another common tactic is to "misfile" or "mislabel" pertinent information in an attempt to keep it secret. Sometime under the Bush regime, there were LOTS of documents declassified or released thru FOI but since they removed all document classification/labeling systems reviewers had to pore over ALL of them to figure out what was actually in them and any kind of relationship between documents.
And the October issue over at fas.org mentioned examples of CIA declassfied documents (required by law) were routine things like document check out requests, performance reviews etc.
I start a new job on Nov 1. I pushed hard to have a new Mac instead of a Gateway running NT. Now I do not know if I will get a Mac, but will be stuck with NT simply because Apple cannot fill orders for G4s, iBooks, and maybe even iMacs. I might be able to use an old 8600 laying around, but frankly, I was looking forward to being able to use a new Mac. Given that I will immediatly have a project with a strict deadline after I start, I know my new employer simply cannot wait for Apple to get it's act in gear. And I know that if I get that NT box, I'll never get a Mac. So what do I do? Use the old 8600 (released circa 96)? I suppose I could take out another loan for a new Mac and wait for it to come in. But most likely, I'll probably cart my G3 to my new job on public transportation.
If only I could talk them into a Powerbook and external monitor....
All these complaints about technology overcoming some mythical golden age are merely signs that have been repeated throughout the last 100 years. Think about it, technology is employed to control decision making processes. By that I mean it is used to facilitate the gathering and dissemination of information (Which is required for decisions to be made) and production. The techniques had their roots in the Industrial Revolution with the American System of manufacture (Taylorism), continuous processign of materials, efficient plant design, cost control, time studies, scientific management etc. These were all systems that look to use information in order to control distribution, consumption and production.
The continued evolution of mass communications, combined with increases in production and distribution, have reached the point where there is very little time required for significant changes in any one of these fields to have a large impact in the other two. So what we are seeing today and some are lamenting, is merely a continuation of things that have happened since the Industrial Revolution. The fact that some feel they have lost control is due in part to the fact that there is no one person making decisions. It is a large non-personal entity that gathers all information available, processes it and then makes a decision based on the available information.
Computers merely make the process faster than humans can. Even today the stock market has to slow down through artifical limits simply becuase the computers process the information faster than humans, which can cause wildly erratic changes in the economy. And yet, people try to compete hoping to get a competitive advantage over somebody else in order to benefit through some real or imagined gain.
And this isn't something that is new either. Many people realized this and put their own view on it. Look at Babbage! The rise of the information class and information workers was seen in 1958, McLuhan (patron saint of the pre-Conde-Nast Wired) saw a global village based on mass media in 1964. Corporate control from Galbraith in the 60s, Brzezinski's technetronic era (1970?) Toffler etc etc.
Its in human nature to control. Its just that right now the means to control production, distribution and consumption of materials is faster and more interdependent than ever. It also depends on a centralized means of gathering information. In 1984 the top 5 information-processing equipment manufacturers were IBM, Digital Equipment, Burroughs, Control Data and NCR. Guess who were the 5 largest in 1928? Remington Rand, National Cash Register (NCR), Burroughs, IBM, and Underwod Elliot Fisher.
In a news flash today the producers of the hit show "Dukes of Hazzard" say the stars who play "Bo" and "Luke Duke" are leaving the show. The producers say the show will go on with two new characters, apropriately enough, cousins, who will be named "Coy" and "Vance". After all, it is the innovative plots that weekly drive the show and not the characters according to unnamed CBS executives.
But can the future Coy and Vance continue to jump the General Lee over all the Friday night Prime Time competition? Time will tell.
Tom Wopat and John Schneider refused to comment, but sources believe they may return for annual weekly movies. Other executives point to the failure of the spin off show "Enos", to generate enough interest and viewers to justify continuation of the popular action series with its main stars gone, but where there's a chance to make money, Hollywood will give anything a try.
Yep. Your (Massachusetts) tax dollars at work going to finance MS patents. You think MIT or the State of Massachusetts will see any of the profits generated from MS? About as likely as Sematech giving the US gov't some of their profits after the US gov't subsidized them in the late 80s.
It'll be the default shipping look on all OSs. I really dislike that, but the Mozilla team feels that such an approach makes the widgets consistent cross platform, which they think is good.
However, since Mozilla uses XUL to define the interface and a CSS file to control the text display, you can modify the look to just about anything you want. I'm going to wait until this thing is finally beta, but after that I'll figure out how to make these skins, 'cuz the default look just sucks. (Note there are some other skins available on mozillazine.org, but I never got them to run on my Mac build).
I'd expect a bunch of people to create skins once the product is beyond the alpha stage. A set of tools would be sweet, but it shouldn't be necessary.
HTH, and that it gets moderated up as "helpful".;P
It'll be the default shipping look on all OSs. I really dislike that, but the Mozilla team feels that such an approach makes the widgets consistent cross platform, which they think is good.
However, since Mozilla uses XUL to define the interface and a CSS file to control the text display, you can modify the look to just about anything you want. I'm going to wait until this thing is finally beta, but after that I'll figure out how to make these skins, 'cuz the default look just sucks. (Note there are some other skins available on mozilazine.org, but I never got them to run on my Mac build).
I'd expect a bunch of people to create skins once the product is beyond the alpha stage. A set of tools would be sweet, but it shouldn't be necessary.
HTH, and that it gets moderated up as "helpful".;P
It is innate to man to attempt to control his environment, particularly in the West where there is deep rooted conflict between man and nature. Man always has to overcome nature, usually by dissecting and trying to make sense of it, then trying to perfect it. The fall of Newtonian physics didn't stop this and I am sure the rise of 20th century capitalism and advertising wouldn't let it go either.
An interesting parallel is from ancient China. In ancient China there was a period in which massive amounts of Buddhist texts flourished. In fact there were so many texts that no one person could possibly handle all that information. So what happened? Specialization. Monks and scholars specialized in studying the writings of a particular scholar, priest or school. One person may be very schooled in Tendai, but totally ignorant in Pure Land school thought for example. And yet, with all this knowledge the people were still not being enlightened, which was the goal. It wasn't long before a reaction among some followers occured that praised simplicity and intent, rather than the words of "experts" and others. And yet, Buddhism is not gone, did not suffer a cataclysmic loss. It continued to grow in its own way building upon its past. And this happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago!
Is society more complex now than it used to be? Absolutely. Is it organized into more specialized constructs? Possibly. What is the result of this complexity? Do people have to turn ever increasingly to experts to attempt to solve their problems? That would certainly result in a feelings of helplessness.
Perhaps if people could just turn off advertising they wouldn't believe that spending money would solve their problems. But, in Western society this is not an option and people will continue to turn to the "experts" rather than think for themselves and rationalize what is truly important or necessary. When that happens you'll be on the path to wisdom.
Looking at: http://www.google.com/why_use.html and jumping down to the section titled "PageRank Explained" breaks my heart. If I read this correctly, Google will merely send more people to the big sites. Why?
Given Google's method of site ranking the vast majority of people will only go to the big sites. Because Google's results are based on the number of links to a page combined with the importance of the linking pages, you'll see pages with lots of links to them always appearing at the top of the results. Now, who has the most number of links pointing to them? Primarily sites run by big businesses or professional organizations. Given that most traffic is increasingly centralized on a smaller number of web sites I find this disturbing.
Now given that the vast majority of people never bother going to a second page of search results (see www.useit.com), google will drive users to the big (important) sites. That a site may have the specific information I need and a big, important site *might* have the information means little to google. It will send me to the page with the most links to it.
Now, I may be reading this all wrong, but this doesn't seem to be helping out the smaller, specialized and niche sites. It only helps the big sites get bigger.
Given that, I do think Google has its place. I think it is important to have several search engines using a variety of means to search information. Too bad they can't all work together to narrow information through using each other's strengths.
Freedom of Choice which MS somehow seems to limit every time it takes on a competitor.
Re:What are you so damn afraid of?
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CALEA update
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Just ask that question to any legitimate political or social movement that has been subject to FBI or DoJ harassment. Here's a few examples: Wobblies, Communists, Socialists, Labor Unions, Students for a Democratic Society, MOVE, Branch Davidians, militias, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, American Indian Movement, Black Panthers, Yellow Panthers, Central American Solidarity Movement, Arab Americans, etc etc.
Now, some members of these *may* have advocated violent means to achieve their ends, but the majority (and certainly the overwhelming majority of the followers) never advocated violence and were merely exercising their Consitutional rights guaranteed to the them. The FBI will use whatever means they have to spy on its citizens and do its best to destroy what they perceive to be threats to "the American Way of Life". Go read a book on COINTELPRO, Watergate, or Echelon to see how government spies on its own citizens and then feel free to freely criticize the power structure. Go take a look at the ever growing number of authorized wiretaps granted over the last decade and the amount of requests denied and you might be surprised.
It's not just terrorists or child pornographers that will end up being spied upon. It will be anybody *suspected* of commiting a crime whether it be nuking Washington, smoking marijuana, violating parole, speeding, or not paying their taxes. Since nearly the entire population has broken some law you can go to jail anytime. The government just has to justify the expense. With cheap, reliable and easy means of surveillence, you're a fool to think the FBI and others wouldn't expand their domestic surveillence against ALL people SUSPECTED of crime.
Such roads lead to selective enforcement of the law and that does not guarantee my safety, but does limit or even ignore my rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
If you want this to be a DVD and CD player as well and hope this will be an important part of the AV market a drawer makes sense. Without a drawer you expose the lens to dirt and scratches. At the price Sony will be charging, I certainly wouldn't want a lens scratch to render my investment useless. Besides, how many DVD players do you see without a drawer? The current Playstation is cheap and looks it.
Sales of the the current PlayStation accounted for around 40 percent of Sony's consolidated operating profit in the past year to March. Sony cannot simply afford to have this be a simple games console, especially, if they hope to continue to be important in the consumer AV market. It is a good move on Sony's part to allow CD and DVD playback on this. It appeals to both the games and the AV markets. And if you want to appeal to the AV market you simply can't make the thing look cheap or be easily damaged due to daily use.
That's why you have the drawer. It's part of a smart move to define a new market niche. I'm surprised it doesn't have Firewire/iLink input/output for video, but maybe that'll come eventually.:)
The specs say it supports DVD-Video. If this means it plays back DVD movies, $370 isn't too much IMHO. But, if it does (and I don't know if it does) will it use regional blockouts like game consoles and other DVD players?
I also noticed the article said there'd be a million chipped by March. A recent story I read said that Sony/Toshiba(?) were having problems with the chip and so may have to delay it's Japanese release. With this latest info, I'm sceptical of all the info.
Guess we'll have to let time show us what is real and what is hype.
My main beef with this and similar products is the incredible price you pay for what, IMHO, is merely conveinence. I compare it to paying $2.00 for a can of soup at the conveinence store vs $1.00 at the grocery store.
Since I really only watch about 8 hours of TV a week and don't tape anything anymore I just don't see the advantage. I find myself more interested in things that will never be on TV, like certain foreign films. But I guess in your case it makes sense. As long as you regularly tape things on TV and don't want to hassle with programming your VCR (mine has a 6 or 7 digit code to enter that will automatically set the program for a specific program) or mind the programs being taped over.
As for removable storage or storage issues I thought it odd that I'd have to spend $1K for 30 hours of programming. If I was a trekkie for example and wanted to tape the entire season of Trek, it'd be cheaper to just by the stuff on tape. I cannot believe it is as simple as using a standard IDE drive given the prices TiVo mentions on their web site, but whatever.
It just sounds too expensive to use as something that is little more than a conveinent way to catch TV shows you won't keep around.
Slashdot Mirror
Also check out this scenario:
Say you're travelling on a single lane road with two-way traffic. The limit is 70, and you come up behind a truck doing 68. Your relative speed on overtaking is therefore 2mph, so in order to cover, say the 100 (relative) yards to overtake the truck you would have to be on the opposite side of the road, facing oncoming traffic, for getting on for two minutes. During this time you would have travelled rather more than a mile (relative to the Earth, as opposed to the truck). As few roads in the UK are empty enough or straight enough for anybody to be able to do this, overtaking will become impossible/fatal, and the government will no doubt then begin scratching heads about why the number of head-on collisions has been climbing.
I don't think it is the fact of storing or copying the files that Real objects to. It is the transfer into another file format. Real bases its business on providing content in their file format. If said content can easily be converted to another format (like MP3) then they lose a competitive advantage in their eyes.
They sign contracts to have content available in their format. The fact that WIMP can play it back may be bad, but if the content provider goes to WIMP format then they lose money on both the format and playback. To a businessman it is intolerable that somebody could take their content, convert it to another format, and listen to it using a competitor's product. If such practice happened often enough they'd be out of business in the medium to long term. Since this is Real's only business they call the lawyers.
Microsoft will probably do the same if somebody converts their format to MP3 and it threatens to gain popular appeal.
I think Real will still lose. Although why such a crappy product succeeded in the first place is beyond me.
thanks for the info
audio is being done by an intern now. i'm just assembling the packages and making tech rcommendations.
there's a strong push for streaming media which is why i referred to QT4 rather than 3.
"...after all the next big thing on the Net will be high-bandwidth audio/video streams and a gradual convergence with TV, radio and telephone."
And notice how the other day Gates parroted Jobs about not wanting to create content, but merely provide the tools for its creation? And what do you think those tools will write?
I do agree strongly with your first paragraph though...
Well, actually developing distance learning courses for web delivery.
My employer has not decided on a technical standards set for our audio tracks in courses. I'm advocating Quicktime, which has good Mac support, decent Windows support, and appears to have the streamer ported to Linux (not sure of players since we don't have Linux customers yet). We don't pay a server tax and we get generally the same level of playback on our customer's platforms (90+% Win and ~5% Mac). But we're an NT only ('cept me) shop in house and I fear Real Player of WiMP will be chosen as standard.
I was wondering what people would like to see used in Distance Learning audio and video content.
Even if I were to agree with everything you said, why must I succomb to this? Why can't I have the option of not being in either system?
To survive in history you need one of two things: guns or money. Neither is a guaranteed winner and it is better to have both, but you need one or the other.
The thing about globalization is that it is an increase in vertical hierarchies. The common person has no means to change the system to his benefit. I may have some tenuous ability to change my country in the US, but it is many times more than some transnational corporation or international gov't agency.
nope. blink is a CSS spec. IE4.5 on Mac doesn't support it and I don't think it is supported on IE5 on PC either.
Not that blink is critical. But the original poster's gist - CSS standards are poorly or not even fully implemented on the leading edge browsers, is valid and causes no end of consternation to me.
Maybe not hospitals if the wireless protocol does indeed harm equipment (I'll defer to others that actually know such things). I'd like the wireless protocol to be a standard. I got the impression it was a standard based on headsets, not the one Apple's Airport is based on.
I think Doctor's offices would be game though. Not so much equipment to be affected in most exam rooms. Also manufacturing lines, especially in the QC phase. Demo meetings, prototype mockups (the image looked like a computer generated image rather than a photo) or even school lessons. Imagine being able to view that animation on your own screen rather than straining to see a far away monitor.
Also good for adding data into a database using forms. Customer Service reps, helpdesks etc could use this to log problems and possibly get recommended action without being stuck at the desk.
Just some ideas. I hope somebody can come out with one for under $200 in the next few years.
This is a chicken or the egg argument. Except that as others have said, there is no widespread support for PNG. IE on the PC supports it, more or less. It doesn't exist as far as IE Mac is concerned. Some versions of Netscape 4 (4.03 IIRC) support it, but it is buggy across platforms and versions. And of course, there is no animated version (MPNG isn't even finalized AFAIK).
Now, if you are a major site are you going to risk alienating your audience and advertisers with content your viewers cannot access, simply because some misunderstood argument about patent enforcement is being bandied about? I don't think so. You won't be a major site for long.
My volunteer group ran this last Friday as part of a Miyzaki film festival (only 8 cities in the US ran this festival).
Mononoke sold out (IIRC the theater only held like 200-250 people).
As part of Buena Vista's distribution deal with Studio Ghibli, they CANNOT edit any of Miyazaki's work. Unlike his other work Mononoke is seen as more mature, so it is actually being distributed by Miramax.
While unable to see Mononoke, I did see My neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso (been waiting years for that), and Laupta: castle in the Sky. All were very good.
Typical themes are female child/adolescent protagonists, change thru conflict (often nature vs man), and a notable abscence of good vs evil. Miyazaki is a big flight buff as well and you see a lot of that in several of his films.
As mentioned before, his films can run over 2 hours, but they are paced really well and a good mix of plot and characterizations.
That said, I get to see a sneak preview Wednsday and hear Gaiman speak afterward!
Another common tactic is to "misfile" or "mislabel" pertinent information in an attempt to keep it secret. Sometime under the Bush regime, there were LOTS of documents declassified or released thru FOI but since they removed all document classification/labeling systems reviewers had to pore over ALL of them to figure out what was actually in them and any kind of relationship between documents.
And the October issue over at fas.org mentioned examples of CIA declassfied documents (required by law) were routine things like document check out requests, performance reviews etc.
I start a new job on Nov 1. I pushed hard to have a new Mac instead of a Gateway running NT. Now I do not know if I will get a Mac, but will be stuck with NT simply because Apple cannot fill orders for G4s, iBooks, and maybe even iMacs. I might be able to use an old 8600 laying around, but frankly, I was looking forward to being able to use a new Mac. Given that I will immediatly have a project with a strict deadline after I start, I know my new employer simply cannot wait for Apple to get it's act in gear. And I know that if I get that NT box, I'll never get a Mac. So what do I do? Use the old 8600 (released circa 96)? I suppose I could take out another loan for a new Mac and wait for it to come in. But most likely, I'll probably cart my G3 to my new job on public transportation.
If only I could talk them into a Powerbook and external monitor....
All these complaints about technology overcoming some mythical golden age are merely signs that have been repeated throughout the last 100 years. Think about it, technology is employed to control decision making processes. By that I mean it is used to facilitate the gathering and dissemination of information (Which is required for decisions to be made) and production. The techniques had their roots in the Industrial Revolution with the American System of manufacture (Taylorism), continuous processign of materials, efficient plant design, cost control, time studies, scientific management etc. These were all systems that look to use information in order to control distribution, consumption and production.
The continued evolution of mass communications, combined with increases in production and distribution, have reached the point where there is very little time required for significant changes in any one of these fields to have a large impact in the other two. So what we are seeing today and some are lamenting, is merely a continuation of things that have happened since the Industrial Revolution. The fact that some feel they have lost control is due in part to the fact that there is no one person making decisions. It is a large non-personal entity that gathers all information available, processes it and then makes a decision based on the available information.
Computers merely make the process faster than humans can. Even today the stock market has to slow down through artifical limits simply becuase the computers process the information faster than humans, which can cause wildly erratic changes in the economy. And yet, people try to compete hoping to get a competitive advantage over somebody else in order to benefit through some real or imagined gain.
And this isn't something that is new either. Many people realized this and put their own view on it. Look at Babbage! The rise of the information class and information workers was seen in 1958, McLuhan (patron saint of the pre-Conde-Nast Wired) saw a global village based on mass media in 1964. Corporate control from Galbraith in the 60s, Brzezinski's technetronic era (1970?) Toffler etc etc.
Its in human nature to control. Its just that right now the means to control production, distribution and consumption of materials is faster and more interdependent than ever. It also depends on a centralized means of gathering information. In 1984 the top 5 information-processing equipment manufacturers were IBM, Digital Equipment, Burroughs, Control Data and NCR. Guess who were the 5 largest in 1928? Remington Rand, National Cash Register (NCR), Burroughs, IBM, and Underwod Elliot Fisher.
Its hard to win against human nature.
News Flash CBS 198?
In a news flash today the producers of the hit show "Dukes of Hazzard" say the stars who play "Bo" and "Luke Duke" are leaving the show. The producers say the show will go on with two new characters, apropriately enough, cousins, who will be named "Coy" and "Vance". After all, it is the innovative plots that weekly drive the show and not the characters according to unnamed CBS executives.
But can the future Coy and Vance continue to jump the General Lee over all the Friday night Prime Time competition? Time will tell.
Tom Wopat and John Schneider refused to comment, but sources believe they may return for annual weekly movies. Other executives point to the failure of the spin off show "Enos", to generate enough interest and viewers to justify continuation of the popular action series with its main stars gone, but where there's a chance to make money, Hollywood will give anything a try.
Thanks for pointing this out. I apologize for my mistake.
Still angers me that businesses often get free capital and tax breaks and doesn't return that from their profits, but I was mistaken on this one.
-LL
Yep. Your (Massachusetts) tax dollars at work going to finance MS patents. You think MIT or the State of Massachusetts will see any of the profits generated from MS? About as likely as Sematech giving the US gov't some of their profits after the US gov't subsidized them in the late 80s.
It'll be the default shipping look on all OSs. I really dislike that, but the Mozilla team feels that such an approach makes the widgets consistent cross platform, which they think is good.
;P
However, since Mozilla uses XUL to define the interface and a CSS file to control the text display, you can modify the look to just about anything you want. I'm going to wait until this thing is finally beta, but after that I'll figure out how to make these skins, 'cuz the default look just sucks. (Note there are some other skins available on mozillazine.org, but I never got them to run on my Mac build).
I'd expect a bunch of people to create skins once the product is beyond the alpha stage. A set of tools would be sweet, but it shouldn't be necessary.
HTH, and that it gets moderated up as "helpful".
It'll be the default shipping look on all OSs. I really dislike that, but the Mozilla team feels that such an approach makes the widgets consistent cross platform, which they think is good.
;P
However, since Mozilla uses XUL to define the interface and a CSS file to control the text display, you can modify the look to just about anything you want. I'm going to wait until this thing is finally beta, but after that I'll figure out how to make these skins, 'cuz the default look just sucks. (Note there are some other skins available on mozilazine.org, but I never got them to run on my Mac build).
I'd expect a bunch of people to create skins once the product is beyond the alpha stage. A set of tools would be sweet, but it shouldn't be necessary.
HTH, and that it gets moderated up as "helpful".
It is innate to man to attempt to control his environment, particularly in the West where there is deep rooted conflict between man and nature. Man always has to overcome nature, usually by dissecting and trying to make sense of it, then trying to perfect it. The fall of Newtonian physics didn't stop this and I am sure the rise of 20th century capitalism and advertising wouldn't let it go either.
An interesting parallel is from ancient China. In ancient China there was a period in which massive amounts of Buddhist texts flourished. In fact there were so many texts that no one person could possibly handle all that information. So what happened? Specialization. Monks and scholars specialized in studying the writings of a particular scholar, priest or school. One person may be very schooled in Tendai, but totally ignorant in Pure Land school thought for example. And yet, with all this knowledge the people were still not being enlightened, which was the goal. It wasn't long before a reaction among some followers occured that praised simplicity and intent, rather than the words of "experts" and others. And yet, Buddhism is not gone, did not suffer a cataclysmic loss. It continued to grow in its own way building upon its past. And this happened hundreds and hundreds of years ago!
Is society more complex now than it used to be? Absolutely. Is it organized into more specialized constructs? Possibly. What is the result of this complexity? Do people have to turn ever increasingly to experts to attempt to solve their problems? That would certainly result in a feelings of helplessness.
Perhaps if people could just turn off advertising they wouldn't believe that spending money would solve their problems. But, in Western society this is not an option and people will continue to turn to the "experts" rather than think for themselves and rationalize what is truly important or necessary. When that happens you'll be on the path to wisdom.
Looking at: http://www.google.com/why_use.html and jumping down to the section titled "PageRank Explained" breaks my heart. If I read this correctly, Google will merely send more people to the big sites. Why?
Given Google's method of site ranking the vast majority of people will only go to the big sites. Because Google's results are based on the number of links to a page combined with the importance of the linking pages, you'll see pages with lots of links to them always appearing at the top of the results. Now, who has the most number of links pointing to them? Primarily sites run by big businesses or professional organizations. Given that most traffic is increasingly centralized on a smaller number of web sites I find this disturbing.
Now given that the vast majority of people never bother going to a second page of search results (see www.useit.com), google will drive users to the big (important) sites. That a site may have the specific information I need and a big, important site *might* have the information means little to google. It will send me to the page with the most links to it.
Now, I may be reading this all wrong, but this doesn't seem to be helping out the smaller, specialized and niche sites. It only helps the big sites get bigger.
Given that, I do think Google has its place. I think it is important to have several search engines using a variety of means to search information. Too bad they can't all work together to narrow information through using each other's strengths.
YMMV
Freedom of Choice which MS somehow seems to limit every time it takes on a competitor.
Just ask that question to any legitimate political or social movement that has been subject to FBI or DoJ harassment. Here's a few examples:
Wobblies, Communists, Socialists, Labor Unions, Students for a Democratic Society, MOVE, Branch Davidians, militias, Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, American Indian Movement, Black Panthers, Yellow Panthers, Central American Solidarity Movement, Arab Americans, etc etc.
Now, some members of these *may* have advocated violent means to achieve their ends, but the majority (and certainly the overwhelming majority of the followers) never advocated violence and were merely exercising their Consitutional rights guaranteed to the them. The FBI will use whatever means they have to spy on its citizens and do its best to destroy what they perceive to be threats to "the American Way of Life". Go read a book on COINTELPRO, Watergate, or Echelon to see how government spies on its own citizens and then feel free to freely criticize the power structure. Go take a look at the ever growing number of authorized wiretaps granted over the last decade and the amount of requests denied and you might be surprised.
It's not just terrorists or child pornographers that will end up being spied upon. It will be anybody *suspected* of commiting a crime whether it be nuking Washington, smoking marijuana, violating parole, speeding, or not paying their taxes. Since nearly the entire population has broken some law you can go to jail anytime. The government just has to justify the expense. With cheap, reliable and easy means of surveillence, you're a fool to think the FBI and others wouldn't expand their domestic surveillence against ALL people SUSPECTED of crime.
Such roads lead to selective enforcement of the law and that does not guarantee my safety, but does limit or even ignore my rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.
If you want this to be a DVD and CD player as well and hope this will be an important part of the AV market a drawer makes sense. Without a drawer you expose the lens to dirt and scratches. At the price Sony will be charging, I certainly wouldn't want a lens scratch to render my investment useless. Besides, how many DVD players do you see without a drawer? The current Playstation is cheap and looks it.
:)
Sales of the the current PlayStation accounted for around 40 percent of Sony's consolidated operating profit in the past year to March. Sony cannot simply afford to have this be a simple games console, especially, if they hope to continue to be important in the consumer AV market. It is a good move on Sony's part to allow CD and DVD playback on this. It appeals to both the games and the AV markets. And if you want to appeal to the AV market you simply can't make the thing look cheap or be easily damaged due to daily use.
That's why you have the drawer. It's part of a smart move to define a new market niche. I'm surprised it doesn't have Firewire/iLink input/output for video, but maybe that'll come eventually.
The specs say it supports DVD-Video. If this means it plays back DVD movies, $370 isn't too much IMHO. But, if it does (and I don't know if it does) will it use regional blockouts like game consoles and other DVD players?
I also noticed the article said there'd be a million chipped by March. A recent story I read said that Sony/Toshiba(?) were having problems with the chip and so may have to delay it's Japanese release. With this latest info, I'm sceptical of all the info.
Guess we'll have to let time show us what is real and what is hype.
I am very glad you are happy with your TiVo.
My main beef with this and similar products is the incredible price you pay for what, IMHO, is merely conveinence. I compare it to paying $2.00 for a can of soup at the conveinence store vs $1.00 at the grocery store.
Since I really only watch about 8 hours of TV a week and don't tape anything anymore I just don't see the advantage. I find myself more interested in things that will never be on TV, like certain foreign films. But I guess in your case it makes sense. As long as you regularly tape things on TV and don't want to hassle with programming your VCR (mine has a 6 or 7 digit code to enter that will automatically set the program for a specific program) or mind the programs being taped over.
As for removable storage or storage issues I thought it odd that I'd have to spend $1K for 30 hours of programming. If I was a trekkie for example and wanted to tape the entire season of Trek, it'd be cheaper to just by the stuff on tape. I cannot believe it is as simple as using a standard IDE drive given the prices TiVo mentions on their web site, but whatever.
It just sounds too expensive to use as something that is little more than a conveinent way to catch TV shows you won't keep around.
Respectfully,
LL