USB Audio: Kludgy and for a price higher than an Nforce motherboard with built in Digital out(I have one; it is great).
Cute case only gets it so far. In this day everything should have built in digital Audio out. I won't buy a computer that doesn't have it.
This was my whole point in stating there should be another model better suited to being a Media PC.
With Apples great interface design team making a usable pvr/player SW and more A/V IO they could make a Media PC that leaves the XPC media PC's in the dust. While nice the mini isn't quite up to that task.
Something like this, but a tad bigger, more powerful with more A/V connections and wireless keyboard/remote and some slick Apple media PC center software.
I would buy one in a heartbeat and I haven't used a Mac since University and they were 68K machines.
There was significant reason for Porn Driving VHS and for DVD uptake.
But no reason exist for Porn migrating ahead of the market this time.
Next generation provide 2 things. 1: Better image quality and 2:capacity.
1: Porn movies are ultra low quality, that dont' get anywhere near to quality limits of current DVD. So there is no migration because of this.
2: Porn movies are generally quite short.
So the porn industry is likely to stay with option 3 ( plain old DVD) long after hollywood has migrated.
Also migration to next gen (NG) will be a slow one, there is very little incentive for the majority of people to move to NG DVD. It will be a niche product for a long time.
Born again is akin to a nervous breakdown IMO. Often they are trading the bottle for a bible.
What percentage of the religous are the same religion as their parents? Is this startling coincidence or learned/enforced behavior?
Talking to my friends growing up, most were forced to go to church. Sounds like brainwashing from a young age to me.
Frankly it is amazing that many escape this cycle. Told from the time you can talk there is an all powerfull vengefull god and weekly attending mass brainwashing sessions.
If we had a world without religion we also wouldn't have the term "Holy War" either, or inquistions, or crusades etc....
At my school those on top academically were the best time managers (this was the most positive correlation), most talented, genuinely intrigued by solving the problems. They were also the ones playing tennis with their girfriends while the grinders tried to figure out thier assigmnets.
The middle of the pack was where most of the assigment copying happened. Where most of the real uber geeks with no social skills were. Where most of the bitterness lives (excuses...).
It was a small school I new every CS student in my year. I would hire any of the top 5 academically without hesitation. I would have to wade very, very carefully in the mid pack.
The parent to this sounds like it was written by some bitter mid packer who never actually knew any top students.
My generalization would be going for the top and I believe it would pay off. That is not to say you wouldn't miss gems, but they are exceptions in my opinion.
One of the best software designers I have ever worked with had only passing grades in school. But he did most of his University part time while working full time.
To me though the most important thing is the interview. You are going to get a stack a resumes that meet your requirements most likely. It boggles my mind that we continue to hire people that can't verbally communicate at all.
Currently only HD3 engined DLP sets use wobbulation. HD2 and HD2+ do not wobbulate, they are native.
The HD3 chip is actually 640x720 and shifts the chips midstream to wobbulte to 1280x720.
Viewiers are split. The image on the wobbulate sets is smoother and screen door is eliminated, but the overall image is softer.
Some think the wobbulators cause more rainbows. Nothing conclusive on this, but it makes sense as this effectively cuts the colour wheels speed in half.
Given the Above I would avoid HD3. I would take sharper over smoothing and increased possability of rainbows in annoying.
This wobbulation looks more like a smoothing technique than anything else. You don't get any more resolution. At least not the way that link is describing. If you can shift the optical path in between you can increase the resolution. if you dont' all you get is a smoothing algorithm, which could be done on the input side for that matter.
I haven't seen a display using one of TI's 1280x720 chips claiming they do 1920x1080 resolution. Sounds like complete BS to me.
Also TI does have a real 1920x1080 DLP chip. It is the xHD3 a big.9" chip at that.
"The truth of the matter, as the article reveals, is that it's people like these that caused so many problems for our friends at Valve and are responsible for most of the other irritating leaks of software"
Valves problems had nothing to do with the leak. If you read the interview with Gabe? at Valve, you will see that the leak was more a convenient scapegoat than anything else.
Note that these groups had nothing to do with the intrusion at Valve, just that someone passed the info on to them and they distribute. That is what they do, distribute.
The main activity mentioned seems to be cam copies of new movies. Does anyone give a rats ass about this? I laugh everytime I see some article freaking out about camera rips. It is clearly more like a harmless prank than anything else. Why the heck would anyone want to see a crappy camera copy of a movie with crappy sound. Revenue lost to this must be approaching Zero.
To me it looks like and adolescent race to see who can be first.
"But they wouldn't have passed the taxes into law if they hadn't been pressured by special-interest groups, and the special-interest groups would not have pressured them if people had not been engaging in copyright infringement."
The special interest groups are big media corporations and this unfair taxation changes were done in Canada before there was any large scale net RobinHooding (from now on I use this more proper term in place of the corporate medias "pirate").
It was done as a response to fair use. You might make a mixed CD for your car thus depriving them of the right to charge you twice for using the same song, therefore the tax everyone buy CD's, blank tapes etc...
I remember these days from 1980's with Commodore 64 and Amiga.
I knew a guy who would upload new games to BBS boards (pre internet) to get points. He would use points to dl new content to upload at other boards. Do this enough and he would accumulate games galore.
In the days of the C64 I seldom played games, merely collected them. I spent more time trying to fit as many games on one floppy than I ever did playing them. This mentality was extremely prevalent and still is in heavy downloader circles.
This is why I laugh myself silly whenever I hear the powers that be claim every download was a lost sale.
During my ealry teens when this was going on. I noted that the games I played the most were the ones I bought. Because if they were really good, I wanted the manual/maps etc.
Even with hundreds of "pirate" games backed up on C64 floppies, the games I spent serious play time with were the few that I actually purchased.
Today I have much more money than time to play games,I don't collect downloads anymore, but I still have a use for Warez. Try before buy. Since you can't return a game for being crap, a consumer needs some way to protect himself. Sometimes I buy on reputation alone, but I still DL cracks to make the game more usable (no cd type things).
If the warez community were to fall, I would be very saddened by its loss of the valuable service it provides in consumer protection.
I used to use Opera. I find their adbar a very tolerable way to to deliver a an ad supported application. It is still on my system, but I use firefox now.
I also made the mistake of installing DivX codec on my system and finding myself gain/gatored....
Ugh! Even after uninstalling divx it still wouldn't uninstall. I had to install several spyware cleaners, delete the stuff manually, it seems like there were several cycles of this before I was running clean again.
Ick. So why use evil crap like gain when they could do something decent like what Opera does?
I won't touch any program with Gain in it, and I assume any ad supported program is Gain and avoid it, until proven otherwise.
Quit your whining. Warez is valuable service.
on
LokiTorrent vs. MPAA
·
· Score: 1
Get off your high horse. I code for a living. Copied a lot of games when I was young and poor. These days I can afford the money to play the games more than the time. So I buy all the games I play.
But Warez groups provide two valuable services to me.
1: The ability to try out stuff before buying it, discovering it is actually crap and not being able to return it.
2: "No disc" cracks so I can install my legit game and play it without the friggen disc in the drive.
http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.htm l
"Milonic's Woolley said the senator's unlicensed use of his software was just "the tip of the iceberg." He said he knows of at least two other senators using unlicensed copies of his software, and many big companies.
Continental Airlines, for example, one of the largest airlines in the United States, uses Woolley's system throughout its Continental.com website. Woolley said the airline has not paid for the software. Worse, the copyright notices in the source code have been removed.
I only looked at the first page, but I have to wonder if someone posts only one consistent message. Every post he made is a rant against anyone who challenges the status quo on copyright law.
Your summary is off the mark: What is wrong is that software patent laws are being hideously abused by large corporations. They will continue the abuse by buying more patents and simultaneously lobbying to extend patent and copyright protection.
This will be a barrier for entry for anyone wishing to develop software. Individual and small companies, both for profit and non-profit will all be stifled. There are no more reasonable checks and balances in the system.
And before someone is convicted of a felony crime I think proof should be required that he either profitted, or that actual damages can be proven not assumed.
"I'd like to believe that a lot of this could be solved by having technically literate, honest people in the government. (But since we know that honest and government do not go together, we have a problem.)"
I agree with you. There was a certain amount of hyperbole in what I originally posted. The problem as I see it currently is that the current system allows corporate "donations" to campaigns and while there are some honest politician and maybe even a few that are technically literate, there are many more potential Orrin Hatches.
Time and Money is on the side of the corporate lobby eventually they will get more and more egrgious amendments in place.
This is so nuts. Nothing anywhere in this says this guy was profitting. He was merely copying and distributing games/apps. There is also no evidence anyone suffered any real damages because of this.
I know some collectors. The mentality is to get copies of everything, they never even install 1/10 th of the stuff, use my maybe 1% of what they install. It is just like a big game to them.
Blah blah this is the law... Frankly it is an insane law. The law is bought and sold by psychopathic corporations and dirty politicians.
We have a system were someone trades information at no personal gain and no measurable loss to the "owner" and they are a federal criminals.
I see a bleak future for the individual and small buisness. As corporations buy more laws and patents and monopilize more technology, eventually you won't even be able write software without being part of the giant corporate hegemony.
Every day I look at this I see a steady trend toward corporate police state.
But this does dilute share holder value. It is the equivalent of printing more money. It dilutes your share in the company. IMO companies shouldn't be able to just create more shares at a whim.
Originally this scheme was started with the rationale to capture revenue lost when you copied an album from a friend. Knowing there was no way to stop this or prosecute this, the entertainment lobby came up with a way to get paid for this "violation". At the same time the law was amended to allow private copying. A coup really. The industry allows a concession that was unstoppable and in return taxes all media.
Cue the internet music boom. Buisness as usual, time to go to war and kick in the doors of some file sharers, sue some grannies and single moms when there kids download music. But wait, that dang private copying amendment makes it a grey area.
Unfortunately what will happen next is there will be an attack on the "private copying" portion of the law. It will be changed, eventually we too will have RCMP raiding file downloaders. But of course the levies will stay as well.
The simple fact is we are in a corpocracy. The law is for the corporations. The certainly won't give up the revenue stream from levies but they will loby until they change the laws so they can sue.
Eventually we will have the worst of all possible worlds.
Slashdot Mirror
Hello sir this is OnStar, and we have records of you speeding on 35 occasions this month. Your $5000 fine is in the mail.
USB Audio: Kludgy and for a price higher than an Nforce motherboard with built in Digital out(I have one; it is great).
Cute case only gets it so far. In this day everything should have built in digital Audio out. I won't buy a computer that doesn't have it.
This was my whole point in stating there should be another model better suited to being a Media PC.
With Apples great interface design team making a usable pvr/player SW and more A/V IO they could make a Media PC that leaves the XPC media PC's in the dust. While nice the mini isn't quite up to that task.
Sound is an issue.
I use my current Nforce PC with digital out to drive my DD/DTS reciever. If I can't do that it is a no go.
Something like this, but a tad bigger, more powerful with more A/V connections and wireless keyboard/remote and some slick Apple media PC center software.
I would buy one in a heartbeat and I haven't used a Mac since University and they were 68K machines.
There was significant reason for Porn Driving VHS and for DVD uptake.
But no reason exist for Porn migrating ahead of the market this time.
Next generation provide 2 things. 1: Better image quality and 2:capacity.
1: Porn movies are ultra low quality, that dont' get anywhere near to quality limits of current DVD. So there is no migration because of this.
2: Porn movies are generally quite short.
So the porn industry is likely to stay with option 3 ( plain old DVD) long after hollywood has migrated.
Also migration to next gen (NG) will be a slow one, there is very little incentive for the majority of people to move to NG DVD. It will be a niche product for a long time.
Cool that sounds ideal. Don't see many zeniths around here though.
Most 30-32 inch widescreen CRTs I looked at were 480i, only 1 was 540p.
Hardly what I would call HDTV, even though that is what they are advertised as.
Any real 1280x720 sets out there? With computer inputs?
Born again is akin to a nervous breakdown IMO. Often they are trading the bottle for a bible.
What percentage of the religous are the same religion as their parents? Is this startling coincidence or learned/enforced behavior?
Talking to my friends growing up, most were forced to go to church. Sounds like brainwashing from a young age to me.
Frankly it is amazing that many escape this cycle. Told from the time you can talk there is an all powerfull vengefull god and weekly attending mass brainwashing sessions.
If we had a world without religion we also wouldn't have the term "Holy War" either, or inquistions, or crusades etc....
At my school those on top academically were the best time managers (this was the most positive correlation), most talented, genuinely intrigued by solving the problems. They were also the ones playing tennis with their girfriends while the grinders tried to figure out thier assigmnets.
The middle of the pack was where most of the assigment copying happened. Where most of the real uber geeks with no social skills were. Where most of the bitterness lives (excuses...).
It was a small school I new every CS student in my year. I would hire any of the top 5 academically without hesitation. I would have to wade very, very carefully in the mid pack.
The parent to this sounds like it was written by some bitter mid packer who never actually knew any top students.
My generalization would be going for the top and I believe it would pay off. That is not to say you wouldn't miss gems, but they are exceptions in my opinion.
One of the best software designers I have ever worked with had only passing grades in school. But he did most of his University part time while working full time.
To me though the most important thing is the interview. You are going to get a stack a resumes that meet your requirements most likely. It boggles my mind that we continue to hire people that can't verbally communicate at all.
Currently only HD3 engined DLP sets use wobbulation. HD2 and HD2+ do not wobbulate, they are native.
The HD3 chip is actually 640x720 and shifts the chips midstream to wobbulte to 1280x720.
Viewiers are split. The image on the wobbulate sets is smoother and screen door is eliminated, but the overall image is softer.
Some think the wobbulators cause more rainbows. Nothing conclusive on this, but it makes sense as this effectively cuts the colour wheels speed in half.
Given the Above I would avoid HD3. I would take sharper over smoothing and increased possability of rainbows in annoying.
This wobbulation looks more like a smoothing technique than anything else. You don't get any more resolution. At least not the way that link is describing. If you can shift the optical path in between you can increase the resolution. if you dont' all you get is a smoothing algorithm, which could be done on the input side for that matter.
.9" chip at that.
I haven't seen a display using one of TI's 1280x720 chips claiming they do 1920x1080 resolution. Sounds like complete BS to me.
Also TI does have a real 1920x1080 DLP chip.
It is the xHD3 a big
See the following for chips and specs:
http://www.digiupdate.com/105_DLP_RPTV.html
"The truth of the matter, as the article reveals, is that it's people like these that caused so many problems for our friends at Valve and are responsible for most of the other irritating leaks of software"
Valves problems had nothing to do with the leak. If you read the interview with Gabe? at Valve, you will see that the leak was more a convenient scapegoat than anything else.
Note that these groups had nothing to do with the intrusion at Valve, just that someone passed the info on to them and they distribute. That is what they do, distribute.
The main activity mentioned seems to be cam copies of new movies. Does anyone give a rats ass about this? I laugh everytime I see some article freaking out about camera rips. It is clearly more like a harmless prank than anything else. Why the heck would anyone want to see a crappy camera copy of a movie with crappy sound. Revenue lost to this must be approaching Zero.
To me it looks like and adolescent race to see who can be first.
"But they wouldn't have passed the taxes into law if they hadn't been pressured by special-interest groups, and the special-interest groups would not have pressured them if people had not been engaging in copyright infringement."
The special interest groups are big media corporations and this unfair taxation changes were done in Canada before there was any large scale net RobinHooding (from now on I use this more proper term in place of the corporate medias "pirate").
It was done as a response to fair use. You might make a mixed CD for your car thus depriving them of the right to charge you twice for using the same song, therefore the tax everyone buy CD's, blank tapes etc...
It was not a response to RobinHood activities.
I remember these days from 1980's with Commodore 64 and Amiga.
I knew a guy who would upload new games to BBS boards (pre internet) to get points. He would use points to dl new content to upload at other boards. Do this enough and he would accumulate games galore.
In the days of the C64 I seldom played games, merely collected them. I spent more time trying to fit as many games on one floppy than I ever did playing them. This mentality was extremely prevalent and still is in heavy downloader circles.
This is why I laugh myself silly whenever I hear the powers that be claim every download was a lost sale.
During my ealry teens when this was going on. I noted that the games I played the most were the ones I bought. Because if they were really good, I wanted the manual/maps etc.
Even with hundreds of "pirate" games backed up on C64 floppies, the games I spent serious play time with were the few that I actually purchased.
Today I have much more money than time to play games,I don't collect downloads anymore, but I still have a use for Warez. Try before buy. Since you can't return a game for being crap, a consumer needs some way to protect himself. Sometimes I buy on reputation alone, but I still DL cracks to make the game more usable (no cd type things).
If the warez community were to fall, I would be very saddened by its loss of the valuable service it provides in consumer protection.
I used to use Opera. I find their adbar a very tolerable way to to deliver a an ad supported application. It is still on my system, but I use firefox now.
I also made the mistake of installing DivX codec on my system and finding myself gain/gatored....
Ugh! Even after uninstalling divx it still wouldn't uninstall. I had to install several spyware cleaners, delete the stuff manually, it seems like there were several cycles of this before I was running clean again.
Ick. So why use evil crap like gain when they could do something decent like what Opera does?
I won't touch any program with Gain in it, and I assume any ad supported program is Gain and avoid it, until proven otherwise.
Get off your high horse. I code for a living. Copied a lot of games when I was young and poor. These days I can afford the money to play the games more than the time. So I buy all the games I play.
But Warez groups provide two valuable services to me.
1: The ability to try out stuff before buying it, discovering it is actually crap and not being able to return it.
2: "No disc" cracks so I can install my legit game and play it without the friggen disc in the drive.
Fix these and I won't need warez.
Very good point. This site has a mechanism for requesting stuff to be removed.
WTF?
http://wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,59305,00.htm l
"Milonic's Woolley said the senator's unlicensed use of his software was just "the tip of the iceberg." He said he knows of at least two other senators using unlicensed copies of his software, and many big companies.
Continental Airlines, for example, one of the largest airlines in the United States, uses Woolley's system throughout its Continental.com website. Woolley said the airline has not paid for the software. Worse, the copyright notices in the source code have been removed.
"That really pisses me off," he said."
Click on his ID to see his posting history.
I only looked at the first page, but I have to wonder if someone posts only one consistent message. Every post he made is a rant against anyone who challenges the status quo on copyright law.
A shill or a one issue troll?
Your summary is off the mark: What is wrong is that software patent laws are being hideously abused by large corporations. They will continue the abuse by buying more patents and simultaneously lobbying to extend patent and copyright protection.
This will be a barrier for entry for anyone wishing to develop software. Individual and small companies, both for profit and non-profit will all be stifled. There are no more reasonable checks and balances in the system.
And before someone is convicted of a felony crime I think proof should be required that he either profitted, or that actual damages can be proven not assumed.
"I'd like to believe that a lot of this could be solved by having technically literate, honest people in the government. (But since we know that honest and government do not go together, we have a problem.)"
I agree with you. There was a certain amount of hyperbole in what I originally posted. The problem as I see it currently is that the current system allows corporate "donations" to campaigns and while there are some honest politician and maybe even a few that are technically literate, there are many more potential Orrin Hatches.
Time and Money is on the side of the corporate lobby eventually they will get more and more egrgious amendments in place.
This is so nuts. Nothing anywhere in this says this guy was profitting. He was merely copying and distributing games/apps. There is also no evidence anyone suffered any real damages because of this.
I know some collectors. The mentality is to get copies of everything, they never even install 1/10 th of the stuff, use my maybe 1% of what they install. It is just like a big game to them.
Blah blah this is the law... Frankly it is an insane law. The law is bought and sold by psychopathic corporations and dirty politicians.
We have a system were someone trades information at no personal gain and no measurable loss to the "owner" and they are a federal criminals.
I see a bleak future for the individual and small buisness. As corporations buy more laws and patents and monopilize more technology, eventually you won't even be able write software without being part of the giant corporate hegemony.
Every day I look at this I see a steady trend toward corporate police state.
But this does dilute share holder value. It is the equivalent of printing more money. It dilutes your share in the company. IMO companies shouldn't be able to just create more shares at a whim.
Originally this scheme was started with the rationale to capture revenue lost when you copied an album from a friend. Knowing there was no way to stop this or prosecute this, the entertainment lobby came up with a way to get paid for this "violation". At the same time the law was amended to allow private copying. A coup really. The industry allows a concession that was unstoppable and in return taxes all media.
Cue the internet music boom. Buisness as usual, time to go to war and kick in the doors of some file sharers, sue some grannies and single moms when there kids download music. But wait, that dang private copying amendment makes it a grey area.
Unfortunately what will happen next is there will be an attack on the "private copying" portion of the law. It will be changed, eventually we too will have RCMP raiding file downloaders. But of course the levies will stay as well.
The simple fact is we are in a corpocracy. The law is for the corporations. The certainly won't give up the revenue stream from levies but they will loby until they change the laws so they can sue.
Eventually we will have the worst of all possible worlds.