Hmm, what makes you think the Adam was a better machine?
For all I can tell, the two things in which it was better hardware wise were the tape drive and the included daisywheel printer, both being peripheral devices and not the 'core' system. Also, both were an option for the c64 )besides the much bigger variety of alternative devices like matrix printers, floppy drives, modem etc etc)
The machine lacks serial and parallel ports )other then the adamnet or whatever it is called high speed proprietary serial port) which makes that you bought a lock-in.
For the rest, I fail to see why it was actually a better computer system but I am a lot more familiar with the c64 hardware then with what Coleco made, so I am likely to not be aware of certain hardware features of the Coleco system.
It did have a better basic interpreter, which was not difficult (CBM basic 2.0 is useless for most purposes)
With all respect, ATI's drivers are a huge pile of shit, they are unstable and perform badly.
NVIDIA is not perfect either, but their drivers do work a lot better, and actually squeeye as much performance as possible out of the available hardware.
Its sad when a gforce 440mx outperforms a radeon 9800 but it does on most configurations when running Linux (not so when running windows on the same hardware)
> Maimonedes, a Jewish philospher who did his best work about 12 centuries or so, posed an interesting example about a donkey placed in the exact middle of a line connecting two distant oasises. He propouded that if the donky acted only on pure logic, it would die of thirst having no logical reason to choose one over the other.
Which is extremely easy to solve by adding a little bit of logic, for example:
If you have two or more equally good options, you pick the one you looked at last.
Alternatively, pick one at random.
Alternatively, pick the first option you considered.
Any of those will do since all options are equal.
Hence, the problem can be solved with one extra rule, nothing mysterious is needed for this.
> The code analogy of the human brain is useful but it hs some inherent differences in addressing the (perhaps literally) quantum gap between technology and actual living systems. A human or any other living animal placed in the Logical Donkey's position would make a choice. Humans in particular are not limited to binary yes/no logic. Yes there have been talk of quantum computers with things like yes/no/maybe states, but it is unclear whether that alone would bridge the distance anytime soon.
As pointed out, there is no need for a maybe option to solve the Logical donkey problem, all that is needed is a rule to deal with the situation, which can be very generic and can be applied in all similar conditions.
> You are too lazy to think up new laws and impliment them, and therefore try to work out a shitty and crappy version which ruins the world. (this is also known as compromise)
Compromises don't ruin the world. They may at times be a bad idea in technology, but they are extremely usefull when dealing with groups of humans. It is the only alternative to falling back to extremely primitive ways.
People with thoughts like yours are the primary cause of the inabillity of certain societies to solve issues without causing lots of death and damage.
> Put your straw man away and read my comment in the context of the article.
My comment was more general then the context of your comemnt, but definitely relevant to that context also. If some teenager doesn't need a job (and most don't) that is fine, but that does not change the argument at all.
> If they don't have a car, they probably don't need a job that bad.
Well, except that there are peopel who cannot drive a car due to dissability (or do you really want someone who is blidn driving a car?). Yeah, I know what you are trying to say, but it comes out really short sighted as you are putting it there.
> Of course if they had a GREAT reason why the phone wasnt on, like they brought it home in 500 pieces, then I could use my own judgement as a parent to make an exception.
Of course they could actually have used the car to go somewhere, say a cinema, and have turned off the phone at the destination...
Just an example, but there are many valid reasons for turning it off that don't require it ending up in pieces and have nothing to do with speeding.
If you insist on having to track that, use a proper device for trackign speed, not some location finder integrated into some communications device when 1. there exist good reasons for tunring it off so it becomes hard to draw any conclusions, and 2. neither device was made for measuring speed, and a combination of the 2 will not be very good at it either.
> That's true only if "education" is the word for a pee test in your language.
If only it were that simple.
First of all, your complaint is correct of course, the 'pee test' stuff is nonsense, if not counter productive.
That said, pot causes a few issues for at least a part of its users that indeed do make them fail education regardless of 'pee tests'.
First of all, I have 'some' experience after approx 18 years of pot use in the past (stopped using it a few years ago)
Anyway, the main issues are the deteriation of will power that come sith usage. THe 'why bother' feeling whenever you get confronted with somethign that looks like it is going to be difficult.
This also applies for school work, and for doing a job, and in geenral, for keepign your life organized.
Now, as said, this only applies to a part of the users, and when you encounter someone who doesn't have those issues then usage should also simply be irrelevant.
Bottomline, the question is not if pot itself is harmfull in certain cases, the question is if it is more damaging to keep it illegal then to make it legal, and I think it is. SO legalisation should be strived for, despite that people can point at dangers of pot use. First because those issues can be talked about a lot easier, and be dealt with, and second because you do not cause damage to those who can deal with it anyway (and my impression is that that is the large majority of users also)
Most people end up giving up their use around age 35 anyway.
> I know that my photos turn out like crap in part because I lack the right equipment: external flash equipment, different wider angle lenses, etc.
Bad tools can destroy a good picture. Good tools can enhance a good picture. Makign a good picture however does not depend on that. It depends on a good eye and good understanding of how it will translate onto the medium you are using.
A good photographer with a cheap camera will still make better pictures then a bad one with the best equipment money can buy, given the codnitions are within what the camera can handle.
Your tools must be good enough for what you try to do, but from that point on, your own capabilities are way more important.
> Sometimes I wonder at the unsophistication of ideas that exist when it comes to freedom. After all, many minds have wrestled with this over the centuries. Kant seemed to sum it up best...
As said, you can argue all you want, it is still less freedom.
Besides, the GPL restriction does not limit your freedom such that it doesn't impede on that of others. It protects your work from being distributed under any other license then the gpl (unless you decide to do so yourself) which impedes on the freedom of others (and yes, I think it is a perfectly valid limitation also, but that is entirely ebsides the point)
> Not at all--I have no intention of ever trying to STOP anyone from doing what they will, but is it too much to allow me to express my opinion on the matter? Is that not a freedom that I am entitled to have?
It is a freedom that you have, just as I have the freedom to point out that you first talk about respecting a choice and then show very little respect.
> No, it is foremost a licensing issue and you are being disengenious saying otherwise.
It is also a licensing issue.
> You may call me impolite if you wish, but I am no more impolite as the insinuation that GPL'd CVS is somehow not FREE.
It has a restriction. That restriction may serve a good purpose, but it is a restriction nonetheless and hence less free. If it is free enough or actually better or whatever is a matter of opinion. Calling it non free is a bit too much imho, but calling it not free enough, well, I tend to agree there, but I accept that others don't. How difficult is it for you to do what you said and accept someoen elses choice, even more when that someone is also prepared to do the work for it?
> know a lot of folks prefer the BSD license and I respect that but does the desire to support the proprietary software industry really mean that all GPL'd code needs to be ported? That's silly. Cycles are being wasted just so that some jack-ass can come along and close your work up again. BSDers may see that as some kind of freedom but pretty much everyone else sees that as inane.
You really know how to show soem respect do you?
I know it is a lto to ask, but would you at least bother to actually read the opencvs homepagge? you may find there is more to it then a licensing issue.
Ah well, why bother indeed, it is more fun to just skip the article and post some stupid anti bsd license nonsense.
> It's an infringement, in that you are treading upon the exclusive right, which remains in the copyright holder. It's like trespassing -- it's not theft of land, but it is an affront to rights. Note that when the government censors people, we talk of infringement on first amendment rights. It's a similar deal.
Oh, I completely agree. ALl I was trying to point out that this infringement does in fact deprive the copyright holder of something.
> No, because FTP has substantial non-infringing uses.
True but applies to p2p neworks like kazaa as well.
> Without sharing other people's copyrighted works FTP still has a use.
Again, true but no difference there with kazaa.
> Kazaa, without other people's copyrighted works, has nothing not available elsewhere.
True but also applies to FTP (to name just a few alternatives, http, scp)
> The tool here is the concept of file transfer between users. It has substantial non-infringing uses. Kazaa's implementation, however, does not as can be seen by a rudimentary examination of the network.
A rudimentary examination of the entwork shows it to be suitable for locating and transfering files between its users. I do not see anything wrong with that.
If you meant looking at its content, well, that is the use not the tool.
> if copyright infringement was theft, the author would lose his copy whenever an unauthorized copy was made. This is clearly not the case.
While I agree with that argument, there is something more to it.
You do deprive the original author of the exclusive right to decide on how to distribute his work. Hence, you can argue that you do steal something still, just not the copyrighted work itself.
Illegal? sure. Morally wrong? that is at the very least debatable. It being illegal does not make it morally wrong automatically, and it can be morally wrong to obey the law in certain situations.
> While the music industry is a price-fixing behemoth - stealing someones copyrighted material is wrong (even more wrong since there is nothing that says a company can't charge through the nose for their product).
Nope, but in the USA there is a constitution that says something about interlectual property rights and their purpose. It is not morally wrong to ignore those who knowingly frustrate that for their own proffit.
> Even still, two wrongs do not make a right.
Agreed. Following an immoral rule doesn't make a right either tho.
> I remember when I was young having to choose for our first VCR to be either betamax or vhs.... I chose VHS (i had no idea about which format was better) but I did realize that there was a West Coast Video a mile from my home which only had VHS...
Hello, meet chicken and egg. Lets try figuring out whoch came first, shall we?
> Take the CD. Rip it. Never use itagain. The CD is in pristine condition. If the HD fails, re-rip. If you have to listen to an actual optical disc (like in a car), just burn a copy.
And it still can get scratched (when putting it into/removign it from the reader or jewel case for example). CHances are lower, but not zero.
> Plus, you underestimate the durability of CDs. If you've ever checked out library CDs, those suckers gets scratched to hell in back. I'd guess that well over 98% of the CDs I've borrowed from the library have been rippable.
No I don't. Scratch the top layer and the disk is no longer sealed and will start degrading rapidly.
You obviously never looked at how often library CDs have to be replaced. I don't know about the local library here, but shops here where you can rent cds and dvds are complaining quite a bit about this.
The fact that you managed to rip from library cds in many cases is because they care enough to not keep the bad discs in there, not because discs last that long. Also, rippable does not mean you get a very good copy, I'd really loook a bit more into how error correction for audio cds works.
At any rate, when no accidents happen and you are extremely carefull then CDs can last a long time, but when you talk about 'backup', then this is really not enough. THe simple fact that they use optics that require a high level of accuracy makes them vulnerable.
> If you had originally ripped all your stuff as MP3, you wouldn't be having this conversation with yourself every year.
Some 8 years ago I started ripping my music colelction to mp3 files. Diskspace constrains and cpu speed made that the only practical choices were 128kbit cbr for most and 192kbit cbr for the things where quality mattered and 128kbti was too much of a limitation. Due to havign a couple hundred cds, this took a few months to complete also.
About a year ago, I reripped everything to 192kbit vbr (and some at 240kbit vbr), which took just a few days. THe main reason for wanting more quality is that I started using mp3 files for my home audio system (more like a semi professional recording studio then the typical home audio system) more and more, and the quality loss was rather noticable in quite a few cases.
Now, for a bit more diskspace (which has become a lot cheaper) I get a lot more quality while I am still usign mp3.
So, even when staying with the same format, there may be reasons to re-encode everything and you can gain quite a bit from doing so.
> You know, burn a lossless format to CD-R or something.
Because CD-Rs don't last. Yeah, I can buy them from some brand that gives a lifelong warantee, but really, no amount of money or replacement of CD-Rs is every going to get me back a unique recording so that is utterly pointless.
Many CD-Rs that I have used so far fail to last for as long as I tend to keep music around, and those that did survive also did degrade noticably (substantially more errors and more jitter when played back on an audio device) Yeah, that was after approx a decade of storing a cd in its jewel case on a spot protected from sunlight and excesive heat and cold.
> Why not just use the CDs themselves as a long-term storage of a lossless format?
Scratch scratch, oops, CD unreadable.
Harddisks fail as well, but solutions to prevent dataloss from disk failure are way more practical for those (mirroring, raid)
Anout the only better alternative is to burn things to opticals (CD or DVD) in a very clean environment, verify them for proper working, and then seal them into a container with controlled atmosphere, temperature and light (or actually, lack of light). Whenever you need the backup, the first thing you have to do after breaking the seal is repeating the backup process in order to create a new known good backup.
Of course all hardly relevant unless you care about keeping your music collection around for more then say a decade.
> You're right that analog dishes are more common, but the post you're replying yo specified non-motorized dishes
Uh..
There are many people here in Europe that have non motorized dishes and no directv or similar service, and you will fidn the same thing everywhere on the planet outside the USA.
So no, I was not even talkign about analog satelite tv and motorized dishes, I was talkign that from all the non motorized dishes used for receiving digital satelite tv, a fraction is used for directv and similar, but with their total market covering at best 5% of the world's population, it is really a small part of the whole.
> People without motorised dishes are mostly on DirectTV or Dish Network. The dish networks setup that we have here is pointed at two or more satellites. I'm not sure about the mechanics of it, but I am pretty sure it recieves 3 or 4 satellites.
I realize this specific case involves IA7, which had the Americas covered, so in this very specific case, only looking at IA7 customers, you might be right, but I very seriously doubt that the majority of people on this planet that watch satelite tv using their own dish have directv or such. Directv aims at some 5% of the worlds population, and dishnetwork? heh, same story.
Then, many people, even in the USA, use a dish to receive programming that does not originate in the USA and is not carried by American networks usually, think about imigrants who want to watch a satelite channel from their country of origin etc.
So.. I think you are wrong in saying that most private people would be watching directv or dishnetwork.
> Except that I've seen it give that dialog when I've started to save an imported Word or Excel file. REALLY annoying since I did not, to the best of my knowledge, use any OO.o-unique functionality - but there's that damn message just the same. More annoying that it won't tell me what those pesky attributes and information *are*, just that they exist. Geez.
I agree, it would be much better when it only gives this message when a real issue exists. Curretly all it knows is that there is the potential of a problem.
Still, it is better to get it when there is a potential issue then finding out later that your document was not saved correctly without warning that this risk was there.
> That's the way it should be, but it's not the way it is for most window managers.
Please come with examples where that isn't the consequence of a user having told the window manager to do so?
For now it is your word against mine, you saying most don't and I am saying most do this properly.
> A workarea is good, but not always an option, and in my case it's not. Plus, using the GIMP's totally fucking terrible GUI as a positive example of anything isn't gonna persuade me of anything, anyway.
Ah yes, you can only look at what soemoen does wrong, and not at what they might do right?
I do agree that a workarea isn't always the proper solution, and I have had cases at hand where the only proper solution was to not share the display with other applications at all.
> Fix it? I should go to every users house and re-code whatever window manager he is using? seriously WTF are you talking about?
If you believe that kwm for example is not handlign this properly, how about submitting a fix to the kde development team? (change kde to whatever other window manager you are havign a problem with)
> Or you suggest I should force a different window management system on the user? Seems totally contradictory to keeping the user in control.
Force? nope. Tell them that your application only displays as you intended it when they use window manager x? why not? Leave the user in control, and (see next point also) honor the decision of that user.
Overr> iding the window managers bad judgement, and allowing it control of what it doesn't mess up, still seems the best option available.
Replacign bad judgement of one system by bad judgement of another system is simply not a solution.
The window manager has better information abotu what is ont he screen then your application, and is the only place where this can be solved properly.
If the user for whatever reason instructs the window manager to behave differently from what you would prefer, then you should come up with some extremely good reason for not honering that.
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Hmm, what makes you think the Adam was a better machine?
For all I can tell, the two things in which it was better hardware wise were the tape drive and the included daisywheel printer, both being peripheral devices and not the 'core' system. Also, both were an option for the c64 )besides the much bigger variety of alternative devices like matrix printers, floppy drives, modem etc etc)
The machine lacks serial and parallel ports )other then the adamnet or whatever it is called high speed proprietary serial port) which makes that you bought a lock-in.
For the rest, I fail to see why it was actually a better computer system but I am a lot more familiar with the c64 hardware then with what Coleco made, so I am likely to not be aware of certain hardware features of the Coleco system.
It did have a better basic interpreter, which was not difficult (CBM basic 2.0 is useless for most purposes)
With all respect, ATI's drivers are a huge pile of shit, they are unstable and perform badly.
NVIDIA is not perfect either, but their drivers do work a lot better, and actually squeeye as much performance as possible out of the available hardware.
Its sad when a gforce 440mx outperforms a radeon 9800 but it does on most configurations when running Linux (not so when running windows on the same hardware)
> UT2004 ran with the same identical performance (in terms of FPS) under KDE 3.3.1. on an AMD64 with 1024 MB.
There is no specific reason why kde would not be suitable for running games other then its memory (and to a far lesser extent) cpu use.
Your machine has plenty of both, so of course kde doesnt interfer with a game of UT.
Try the same on a Athlon xp 2400 with 512 MB and you will notice a huge difference.
> Maimonedes, a Jewish philospher who did his best work about 12 centuries or so, posed an interesting example about a donkey placed in the exact middle of a line connecting two distant oasises. He propouded that if the donky acted only on pure logic, it would die of thirst having no logical reason to choose one over the other.
Which is extremely easy to solve by adding a little bit of logic, for example:
If you have two or more equally good options, you pick the one you looked at last.
Alternatively, pick one at random.
Alternatively, pick the first option you considered.
Any of those will do since all options are equal.
Hence, the problem can be solved with one extra rule, nothing mysterious is needed for this.
> The code analogy of the human brain is useful but it hs some inherent differences in addressing the (perhaps literally) quantum gap between technology and actual living systems. A human or any other living animal placed in the Logical Donkey's position would make a choice. Humans in particular are not limited to binary yes/no logic. Yes there have been talk of quantum computers with things like yes/no/maybe states, but it is unclear whether that alone would bridge the distance anytime soon.
As pointed out, there is no need for a maybe option to solve the Logical donkey problem, all that is needed is a rule to deal with the situation, which can be very generic and can be applied in all similar conditions.
> You are too lazy to think up new laws and impliment them, and therefore try to work out a shitty and crappy version which ruins the world. (this is also known as compromise)
Compromises don't ruin the world. They may at times be a bad idea in technology, but they are extremely usefull when dealing with groups of humans. It is the only alternative to falling back to extremely primitive ways.
People with thoughts like yours are the primary cause of the inabillity of certain societies to solve issues without causing lots of death and damage.
> Put your straw man away and read my comment in the context of the article.
My comment was more general then the context of your comemnt, but definitely relevant to that context also. If some teenager doesn't need a job (and most don't) that is fine, but that does not change the argument at all.
> If they don't have a car, they probably don't need a job that bad.
Well, except that there are peopel who cannot drive a car due to dissability (or do you really want someone who is blidn driving a car?). Yeah, I know what you are trying to say, but it comes out really short sighted as you are putting it there.
> Of course if they had a GREAT reason why the phone wasnt on, like they brought it home in 500 pieces, then I could use my own judgement as a parent to make an exception.
Of course they could actually have used the car to go somewhere, say a cinema, and have turned off the phone at the destination...
Just an example, but there are many valid reasons for turning it off that don't require it ending up in pieces and have nothing to do with speeding.
If you insist on having to track that, use a proper device for trackign speed, not some location finder integrated into some communications device when 1. there exist good reasons for tunring it off so it becomes hard to draw any conclusions, and 2. neither device was made for measuring speed, and a combination of the 2 will not be very good at it either.
*chuckle*
> That's true only if "education" is the word for a pee test in your language.
If only it were that simple.
First of all, your complaint is correct of course, the 'pee test' stuff is nonsense, if not counter productive.
That said, pot causes a few issues for at least a part of its users that indeed do make them fail education regardless of 'pee tests'.
First of all, I have 'some' experience after approx 18 years of pot use in the past (stopped using it a few years ago)
Anyway, the main issues are the deteriation of will power that come sith usage. THe 'why bother' feeling whenever you get confronted with somethign that looks like it is going to be difficult.
This also applies for school work, and for doing a job, and in geenral, for keepign your life organized.
Now, as said, this only applies to a part of the users, and when you encounter someone who doesn't have those issues then usage should also simply be irrelevant.
Bottomline, the question is not if pot itself is harmfull in certain cases, the question is if it is more damaging to keep it illegal then to make it legal, and I think it is. SO legalisation should be strived for, despite that people can point at dangers of pot use. First because those issues can be talked about a lot easier, and be dealt with, and second because you do not cause damage to those who can deal with it anyway (and my impression is that that is the large majority of users also)
Most people end up giving up their use around age 35 anyway.
> I know that my photos turn out like crap in part because I lack the right equipment: external flash equipment, different wider angle lenses, etc.
Bad tools can destroy a good picture. Good tools can enhance a good picture. Makign a good picture however does not depend on that. It depends on a good eye and good understanding of how it will translate onto the medium you are using.
A good photographer with a cheap camera will still make better pictures then a bad one with the best equipment money can buy, given the codnitions are within what the camera can handle.
Your tools must be good enough for what you try to do, but from that point on, your own capabilities are way more important.
> Sometimes I wonder at the unsophistication of ideas that exist when it comes to freedom. After all, many minds have wrestled with this over the centuries. Kant seemed to sum it up best...
As said, you can argue all you want, it is still less freedom.
Besides, the GPL restriction does not limit your freedom such that it doesn't impede on that of others. It protects your work from being distributed under any other license then the gpl (unless you decide to do so yourself) which impedes on the freedom of others (and yes, I think it is a perfectly valid limitation also, but that is entirely ebsides the point)
> Not at all--I have no intention of ever trying to STOP anyone from doing what they will, but is it too much to allow me to express my opinion on the matter? Is that not a freedom that I am entitled to have?
It is a freedom that you have, just as I have the freedom to point out that you first talk about respecting a choice and then show very little respect.
> No, it is foremost a licensing issue and you are being disengenious saying otherwise.
It is also a licensing issue.
> You may call me impolite if you wish, but I am no more impolite as the insinuation that GPL'd CVS is somehow not FREE.
It has a restriction. That restriction may serve a good purpose, but it is a restriction nonetheless and hence less free. If it is free enough or actually better or whatever is a matter of opinion. Calling it non free is a bit too much imho, but calling it not free enough, well, I tend to agree there, but I accept that others don't. How difficult is it for you to do what you said and accept someoen elses choice, even more when that someone is also prepared to do the work for it?
> know a lot of folks prefer the BSD license and I respect that but does the desire to support the proprietary software industry really mean that all GPL'd code needs to be ported? That's silly. Cycles are being wasted just so that some jack-ass can come along and close your work up again. BSDers may see that as some kind of freedom but pretty much everyone else sees that as inane.
You really know how to show soem respect do you?
I know it is a lto to ask, but would you at least bother to actually read the opencvs homepagge? you may find there is more to it then a licensing issue.
Ah well, why bother indeed, it is more fun to just skip the article and post some stupid anti bsd license nonsense.
> It's an infringement, in that you are treading upon the exclusive right, which remains in the copyright holder. It's like trespassing -- it's not theft of land, but it is an affront to rights. Note that when the government censors people, we talk of infringement on first amendment rights. It's a similar deal.
Oh, I completely agree. ALl I was trying to point out that this infringement does in fact deprive the copyright holder of something.
> No, because FTP has substantial non-infringing uses.
True but applies to p2p neworks like kazaa as well.
> Without sharing other people's copyrighted works FTP still has a use.
Again, true but no difference there with kazaa.
> Kazaa, without other people's copyrighted works, has nothing not available elsewhere.
True but also applies to FTP (to name just a few alternatives, http, scp)
> The tool here is the concept of file transfer between users. It has substantial non-infringing uses. Kazaa's implementation, however, does not as can be seen by a rudimentary examination of the network.
A rudimentary examination of the entwork shows it to be suitable for locating and transfering files between its users. I do not see anything wrong with that.
If you meant looking at its content, well, that is the use not the tool.
> if copyright infringement was theft, the author would lose his copy whenever an unauthorized copy was made. This is clearly not the case.
While I agree with that argument, there is something more to it.
You do deprive the original author of the exclusive right to decide on how to distribute his work. Hence, you can argue that you do steal something still, just not the copyrighted work itself.
> And is quite illegal as well as morally wrong.
Illegal? sure.
Morally wrong? that is at the very least debatable. It being illegal does not make it morally wrong automatically, and it can be morally wrong to obey the law in certain situations.
> While the music industry is a price-fixing behemoth - stealing someones copyrighted material is wrong (even more wrong since there is nothing that says a company can't charge through the nose for their product).
Nope, but in the USA there is a constitution that says something about interlectual property rights and their purpose. It is not morally wrong to ignore those who knowingly frustrate that for their own proffit.
> Even still, two wrongs do not make a right.
Agreed. Following an immoral rule doesn't make a right either tho.
> I remember when I was young having to choose for our first VCR to be either betamax or vhs.... I chose VHS (i had no idea about which format was better) but I did realize that there was a West Coast Video a mile from my home which only had VHS...
Hello, meet chicken and egg. Lets try figuring out whoch came first, shall we?
> Take the CD. Rip it. Never use itagain. The CD is in pristine condition. If the HD fails, re-rip. If you have to listen to an actual optical disc (like in a car), just burn a copy.
And it still can get scratched (when putting it into/removign it from the reader or jewel case for example). CHances are lower, but not zero.
> Plus, you underestimate the durability of CDs. If you've ever checked out library CDs, those suckers gets scratched to hell in back. I'd guess that well over 98% of the CDs I've borrowed from the library have been rippable.
No I don't. Scratch the top layer and the disk is no longer sealed and will start degrading rapidly.
You obviously never looked at how often library CDs have to be replaced. I don't know about the local library here, but shops here where you can rent cds and dvds are complaining quite a bit about this.
The fact that you managed to rip from library cds in many cases is because they care enough to not keep the bad discs in there, not because discs last that long. Also, rippable does not mean you get a very good copy, I'd really loook a bit more into how error correction for audio cds works.
At any rate, when no accidents happen and you are extremely carefull then CDs can last a long time, but when you talk about 'backup', then this is really not enough. THe simple fact that they use optics that require a high level of accuracy makes them vulnerable.
> If you had originally ripped all your stuff as MP3, you wouldn't be having this conversation with yourself every year.
Some 8 years ago I started ripping my music colelction to mp3 files. Diskspace constrains and cpu speed made that the only practical choices were 128kbit cbr for most and 192kbit cbr for the things where quality mattered and 128kbti was too much of a limitation. Due to havign a couple hundred cds, this took a few months to complete also.
About a year ago, I reripped everything to 192kbit vbr (and some at 240kbit vbr), which took just a few days. THe main reason for wanting more quality is that I started using mp3 files for my home audio system (more like a semi professional recording studio then the typical home audio system) more and more, and the quality loss was rather noticable in quite a few cases.
Now, for a bit more diskspace (which has become a lot cheaper) I get a lot more quality while I am still usign mp3.
So, even when staying with the same format, there may be reasons to re-encode everything and you can gain quite a bit from doing so.
> You know, burn a lossless format to CD-R or something.
Because CD-Rs don't last. Yeah, I can buy them from some brand that gives a lifelong warantee, but really, no amount of money or replacement of CD-Rs is every going to get me back a unique recording so that is utterly pointless.
Many CD-Rs that I have used so far fail to last for as long as I tend to keep music around, and those that did survive also did degrade noticably (substantially more errors and more jitter when played back on an audio device) Yeah, that was after approx a decade of storing a cd in its jewel case on a spot protected from sunlight and excesive heat and cold.
> Why not just use the CDs themselves as a long-term storage of a lossless format?
Scratch scratch, oops, CD unreadable.
Harddisks fail as well, but solutions to prevent dataloss from disk failure are way more practical for those (mirroring, raid)
Anout the only better alternative is to burn things to opticals (CD or DVD) in a very clean environment, verify them for proper working, and then seal them into a container with controlled atmosphere, temperature and light (or actually, lack of light). Whenever you need the backup, the first thing you have to do after breaking the seal is repeating the backup process in order to create a new known good backup.
Of course all hardly relevant unless you care about keeping your music collection around for more then say a decade.
> You're right that analog dishes are more common, but the post you're replying yo specified non-motorized dishes
Uh..
There are many people here in Europe that have non motorized dishes and no directv or similar service, and you will fidn the same thing everywhere on the planet outside the USA.
So no, I was not even talkign about analog satelite tv and motorized dishes, I was talkign that from all the non motorized dishes used for receiving digital satelite tv, a fraction is used for directv and similar, but with their total market covering at best 5% of the world's population, it is really a small part of the whole.
> People without motorised dishes are mostly on DirectTV or Dish Network. The dish networks setup that we have here is pointed at two or more satellites. I'm not sure about the mechanics of it, but I am pretty sure it recieves 3 or 4 satellites.
I realize this specific case involves IA7, which had the Americas covered, so in this very specific case, only looking at IA7 customers, you might be right, but I very seriously doubt that the majority of people on this planet that watch satelite tv using their own dish have directv or such. Directv aims at some 5% of the worlds population, and dishnetwork? heh, same story.
Then, many people, even in the USA, use a dish to receive programming that does not originate in the USA and is not carried by American networks usually, think about imigrants who want to watch a satelite channel from their country of origin etc.
So.. I think you are wrong in saying that most private people would be watching directv or dishnetwork.
> Except that I've seen it give that dialog when I've started to save an imported Word or Excel file. REALLY annoying since I did not, to the best of my knowledge, use any OO.o-unique functionality - but there's that damn message just the same. More annoying that it won't tell me what those pesky attributes and information *are*, just that they exist. Geez.
I agree, it would be much better when it only gives this message when a real issue exists. Curretly all it knows is that there is the potential of a problem.
Still, it is better to get it when there is a potential issue then finding out later that your document was not saved correctly without warning that this risk was there.
> That's the way it should be, but it's not the way it is for most window managers.
Please come with examples where that isn't the consequence of a user having told the window manager to do so?
For now it is your word against mine, you saying most don't and I am saying most do this properly.
> A workarea is good, but not always an option, and in my case it's not. Plus, using the GIMP's totally fucking terrible GUI as a positive example of anything isn't gonna persuade me of anything, anyway.
Ah yes, you can only look at what soemoen does wrong, and not at what they might do right?
I do agree that a workarea isn't always the proper solution, and I have had cases at hand where the only proper solution was to not share the display with other applications at all.
> Fix it? I should go to every users house and re-code whatever window manager he is using? seriously WTF are you talking about?
If you believe that kwm for example is not handlign this properly, how about submitting a fix to the kde development team? (change kde to whatever other window manager you are havign a problem with)
> Or you suggest I should force a different window management system on the user? Seems totally contradictory to keeping the user in control.
Force? nope. Tell them that your application only displays as you intended it when they use window manager x? why not? Leave the user in control, and (see next point also) honor the decision of that user.
Overr> iding the window managers bad judgement, and allowing it control of what it doesn't mess up, still seems the best option available.
Replacign bad judgement of one system by bad judgement of another system is simply not a solution.
The window manager has better information abotu what is ont he screen then your application, and is the only place where this can be solved properly.
If the user for whatever reason instructs the window manager to behave differently from what you would prefer, then you should come up with some extremely good reason for not honering that.