You hit the nail right on the head, for a whole lot of expense and trouble, you can get a tiny bit more sound quality on ultra-fragile vinyl records which become nearly worthless if they get a little scratch on them.
You know, when I started this subthread, I never pretended otherwise. I have a friend who was rabid as any when it came to sound reproduction, and at the uni, he spent his entire free time (and some of his non-free time--he was an EE, afterall) building the perfect amps and speakers by hand. I can hear the difference when playing vinyls and CDs of a very modern violin concerto performance (I was a professional trumpet player at one time as well), in a blind test, but most of the people asked could not.
You're absolutely correct, though, regarding the fragility of the setup; by the tenth run on the *same vinyl*, the sound had degraded to a point below that of a quality CD recording. I, personally, own a relatively inexpensive (~ $400) bookshelf system, and a relatively expensive (~ $1300) trumpet. Yes, I can spend more on either, but for me, the point of diminishing returns have already been exceeded on both areas. That's not to say that I won't pump any more money into the instrument or any other hobbies, but I'm rather fickle, and lacking unlimited funds, with other expensive hobbies too:-). --
France and Germany are both using the term "super-state".
And what strange bedfellows they make, considering their histories towards each other. I'm glad they're finally able to put their differences behind them; it gives me hope for the rest of humanity. --
You know? I never thought of it that way. $30/username, and if all freebies were reduced to AC's, the S:N ratio would *probably* go up enough to the point where I would pony up. --
At the risk of sounding like a zealot, I must put in my 2 cents. Free software has nothing to do with the price, but everything to do with freedom. Read what RMS says about the GPL. The synopsis is that you can charge whatever price you can for the GPL'ed software, but with the software distribution, you must give the buyer the ability to easily obtain the source, and let them modify it at will, provided that they release their modifications under GPL (emphasis mine).
Now, I do agree that/. readers will probably revolt if/. went to a transitionary-subscription-only model, but then, that's life. I'm probably willing to pay for salon, CNN, et. al, but most likely, I won't pay as much for/. as I would for some of the others I've mentioned. --
...and on news today:/. DDOS took down a popular credit card gateway service for over two hours as affluent geeks tried to give money back to their beloved site, taking down vast majority of the eCommerce sites, sometimes forever. --
You know, what you say reminds me of photography. Sure, the camera will expose the film in a few seconds at most, but there are literally *hours* of preparation and post-exposure work that will go into each shot that the photographer will keep. I know I sometimes wish I can make some money through photography, and I envy that you can at least seem to be able to break even. Good luck. --
Actually, Win98 and friends, as well as 95 OSR2 doesn't run well on a P233MMX w/64MB of RAM. Roommate had one, went to 98, then to 95 OSR2, then finally got fed up and installed NT4 (which, admittedly, was rather decent if you turned off some of the eyecandy). Office 97 isn't too bad, but it's a 4yr old app that's running on a 4yr old puter. Office 2000, of course, tended to be a bit more sluggish. --
You don't understand. The merchant has not choice in the matter. The way the credit card authorization works is exactly how the previous poster describes and there is NO way around it other than finding a company that actually has proper authorization. In places like the UK, this is impossible, in the US it's unlikely (if not impossible).
Yes, they do. They can do something like this: Customer -> Merchant -> CCAG. Yes, it's more work, but since the "Merchant" is always sitting between the CCAG and the Customer, they can verify the prices and such before the authorisation is sent to the CCAG. Basically, the merchant system abstracts the backend, whether it be the RDBMS or the CCAG.
It's just a matter of inexperienced/untalented developers taking on more responsibility than they can handle, and inexperienced/untalented management not seeing that this is the case.
My concern is that as more and more code is given to us, will we refuse it becuase we didn't write it? And would that be a bad thing?
In a word, yes. If the "Not Invented Here" syndrome becomes rampant, then large corporations will have less incentive to build improvements upon the system, and therefore, will start again with either a fork or a potentially closed-source proprietary system. Either way, support for the original open-source system will wither away, reducing the potential for corporate uptake.
However, this is just a generalisation; I cannot comment specifically upon Apache itself.
And, because of its ability to be used in seditious/thought-provoking manner, the word "people" will be banned in the next iteration of DMCA. Please use the word "persons" instead;p --
but DIVX had a compelling and not-as-suckful competitor. Where's HDTV's competitor that encompasses everything that HDTV has, except for the copy protection? --
Mitsubishi Diamondtron monitors have been around for at least 7 years. They were significantly cheaper than the Trinitron-based monitors at the time, and at least in the 13-14" tube sizes (which was the prevalent sizes then), their margins were excessively small on the tubes. It's kind of difficult to see Mitsubishi paying Sony a royalty at this point *and* being able to OEM their tubes for slightly less; it makes no business sense for Sony to make the licensing affordable to 3rd parties when these technology licensees would compete in the same space as you (i.e. midrange+ monitors).
OTOH, back then, the Diamondtron monitors were rather horrible, so it's also possible that it wasn't economically possible for Mitsu to be able to offer the tube at the similar price points. However, Sony no longer dominates the market for high-end CRT tubes (Diamontron, as well as other CRT manufacturers, have caught up--and surpassed in some cases--with Sony).
Sorry for rambling, but this is my take on it as I saw the industry. --
OTOH, as Sony moves away from the Trinitron as their flagship product, the prices of the tubes should start to come down.
Though, this development really surprises me. My father is one of the directors @ Sony Display Division, and he mentioned nothing of the sort *shrug*. --
They already make Trinitron clones. It's called the Mitsubishi Diamondtron. Actually, Sony's (and Mitsubishi, I'm sure) been improving their Trinitron tube since they first started to build TV's with them, so it's obviously not just a matter of getting the patent document and slapping together a factory. There's a reason why Trinitron tubes get OEM'ed to other companies; they just don't have the expertise that Sony invested in for decades to build their tubes. --
The patent's been dead for at least five years. Actually, as they've been making tv sets since the 60's, and all they made were the trinitrons, the patent's probably been dead for longer. Sorry, but no corporate conspiracy theory here. --
The patent for the Trinitron tubes ran out a while ago. Mitsubishi "copied" it, and came out with the Diamondtron. It used to be that the Diamondtron tubes weren't as good, but now, they're very much comparable.
Actually, now that some invar-mask tubes are flat-screen capable, it's kind of a moot point. --
Actually, I don't think you need standard DTDs, as long as each site stuck with their own DTDs long enough to make it worthwhile. At that point, you can build a custom XSL for each site to transform their content to conform to your DTD, and you can parse that.
Slashdot Mirror
And sadly enough, I get it too... *sigh*
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You know, when I started this subthread, I never pretended otherwise. I have a friend who was rabid as any when it came to sound reproduction, and at the uni, he spent his entire free time (and some of his non-free time--he was an EE, afterall) building the perfect amps and speakers by hand. I can hear the difference when playing vinyls and CDs of a very modern violin concerto performance (I was a professional trumpet player at one time as well), in a blind test, but most of the people asked could not.
You're absolutely correct, though, regarding the fragility of the setup; by the tenth run on the *same vinyl*, the sound had degraded to a point below that of a quality CD recording. I, personally, own a relatively inexpensive (~ $400) bookshelf system, and a relatively expensive (~ $1300) trumpet. Yes, I can spend more on either, but for me, the point of diminishing returns have already been exceeded on both areas. That's not to say that I won't pump any more money into the instrument or any other hobbies, but I'm rather fickle, and lacking unlimited funds, with other expensive hobbies too :-).
--
The ultra-l33t HiFi buffs do _not_ listen to music in digital. First-run vinyl always sounds better :-P
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You make that sound like it's a bad thing!
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France and Germany are both using the term "super-state".
And what strange bedfellows they make, considering their histories towards each other. I'm glad they're finally able to put their differences behind them; it gives me hope for the rest of humanity.
--
Indeed. My uni has issues with providing everyone with 100Mbps now, due to the poor quality cables they used for *10Mbps* ethernet. *sigh*.
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You know? I never thought of it that way. $30/username, and if all freebies were reduced to AC's, the S:N ratio would *probably* go up enough to the point where I would pony up.
--
At the risk of sounding like a zealot, I must put in my 2 cents. Free software has nothing to do with the price, but everything to do with freedom. Read what RMS says about the GPL. The synopsis is that you can charge whatever price you can for the GPL'ed software, but with the software distribution, you must give the buyer the ability to easily obtain the source, and let them modify it at will, provided that they release their modifications under GPL (emphasis mine).
Now, I do agree that /. readers will probably revolt if /. went to a transitionary-subscription-only model, but then, that's life. I'm probably willing to pay for salon, CNN, et. al, but most likely, I won't pay as much for /. as I would for some of the others I've mentioned.
--
...and on news today: /. DDOS took down a popular credit card gateway service for over two hours as affluent geeks tried to give money back to their beloved site, taking down vast majority of the eCommerce sites, sometimes forever.
--
Yes, at least on NT. edit %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts .
--
You know, what you say reminds me of photography. Sure, the camera will expose the film in a few seconds at most, but there are literally *hours* of preparation and post-exposure work that will go into each shot that the photographer will keep. I know I sometimes wish I can make some money through photography, and I envy that you can at least seem to be able to break even. Good luck.
--
Actually, Win98 and friends, as well as 95 OSR2 doesn't run well on a P233MMX w/64MB of RAM. Roommate had one, went to 98, then to 95 OSR2, then finally got fed up and installed NT4 (which, admittedly, was rather decent if you turned off some of the eyecandy). Office 97 isn't too bad, but it's a 4yr old app that's running on a 4yr old puter. Office 2000, of course, tended to be a bit more sluggish.
--
Yes, they do. They can do something like this: Customer -> Merchant -> CCAG. Yes, it's more work, but since the "Merchant" is always sitting between the CCAG and the Customer, they can verify the prices and such before the authorisation is sent to the CCAG. Basically, the merchant system abstracts the backend, whether it be the RDBMS or the CCAG.
It's just a matter of inexperienced/untalented developers taking on more responsibility than they can handle, and inexperienced/untalented management not seeing that this is the case.
--
In a word, yes. If the "Not Invented Here" syndrome becomes rampant, then large corporations will have less incentive to build improvements upon the system, and therefore, will start again with either a fork or a potentially closed-source proprietary system. Either way, support for the original open-source system will wither away, reducing the potential for corporate uptake.
However, this is just a generalisation; I cannot comment specifically upon Apache itself.
--
an NSI whois reveals that the .la TLD is a ccTLD, just like most two-letter TLD's. If you're curious, just go to http://www.networksolutions.com/cgi-bin/whois/whoi s?STRING=la. enjoy.
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you know you use emacs too much when you try to ctrl-c->ctrl-X out of this post
<pedantic>you know you're not using emacs enough when you don't type C-x C-c to exit emacs. </pedantic>
Of course, it's entirely possible that you type it correctly, but don't remember typing it. Me, I prefer vim.
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And, because of its ability to be used in seditious/thought-provoking manner, the word "people" will be banned in the next iteration of DMCA. Please use the word "persons" instead ;p
--
but DIVX had a compelling and not-as-suckful competitor. Where's HDTV's competitor that encompasses everything that HDTV has, except for the copy protection?
--
OTOH, back then, the Diamondtron monitors were rather horrible, so it's also possible that it wasn't economically possible for Mitsu to be able to offer the tube at the similar price points. However, Sony no longer dominates the market for high-end CRT tubes (Diamontron, as well as other CRT manufacturers, have caught up--and surpassed in some cases--with Sony).
Sorry for rambling, but this is my take on it as I saw the industry.
--
OTOH, as Sony moves away from the Trinitron as their flagship product, the prices of the tubes should start to come down.
Though, this development really surprises me. My father is one of the directors @ Sony Display Division, and he mentioned nothing of the sort *shrug*.
--
They already make Trinitron clones. It's called the Mitsubishi Diamondtron. Actually, Sony's (and Mitsubishi, I'm sure) been improving their Trinitron tube since they first started to build TV's with them, so it's obviously not just a matter of getting the patent document and slapping together a factory. There's a reason why Trinitron tubes get OEM'ed to other companies; they just don't have the expertise that Sony invested in for decades to build their tubes.
--
The patent's been dead for at least five years. Actually, as they've been making tv sets since the 60's, and all they made were the trinitrons, the patent's probably been dead for longer. Sorry, but no corporate conspiracy theory here.
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Actually, now that some invar-mask tubes are flat-screen capable, it's kind of a moot point.
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And right now, the media arm of Sony is the darling of the company.
--
Actually, I don't think you need standard DTDs, as long as each site stuck with their own DTDs long enough to make it worthwhile. At that point, you can build a custom XSL for each site to transform their content to conform to your DTD, and you can parse that.
--