Don't forget that Google has the 'cache' facility that allows you to see the page that Google has indexed. Display the cache, visit the page and if they don't match up - complain to Google.
I think the Google cache is GREAT! Lots of sites go down mysteriously or pages are moved/missing and Google has them cached so you can see them. I've used it many times.
If you don't like the cache, don't use it!:)
And if you have the urge to complain to Google - don't. They'll probably just tell you to use the original URL.
(yawn) In which case he could have bought a high-end DVD player at a home theatre store. Instead of getting a toy to play them on.
I'm sure Sony would resent that statement if they read it. That's like saying that if you had your high-end mixer/speakers hooked up to your TV and you had a PSX that you wouldn't play CD's on it - instead you'd go out and buy high-end CD player and sit it right beside the PSX, mocking it's (non-existent) mediocrity as a CD player. GET REAL.
The PS2's sold like hotcakes in Japan because they *could* play DVD's. If some high-class jerk in North America (or anywhere besides Japan for that matter) wants to have two CD players and two DVD players (one of which doesn't work) in the same entertainment system then that person deserves to pay through nose.
I just don't understand how demand for these things can be that big!
I've read many articles about the PS2 in the last year. The one that stuck out the most in my mind was the one that said that the PS2 was selling well in Japan because it not only could play old PS games, but because it was a DVD player too.
This is Sony's main selling point, and it's working like a charm. "Who cares if the system costs a hundred or two extra.... you can play DVD's on it!"
Also, if you play the PS as much as my friends do, your PS has probably seen better days. The PS2 is an excellent way to replace the old system.
If RAM chips were damaged, there is potential that they get damanged further, and eventually your amount of usable RAM will run down to 0 bytes.
In theory it's possible but VERY unlikely given the quality of RAM made today. But it also depends how the RAM was damaged. If it's a bad connection, the modules (I don't know the name of the chips on the DIMM) themselves could be good but they aren't connected properly. If the chips are from a poorly made batch THEN you may have this degredation problem you speak of.
But apart from individual testing, how do you differentiate these chips from "good" chips used on "good" RAM? You can't, and that's why there are warrantees.
To be honest, doing this does nothing but ENCOURAGE the manufacturers to continue to make bad ram. Why not make these manufacturing companies make GOOD ram so we don't have to do this in the first place?
I think this comment is a result of not knowing how difficult it is to make "good" RAM (or *any* good electronics for that matter).
The complex process behind making RAM means that there will ALWAYS be defective ones in the batches that can't meet standards set by the manufacturer to cover their ass on warrantees, etc. If they are going to end up throwing this hardware out (or recycling the pieces if that's cheap) then they might be able to make more money selling the defective RAM.
While having "partially defective" RAM on the market may seem bad, if the price point is right it could be useful for some people. Like if I could get 512MB with 50MB defective for 100 bucks (w/ maybe a 1 year warrantee on the 462), I'd jump on it in a second. But that's just me.
Whenever I ask a businessman what his service cost and I get a lot of hee-hawing about how "it depends", red lights immediately start flashing.
Ok, so you read the article. Why are you making points about a businessman when Jim McCoy is a programmer? A lot of this stuff is still up in the air because they are creating a new market and essentially just a big grey area. Sometimes things are just a little less cut and dry than what we'd like, but we still try them out...
People will flood the system with 3 gig files titled 'nakedgirl.mpg' in order to cash in.
That might be true in the short term, but the people that upload crap are going to be labelled as users that upload crap (and when they open a new account they start with no mojo again). If your theory was correct, a web site (and business model) like eBay just plain wouldn't work at all. People would be too busy ripping other people off than having productive auctions - and this just isn't the case.
Sometimes people just have to be trusted. Of course, a good system (like eBay's) helps, but ultimately it comes down to good people who want to use the system as intended.
Great! Another system in which the publisher (the people with the money and the big iron and bandwidth to host this stuff) rakes in the profits while content creators have to live on whatever scraps get thrown their way.
The difference being that a "publisher" doesn't have to press CDs, buy radio and MTV time, etc to put a file on Mojo Nation. Besides the studio and mixing costs, the artist has no other expenses and could "publish" their own songs - freeing them of traditional labels. How well they do financially would then be determined by how much people think their music is actually worth to them in the form of a "tip". The music "industry" would then be a "viral marketing" paradise controlled by the only two parties that matter (the artists and the listeners), where you listen to stuff that other people have liked (and tipped for) in the past. It's like listening to the radio with the Britney Spears and N'Sync filtered out for you. I say it's about time...
<snip!>
How does Mojo Nation and Autonomous Zone Industries make money through this process?
As the bank, we earn a small percentage of Mojo-to-dollar transactions or dollar-to-Mojo transactions. We act as a market maker: There are some people who will end up with a surplus of Mojo -- they will contribute more than they download. There are lot of people who will end up with a deficit of Mojo. We will put the two parties together and basically let them buy and sell on our Mojo market, and we'll take a small percentage.
At the moment it's 2 percent. It's only for dollar-to-Mojo transactions. If you put $10 of Mojo into the system and keep using it and using it, you never pay the fee.
</snip!>
Looks like real money to me. Of course, I haven't seen money in a while - so you never know.
Does anyone honestly think that the Internet has stopped growing for the time being? People need choice because one system can't (and shouldn't) be required to handle the load of the file sharing community (which will be most of the people on the 'net soon). Besides that, people have different needs that are serviced by the different options.
If you need to be more careful about what you are sharing, you use Freenet and not Gnutella. If you want movies, you use Scour and not Napster. Scour incidentally has many obscure mp3s that Napster typically does not have. So there are many options are out there - and this is a good thing.
Sounds to me like the non-commercial sharing defense used by Napster won't work here when Da Man comes after it.
H. Rosen: So users buy and sell content using Mojo Nation, right?
Developer: No, ummmm, well, they don't buy content, they buy, ummm, the right to download content!
Judge: Piracy! AHRA does not apply! Shut it down! SO ORDERED.
Tell me how this won't happen.
The difference is that Napster doesn't have a completely different legal use. Mojo Nation can just say "Our business model states that we buy and sell resources. What people use those resources for is their own business."
I also fail to see how an open-source decentralized program could be shut down. Gnutella has proved that if something is good enough, people will continue to develop it even if the original authors cannot.
Of course, an all-knowing judge could always shut down its transmission medium...;)
I just thought I'd interject with a few facts about Mojonation.
1. You do not need content to get Mojo. You can let people use your computer's resources.
2. You can exchange mojo for cash and vice versa (ie. if you don't like to trade files, sell your resources instead - this may be a great way for companies to use idle computers)
3. Mojonation is built to scale. It won't choke like Gnutella.
Please folks, read the damn article before you post. You just come off like idiots otherwise.
... just because it uses a VM? I don't get it. I mean, Java syntax is a ripoff of C/C++ but I don't hear too many people bitching about that.
Maybe the reality is that having a VM is a Good Thing (TM) when you have a lot of computing power. Now that developers don't have to worry about optimization so much, they can concentrate on making their lives easier. As a software engineering student, that sounds pretty darn good to me.
I think the web lost its "charm feel" a long time ago... right about the time John Q. Public started using the place to "surf".
I'd like to think that/. is the kind of place that, in order to post news in a very timely manner, would sacrifice the simple things. However, given the procedure that must be followed in order to get a story posted on/. (usually several dozen people bugging a/. "editor" to post a story), I'm more inclined to think that the whole selection process is less hasty.
Therefore, if the story takes a little while to trickle in, clarify and confirm, why not take a minute to check it for spelling mistakes?
Keep in mind that most of the people that read/. are geeks and as such, have a very good understanding of the English language. Also, the large programming-based audience of/. tends to be made of people of meticulous nature (sloppy programmers are not good programmers). If an "editor" had mis-typed a line of C code, would people be any less brutal? I think not...
Um... it seems as though you guys are overlooking a big issue: Minidiscs are DISCS and must be spinning to play. From our endless experience with portable CD players, we know that this can be a Bad Thing (TM) - skipping and scratching of the discs being the major two issues.
I believe that the fact that players like the Rio have no moving parts is a HUGE advantage over their mechanical counterparts.
I know I'm sick of discs... and I can't wait until memory (ie. the Sony Memory stick-type technology) is cheap enough to fit 100s of songs on it. Of course, by that time we'll probably be getting custom mp3 streams via a wireless connection (ie. Bluetooth?)... regardless...:)
They want the watermark detection to be built into every player, so that it will refuse to play even analog copies of watermarked material. Of course, this means that all you have to do is reverse engineer one of the millions of players they will be selling, and you know exactly how to find the watermark-- and how to remove it.
Sounds a lot like how the DeCSS guys cracked DVD to me. One slip-up by a licensee and it's all over. Talk about a flawed system.:)
Who flies anymore? I thought we all used the space elevator!
Some of us prefer to travel laterally.;-P
rLowe
PS> I am familiar with the roundness of the earth. For argument's sake, let's just say that one travels laterally around the circumference of the earth.
You may be right about EE (though, there are areas in Electrical Engineering they will move to) but CS will be in less demand? Who is going to write software for these wonderful gadgets? Mechanical engineers?? LOL!
I don't imagine Mainsoft would be having as hard a time porting Office as people are making out, not only because the toolkit is good IMHO, but because in my dealings with them they have seemed like a very sharp bunch of people.
It's been mentioned in other spots but I thought I'd remind people here since this post was moderated so high: Office is a complicated beast.
We aren't talking about 1 program consisting of 300,000 lines of code here. We are talking about a multi-million line gorilla consisting of interconnecting, short-cut using office apps. I have no personal knowledge of the code itself... but just look at some of the things that Office can do and anyone who has enough computer know-how will realise that most programs just don't do some of the stuff that Office can do. I'd like to chalk it up to the intelligence and inginuity Microsoft engineers, but that same group of engineers also had their grubby hands on Windows 95 code, so....
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget that Google has the 'cache' facility that allows you to see the page that Google has indexed. Display the cache, visit the page and if they don't match up - complain to Google.
:)
I think the Google cache is GREAT! Lots of sites go down mysteriously or pages are moved/missing and Google has them cached so you can see them. I've used it many times.
If you don't like the cache, don't use it!
And if you have the urge to complain to Google - don't. They'll probably just tell you to use the original URL.
rLowe
(yawn) In which case he could have bought a high-end DVD player at a home theatre store. Instead of getting a toy to play them on.
I'm sure Sony would resent that statement if they read it. That's like saying that if you had your high-end mixer/speakers hooked up to your TV and you had a PSX that you wouldn't play CD's on it - instead you'd go out and buy high-end CD player and sit it right beside the PSX, mocking it's (non-existent) mediocrity as a CD player. GET REAL.
The PS2's sold like hotcakes in Japan because they *could* play DVD's. If some high-class jerk in North America (or anywhere besides Japan for that matter) wants to have two CD players and two DVD players (one of which doesn't work) in the same entertainment system then that person deserves to pay through nose.
rLowe
I just don't understand how demand for these things can be that big!
.... you can play DVD's on it!"
;)
I've read many articles about the PS2 in the last year. The one that stuck out the most in my mind was the one that said that the PS2 was selling well in Japan because it not only could play old PS games, but because it was a DVD player too.
This is Sony's main selling point, and it's working like a charm. "Who cares if the system costs a hundred or two extra
Also, if you play the PS as much as my friends do, your PS has probably seen better days. The PS2 is an excellent way to replace the old system.
rLowe
PS> I swear I don't work for Sony.
So I'd expect Sega or Bleem or someone would be happy to drop 15 grand to pre-preview a Playstation 2 and not think twice about it.
Sega would not wait until the North American release to reverse engineer the system. You have to give them a little more credit than that, I'm afraid.
rLowe
Anyone with $15k to spend would have hopped on a jet to Japan, bought one, and flown back months ago.
;)
A-hem! Not if that person wanted to play Region 1 DVD's.
rLowe
If RAM chips were damaged, there is potential that they get damanged further, and eventually your amount of usable RAM will run down to 0 bytes.
In theory it's possible but VERY unlikely given the quality of RAM made today. But it also depends how the RAM was damaged. If it's a bad connection, the modules (I don't know the name of the chips on the DIMM) themselves could be good but they aren't connected properly. If the chips are from a poorly made batch THEN you may have this degredation problem you speak of.
But apart from individual testing, how do you differentiate these chips from "good" chips used on "good" RAM? You can't, and that's why there are warrantees.
rLowe
To be honest, doing this does nothing but ENCOURAGE the manufacturers to continue to make bad ram. Why not make these manufacturing companies make GOOD ram so we don't have to do this in the first place?
I think this comment is a result of not knowing how difficult it is to make "good" RAM (or *any* good electronics for that matter).
The complex process behind making RAM means that there will ALWAYS be defective ones in the batches that can't meet standards set by the manufacturer to cover their ass on warrantees, etc. If they are going to end up throwing this hardware out (or recycling the pieces if that's cheap) then they might be able to make more money selling the defective RAM.
While having "partially defective" RAM on the market may seem bad, if the price point is right it could be useful for some people. Like if I could get 512MB with 50MB defective for 100 bucks (w/ maybe a 1 year warrantee on the 462), I'd jump on it in a second. But that's just me.
Ok, so what if they do a Kerberos end-to-end thing?
... and I ain't talkin' about DivX :-)
How many people out there can see that it's a shit sandwich and not eat it? Most of us - and that's all it'll take.
One word: Divx
rLowe
PS>
Whenever I ask a businessman what his service cost and I get a lot of hee-hawing about how "it depends", red lights immediately start flashing.
...
Ok, so you read the article. Why are you making points about a businessman when Jim McCoy is a programmer? A lot of this stuff is still up in the air because they are creating a new market and essentially just a big grey area. Sometimes things are just a little less cut and dry than what we'd like, but we still try them out
People will flood the system with 3 gig files titled 'nakedgirl.mpg' in order to cash in.
That might be true in the short term, but the people that upload crap are going to be labelled as users that upload crap (and when they open a new account they start with no mojo again). If your theory was correct, a web site (and business model) like eBay just plain wouldn't work at all. People would be too busy ripping other people off than having productive auctions - and this just isn't the case.
Sometimes people just have to be trusted. Of course, a good system (like eBay's) helps, but ultimately it comes down to good people who want to use the system as intended.
rLowe
Great! Another system in which the publisher (the people with the money and the big iron and bandwidth to host this stuff) rakes in the profits while content creators have to live on whatever scraps get thrown their way.
...
The difference being that a "publisher" doesn't have to press CDs, buy radio and MTV time, etc to put a file on Mojo Nation. Besides the studio and mixing costs, the artist has no other expenses and could "publish" their own songs - freeing them of traditional labels. How well they do financially would then be determined by how much people think their music is actually worth to them in the form of a "tip". The music "industry" would then be a "viral marketing" paradise controlled by the only two parties that matter (the artists and the listeners), where you listen to stuff that other people have liked (and tipped for) in the past. It's like listening to the radio with the Britney Spears and N'Sync filtered out for you. I say it's about time
rLowe
Back to playing Monopoly with Monopoly money
did you miss these paragraphs?
<snip!>
How does Mojo Nation and Autonomous Zone Industries make money through this process?
As the bank, we earn a small percentage of Mojo-to-dollar transactions or dollar-to-Mojo transactions. We act as a market maker: There are some people who will end up with a surplus of Mojo -- they will contribute more than they download. There are lot of people who will end up with a deficit of Mojo. We will put the two parties together and basically let them buy and sell on our Mojo market, and we'll take a small percentage.
At the moment it's 2 percent. It's only for dollar-to-Mojo transactions. If you put $10 of Mojo into the system and keep using it and using it, you never pay the fee.
</snip!>
Looks like real money to me. Of course, I haven't seen money in a while - so you never know.
rLowe
Does anyone honestly think that the Internet has stopped growing for the time being? People need choice because one system can't (and shouldn't) be required to handle the load of the file sharing community (which will be most of the people on the 'net soon). Besides that, people have different needs that are serviced by the different options.
If you need to be more careful about what you are sharing, you use Freenet and not Gnutella. If you want movies, you use Scour and not Napster. Scour incidentally has many obscure mp3s that Napster typically does not have. So there are many options are out there - and this is a good thing.
point well taken. :)
rL
Sounds to me like the non-commercial sharing defense used by Napster won't work here when Da Man comes after it.
... ;)
H. Rosen: So users buy and sell content using Mojo Nation, right?
Developer: No, ummmm, well, they don't buy content, they buy, ummm, the right to download content!
Judge: Piracy! AHRA does not apply! Shut it down! SO ORDERED.
Tell me how this won't happen.
The difference is that Napster doesn't have a completely different legal use. Mojo Nation can just say "Our business model states that we buy and sell resources. What people use those resources for is their own business."
I also fail to see how an open-source decentralized program could be shut down. Gnutella has proved that if something is good enough, people will continue to develop it even if the original authors cannot.
Of course, an all-knowing judge could always shut down its transmission medium
rLowe
That post was commented at slashdot readers, not the editors. :)
Hi guys.
I just thought I'd interject with a few facts about Mojonation.
1. You do not need content to get Mojo. You can let people use your computer's resources.
2. You can exchange mojo for cash and vice versa (ie. if you don't like to trade files, sell your resources instead - this may be a great way for companies to use idle computers)
3. Mojonation is built to scale. It won't choke like Gnutella.
Please folks, read the damn article before you post. You just come off like idiots otherwise.
rLowe
Basically, it looks to me like a Java ripoff.
... just because it uses a VM? I don't get it. I mean, Java syntax is a ripoff of C/C++ but I don't hear too many people bitching about that.
Maybe the reality is that having a VM is a Good Thing (TM) when you have a lot of computing power. Now that developers don't have to worry about optimization so much, they can concentrate on making their lives easier. As a software engineering student, that sounds pretty darn good to me.
I think the web lost its "charm feel" a long time ago ... right about the time John Q. Public started using the place to "surf".
/. is the kind of place that, in order to post news in a very timely manner, would sacrifice the simple things. However, given the procedure that must be followed in order to get a story posted on /. (usually several dozen people bugging a /. "editor" to post a story), I'm more inclined to think that the whole selection process is less hasty.
/. are geeks and as such, have a very good understanding of the English language. Also, the large programming-based audience of /. tends to be made of people of meticulous nature (sloppy programmers are not good programmers). If an "editor" had mis-typed a line of C code, would people be any less brutal? I think not ...
I'd like to think that
Therefore, if the story takes a little while to trickle in, clarify and confirm, why not take a minute to check it for spelling mistakes?
Keep in mind that most of the people that read
rLowe
FYI:
The interview is in the October 2000 Wired (8.10), pg 253.
rLowe
I think CmdrTaco needs an editor for christmas (you know, one like those print guys have). :)
rLowe
Um ... it seems as though you guys are overlooking a big issue: Minidiscs are DISCS and must be spinning to play. From our endless experience with portable CD players, we know that this can be a Bad Thing (TM) - skipping and scratching of the discs being the major two issues.
... and I can't wait until memory (ie. the Sony Memory stick-type technology) is cheap enough to fit 100s of songs on it. Of course, by that time we'll probably be getting custom mp3 streams via a wireless connection (ie. Bluetooth?) ... regardless ... :)
I believe that the fact that players like the Rio have no moving parts is a HUGE advantage over their mechanical counterparts.
I know I'm sick of discs
They want the watermark detection to be built into every player, so that it will refuse to play even analog copies of watermarked material. Of course, this means that all you have to do is reverse engineer one of the millions of players they will be selling, and you know exactly how to find the watermark-- and how to remove it.
:)
Sounds a lot like how the DeCSS guys cracked DVD to me. One slip-up by a licensee and it's all over. Talk about a flawed system.
Good luck with this one boys and girls.
Who flies anymore? I thought we all used the space elevator!
;-P
Some of us prefer to travel laterally.
rLowe
PS> I am familiar with the roundness of the earth. For argument's sake, let's just say that one travels laterally around the circumference of the earth.
You may be right about EE (though, there are areas in Electrical Engineering they will move to) but CS will be in less demand? Who is going to write software for these wonderful gadgets? Mechanical engineers?? LOL!
rLowe
I don't imagine Mainsoft would be having as hard a time porting Office as people are making out, not only because the toolkit is good IMHO, but because in my dealings with them they have seemed like a very sharp bunch of people.
... but just look at some of the things that Office can do and anyone who has enough computer know-how will realise that most programs just don't do some of the stuff that Office can do. I'd like to chalk it up to the intelligence and inginuity Microsoft engineers, but that same group of engineers also had their grubby hands on Windows 95 code, so ....
It's been mentioned in other spots but I thought I'd remind people here since this post was moderated so high: Office is a complicated beast.
We aren't talking about 1 program consisting of 300,000 lines of code here. We are talking about a multi-million line gorilla consisting of interconnecting, short-cut using office apps. I have no personal knowledge of the code itself
rLowe