why would internet users share their bandwidth to benefit media companies?
That brings up an interesting possible use. Let's say we have an app provided by a (nice*) media company which uses bittorrent to download movies for us to watch (how/wherever we feel like*). Now, what if this torrent app (which would probably be set up to only download torrents provided by the media company) tracked not only how many movies we downloaded, but how many MB we uploaded?
They could (assuming they're nice and cool and all that) do something like give us credits for how much we uploaded. While I might not be ok with them using my bandwidth to deliver their product for their profit at my expense, I'd be perfectly happy for them to pay to use my unused bandwidth. Be the first one to get a new movie, set up as a seeder, and earn yourself 3 other movies right there.
I just hope they don't start (like the article suggests they should) automatically blocking "non-official" torrents in the protocol itself or in the main distribution. It'd make it easier for them to license bittorrent, but it'd be a real slap in the face to everyone else.
As cool as this sounds, and as bitchin' as it is to be able to say "Look" to all the punks that *still* complain about apple only selling 1 button mice, I don't think I'm gonna enjoy this.
Why? Simple. I *HATE* trackpads on laptop when you have double clicking on. I tap my fingers (among other annoying habits), and I hate having it decide "Oh, he clicked" when I was reading a long document and my cursor was randomly over something I really didn't want clicked. I don't see this as being any different. I'll accidentally tap my finger and bam, I clicked.
As it is, I've got a 5 button mouse with little buttons on the side that I use for expose. It's nice. Sometimes. It also becomes a pain, fairly often actually, when I'm clicking something and accidentaly grab the mouse too hard and instead of clicking, everything on my desktop disappears. Easy enough to correct, but still an annoyance. That mouse you at least have to use some force to push the buttons, with the mighty mouse, they don't say specifically, but it sounds like just a swipe will do it.
Also, I think the lessons learned by all those projected keyboards and stuff should be taken into account. Just like when I'm typing, I want feedback on whether I've pushed hard enough to register. I like the little click. I like the resistance. And I think a lot of other people do, as well.
I think it's a good idea for Apple to have a multi-button mouse, I like the whole idea of it being able to be both a single button mouse and a multi-button mouse just by clicking a radio button in "Preferences" (someone earlier said something about having little kids and old people set up that way on their user when they log in and I totally agree), and I really think that "scroll-ball" thing is sweet (I wish I had that in my current mouse), but I just don't think this whole "touch-sensitive" thing is a good idea.
I think you need to read the article more carefully. The FBI started investigating before the agreement was reached because someone had come to them complaining that a crime has been committed. Like an earlier poster said, it's their job to investigate when people claim a crime has been committed, if only to determine whether or not a crime has actually been committed. For all we know (and from the sounds of it), one hasn't, the investigation is going to be (possibly already) dropped, and that's all that comes of it.
As to pinging a router, all the FBI would hear at first is "I think someone committed a crime", told to them by the pinged party. The FBI would ask them what happened (which would be considered an investigation), the person would say they'd been pinged, the FBI would ask what else, the person would say that's it, and the FBI would probably laugh and stop the investigation. Basically, it's the FBI's job to investigate when a private citizen says a crime has been committed (and it falls under federal jurisdiction). While no one wants the FBI doing more than their job description tells them to do (the original one), I'd say it's fair to expect and allow them to do the basic job they were created to do.
Your coworkers don't know who MacGyver is? I'm 19, and I used to watch that show religiously. I can make a fucking cannon out of a rag and a muffler, thanks to him. If I were you, I'd ditch that shitty company ASAP. Seriously, with employees like that, it ain't going nowhere!
Pixar writes their own (Marionette, I believe its called), Dreamworks uses Maya and a host of internally developed apps and plugins (for example), but I'd be willing to bet that most of the post-production work is done using Avid or FCP (and of course stuff like AfterEffects), which, for the most part, don't run on linux (Shake does, and it's damn sweet).
Most smaller companies (commercials, doing stills for magazine ads, and artists) still use commercial products, like Maya, Lightwave, or Animation Master, mostly, I think, for support reasons, but also because, at this stage, they still have features that are missing from Blender (camera/lens types, focal length and depth, and some heirarchy differences). As for cinellera, I don't know many people using it at all (any personally). No one teaches it in film classes, as far as I can tell, and most home users who have the time to mess around with it and understand it either a) also have the money for a cheap mac and use iMovie, which while nowhere as powerful, is good enough for a lot more than you'd expect or b) also have enough time and expertise to get a cracked version of premiere (of FCP if they have a mac) and just use that.
Personally, I still find it absolutely amazing everytime the shuttle launches. It's just a marvel of engineering. And it's damn beautiful.
To everyone who didn't get to see the coverage (or live, you lucky bastards), you seriously missed out. Yeah, the commentators were kinda annoying, but the amount of camera coverage (and the fact that I could switch between all the major networks to find a different view if they switched to one I didn't like) was really cool. I've seen launches in person, and frankly, I'm torn as to whether seeing it live or this way was better. I mean, live, you see the first 20 seconds, 30 if you brought binoculars, 40 if you brought a telescope. Today, I got to see the main booster separate, *live*.
I wanna be one of many to wish the astronauts best of luck with their mission, and a happy return.
The garden does a lot more than that. I saw a presentation about the UT Med School building, which recently replaced their roof with a "green roof" (basically a garden). Along with providing pretty damn good insulation for the building compared to the flat roof it replaced, it was expected to last at least 30 years. Compare this to the something like 8 years the tar and asphalt roofs had lasted, and you get a nice drop in waste from replacing the roof so often. Besides, when you do replace the roof, the majority of what you're replacing is now plant matter and dirt. Much more environmentally friendly....
Obviously, if I'm concious, it won't work, cause I'll just mentally change the time. But on something like a bedside alarm clock, it works great. Barely concious, I reach over and hit the snooze button and look at the face. About half the time, I go "mmmfmfmfm*", throw myself out of bed, and wander around until I get into the shower. The rest of the time I go "mmfmfmmmf*" and kinda vegge for a few minutes, knowing I've got those few minutes to acclimate back to the real world, and then I get up.
Frankly, it was the only reason I occasionally made it to class last semester.
*translates to: awww, fuck. *translates to: awww, fuck it. It's morning, my vocabulary is a bit limited...
I think you need to go back and look at the common carrier arguments.
Yes, as a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want within the law (like, they can't murder people), and this certainly fits within that margin (assuming U.S. law were to apply, I'm not sure what if any differences there might be in Canada. Sorry, I'm just not that worldly...)
However, once they're allowed to do things like run on telephone poles placed in people's backyards through laws like emminent domain (which is how it works in the States, at least), they lose some of those rights. They are no long a purely private company. They are in the same situation as, say, a municipal bus service, like Metro (I live in Houston, that's our bus/light rail authority). By using government powers to provide a public service (which is what they claimed they were providing when the put those poles up) they must submit to the rules governing government, as well.
At the very least, though, what they are doing is fraud. They told the government and the public, oftentimes in court, that they could not be held responsible for what is carried through their network because they could not control it. They are now proving that they can, in fact, control and censor it. When people signed up and signed contracts to give them "access to the internet", they were expecting, as the company had said, that they would be getting access to an uncesored network, the internet, because the company was unable to censor it. This changed, and the company began giving them access to a censored network, which is fundamentally different than what they signed up for. They either lied about being able to censor the internet at first or are no longer supplying the same service as required by their contract.
Basically, any way you look at it, this company is doing something very illegal on one level or another, and the government has the obligation to step in and do something. If nothing else, by granting public use and monopoly powers to companies like these, the government has the responsibility to step in and punish the company as they have taken that ability away from the consumer.
I think my brother went there. Twice. Once when it was still Subway (right after it opened), and once when it was the mafia version (I can't remember the name, but it was something close enough that they just re-stitched all of the logo shirts and painted a little on the signs). I seem to remember it taking less than a month to convert...
Yeah, it might a booming city ripe with economic opportunity, but you gotta ask the mob first.
A few years ago, 3 or 4 I think, my brother spent a year in Russia as a student. Firstly, his rooming situation, though done through his University at home, was actually controlled through the mob (as in his checks went to a mob boss who then paid the landlady and the authorities). He bought of a cop on red square. And by bought off, the cop told him the fine was $20 there or $50 back at the station...
About the same time, a businessman came to speak at our school. He'd just been over in Russia helping his company expand to advantage of the wonderful, booming economy. His first lesson upon arrival was what happened to his counterpart at Coke. They built a plant (I think just outside of Moscow), but decided that they were big enough to skip over the Mafia. A few days after it opened, someone attacked it with an RPG (didn't kill anyone, as the mafia had made sure everyone was too scared to work there in the first place).
Yeah, there's plenty of honest growth that's occuring. But if there's not mafia backing behind it, then there's explicitly granted mafia permission to keep it up.
Welcome to Texas. One of the first things I learned from my high school cross country captain is that it's legal for someone over the age of 18 to brew up to 50 (I think 50, but it may be less...) gallons of beer for their own personal use. So yes, you can buy the ingredients, make it, and even drink it under your parent/guardian's supervision (I'm a licensed bartender, so I know that part's legal for sure).
Hey, now, Heineken makes a reasonable product. If you'd used something like Milwaukee's Best or Lone Star, that would be a more accurate comparison. And if you don't know what Lone Star is, imagine making your dog drink a bottle of Budweiser (the good one, not the American one), then having them piss in a bottle, then making them drink that, and piss it into another bottle, then adding a little bit more alcohol. Then charge a buck fifty for a keg. That's Lone Star.
That paragraph should read "Authorities report having shut down the online community site "thefacebook.com". Authorities claim the popular site was being used to advocate and facilitate the use of drugs on college campuses by groups of students. The groups were uncovered by careful monitoring of "Facebook Groups" like "I <3 pot", "I'm high right now", and "Half Baked is my favorite movie, EVER". The site, used for gathering "friends" and building showing off how popular students virtually are, is popular on American and international college and university campuses.
Ten thousand people have been arrested at every college campus in the United States after authorities discovered them allegedly using the online community site thefacebook.com to promote, sell, and entertain themselves while using drugs.
Authorities report having shut down the online community site "thefacebook.com". Authorities claim the popular site was being used to advocate and facilitate the use of drugs on college campuses by groups of students. The groups were uncovered by careful monitoring of "Facebook Groups" like "I The site, used for gathering "friends" and building showing off how popular students virtually are, is popular on American and international college and university campuses.
"We discovered the drug rings by careful monitoring of their message boards, which mostly consisted of random thoughts posted while users were high and requests if anyone knew where to 'get some'," an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency told the Obvious News news agency.
"We are aware of the situation and will look investigate it thoroughly, later. Right now, we're fuckin' wasted, man," thefacebook.com said in a statement.
Authorites said the druggies used a few features of the facebook.com to get information on where to find drugs such as marijuana and ecstasy. However, more advanced features, such as "poking", were not generally employed until after the students had acquired and used the drugs.
...the same way I've always handled it: by forgetting about it and doing nothing until I show up for work an hour late (well, an hour and fifteen minutes late, more precisely...)
Acutally, that only used to be true. Now that I've got a cell phone that automagically updates it's time from the network, I just set my clocks to it whenever they get a bit or an hour off and forget about the whole damn thing.
Baca said -- "In a video game, you're actually pursuing and simulating a person. You're under hypnosis. You're a person that is dramatizing, that is living the example of what is going on.
Once, for theatre class, I had to play a character who "liked little girls. Girlfriend: You mean, little women? Me:No, little girls." I was "dramatizing, living the example" that was layed out in the script for me. I was training how to *be* that guy, who just so happened to have a penchant for very young ladies...
How is are video games like GTA subjected to such reviews when there are so many plays with such infinitely more disturbing content that people not only like, but consider classics? Which is worse, letting a child play a game where he goes on a game-long mission of killing all the drug dealers that have been destroying his town (the *PLOT* of GTA:SA), or letting a child read/see a play where the main idea behind it his the worthlessness of mankind, the pointlessness of existence, or something like that?
Think about the horrible things that could happen to the mind of an impressionable child if he reads something post-modern, but doesn't quite get the whole self-liberation part of it. Or hell, if he reads something modern and *does* get it! Just like playing this game, I wouldn't let my child read something like that without *my guidance*.
A little more realistically, what about Tom Clancy? I remember one of his books, the one where Clark goes and kills a bunch of drug dealers (can't remember the name...), has the same basic idea of GTA:SA. Hookers being beaten, raped, and killed. A vigilante going out and killing drug dealers in horrible, horrible ways (the decompression chamber?). No one said a damn thing about that. I managed to check it out my middle school library (I went to an uptight, north-easter style private school in the heart of Texas, the Gay-Straight Alliance wasn't allowed official club recognition even though half the faculty were members because they were afraid of parental retribution) without anyone saying a thing. That is, until my dad read it when I was through with it and banned me from reading Tom Clancy for a few years (which I completely ignored...).
I think GPS wouldn't work too well in a museum or something. It'd work great at Stonehenge, but not so much a large, thick walled building like the National Gallery in London. You'd get to much signal weakening and bouncing. They could do it so it depended on the last info point you were at, though. Like "Facing the big statue of the Greek guy, turn left and go through the door" or have a map or something. That's a cool idea, though.
I think a lot of people (Apple included) are missing the biggest market for a vPod: vPodCasts.
Think about all the morning business shows that try and cram a full days worth of news into 30 minutes about the time most people are eating breakfast. Imagine, instead, that they made 5-6 5 minute segments, with a little meta-data, and made them available for download. I could choose a couple sources and tell it to download all the segments that related to a certain kind of business. Then when I wake up in the morning, hit download as I crawl out of bed, take a shower, grab my vPod and watch 30 minutes of tailor-made for me news as I eat/run out the door to catch my bus or train. I'll bet some place like the Wall Street Journal could even charge $20-$30 bucks a year for 20-30 minutes of news a day, assuming it was well set up.
Politicos would rejoice, as well. Think about all the Fox News/CNN shows. The majority of the show is a closeup of someone's head and a bit of shoulder. The vPod, assuming it keeps the same size, has a decent enough screen for such a shot, and could probably deal with the occasional cutaway clip. You could then choose to download all news stories involving your party, or involving a certain city, or a certain subject in the same way as the business guys.
While I think the music videos are cool (I'm a huge music video buff, I've something like 40 gigs at home...) and that there will probably be a good number of kids that have them just to be cool ($2 ringtones and $1 phone backgrounds anyone?), I think the killer app for the vPod will be vPodCasts, some free community, some paid commercial. But who knows? It could be something completely different.
I can see people using this while they exercise at a gym or something. At my university, the gym has tvs with cable at all of the stepper machines and treadmills and stuff. I could see people at gyms that don't have this sort of setup putting a movie on the ipod. They wouldn't need to watch it the entire time (I constantly have a movie on in the background while I'm working and only occasionally look over at the screen), so the lack of screen size wouldn't be that much of a hit. Or, depending on how open Apple is with what videos you can play, you could put tv shows on there. Think podcasting tvs shows... Could be interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
why would internet users share their bandwidth to benefit media companies?
That brings up an interesting possible use. Let's say we have an app provided by a (nice*) media company which uses bittorrent to download movies for us to watch (how/wherever we feel like*). Now, what if this torrent app (which would probably be set up to only download torrents provided by the media company) tracked not only how many movies we downloaded, but how many MB we uploaded?
They could (assuming they're nice and cool and all that) do something like give us credits for how much we uploaded. While I might not be ok with them using my bandwidth to deliver their product for their profit at my expense, I'd be perfectly happy for them to pay to use my unused bandwidth. Be the first one to get a new movie, set up as a seeder, and earn yourself 3 other movies right there.
I just hope they don't start (like the article suggests they should) automatically blocking "non-official" torrents in the protocol itself or in the main distribution. It'd make it easier for them to license bittorrent, but it'd be a real slap in the face to everyone else.
*Yeah, I know, wishful thinking...
As cool as this sounds, and as bitchin' as it is to be able to say "Look" to all the punks that *still* complain about apple only selling 1 button mice, I don't think I'm gonna enjoy this.
Why? Simple. I *HATE* trackpads on laptop when you have double clicking on. I tap my fingers (among other annoying habits), and I hate having it decide "Oh, he clicked" when I was reading a long document and my cursor was randomly over something I really didn't want clicked. I don't see this as being any different. I'll accidentally tap my finger and bam, I clicked.
As it is, I've got a 5 button mouse with little buttons on the side that I use for expose. It's nice. Sometimes. It also becomes a pain, fairly often actually, when I'm clicking something and accidentaly grab the mouse too hard and instead of clicking, everything on my desktop disappears. Easy enough to correct, but still an annoyance. That mouse you at least have to use some force to push the buttons, with the mighty mouse, they don't say specifically, but it sounds like just a swipe will do it.
Also, I think the lessons learned by all those projected keyboards and stuff should be taken into account. Just like when I'm typing, I want feedback on whether I've pushed hard enough to register. I like the little click. I like the resistance. And I think a lot of other people do, as well.
I think it's a good idea for Apple to have a multi-button mouse, I like the whole idea of it being able to be both a single button mouse and a multi-button mouse just by clicking a radio button in "Preferences" (someone earlier said something about having little kids and old people set up that way on their user when they log in and I totally agree), and I really think that "scroll-ball" thing is sweet (I wish I had that in my current mouse), but I just don't think this whole "touch-sensitive" thing is a good idea.
4-button mouse? Psh. I've got a *5* button mouse for *my* mac. With a scroll wheel. And flames painted on the side. And spinners. Bitch.
I think you need to read the article more carefully. The FBI started investigating before the agreement was reached because someone had come to them complaining that a crime has been committed. Like an earlier poster said, it's their job to investigate when people claim a crime has been committed, if only to determine whether or not a crime has actually been committed. For all we know (and from the sounds of it), one hasn't, the investigation is going to be (possibly already) dropped, and that's all that comes of it.
As to pinging a router, all the FBI would hear at first is "I think someone committed a crime", told to them by the pinged party. The FBI would ask them what happened (which would be considered an investigation), the person would say they'd been pinged, the FBI would ask what else, the person would say that's it, and the FBI would probably laugh and stop the investigation. Basically, it's the FBI's job to investigate when a private citizen says a crime has been committed (and it falls under federal jurisdiction). While no one wants the FBI doing more than their job description tells them to do (the original one), I'd say it's fair to expect and allow them to do the basic job they were created to do.
Your coworkers don't know who MacGyver is? I'm 19, and I used to watch that show religiously. I can make a fucking cannon out of a rag and a muffler, thanks to him. If I were you, I'd ditch that shitty company ASAP. Seriously, with employees like that, it ain't going nowhere!
We've always loved the studios, it's the marketing/legal departments we hate.
Pixar writes their own (Marionette, I believe its called), Dreamworks uses Maya and a host of internally developed apps and plugins (for example), but I'd be willing to bet that most of the post-production work is done using Avid or FCP (and of course stuff like AfterEffects), which, for the most part, don't run on linux (Shake does, and it's damn sweet).
Most smaller companies (commercials, doing stills for magazine ads, and artists) still use commercial products, like Maya, Lightwave, or Animation Master, mostly, I think, for support reasons, but also because, at this stage, they still have features that are missing from Blender (camera/lens types, focal length and depth, and some heirarchy differences). As for cinellera, I don't know many people using it at all (any personally). No one teaches it in film classes, as far as I can tell, and most home users who have the time to mess around with it and understand it either a) also have the money for a cheap mac and use iMovie, which while nowhere as powerful, is good enough for a lot more than you'd expect or b) also have enough time and expertise to get a cracked version of premiere (of FCP if they have a mac) and just use that.
Personally, I still find it absolutely amazing everytime the shuttle launches. It's just a marvel of engineering. And it's damn beautiful.
To everyone who didn't get to see the coverage (or live, you lucky bastards), you seriously missed out. Yeah, the commentators were kinda annoying, but the amount of camera coverage (and the fact that I could switch between all the major networks to find a different view if they switched to one I didn't like) was really cool. I've seen launches in person, and frankly, I'm torn as to whether seeing it live or this way was better. I mean, live, you see the first 20 seconds, 30 if you brought binoculars, 40 if you brought a telescope. Today, I got to see the main booster separate, *live*.
I wanna be one of many to wish the astronauts best of luck with their mission, and a happy return.
The garden does a lot more than that. I saw a presentation about the UT Med School building, which recently replaced their roof with a "green roof" (basically a garden). Along with providing pretty damn good insulation for the building compared to the flat roof it replaced, it was expected to last at least 30 years. Compare this to the something like 8 years the tar and asphalt roofs had lasted, and you get a nice drop in waste from replacing the roof so often. Besides, when you do replace the roof, the majority of what you're replacing is now plant matter and dirt. Much more environmentally friendly....
Actually, the clocks thing works, to an extent.
Obviously, if I'm concious, it won't work, cause I'll just mentally change the time. But on something like a bedside alarm clock, it works great. Barely concious, I reach over and hit the snooze button and look at the face. About half the time, I go "mmmfmfmfm*", throw myself out of bed, and wander around until I get into the shower. The rest of the time I go "mmfmfmmmf*" and kinda vegge for a few minutes, knowing I've got those few minutes to acclimate back to the real world, and then I get up.
Frankly, it was the only reason I occasionally made it to class last semester.
*translates to: awww, fuck. *translates to: awww, fuck it. It's morning, my vocabulary is a bit limited...
Yes, as a private company, they should be allowed to do whatever they want within the law (like, they can't murder people), and this certainly fits within that margin (assuming U.S. law were to apply, I'm not sure what if any differences there might be in Canada. Sorry, I'm just not that worldly...)
However, once they're allowed to do things like run on telephone poles placed in people's backyards through laws like emminent domain (which is how it works in the States, at least), they lose some of those rights. They are no long a purely private company. They are in the same situation as, say, a municipal bus service, like Metro (I live in Houston, that's our bus/light rail authority). By using government powers to provide a public service (which is what they claimed they were providing when the put those poles up) they must submit to the rules governing government, as well.
At the very least, though, what they are doing is fraud. They told the government and the public, oftentimes in court, that they could not be held responsible for what is carried through their network because they could not control it. They are now proving that they can, in fact, control and censor it. When people signed up and signed contracts to give them "access to the internet", they were expecting, as the company had said, that they would be getting access to an uncesored network, the internet, because the company was unable to censor it. This changed, and the company began giving them access to a censored network, which is fundamentally different than what they signed up for. They either lied about being able to censor the internet at first or are no longer supplying the same service as required by their contract.
Basically, any way you look at it, this company is doing something very illegal on one level or another, and the government has the obligation to step in and do something. If nothing else, by granting public use and monopoly powers to companies like these, the government has the responsibility to step in and punish the company as they have taken that ability away from the consumer.
The correct response was: What is a tire iron? Yes, that's right, tire iron...
I think my brother went there. Twice. Once when it was still Subway (right after it opened), and once when it was the mafia version (I can't remember the name, but it was something close enough that they just re-stitched all of the logo shirts and painted a little on the signs). I seem to remember it taking less than a month to convert...
Yeah, it might a booming city ripe with economic opportunity, but you gotta ask the mob first.
A few years ago, 3 or 4 I think, my brother spent a year in Russia as a student. Firstly, his rooming situation, though done through his University at home, was actually controlled through the mob (as in his checks went to a mob boss who then paid the landlady and the authorities). He bought of a cop on red square. And by bought off, the cop told him the fine was $20 there or $50 back at the station...
About the same time, a businessman came to speak at our school. He'd just been over in Russia helping his company expand to advantage of the wonderful, booming economy. His first lesson upon arrival was what happened to his counterpart at Coke. They built a plant (I think just outside of Moscow), but decided that they were big enough to skip over the Mafia. A few days after it opened, someone attacked it with an RPG (didn't kill anyone, as the mafia had made sure everyone was too scared to work there in the first place).
Yeah, there's plenty of honest growth that's occuring. But if there's not mafia backing behind it, then there's explicitly granted mafia permission to keep it up.
Welcome to Texas. One of the first things I learned from my high school cross country captain is that it's legal for someone over the age of 18 to brew up to 50 (I think 50, but it may be less...) gallons of beer for their own personal use. So yes, you can buy the ingredients, make it, and even drink it under your parent/guardian's supervision (I'm a licensed bartender, so I know that part's legal for sure).
Hey, now, Heineken makes a reasonable product. If you'd used something like Milwaukee's Best or Lone Star, that would be a more accurate comparison. And if you don't know what Lone Star is, imagine making your dog drink a bottle of Budweiser (the good one, not the American one), then having them piss in a bottle, then making them drink that, and piss it into another bottle, then adding a little bit more alcohol. Then charge a buck fifty for a keg. That's Lone Star.
damned html tags...
That paragraph should read "Authorities report having shut down the online community site "thefacebook.com". Authorities claim the popular site was being used to advocate and facilitate the use of drugs on college campuses by groups of students. The groups were uncovered by careful monitoring of "Facebook Groups" like "I <3 pot", "I'm high right now", and "Half Baked is my favorite movie, EVER". The site, used for gathering "friends" and building showing off how popular students virtually are, is popular on American and international college and university campuses.
TheFacebook.com site 'used by Stoners'
Ten thousand people have been arrested at every college campus in the United States after authorities discovered them allegedly using the online community site thefacebook.com to promote, sell, and entertain themselves while using drugs.
Authorities report having shut down the online community site "thefacebook.com". Authorities claim the popular site was being used to advocate and facilitate the use of drugs on college campuses by groups of students. The groups were uncovered by careful monitoring of "Facebook Groups" like "I The site, used for gathering "friends" and building showing off how popular students virtually are, is popular on American and international college and university campuses.
"We discovered the drug rings by careful monitoring of their message boards, which mostly consisted of random thoughts posted while users were high and requests if anyone knew where to 'get some'," an agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency told the Obvious News news agency.
"We are aware of the situation and will look investigate it thoroughly, later. Right now, we're fuckin' wasted, man," thefacebook.com said in a statement.
Authorites said the druggies used a few features of the facebook.com to get information on where to find drugs such as marijuana and ecstasy. However, more advanced features, such as "poking", were not generally employed until after the students had acquired and used the drugs.
You remember the final scene in "Dr. Strangelove"? It kinda looks like that...
...the same way I've always handled it: by forgetting about it and doing nothing until I show up for work an hour late (well, an hour and fifteen minutes late, more precisely...)
Acutally, that only used to be true. Now that I've got a cell phone that automagically updates it's time from the network, I just set my clocks to it whenever they get a bit or an hour off and forget about the whole damn thing.
What about the theatre?
Once, for theatre class, I had to play a character who "liked little girls. Girlfriend: You mean, little women? Me:No, little girls." I was "dramatizing, living the example" that was layed out in the script for me. I was training how to *be* that guy, who just so happened to have a penchant for very young ladies...
How is are video games like GTA subjected to such reviews when there are so many plays with such infinitely more disturbing content that people not only like, but consider classics? Which is worse, letting a child play a game where he goes on a game-long mission of killing all the drug dealers that have been destroying his town (the *PLOT* of GTA:SA), or letting a child read/see a play where the main idea behind it his the worthlessness of mankind, the pointlessness of existence, or something like that?
Think about the horrible things that could happen to the mind of an impressionable child if he reads something post-modern, but doesn't quite get the whole self-liberation part of it. Or hell, if he reads something modern and *does* get it! Just like playing this game, I wouldn't let my child read something like that without *my guidance*.
A little more realistically, what about Tom Clancy? I remember one of his books, the one where Clark goes and kills a bunch of drug dealers (can't remember the name...), has the same basic idea of GTA:SA. Hookers being beaten, raped, and killed. A vigilante going out and killing drug dealers in horrible, horrible ways (the decompression chamber?). No one said a damn thing about that. I managed to check it out my middle school library (I went to an uptight, north-easter style private school in the heart of Texas, the Gay-Straight Alliance wasn't allowed official club recognition even though half the faculty were members because they were afraid of parental retribution) without anyone saying a thing. That is, until my dad read it when I was through with it and banned me from reading Tom Clancy for a few years (which I completely ignored...).
How is GTA any worse?
Speaker Diameter: 12 inches
Weight: ~ 65Kilos.... I did say it was over engineered!"
wtf? Is the guy British or not? I mean, ebay.co.uk, but measuring in inches? I think my head is gonna explode...
I think GPS wouldn't work too well in a museum or something. It'd work great at Stonehenge, but not so much a large, thick walled building like the National Gallery in London. You'd get to much signal weakening and bouncing. They could do it so it depended on the last info point you were at, though. Like "Facing the big statue of the Greek guy, turn left and go through the door" or have a map or something. That's a cool idea, though.
I think a lot of people (Apple included) are missing the biggest market for a vPod: vPodCasts.
Think about all the morning business shows that try and cram a full days worth of news into 30 minutes about the time most people are eating breakfast. Imagine, instead, that they made 5-6 5 minute segments, with a little meta-data, and made them available for download. I could choose a couple sources and tell it to download all the segments that related to a certain kind of business. Then when I wake up in the morning, hit download as I crawl out of bed, take a shower, grab my vPod and watch 30 minutes of tailor-made for me news as I eat/run out the door to catch my bus or train. I'll bet some place like the Wall Street Journal could even charge $20-$30 bucks a year for 20-30 minutes of news a day, assuming it was well set up.
Politicos would rejoice, as well. Think about all the Fox News/CNN shows. The majority of the show is a closeup of someone's head and a bit of shoulder. The vPod, assuming it keeps the same size, has a decent enough screen for such a shot, and could probably deal with the occasional cutaway clip. You could then choose to download all news stories involving your party, or involving a certain city, or a certain subject in the same way as the business guys.
While I think the music videos are cool (I'm a huge music video buff, I've something like 40 gigs at home...) and that there will probably be a good number of kids that have them just to be cool ($2 ringtones and $1 phone backgrounds anyone?), I think the killer app for the vPod will be vPodCasts, some free community, some paid commercial. But who knows? It could be something completely different.
I can see people using this while they exercise at a gym or something. At my university, the gym has tvs with cable at all of the stepper machines and treadmills and stuff. I could see people at gyms that don't have this sort of setup putting a movie on the ipod. They wouldn't need to watch it the entire time (I constantly have a movie on in the background while I'm working and only occasionally look over at the screen), so the lack of screen size wouldn't be that much of a hit. Or, depending on how open Apple is with what videos you can play, you could put tv shows on there. Think podcasting tvs shows... Could be interesting.