You can get near instantaneous stats out of these machines.
No, not like you can when you're watching Survivor or an NFL game. Remember that's what people want... Monday Night Football commentary with tickers. Flashing lights and shiny metal. Oooh.
And what multiple languages do you need? They see the names of the people running -- if they don't know "George W. Bush" is running the President and not the local Assembly seat that's their problem.
You have negated any credibility you might have had with that statement.
What is so wrong with the concept behind these machines that we need to all rush out and buy touchscreen systems? What advantage does a touchscreen offer? It is a closed-source solution that's infinitely easier to rig then a mechanical counting system.
People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats. People don't want to worry about counting and recounting. People want to have the voting booth be available in 1000 different languages. People want to have their tax money spent on something that is ever-changing.
I would prefer (and basically demand) that we keep our current voting mechanisms the same. Will they? No. But that's not really something that my single voice can stand against.
More troll crap from an AC. Go figure. I believe there should be a legal distinction between commercial "freedom" and personal. Just because lawyers have made them one in the same doesn't mean they should be.
Next time at least post showing your real handle so I know who to ignore.
There's no way that Sony of all people would release a device that ignores macro vision, or even the broadcast flag.
Yet another reason why consolidated media shouldn't be allowed to be active in manufactoring hardware that reads media. Ahh, the end of freedom as we know it... It's not like they own the government yet;)
The difference is that a company like Microsoft says "we don't like you and will sue you for patent infringement" whereas Novell is saying "if you sue us we'll sue you back". Big difference.
Well, that's what I thought until I noticed a particular word (emphasis mine):
As appropriate, Novell is prepared to use our patents, which are highly relevant in today's marketplace, to defend against those who might assert patents against open source products marketed, sold or supported by Novell.
That doesn't seem like they are going to fight once litigation is started. That words leads me to believe that they would start litigation if anyone even brought up the idea that their IP was being used w/o permission in the kernel.
We believe that customers want and need freedom of choice in making decisions about technology solutions. Those considering Novell offerings, whether proprietary or open source, should be able to make their purchasing decisions based on technical merits, security, quality of service and value, not the threat of litigation. Novell intends to continue to compete based on such criteria.
Good, I like to hear that. It's nice having some of the "big dogs" on the side of Linux. But they seem to contradict themselves when they say:
As appropriate, Novell is prepared to use our patents, which are highly relevant in today's marketplace, to defend against those who might assert patents against open source products marketed, sold or supported by Novell.
Seems like a threat to anyone out there thinking about possible litigation to me. Now, I doubt that there is any serious issues w/the Linux kernel code when it comes to IP but what if someone did have a legitimate claim? Someone like Novell making open threats like this might have them think twice.
What is being done meets the legal defination of stealing and that is all that matter in the court room.
Hmm, I was always under the assumption that the legal definition of stealing was:
The basic legal definition of theft is 'the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it'.
But I guess legal dictionaries and my own recollection are wrong. If you are trading music online you aren't depriving the owner of anything unless he can no longer sell the product.
They want to try legally protect an outmoded business practice, and create an artificial scarcity.
Now see, I know what you meant to say but you didn't say it correctly. What difference does it make that it is an "outmoded business practice"? So what? What matters is that they are a monopoly and have the power to keep people buying their music at artifically inflated prices.
The more people trade music online the more draconian laws will be presented to those that have the power to make them. The more music we continue to buy from the monopolies the more money they will have to sue us, fill the pockets of the law makers, and continue to bombard us with crap fed through the filters of consolidated media outlets.
That's why we should ignore their shit and tell everyone we know to do the same. THAT will hopefully dampen their reign. Not trading their music and giving them more legal fodder.
MP3 server for your home stereo? Slap an 80GB drive into an old box with your favorite flavor of OS and remote connect. It's not that hard; my non-geek brother did this for his house (he's a college senior) and it's impressed the hell out of their party guests.
Or use an old laptop and a wireless card. Share the MP3s out from the network. That's what we did. I don't ever think that our party guests were "impressed" though. It was just part of being in college and having a friend that was a computer dork.
Portable player? Go with either a low-storage and inexpensive Creative USB player or a high-storage and expensive iPod. Anything in between fails to impress me.
Inexpensive/low storage = CD MP3 player. Cheap ($45 or less), portable, and no worries about a hard drive getting owned. It usually has more storage space than flash-based players and it's a lot easier to add more songs when the storage runs out.
As for them changing format: don't people on/. always say that large media companies must update their business models to reflect changing times and consumer tastes? It appears CS has done just that. Where is the problem?
The problems as I see them: They weren't successful? I am not drawn to this updated format? The magazine is just like every other one out there and doesn't stand out on the rack like it used to (as I mentioned above)?
Taken from dreambook.com: Name: Michael Franklin Homepage URL: http://snmmedia.com Comments: Hi Guys,
I have been reading your column ever since you had a column. I was saddened when I read that your latest column would be your last. I emailed Computer Shopper to voice my support for you and tell them I would never read their publication again and in fact, would probably use my existing pages of CS for some sort of nefarious activity involving dog poop.
I won't uses the pages of your column for puppy pages though, but it is an apt metaphor for how I feel right now. Like CS pooped on us all.
I donated to the cause and have bookmarked your site. You guys are the best and I hope to hear more of your unbiased opinions in the future.
Friday, October 8th 2004 - 01:15:52 PM
Well, as much as I loved computer shopper back in the early 1990s I stopped reading it somewhere in the late 1990s. I saw it recently on a magazine rack and was quite disappointed to see it being thin and boring. I loved to spend hours pouring over its pages looking for deals and daydreaming of the best computer I could buy on my budget. I enjoyed them because they were different not because they were the same. They offered something that made them stand out against all the other magazines. Why they would change formats to be like everyone else I'll never know.
CS didn't let you down when they dropped Alice and Bill's article they let you down years ago when they changed formats. From what I read online I can only imagine that this will continue the downhill slide that CS has taken since I stopped reading it all those years ago.
A recorder from TiVo, by contrast, can be bought for less than $100 after rebates, although it has a fee of $12.95 a month, which the Windows system does not.
This is EXACTLY why I went with a Tivo. Price. $50 after rebate and it's noiseless. I don't think about it and I don't worry that it will crash.
I was seriously thinking about buying a machine to do MythTV which was my first choice but I always found myself put off by the time/money investment only to have yet another machine running in the house sucking electricity (I am VERY interested in seeing a power consumption comparison between a low-end MythTV machine, Tivo, and Microsoft solution).
Anyway. Building and running a mythTV box, while well within my ability, was just too much of a hassle compared to clicking on CircuitShitty and picking it up at the desk 20 minutes later.
In a joint petition to the Supreme Court, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that letting the lower court rulings stand would badly undermine the value of copyrighted work.
And I say that the changes to copyright law have made copyrighted works worth more for longer than they should be. It's just as ridiculous.
"These companies have expressly designed their businesses to avoid all legal liability, with the full knowledge that over 90 percent of the material traversing their applications belongs to someone else," MPAA Chief Executive Dan Glickman said in a statement.
Sounds like any business out there. Being able to avoid getting in trouble when their product fucks up. Isn't that what lawyers are for?
"That case was based on the principles established in the 1984 Betamax case, which has led to the largest and most profitable period of technological innovation in this country's history. Consumers, industry and our country have all benefited as a result."
Exactly. Current law (and the DMCA) have stiffled innovation as everyone is fearful of being sued. Let's end this non-sense and let the corporations realize that they cannot buy everyone.
am not saying we shouldn't address the issues of so-called "greenhouse gases," but we don't have to go at it in a panic-stricken manner.
If you haven't noticed no one pays news like this any attention unless it worded as an immediate threat or detrimental to the health/future of their children. Words sell.
Just ask a certain political party why they insist on reusing harsh rhetoric to scare the American public.
that's exactly the point many people forget when they're hyping up voip for mobiles, that the for _mobile_ use networks already have been tuned for transferring voice as cheaply and well as possible.
For whatever reason I was thinking that the phone would allow you to switch VoIP networks at will. That way, if you were away from home, you could be doing your thing via your provider's network. Then when you got home you could be calling out on your own VoIP solution (whatever that may be).
Well why wouldn't we put a pointless review on the main page? I have already been modded as a Troll for pointing out that the review is a professional reviewer for Amazon.com and this was pasted directly from there.
It's obviously a poor book and shouldn't be purchased. Maybe they should have made that more clear in the title. Hell, let's have a story about ALL the overpriced books with spelling and gammar errors. I'd actually appreciate that as it would be definitly "Stuff that Matters".
Who wants to be able to program their TV to record TV from work? Who wants to program their lights to come on from work? Who wants to program their heat/AC to turn on/off from work? Who wants their oven to preheat from work?
I'm more concerned with walking into a liquor store that reads my ID into their database. Right now they have those little blue/yellow scanners that do it. At lesat if it's done by hand I can always refuse to buy my liquor there (and I do even if they require a swipe).
Anyone too lazy to read an ID manually is not worth giving my money to.
The property owner of the email should be protecting it via encryption or its there for anyone to read.
Laws like the ones are talking about will eventually cause the population to do exactly that but it's not exactly as if the criminals weren't doing that already.
You will be labelled a traitor if you protect yourself and [tinfoil warning] you could eventually be held against your will for crimes against the government for protecting your personal privacy [/tinfoil].
Remember that anyone who encrypts their email obviously has something to hide and doesn't support their government and their own freedom!
Re:Interesting article
on
The Long Tail
·
· Score: 1
I want the article to be right, but it seems more like a hope than any evidence. Amazon, Netflix, etc are selling/renting a lot of material that traditional stores don't stock, but it doesn't seem like it's indicating any great shift.
We are seeing this happen with Netflix for one simple reason. Longterm Netflix users don't get the more popular titles after a while. They are then given a title that is further and further down the list which ends up being something that is out of the "top 3,000". It's great for people that enjoy documentaries and foreign films but it sucks for people that have no interest in that sort of thing.
Amazon has enabled me to find books that are somewhat similar to what I normally read cheap. Real cheap. I always buy from Amazon used. They usually ship quickly and I only buy ones that are under $2.00. I have amassed quite a ecclectic book collection by doing this. Yeah some of the books aren't in the best of shape but I knew that there was that possibility going in.
It saves ME a ton of time searching brick and mortar stores and it saves me a ton of money too.
Slashdot Mirror
What is air worth? Some things have great value, but simply trying to measure that value in dollars is to misunderstand the nature of that value.
Just ask the WTO, they seem to be able to put a price on water. Why not air too?
You can get near instantaneous stats out of these machines.
No, not like you can when you're watching Survivor or an NFL game. Remember that's what people want... Monday Night Football commentary with tickers. Flashing lights and shiny metal. Oooh.
And what multiple languages do you need? They see the names of the people running -- if they don't know "George W. Bush" is running the President and not the local Assembly seat that's their problem.
You have negated any credibility you might have had with that statement.
What is so wrong with the concept behind these machines that we need to all rush out and buy touchscreen systems? What advantage does a touchscreen offer? It is a closed-source solution that's infinitely easier to rig then a mechanical counting system.
People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats. People don't want to worry about counting and recounting. People want to have the voting booth be available in 1000 different languages. People want to have their tax money spent on something that is ever-changing.
I would prefer (and basically demand) that we keep our current voting mechanisms the same. Will they? No. But that's not really something that my single voice can stand against.
More troll crap from an AC. Go figure. I believe there should be a legal distinction between commercial "freedom" and personal. Just because lawyers have made them one in the same doesn't mean they should be.
Next time at least post showing your real handle so I know who to ignore.
There's no way that Sony of all people would release a device that ignores macro vision, or even the broadcast flag.
;)
Yet another reason why consolidated media shouldn't be allowed to be active in manufactoring hardware that reads media. Ahh, the end of freedom as we know it... It's not like they own the government yet
The movie (Windows Media or Quicktime) shows someone having far too much fun riding one."
:)
Well duh, he's trying to make up for the fact that he looks like a huge dork with that fucking helmet on.
The difference is that a company like Microsoft says "we don't like you and will sue you for patent infringement" whereas Novell is saying "if you sue us we'll sue you back". Big difference.
Well, that's what I thought until I noticed a particular word (emphasis mine):
As appropriate, Novell is prepared to use our patents, which are highly relevant in today's marketplace, to defend against those who might assert patents against open source products marketed, sold or supported by Novell.
That doesn't seem like they are going to fight once litigation is started. That words leads me to believe that they would start litigation if anyone even brought up the idea that their IP was being used w/o permission in the kernel.
We believe that customers want and need freedom of choice in making decisions about technology solutions. Those considering Novell offerings, whether proprietary or open source, should be able to make their purchasing decisions based on technical merits, security, quality of service and value, not the threat of litigation. Novell intends to continue to compete based on such criteria.
Good, I like to hear that. It's nice having some of the "big dogs" on the side of Linux. But they seem to contradict themselves when they say:
As appropriate, Novell is prepared to use our patents, which are highly relevant in today's marketplace, to defend against those who might assert patents against open source products marketed, sold or supported by Novell.
Seems like a threat to anyone out there thinking about possible litigation to me. Now, I doubt that there is any serious issues w/the Linux kernel code when it comes to IP but what if someone did have a legitimate claim? Someone like Novell making open threats like this might have them think twice.
Just a thought.
What is being done meets the legal defination of stealing and that is all that matter in the court room.
Hmm, I was always under the assumption that the legal definition of stealing was:
The basic legal definition of theft is 'the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving that person of it'.
But I guess legal dictionaries and my own recollection are wrong. If you are trading music online you aren't depriving the owner of anything unless he can no longer sell the product.
They want to try legally protect an outmoded business practice, and create an artificial scarcity.
Now see, I know what you meant to say but you didn't say it correctly. What difference does it make that it is an "outmoded business practice"? So what? What matters is that they are a monopoly and have the power to keep people buying their music at artifically inflated prices.
The more people trade music online the more draconian laws will be presented to those that have the power to make them. The more music we continue to buy from the monopolies the more money they will have to sue us, fill the pockets of the law makers, and continue to bombard us with crap fed through the filters of consolidated media outlets.
That's why we should ignore their shit and tell everyone we know to do the same. THAT will hopefully dampen their reign. Not trading their music and giving them more legal fodder.
Sorry, this doesn't make P2P copyrighted music stealing legal...
Nor does it make trading music files online "stealing" no matter how much they want the world to believe that it is.
MP3 server for your home stereo? Slap an 80GB drive into an old box with your favorite flavor of OS and remote connect. It's not that hard; my non-geek brother did this for his house (he's a college senior) and it's impressed the hell out of their party guests.
Or use an old laptop and a wireless card. Share the MP3s out from the network. That's what we did. I don't ever think that our party guests were "impressed" though. It was just part of being in college and having a friend that was a computer dork.
Portable player? Go with either a low-storage and inexpensive Creative USB player or a high-storage and expensive iPod. Anything in between fails to impress me.
Inexpensive/low storage = CD MP3 player. Cheap ($45 or less), portable, and no worries about a hard drive getting owned. It usually has more storage space than flash-based players and it's a lot easier to add more songs when the storage runs out.
As for them changing format: don't people on /. always say that large media companies must update their business models to reflect changing times and consumer tastes? It appears CS has done just that. Where is the problem?
The problems as I see them: They weren't successful? I am not drawn to this updated format? The magazine is just like every other one out there and doesn't stand out on the rack like it used to (as I mentioned above)?
Taken from dreambook.com:
Name: Michael Franklin
Homepage URL: http://snmmedia.com
Comments: Hi Guys,
I have been reading your column ever since you had a column. I was saddened when I read that your latest column would be your last. I emailed Computer Shopper to voice my support for you and tell them I would never read their publication again and in fact, would probably use my existing pages of CS for some sort of nefarious activity involving dog poop.
I won't uses the pages of your column for puppy pages though, but it is an apt metaphor for how I feel right now. Like CS pooped on us all.
I donated to the cause and have bookmarked your site. You guys are the best and I hope to hear more of your unbiased opinions in the future.
Friday, October 8th 2004 - 01:15:52 PM
Well, as much as I loved computer shopper back in the early 1990s I stopped reading it somewhere in the late 1990s. I saw it recently on a magazine rack and was quite disappointed to see it being thin and boring. I loved to spend hours pouring over its pages looking for deals and daydreaming of the best computer I could buy on my budget. I enjoyed them because they were different not because they were the same. They offered something that made them stand out against all the other magazines. Why they would change formats to be like everyone else I'll never know.
CS didn't let you down when they dropped Alice and Bill's article they let you down years ago when they changed formats. From what I read online I can only imagine that this will continue the downhill slide that CS has taken since I stopped reading it all those years ago.
A recorder from TiVo, by contrast, can be bought for less than $100 after rebates, although it has a fee of $12.95 a month, which the Windows system does not.
This is EXACTLY why I went with a Tivo. Price. $50 after rebate and it's noiseless. I don't think about it and I don't worry that it will crash.
I was seriously thinking about buying a machine to do MythTV which was my first choice but I always found myself put off by the time/money investment only to have yet another machine running in the house sucking electricity (I am VERY interested in seeing a power consumption comparison between a low-end MythTV machine, Tivo, and Microsoft solution).
Anyway. Building and running a mythTV box, while well within my ability, was just too much of a hassle compared to clicking on CircuitShitty and picking it up at the desk 20 minutes later.
YMMV.
In a joint petition to the Supreme Court, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that letting the lower court rulings stand would badly undermine the value of copyrighted work.
And I say that the changes to copyright law have made copyrighted works worth more for longer than they should be. It's just as ridiculous.
"These companies have expressly designed their businesses to avoid all legal liability, with the full knowledge that over 90 percent of the material traversing their applications belongs to someone else," MPAA Chief Executive Dan Glickman said in a statement.
Sounds like any business out there. Being able to avoid getting in trouble when their product fucks up. Isn't that what lawyers are for?
"That case was based on the principles established in the 1984 Betamax case, which has led to the largest and most profitable period of technological innovation in this country's history. Consumers, industry and our country have all benefited as a result."
Exactly. Current law (and the DMCA) have stiffled innovation as everyone is fearful of being sued. Let's end this non-sense and let the corporations realize that they cannot buy everyone.
am not saying we shouldn't address the issues of so-called "greenhouse gases," but we don't have to go at it in a panic-stricken manner.
If you haven't noticed no one pays news like this any attention unless it worded as an immediate threat or detrimental to the health/future of their children. Words sell.
Just ask a certain political party why they insist on reusing harsh rhetoric to scare the American public.
that's exactly the point many people forget when they're hyping up voip for mobiles, that the for _mobile_ use networks already have been tuned for transferring voice as cheaply and well as possible.
For whatever reason I was thinking that the phone would allow you to switch VoIP networks at will. That way, if you were away from home, you could be doing your thing via your provider's network. Then when you got home you could be calling out on your own VoIP solution (whatever that may be).
Well why wouldn't we put a pointless review on the main page? I have already been modded as a Troll for pointing out that the review is a professional reviewer for Amazon.com and this was pasted directly from there.
It's obviously a poor book and shouldn't be purchased. Maybe they should have made that more clear in the title. Hell, let's have a story about ALL the overpriced books with spelling and gammar errors. I'd actually appreciate that as it would be definitly "Stuff that Matters".
See all of the other books that Ben advertises/reviews here.
Who wants to be able to program their TV to record TV from work? Who wants to program their lights to come on from work? Who wants to program their heat/AC to turn on/off from work? Who wants their oven to preheat from work?
I know I do.
I'm more concerned with walking into a liquor store that reads my ID into their database. Right now they have those little blue/yellow scanners that do it. At lesat if it's done by hand I can always refuse to buy my liquor there (and I do even if they require a swipe).
Anyone too lazy to read an ID manually is not worth giving my money to.
It's more like the mafia. You need protection from what we just did to you. Pay up *and* continue to suffer all at the same time.
The property owner of the email should be protecting it via encryption or its there for anyone to read.
Laws like the ones are talking about will eventually cause the population to do exactly that but it's not exactly as if the criminals weren't doing that already.
You will be labelled a traitor if you protect yourself and [tinfoil warning] you could eventually be held against your will for crimes against the government for protecting your personal privacy [/tinfoil].
Remember that anyone who encrypts their email obviously has something to hide and doesn't support their government and their own freedom!
I want the article to be right, but it seems more like a hope than any evidence. Amazon, Netflix, etc are selling/renting a lot of material that traditional stores don't stock, but it doesn't seem like it's indicating any great shift.
We are seeing this happen with Netflix for one simple reason. Longterm Netflix users don't get the more popular titles after a while. They are then given a title that is further and further down the list which ends up being something that is out of the "top 3,000". It's great for people that enjoy documentaries and foreign films but it sucks for people that have no interest in that sort of thing.
Amazon has enabled me to find books that are somewhat similar to what I normally read cheap. Real cheap. I always buy from Amazon used. They usually ship quickly and I only buy ones that are under $2.00. I have amassed quite a ecclectic book collection by doing this. Yeah some of the books aren't in the best of shape but I knew that there was that possibility going in.
It saves ME a ton of time searching brick and mortar stores and it saves me a ton of money too.