the article stacks up all these ideas and misses one big obvious counter:
If push came to shove, the iPod would simply acquire telephony.
Game over. Apple's a fairly nimble company for its size. If they sniffed that telephones would need tunage, they'd put a telephone in an iPod faster than you can say "Paint me pink and call me Nancy".
The battery life is an ongoing issue, and they're improving it. It's not optimal, but it is far from disastrous. The fact that they're selling then as fast as they can make them is a testament to their usefulness.
Now go back under your rock with your tinfoil hat and repeat after me: It's All A Big Conspiracy And Apple Is Doomed.
Yup - you're right. My math is prety terrible. I looked back over it and found that in my fury I had accidentally typed in an extra zero. DOH! No wonder I was so cheesed.
The sony player STILL sucks, though. The Sony machine has zero advantages over the iPod except battery life. Being a wee bit smaller and a wee bit lighter I don't see as significant, given how light and small the iPod is. And given (as has been previously noted by many others) that one would be converting one lossy format to another even lossier format, in practice the sound quality is sure to suck great steaming tourds.
This sony player truly is a bad idea gone awry. As others have noted, the yWill Get Pummelled in the MArketplace, and I would bet dollars for donuts that they will be supporting MP3 in the next rev.
But thanks for the heads up on the numbers - two days is still too long, AFAIAC.
One major downside of the new Walkman is that it can't play MP3 files, or any of the other standard formats. It can play back only a proprietary Sony format called ATRAC3, or a variation called ATRAC3plus.
STEEEERIKE ONE!
This means that, when you transfer your MP3 files to the new Walkman, Sony's PC software must laboriously convert them first into ATRAC3 files.
STEEEERIKE TWO!!!!
To transfer MP3 song files from your PC to the Walkman, you first launch the software Sony supplies to manage the Walkman, called SonicStage 2....... the Sony software must grind away, converting all of them, one at a time, to the special Sony format.
For my test, I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files.......it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman.
STEEEEEERIKE THREE!!!! YOU'RE OUTA HERE!
WTF was Sony thinking? Let's see, right now, I have 8991 mp3s that eat 53.64 gigs of space on my drive. If it took him 133 minutes for 416 tracks, it would take me...ummm (open crackulator) 468 hours to convert my files to a Sony compatible format!!!!
that's only about Nineteen DAYS
I think I speak for many when I say:
Sony: kindly go FUCK YOURSELF - YOU MORONS.
think about it - RIGHT.... I'm going to let my machine Grind Away for what - the better part of a month, just so my mp3 collection will fit on their stupid little player?
Ummmm, No.
I'll take my iPod THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Note to Sony: GAME OVER. Would you like to play again?
My ex-neighbour back east had a shotgun and got sick of Windows crashing on him everyday. So he put it on the wall in his backyard and blasted it with a 12 gauge.
I helped him drag it back in and it worked. For about 5 minutes. Then it BSOD'd and never came back.
you have a dual purpose buss rolling along a rail route at, ummm, what, 80kmph? It weighs, what? 10 tons? 20 tons? Then right behind it is a kilometer long train full of, oh, I dunno - NAPTHA - that's roaring along at what?140kmph? ANd it weighs how many hundreds of tons? And takes how long to stop?
And then Brer Rabbit pulls the STOP AT NEXT CORNER pull tab in the dual purpose bus, and while he's getting his geriatric bones off the bus, everyone is sighing and wondering WHEN THE HELL HE'S GOING TO GET THE HELL OFF THE BUS. And as he ever so slowly mosies off the bus BLAMMO! Hit from behind by a train full of naptha.
The thing goes up like a tactical nuke.
This idea of a dual purpose bus is dumb dumb dee dumb, dumb dee dumb dee dumb dee dumb.
Didn't anyone test that POS before it went to the production server? What were they thinking?
EVERY out of work QA geek should be polishing their resume and hounding those stupid nimnos to hire a proper QA team.
"A million bucks pissed away from lack of testing? Cool: give me $500k and I will guarantee that it won't escape the test server with a single showstopping bug. sure: you just blew $500k, but think of it as SAVING $500k over having a catastrophic faliure...."
I'd like to agree with everything the parent said, but completely disagree with his suggestions. not because he's wrong (he's totally correct, esp. about renting - with HD around the courner buying a high end NTSC camera is a waste of money for a beginner.) but because his correct answers don't answer the problem. You're new and you're trying to get something done. You need to make LOTS of mistakes, and you need to make them cheaply. So I would suggest downshifting your aesthetics and go for a more "low-fi" effect. To that end:
F) depending on the effect you're trying to get, consider alternatives. Think: Pixelvision. Think VHS. Think cheapie DV camera. Process the the bejesus out of it. If it's your first work, don't bother with trying to make it look Hollywood, or even Daytime TV. just get something out the door, that you feel good about. It's better to make some not-so-great art that you find personally fulfilling and was a great learning experience than some primetime dogfood commercial.
G) Here's another tip: Shoot with a cheap DV camera (like I dunno - a Canon ZR60 - $300 when you can find 'em) and then take all the colour out in post. There is no loss to the luminance signal (DV is 4.1.1), so a cheapie is going to look a lot more like a high end camera in Black and White than it will in colour, due to the loss from using a single chip NTSC camera.
H) CONCENTRATE ON CONTENT. If the content is compelling, the formal inadequacies are often not as noticeable, or can even be used as a foil to amplify the content. Having something important and insightful to say with your work will trump any HDTV camera and lighting crew and prima donna actors you can find. Life is too short to make stupid crap, but if your budget doesn't permit hiring Walter Murch and a REAL CAMERA then focus on what you're trying to say, and strive to say it well.
I) there is no point I.
J) Pracitce your editing chops doing some video smashups. Rent a bunch of DVDs of movies that make you go "THAT WAS FUCKING GREAT", rip them to your drive as QT movies, and then edit the crap out of them. Study the really well edited ones - see how they're put together.
K) It seems you're going for a "music video" from what I can gather, so look at the masters of the genre, especially Chris Cunningham and Godley and Creme for fancy stuff, and then check out the works of the Emergency Broadcast Network. you don't need fancy cameras and actors and lighting to make an extremely effective video. You just need a vision and the will and some small amount of money to get you going.
You GUTLESS piece of West African SHIT! You haven't got the balls to off the kleptocratic assholes who are running your third rate petroleum state into the ground, so why should I fear you? You scum sucking RETARD!
You don't know who I am, you don't know where I live,so FUCK YOU! Come here and lick my butthole clean you PATHETIC PIECE OF CRAP!
Come and GET ME! Why? Because I'm one of several million good Americans who believe in the SECOND AMENDMENT, and I WILL CHEERFULLY BLAST YOUR NASTY LITTLE NADS OFF with my SHOTGUN(S) and then let MY DOGS have you for DINNER.
So fuck off you cowardly piece of worm ridden dogshit. In fact, calling you dogshit is an insult to excrement. Go choke yourself, asshole.
Haven't heard back from him yet.
Probably won't.
RS
The Compaq merge had nothing to do with technology
on
Dell CEO Tells All
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It had to do with 2 things (a Close Friend works at HP, so I get to hear things...)
1. Carly Got Paid. She wanted to make a few million and shore up her shaky position with the board. She got both wishes.
2. COMPAQ PAY CURVES
Compaq paid their people less, gave them fewer benefits, and shorter vacation. By applying Compaq Pay Curves, most of the people at HP suddenly found themselves at the top of their pay curve. They won't get a raise for decades. On top of that, if you were getting 5 weeks vacation because you had slaved for HP for 15 years, you now only get 4, thanks to the adoption ofthe Compaq HR regs. There was a whole raft of HR changes in HP that saved the company hundreds of millions of dollars on an ongoing basis. So not only did it chop X jillion bucks off their expenses this year, they wouldn't see it coming back the next.
Those left stateside who are not in management and not outsourced, are doing the work of three or four people.
This is NOT a sustainable situation and it is going to come crashing down in fairly short order.
Carly's HP is a disaster. She led Lucent gliding into a death spiral, and she's going to sink HP. And weep all the way to the bank. Plutocratic leeches like her must be stopped.
As someone noted eariler, these kinds of 2x matrices are extremely limiting in that they don't allow other possiblities. not only is that true for the realm of the possiblities that avail the dimension that the considered problem exists on, but 2x matrices also evacuate the possibility of other dimensions.
Not only do fators for consideration work on the plane of a decision matrix, but the universe is sufficiently sadistic as to insist on things coming out of nowhere to provide a level of complexity that presently exceeds human understanding. This variability scales down, and that's why things don't always go as planned.
People who buy these kinds of books are simply lackingthe level of imagination necessary to avoid getting caught in some corporate peter principle, and want quick answers as to how they can out-edge or out-compete their rivals.
What the 2x matrix world view, in present contexts, fails to understand is that the challenges ahead are not of competition but of co-operation - not unipolar dominance but multipolar consensus - not an overpopulated mass of hungry people, but a vastly depopulated technologically productive species exploring the universe. There is nothing matrical about that - the vision is completely wrong and off - we need more nuanced and complex decisions aided by a technical offloading of horsepower to machines, not simpler faster ones based on the quarterly bottom line...
When have we NOT held that public nudity and swearing in public are a bad thing? Especially on the broadcast airwaves? When have we EVER allowed it?
The question isn't when have WE (whoever WE are) have historically allowed it - the question is whether or not it should be allowed. People who are more of a libertarian bent (I use that term in its loose, non-political sense) tend to think such things are OK, while those of a more puritanical (again a loose not political definition) bent prefer not.
but again, it boils down to should it be OK (period) and not whether or not is subject to historical analysis. If so, then we should still have slavery, because human society has had slavery a lot longer than it hasn't.
We're in a war right now (whether some people want to admit it or not), and none one has ever been censored for questioning national security. No press freedoms have been curtailed at ALL, unlike WW II, where official censors got to look at everything the press did before it was published.
I disagree with your premise. We are not in a war. We are in a historically unique situation that resembles one, but it really isn't. Imagine this: Geo Washington et al fill some dozen large boats with gunpowder and oil and all kinds of bad stuff and float then over to Lodon ca. 1775\4. There's no war, no declaration of indpendence, just some unruly colonies. They float these boats right up to the house of commons or some palace or some equally populated and politically sensitive target, and then they strap the boats together and blow themselves and everything for about a half mile around to flinders.
Geo Washington writes out a manifesto saying "I'm a rich colonist and old King George can go fsck himself. We want Britain out of North America NOW and (fill in other similar demands)." Now, did the colonies declare war on Britain? No. would Britain decide it's at war? I doubt it. It would consider Washington et al a bunch of politically motivated criminals that require a militarised response. But calling it a war, is ridiculous.
George Bush et al have used this "war" idea in order to institute the Orwellian prediction of the Permanent Wartime Economy, and he is using dupes like Des Scorp to do their fearmongering and bidding.
Was the USA correct in going into Afghanistan? Sure. And if we had bombed London as outlined above, I daresay that the Brits would have marched on Virginia in a big way - and with a great deal of support from the colonists themselves - just as the USA was easily ablle to get massive international support in thumping the Al Qaeda/Taliban regime.
Press freedoms haven't been curtailed? What rock have you been under?
With the exceptions of some things like the DMCA, tell me what freedom's we've lost that used to be written in law? Even the Patriot Act doesn't affect the vast majority of people in this country.
1. It's an old page - I remember reading it a few years ago.
2. Around 1990 is when desktop computers were finally strong enough to do basic synthesis and sampling. At that point the writing was on the wall: the age of hardware synthesis was doomed - it would eventually go software, and the results have been impressive. For example: Propellerhead's REASON provides more synthesis power than any reasonable human being could have afforded in 1990. You want 11 samplers in a rack? In 1990, it would have cost $11,000. With REASON, it's just 11 mouse clicks on a $350 piece of software on a $600 computer.
You want echo an each? That would have been another $5000. Ooops - big mistake? You're stuck with $16,000 of gear. In REASON, you simply select all and hit delete.
For all the crowing of the mystical qualities of a specific synthesizer's analogue wonderments, the simple fact is this: software synthesis is vastly cheaper. Today you can go out and blow thousands on a (brand x) synthesizer or hundreds on (brand y) software. The consolidations in the synth industry confirm all of this.
In the early 1980s there were many many manufacturers. Now there are a handful. This number will continue to reduce as hardware becomes increasingly irrelevant for sound production. At the same time intuitive control surfaces that simultaneously operate in open standards of MIDI and closed standards of dedicated software synthesis will be the next wave of the future in hardware synthesizer manufacture.
I'm on the inside of this, so believe me: it's all true. I'm not joking and it's happening NOW.
The story reminds me of the above mentioned movie. Has a lot of footage of these people. It doesn't talk abouttheir lives, but wherever I watch the movie I know those poor bastards are getting massively irradiated.
One of the creepiest sections is where chinese troops put gas masks on their horses and charge the mushroom cloud with AK47s blazing. Freaky. It laos has people in lawn chairs watching explosions, and people in trenchs watching explosions, and explosions sinking an entire abandoned Navy and all kinds of crap.
The other cool thing about the movie is this: it's narrated by Captain Kirk himself.
If that little 500m sucker clobbered LA (my fave target) and you were 100km away out in the desert, the impact calculator says:
Impact Effects
Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, and Gareth Collins
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 100.00 km = 62.10 miles
Projectile Diameter: 500.00 m = 1640.00 ft = 0.31 miles
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 10.00 km/s = 6.21 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 3000 kg/m3
Target Type: Competent Rock or saturated soil
Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and remains intact.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.
Energy:
9.82 x 1018 Joules = 2.35 x 10^3 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is 4.3 x 10^4 years
Crater Size:
Transient Crater Diameter: 4.59 km = 2.85 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 5.63 km = 3.50 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
Thermal Radiation:
Time for maximum radiation: 0.43 seconds after impact
Visible fireball radius: 3.5 km = 2.2 miles
The fireball appears 7.9 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 3.60 x 104 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 6 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 6.5
Seismic Effects:
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 20.0 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 6.9
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 100 km:
VI. Felt by all. Many frightened and run outdoors. Persons walk unsteadily. Windows, dishes, glassware broken. Knickknacks, books, etc., off shelves. Pictures off walls. Furniture moved or overturned. Weak plaster and masonry D cracked. Small bells ring (church, school). Trees, bushes shaken (visibly, or heard to rustle).
VII. Difficult to stand. Noticed by drivers of motor cars. Hanging objects quiver. Furniture broken. Damage to masonry D, including cracks. Weak chimneys broken at roof line. Fall of plaster, loose bricks, stones, tiles, cornices (also unbraced parapets and architectural ornaments). Some cracks in masonry C. Waves on ponds; water turbid with mud. Small slides and caving in along sand or gravel banks. Large bells ring. Concrete irrigation ditches damaged.
Masonry C. Ordinary workmanship and mortar; no extreme weaknesses like failing to tie in at corners, but neither reinforced nor designed against horizontal forces.
Masonry D. Weak materials, such as adobe; poor mortar; low standards of workmanship; weak horizontally.
Ejecta:
The ejecta will arrive approximately 144.2 seconds after the impact.
At your position the ejecta arrives in scattered fragments
Average Ejecta Thickness: 4.6 mm = 0.1822 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 3.5 cm = 1.37 inches
Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 333.3 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 19232.2 Pa = 0.1923 bars = 2.7310 psi
Max wind velocity: 38.2 m/s = 85.4 mph
Sound Intensity: 86 dB (Loud as heavy traffic)
So let's see - you're 100 km away - first you experience a 6.9 earthquake, and the red hot 4.6mm fragments arrive 144 seconds later? Great - that's like 250 km per hour... Nice. Anyone in the open is DEAD, and your house might not survive that either. Then after being weakened by a major earthquake and a barrage of highspeed rocks, an 86 mph wind comes to visit.
Great. Sounds pretty crappy to me. I doubt that it would be the end of the world (Except for LA, but who cares?) but I think that even a smallish rock like that would produce some MAJOR damage, and should be avoided at all costs - alomst as much as voting for GW should be avoided.
OK, IIRC, MS has 57,000 employees. They have 52 BILLION dollars IN CASH in the bank. But they're cutting back on employee benefits? WTF???
If they cut that 52 billion 57,000 ways, everyone would get $912,280.70. If you invest that and get 5% return annual, they would all get $45,614 a year FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. And because it's pure interest income, and US tax laws favour those who don't work fora living over those who do, they would only pay something like 20 - 25% income tax on it.
Why doesn't MS do something like this? Because they are beholden to their shareholders who speculate on their profits, and not to the workers who MAKE their profits.
Every employee of MS should RISE UP and revolt against their masters. RISE UP!!! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS AND YOU CAN GAIN A GUARANTEED COMFORTABLE LIFE!!!
THROW OFF the consciousness that holds you down - TAKE WHAT IS YOURS - your LIFE, your LIBERTY, and your RIGHTFUL WAGE!!!
All you need to do is a get a video feed off the damn DVD player and run it through a TBC (Time Base Corrector). Any half way decent one will strip out all of the nasty Macrovision on the fly and encryption won't matter, because it's an analogue signal. then you record it to your DV system du jour, and you're done - the video is now available for random distribution at your will.... No muss, not too much fuss, and no chocolate mess.
it's just this little chromium switch here...you people are SO superstitious...
Microsoft gets to test its DRM in China on a huge populace that has no choice but to except to evil dictates of their pseudo-communist overlords. Once they get some of the major bugs worked out, and the almost major bugs can be papered over, they spring it on the USA just in time for broadcast HDTV, which will use MS DRM and the WMV format.
Apple went to iTunes and music and won that battle handily, but they're losing the war big time, as the next generation of movie houses will use video projection and the WMV file format. The money is in the Big Things, and MS is cozying up to all the evil bastards and putting themselves in centre stage. As far as MS is concerned, the WMV format doesn't care if the DRM is locking down a movie theatre or a home theatre. It's all the same entertainment designed to keep your attention between commercials (TV) or your mind off the horrors of the nightmare we call post-industrial civilisation.
Bread and Circuses, only this time the circuses have DRM owned by a monopoly.
I did read it and it answered my point. I'll even quote you, you anonymous coward:
Mailing lists don't really have a good solution with the first generation of stamps.
Now, spam has plagued us for HOW LONG? And this proposal to sender pays has only recently been seriously considered till WHEN? And HOW LONG would it take for the Second Generation of stamps to work? And when Spammers figure out some loophole (graciously provided by the Borg in Redmond) that gets them around stamps, this will benefit email lists HOW?
My point still stands and your criticism self refutes by the very quote you use to "bolster" your argument when viewed in historical context.
Face it: sender pays sucks, and will only prove to be more of a headache than spam. Spam is powerless against the delete key, just as my recycle bin cheerfully eats all my unopened junk mail. To really stop spam, you have to stop spammers.
What doesn't suck is not only catching and procesuting spammers, but putting them in prison. Not some cushy prison in Denmark, but some hellhole like BanglaDesh or Botswana. It's an international crime and it deserves an international punishement.
I DEPEND on several email lists, and the only way sender pays is if it is universal, and that would bankrupt the lists I'm on, having an extremely deleterious net effect on the free speech that the email lists of these extremely niche interests provide.
I think we simply need to throw more money at Interpol, getthem a "Spam Cop Agency" and make the punishments *severe* enough for spammers that it will snuff these asshats out of existence.
With processors eating up more and more power just to run them, and running hotter all the time, a lot of any new power coming on line will get dumped into the coolant / refrigerant technologies (compressors suck up a lot of juice too...)
Batteries (and power technology in general) are so far behind the curve, it's really pretty sad. Moore's Law may be on a vacation in chip land, but it's pretty much closed up shop in the world of battery and power storage.
In a world of cheap oil - who cares?
I'm surprised we don't have kick start deisel laptops... Urrr- that's right - I forgot - that was the Soviet idea of powering a laptop...
Well guess what? The world is FULL of "most important issues" and "things nobody can laugh at" and most of them are funny to somebody else. People need to lighten up a bit and learn that yes, you are funny too and no, you don't hold the One True Way and the moral righteousness that is untouchable.
Yeeeeah! I agree! Some child STARVING TO DEATH every few seconds IS A FUCKING RIOT!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeeeeah- and spending billions invading a sovereign (if evil) dictatorship- and killing tens of thousands of its residents? YEAH!!! That's the FUNNIEST SHIT since the Battle of the Marne! Heeeheheheeehee!!! Yeah! And reducing Iraq to a godforsaken desolate wasteland? HA! I just get hysterical when I hear about that crap. And the environment! Hohohohohooooo--- I bust a GUT everytime I think about the RUINED WORLD my little girl is inhereting! YA!Makes me so HAPPY I COULD PUKE!
God FORBID we EVER take SERIOUS ISSUES SERIOUSLY. That would be so MODERN and SINCERE. We wouldn't want THAT, now WOULD WE?
OK, the great OZ has been asked to weigh in on this. So:
1. Terraforming will be a big deal. So, THINK BIG, but doable.
The biggest problem with Mars is that it isn't Big Enough or Wet Enough. Its gravity is weak and any kind of terran atmosphere / water condition wouldn't last very long. Also, there's a lot of water there, but not enough to really make it happen.
SO: this is what we do-
We figure out a way to send Saturn's moon Iapetus to collide with Mars. Iapetus is mostly water ice. Since Mars has very little atmosphere, it'll plow into Mars straight on and destroy the place. However: in the ensuing melee, Iapetus will Melt. Result? Instant Oceans of Water. Many Miles Deep. We turn Mons Olympus (into Olympic Island) into a base of operations. We'll have all the water we could possibley want and then some. We use solar power to crack huge amounts of it into Oxygen. Introduce plankton and sea critturs and get a carbon cycle going and food from the sea. Sure: the water will tend to break down in the upper atmosphere, and without an ionosphere, it will tend to breakdown and disappear, but it will take HUNDREDS of millions of years for that to happen to the water introduced by Iapetus.
2. to al the ninnies who say "spend that money on Earth and Feed The Poor." I reply: we can easily do both. Just KILL THE RICH and TAKE THEIR MONEY and set up a properly socialist system. Tere will be a lot of resistance from the running dog jackals and the deluded dupes of the capitalist conspiracy, but it's nothing an SKS can't take care of. Problem solved. Bascially: If we DON'T get people onto Mars, we're definitely screwed as someday an asteroid will come and thump us a good one, and all the money you pissed away on a bunch of poor retards isn't going to help their poor retarded progeny from surviving said asteroid strike.
3. Martians will be the second step. The first step is homo futuris - a genetically enhanced human species that lives an order of magnitude longer, has an IQ that would be off our charts and is resistant to most, if not all, contemporary communicable diseases, and has had its genome cleansed of disease (esp. cancer) propensities. If we can get to homo futuris, then we can think about developing a species that can knit bones and reproduce in some fraction of our gravity with a reduced atmosphere...
don'tcha just love it when one hand of Corporate America Chops Off the other hand? It's kind of like watching a slow motion train wreck, or a circular firing squad.
Someone will recombine DNA to make AIDS (or some other long term and fatal disease) as contagious as the common cold before the grey goo scenario plays out.
Slashdot Mirror
If push came to shove, the iPod would simply acquire telephony.
Game over. Apple's a fairly nimble company for its size. If they sniffed that telephones would need tunage, they'd put a telephone in an iPod faster than you can say "Paint me pink and call me Nancy".
The battery life is an ongoing issue, and they're improving it. It's not optimal, but it is far from disastrous. The fact that they're selling then as fast as they can make them is a testament to their usefulness.
Now go back under your rock with your tinfoil hat and repeat after me: It's All A Big Conspiracy And Apple Is Doomed.
Ya freeek.
RS
The sony player STILL sucks, though. The Sony machine has zero advantages over the iPod except battery life. Being a wee bit smaller and a wee bit lighter I don't see as significant, given how light and small the iPod is. And given (as has been previously noted by many others) that one would be converting one lossy format to another even lossier format, in practice the sound quality is sure to suck great steaming tourds.
This sony player truly is a bad idea gone awry. As others have noted, the yWill Get Pummelled in the MArketplace, and I would bet dollars for donuts that they will be supporting MP3 in the next rev.
But thanks for the heads up on the numbers - two days is still too long, AFAIAC.
RS
One major downside of the new Walkman is that it can't play MP3 files, or any of the other standard formats. It can play back only a proprietary Sony format called ATRAC3, or a variation called ATRAC3plus.
STEEEERIKE ONE!
This means that, when you transfer your MP3 files to the new Walkman, Sony's PC software must laboriously convert them first into ATRAC3 files.
STEEEERIKE TWO!!!!
To transfer MP3 song files from your PC to the Walkman, you first launch the software Sony supplies to manage the Walkman, called SonicStage 2.... ... the Sony software must grind away, converting all of them, one at a time, to the special Sony format.
For my test, I used a very modest collection of 431 standard MP3 files.... ...it took an agonizingly long two hours and 13 minutes to transfer the remaining 416 tracks to the Walkman.
STEEEEEERIKE THREE!!!! YOU'RE OUTA HERE!
WTF was Sony thinking? Let's see, right now, I have 8991 mp3s that eat 53.64 gigs of space on my drive. If it took him 133 minutes for 416 tracks, it would take me...ummm (open crackulator) 468 hours to convert my files to a Sony compatible format!!!!
that's only about Nineteen DAYS
I think I speak for many when I say:
Sony: kindly go FUCK YOURSELF - YOU MORONS.
think about it - RIGHT.... I'm going to let my machine Grind Away for what - the better part of a month, just so my mp3 collection will fit on their stupid little player?
Ummmm, No.
I'll take my iPod THANK YOU VERY MUCH.
Note to Sony: GAME OVER. Would you like to play again?
RS
I helped him drag it back in and it worked. For about 5 minutes. Then it BSOD'd and never came back.
Total POS.
RS
you have a dual purpose buss rolling along a rail route at, ummm, what, 80kmph? It weighs, what? 10 tons? 20 tons? Then right behind it is a kilometer long train full of, oh, I dunno - NAPTHA - that's roaring along at what?140kmph? ANd it weighs how many hundreds of tons? And takes how long to stop?
And then Brer Rabbit pulls the STOP AT NEXT CORNER pull tab in the dual purpose bus, and while he's getting his geriatric bones off the bus, everyone is sighing and wondering WHEN THE HELL HE'S GOING TO GET THE HELL OFF THE BUS. And as he ever so slowly mosies off the bus BLAMMO! Hit from behind by a train full of naptha.
The thing goes up like a tactical nuke.
This idea of a dual purpose bus is dumb dumb dee dumb, dumb dee dumb dee dumb dee dumb.
RS
EVERY out of work QA geek should be polishing their resume and hounding those stupid nimnos to hire a proper QA team.
"A million bucks pissed away from lack of testing? Cool: give me $500k and I will guarantee that it won't escape the test server with a single showstopping bug. sure: you just blew $500k, but think of it as SAVING $500k over having a catastrophic faliure...."
If they turn you down, they're dumbasses.
RS
F) depending on the effect you're trying to get, consider alternatives. Think: Pixelvision. Think VHS. Think cheapie DV camera. Process the the bejesus out of it. If it's your first work, don't bother with trying to make it look Hollywood, or even Daytime TV. just get something out the door, that you feel good about. It's better to make some not-so-great art that you find personally fulfilling and was a great learning experience than some primetime dogfood commercial.
G) Here's another tip: Shoot with a cheap DV camera (like I dunno - a Canon ZR60 - $300 when you can find 'em) and then take all the colour out in post. There is no loss to the luminance signal (DV is 4.1.1), so a cheapie is going to look a lot more like a high end camera in Black and White than it will in colour, due to the loss from using a single chip NTSC camera.
H) CONCENTRATE ON CONTENT. If the content is compelling, the formal inadequacies are often not as noticeable, or can even be used as a foil to amplify the content. Having something important and insightful to say with your work will trump any HDTV camera and lighting crew and prima donna actors you can find. Life is too short to make stupid crap, but if your budget doesn't permit hiring Walter Murch and a REAL CAMERA then focus on what you're trying to say, and strive to say it well.
I) there is no point I.
J) Pracitce your editing chops doing some video smashups. Rent a bunch of DVDs of movies that make you go "THAT WAS FUCKING GREAT", rip them to your drive as QT movies, and then edit the crap out of them. Study the really well edited ones - see how they're put together.
K) It seems you're going for a "music video" from what I can gather, so look at the masters of the genre, especially Chris Cunningham and Godley and Creme for fancy stuff, and then check out the works of the Emergency Broadcast Network. you don't need fancy cameras and actors and lighting to make an extremely effective video. You just need a vision and the will and some small amount of money to get you going.
Good luck,
RS
You GUTLESS piece of West African SHIT! You haven't got the balls to off the kleptocratic assholes who are running your third rate petroleum state into the ground, so why should I fear you? You scum sucking RETARD!
You don't know who I am, you don't know where I live,so FUCK YOU! Come here and lick my butthole clean you PATHETIC PIECE OF CRAP!
Come and GET ME! Why? Because I'm one of several million good Americans who believe in the SECOND AMENDMENT, and I WILL CHEERFULLY BLAST YOUR NASTY LITTLE NADS OFF with my SHOTGUN(S) and then let MY DOGS have you for DINNER.
So fuck off you cowardly piece of worm ridden dogshit. In fact, calling you dogshit is an insult to excrement. Go choke yourself, asshole.
Haven't heard back from him yet.
Probably won't.
RS
1. Carly Got Paid. She wanted to make a few million and shore up her shaky position with the board. She got both wishes.
2. COMPAQ PAY CURVES
Compaq paid their people less, gave them fewer benefits, and shorter vacation. By applying Compaq Pay Curves, most of the people at HP suddenly found themselves at the top of their pay curve. They won't get a raise for decades. On top of that, if you were getting 5 weeks vacation because you had slaved for HP for 15 years, you now only get 4, thanks to the adoption ofthe Compaq HR regs. There was a whole raft of HR changes in HP that saved the company hundreds of millions of dollars on an ongoing basis. So not only did it chop X jillion bucks off their expenses this year, they wouldn't see it coming back the next.
Those left stateside who are not in management and not outsourced, are doing the work of three or four people.
This is NOT a sustainable situation and it is going to come crashing down in fairly short order.
Carly's HP is a disaster. She led Lucent gliding into a death spiral, and she's going to sink HP. And weep all the way to the bank. Plutocratic leeches like her must be stopped.
RS
Not only do fators for consideration work on the plane of a decision matrix, but the universe is sufficiently sadistic as to insist on things coming out of nowhere to provide a level of complexity that presently exceeds human understanding. This variability scales down, and that's why things don't always go as planned.
People who buy these kinds of books are simply lackingthe level of imagination necessary to avoid getting caught in some corporate peter principle, and want quick answers as to how they can out-edge or out-compete their rivals.
What the 2x matrix world view, in present contexts, fails to understand is that the challenges ahead are not of competition but of co-operation - not unipolar dominance but multipolar consensus - not an overpopulated mass of hungry people, but a vastly depopulated technologically productive species exploring the universe. There is nothing matrical about that - the vision is completely wrong and off - we need more nuanced and complex decisions aided by a technical offloading of horsepower to machines, not simpler faster ones based on the quarterly bottom line...
RS
The question isn't when have WE (whoever WE are) have historically allowed it - the question is whether or not it should be allowed. People who are more of a libertarian bent (I use that term in its loose, non-political sense) tend to think such things are OK, while those of a more puritanical (again a loose not political definition) bent prefer not.
but again, it boils down to should it be OK (period) and not whether or not is subject to historical analysis. If so, then we should still have slavery, because human society has had slavery a lot longer than it hasn't.
We're in a war right now (whether some people want to admit it or not), and none one has ever been censored for questioning national security. No press freedoms have been curtailed at ALL, unlike WW II, where official censors got to look at everything the press did before it was published.
I disagree with your premise. We are not in a war. We are in a historically unique situation that resembles one, but it really isn't. Imagine this: Geo Washington et al fill some dozen large boats with gunpowder and oil and all kinds of bad stuff and float then over to Lodon ca. 1775\4. There's no war, no declaration of indpendence, just some unruly colonies. They float these boats right up to the house of commons or some palace or some equally populated and politically sensitive target, and then they strap the boats together and blow themselves and everything for about a half mile around to flinders.
Geo Washington writes out a manifesto saying "I'm a rich colonist and old King George can go fsck himself. We want Britain out of North America NOW and (fill in other similar demands)." Now, did the colonies declare war on Britain? No. would Britain decide it's at war? I doubt it. It would consider Washington et al a bunch of politically motivated criminals that require a militarised response. But calling it a war, is ridiculous.
George Bush et al have used this "war" idea in order to institute the Orwellian prediction of the Permanent Wartime Economy, and he is using dupes like Des Scorp to do their fearmongering and bidding.
Was the USA correct in going into Afghanistan? Sure. And if we had bombed London as outlined above, I daresay that the Brits would have marched on Virginia in a big way - and with a great deal of support from the colonists themselves - just as the USA was easily ablle to get massive international support in thumping the Al Qaeda/Taliban regime.
Press freedoms haven't been curtailed? What rock have you been under?
With the exceptions of some things like the DMCA, tell me what freedom's we've lost that used to be written in law? Even the Patriot Act doesn't affect the vast majority of people in this country.
Oh so depriving citizens of the writ of habeus corpus is OK as long as it's not the vast majority of people? So it's OK to deny people their constitutional rights when the dimwitted tool of some right wing corporate junta says so? Read this and then tell me how our freedoms aren't being curtailed at the hands of the single most perfidious and downright evil administration that I have ever, in my 45 years of life, experienced.
Sir, YOUR post is bullshit, and the simple facts around prove so.
RS
2. Around 1990 is when desktop computers were finally strong enough to do basic synthesis and sampling. At that point the writing was on the wall: the age of hardware synthesis was doomed - it would eventually go software, and the results have been impressive. For example: Propellerhead's REASON provides more synthesis power than any reasonable human being could have afforded in 1990. You want 11 samplers in a rack? In 1990, it would have cost $11,000. With REASON, it's just 11 mouse clicks on a $350 piece of software on a $600 computer.
You want echo an each? That would have been another $5000. Ooops - big mistake? You're stuck with $16,000 of gear. In REASON, you simply select all and hit delete.
For all the crowing of the mystical qualities of a specific synthesizer's analogue wonderments, the simple fact is this: software synthesis is vastly cheaper. Today you can go out and blow thousands on a (brand x) synthesizer or hundreds on (brand y) software. The consolidations in the synth industry confirm all of this.
In the early 1980s there were many many manufacturers. Now there are a handful. This number will continue to reduce as hardware becomes increasingly irrelevant for sound production. At the same time intuitive control surfaces that simultaneously operate in open standards of MIDI and closed standards of dedicated software synthesis will be the next wave of the future in hardware synthesizer manufacture.
I'm on the inside of this, so believe me: it's all true. I'm not joking and it's happening NOW.
HW
One of the creepiest sections is where chinese troops put gas masks on their horses and charge the mushroom cloud with AK47s blazing. Freaky. It laos has people in lawn chairs watching explosions, and people in trenchs watching explosions, and explosions sinking an entire abandoned Navy and all kinds of crap.
The other cool thing about the movie is this: it's narrated by Captain Kirk himself.
RS
Impact Effects Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, and Gareth Collins
Your Inputs:
Distance from Impact: 100.00 km = 62.10 miles
Projectile Diameter: 500.00 m = 1640.00 ft = 0.31 miles
Projectile Density: 3000 kg/m3
Impact Velocity: 10.00 km/s = 6.21 miles/s
Impact Angle: 45 degrees
Target Density: 3000 kg/m3
Target Type: Competent Rock or saturated soil
Major Global Changes:
The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact and remains intact.
The impact does not make a noticeable change in the Earth's rotation period or the tilt of its axis.
The impact does not shift the Earth's orbit noticeably.
Energy: 9.82 x 1018 Joules = 2.35 x 10^3 MegaTons TNT
The average interval between impacts of this size somewhere on Earth is 4.3 x 10^4 years
Crater Size:
Transient Crater Diameter: 4.59 km = 2.85 miles
Final Crater Diameter: 5.63 km = 3.50 miles
The crater formed is a complex crater.
Thermal Radiation: Time for maximum radiation: 0.43 seconds after impact
Visible fireball radius: 3.5 km = 2.2 miles
The fireball appears 7.9 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 3.60 x 104 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 6 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 6.5
Seismic Effects:
The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 20.0 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 6.9
Mercalli Scale Intensity at a distance of 100 km:
VI. Felt by all. Many frightened and run outdoors. Persons walk unsteadily. Windows, dishes, glassware broken. Knickknacks, books, etc., off shelves. Pictures off walls. Furniture moved or overturned. Weak plaster and masonry D cracked. Small bells ring (church, school). Trees, bushes shaken (visibly, or heard to rustle).
VII. Difficult to stand. Noticed by drivers of motor cars. Hanging objects quiver. Furniture broken. Damage to masonry D, including cracks. Weak chimneys broken at roof line. Fall of plaster, loose bricks, stones, tiles, cornices (also unbraced parapets and architectural ornaments). Some cracks in masonry C. Waves on ponds; water turbid with mud. Small slides and caving in along sand or gravel banks. Large bells ring. Concrete irrigation ditches damaged.
Masonry C. Ordinary workmanship and mortar; no extreme weaknesses like failing to tie in at corners, but neither reinforced nor designed against horizontal forces.
Masonry D. Weak materials, such as adobe; poor mortar; low standards of workmanship; weak horizontally.
Ejecta: The ejecta will arrive approximately 144.2 seconds after the impact.
At your position the ejecta arrives in scattered fragments
Average Ejecta Thickness: 4.6 mm = 0.1822 inches
Mean Fragment Diameter: 3.5 cm = 1.37 inches
Air Blast:
The air blast will arrive at approximately 333.3 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 19232.2 Pa = 0.1923 bars = 2.7310 psi
Max wind velocity: 38.2 m/s = 85.4 mph
Sound Intensity: 86 dB (Loud as heavy traffic)
So let's see - you're 100 km away - first you experience a 6.9 earthquake, and the red hot 4.6mm fragments arrive 144 seconds later? Great - that's like 250 km per hour... Nice. Anyone in the open is DEAD, and your house might not survive that either. Then after being weakened by a major earthquake and a barrage of highspeed rocks, an 86 mph wind comes to visit.
Great. Sounds pretty crappy to me. I doubt that it would be the end of the world (Except for LA, but who cares?) but I think that even a smallish rock like that would produce some MAJOR damage, and should be avoided at all costs - alomst as much as voting for GW should be avoided.
RS
If they cut that 52 billion 57,000 ways, everyone would get $912,280.70. If you invest that and get 5% return annual, they would all get $45,614 a year FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. And because it's pure interest income, and US tax laws favour those who don't work fora living over those who do, they would only pay something like 20 - 25% income tax on it.
Why doesn't MS do something like this? Because they are beholden to their shareholders who speculate on their profits, and not to the workers who MAKE their profits.
Every employee of MS should RISE UP and revolt against their masters. RISE UP!!! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS AND YOU CAN GAIN A GUARANTEED COMFORTABLE LIFE!!!
THROW OFF the consciousness that holds you down - TAKE WHAT IS YOURS - your LIFE, your LIBERTY, and your RIGHTFUL WAGE!!!
Insert (smash the state) statements here.
Insert (facts) here.
RS
We complain - audi says it's not their fault, City says it's not their problem.
When I grow an extra head from the radiation I will go to the office of the Sutro Tower people and eat one of their faces.
RS
it's just this little chromium switch here...you people are SO superstitious...
RS
Microsoft gets to test its DRM in China on a huge populace that has no choice but to except to evil dictates of their pseudo-communist overlords. Once they get some of the major bugs worked out, and the almost major bugs can be papered over, they spring it on the USA just in time for broadcast HDTV, which will use MS DRM and the WMV format.
Apple went to iTunes and music and won that battle handily, but they're losing the war big time, as the next generation of movie houses will use video projection and the WMV file format. The money is in the Big Things, and MS is cozying up to all the evil bastards and putting themselves in centre stage. As far as MS is concerned, the WMV format doesn't care if the DRM is locking down a movie theatre or a home theatre. It's all the same entertainment designed to keep your attention between commercials (TV) or your mind off the horrors of the nightmare we call post-industrial civilisation.
Bread and Circuses, only this time the circuses have DRM owned by a monopoly.
Heard it here first. Sort of.
RS
Mailing lists don't really have a good solution with the first generation of stamps.
Now, spam has plagued us for HOW LONG? And this proposal to sender pays has only recently been seriously considered till WHEN? And HOW LONG would it take for the Second Generation of stamps to work? And when Spammers figure out some loophole (graciously provided by the Borg in Redmond) that gets them around stamps, this will benefit email lists HOW?
My point still stands and your criticism self refutes by the very quote you use to "bolster" your argument when viewed in historical context.
Face it: sender pays sucks, and will only prove to be more of a headache than spam. Spam is powerless against the delete key, just as my recycle bin cheerfully eats all my unopened junk mail. To really stop spam, you have to stop spammers.
What doesn't suck is not only catching and procesuting spammers, but putting them in prison. Not some cushy prison in Denmark, but some hellhole like BanglaDesh or Botswana. It's an international crime and it deserves an international punishement.
RS
I DEPEND on several email lists, and the only way sender pays is if it is universal, and that would bankrupt the lists I'm on, having an extremely deleterious net effect on the free speech that the email lists of these extremely niche interests provide.
I think we simply need to throw more money at Interpol, getthem a "Spam Cop Agency" and make the punishments *severe* enough for spammers that it will snuff these asshats out of existence.
RS
Batteries (and power technology in general) are so far behind the curve, it's really pretty sad. Moore's Law may be on a vacation in chip land, but it's pretty much closed up shop in the world of battery and power storage.
In a world of cheap oil - who cares?
I'm surprised we don't have kick start deisel laptops... Urrr- that's right - I forgot - that was the Soviet idea of powering a laptop...
RS
HW
Well guess what? The world is FULL of "most important issues" and "things nobody can laugh at" and most of them are funny to somebody else. People need to lighten up a bit and learn that yes, you are funny too and no, you don't hold the One True Way and the moral righteousness that is untouchable.
Yeeeeah! I agree! Some child STARVING TO DEATH every few seconds IS A FUCKING RIOT!!! BWAHAHAHAHA!!!! Yeeeeah- and spending billions invading a sovereign (if evil) dictatorship- and killing tens of thousands of its residents? YEAH!!! That's the FUNNIEST SHIT since the Battle of the Marne! Heeeheheheeehee!!! Yeah! And reducing Iraq to a godforsaken desolate wasteland? HA! I just get hysterical when I hear about that crap. And the environment! Hohohohohooooo--- I bust a GUT everytime I think about the RUINED WORLD my little girl is inhereting! YA!Makes me so HAPPY I COULD PUKE!
God FORBID we EVER take SERIOUS ISSUES SERIOUSLY. That would be so MODERN and SINCERE. We wouldn't want THAT, now WOULD WE?
RS
1. Terraforming will be a big deal. So, THINK BIG, but doable.
The biggest problem with Mars is that it isn't Big Enough or Wet Enough. Its gravity is weak and any kind of terran atmosphere / water condition wouldn't last very long. Also, there's a lot of water there, but not enough to really make it happen.
SO: this is what we do-
We figure out a way to send Saturn's moon Iapetus to collide with Mars. Iapetus is mostly water ice. Since Mars has very little atmosphere, it'll plow into Mars straight on and destroy the place. However: in the ensuing melee, Iapetus will Melt. Result? Instant Oceans of Water. Many Miles Deep. We turn Mons Olympus (into Olympic Island) into a base of operations. We'll have all the water we could possibley want and then some. We use solar power to crack huge amounts of it into Oxygen. Introduce plankton and sea critturs and get a carbon cycle going and food from the sea. Sure: the water will tend to break down in the upper atmosphere, and without an ionosphere, it will tend to breakdown and disappear, but it will take HUNDREDS of millions of years for that to happen to the water introduced by Iapetus.
2. to al the ninnies who say "spend that money on Earth and Feed The Poor." I reply: we can easily do both. Just KILL THE RICH and TAKE THEIR MONEY and set up a properly socialist system. Tere will be a lot of resistance from the running dog jackals and the deluded dupes of the capitalist conspiracy, but it's nothing an SKS can't take care of. Problem solved. Bascially: If we DON'T get people onto Mars, we're definitely screwed as someday an asteroid will come and thump us a good one, and all the money you pissed away on a bunch of poor retards isn't going to help their poor retarded progeny from surviving said asteroid strike.
3. Martians will be the second step. The first step is homo futuris - a genetically enhanced human species that lives an order of magnitude longer, has an IQ that would be off our charts and is resistant to most, if not all, contemporary communicable diseases, and has had its genome cleansed of disease (esp. cancer) propensities. If we can get to homo futuris, then we can think about developing a species that can knit bones and reproduce in some fraction of our gravity with a reduced atmosphere...
the Great OZ has spoken!
RS
don'tcha just love it when one hand of Corporate America Chops Off the other hand? It's kind of like watching a slow motion train wreck, or a circular firing squad.
RS
RS