It seems he's not referring to ported games being inferior to their original platforms, but rather that they'll be inferior to other games on the Revolution that take full advantage of the new control scheme. As long as the Revolution supports the original Gamecube controller, only processor power will limit its ability to run ported games.
The RIAA will probably just fight this by claiming the artists don't understand economics and don't realize the RIAA is helping them. The RIAA will always have a larger propaganda machine than the artists - a propaganda machine used against them but powered by their own blood; the only way to solve the problem in the long term is for new artists to keep their work out of the hands of RIAA-based labels. Only then will the RIAA lose its power.
The theme song for the game by Utada Hikaru, titled "Passion", is awesome as well. I recommend everyone find a way to listen to it if you're open to Japanese music. If you like the song, check out the music video.
This is just flamebait. First, the Acid2 is overemphasized when comparing browsers. It's good when a browser passes it, as it does suggest a higher quality of attention to standards, but it tests many things that aren't as important. In addition to testing standard CSS capabilites, it also reveals problems with error correction, from developer mistakes such as mismatched tags or syntax errors. It's good to focus on that eventually, but supporting correctly-coded, standards-compliant CSS is much more important. Hopefully FF will pass Acid2 soon, but I'm not losing any sleep over it as long FF does most of CSS properly. While Firefox and IE still have weaknesses concerning valid CSS, the FF list is much shorter.
Second, I usually get better speed out of IE6 than I do from my fully extension-loaded Firefox. That's easily explained though: it does less work. It cheats on speed by rendering pages incorrectly, cheats on memory usage by sharing much of its code with the OS, and has way less features than I get from extensioned FF. However, even a brand new install of FF already does more than IE and performs almost as well, even despite IE's aforementioned "cheating".
Think of IE as a "lite" browser and it makes sense - less features* with slightly more speed.
Last, "Firefox doesn't like ColdFusion" can easily be reversed to mean "ColdFusion doesn't like Firefox". Assuming you're correct in that they have some incompatibilities (no experience, myself), I'm betting CF was developed specifically for IE and does things contrary to standards, and FF can't figure out what it wants.
*features like security, HTML rendering quality, CSS capabilities, customizability, etc.
I think emphasis on the Acid test is a bit overblown, since it tests far more than just standard valid CSS handling. It also takes into account very specific points about fallback methods, handling of bad tags, improper syntax, etc. Even Safari, which passes the Acid test, still doesn't allow web developers to replace the goofy Aqua buttons on a site with standard ones. In general, what we need in IE7 (well, all browsers) is support for all the features properly-coded standard CSS; full compliance with Acid is a luxury for another day.
Adblock Plus 0.5.11.3* (http://bene.sitesled.com/adblock.htm) includes a feature called "Support Site" which will consider any ad from a particular site as a "hidden" ad rather than a "removed" one. In general, you can set it to omit all ads, but ads from sites on this list will be downloaded but not shown. At that point, there's really no easy way for LJ to know if you're actually seeing them.
*See Wikipedia for an explanation of the competing versions of "Adblock Plus"
Maybe he used a simple cipher because he wanted the codes to be cracked. Now the police have been arresting his enemies because he "secretly" mentioned them in his letters.
Even worse, people decode random-substitution ciphers in newspapers daily, for fun. A rotating cipher is even easier to break since the letters remain sequential. I guess we could give the guy a break though, since, according to the article, he only has about a 3rd-grade education.
Rather than an independent "directional mic" in each ear, these glasses determine the origin of sounds based on timing, which is what the ears do in general. If a sound hits both ears at the same time, it's probably coming from directly in front of or directly behind the listener. If the array of hearing aids amplify only in-phase sounds, it will help to eliminate sounds that come from places other than where the user is looking. However, in order for all these microphones to coordinate, they must be able to communicate in some way, and a wire running through a pair of fake (or real) glasses is a good way to do that without looking strange. Thus, the glasses are just a transport mechanism.
That means the glasses (and TFA) make sense. However, like your first point, the/. article summary and title do not. But since when did the editors actually edit?
I want to respond to all the comments that reduce Aero to a simple extension of the goofy Luna theme from XP. Aero is not a skin; it is a completely different way of conveying GUIs to the user. Everyone knows by now that it's rendering the "eye candy" parts of the system with the graphics card in 3D mode - that's Big Deal A, which I see as a big feature but everyone has committed themselves to discounting. However, what seems to be missed is Big Deal B: rather than every component of each program's UI being rendered as bitmaps, it is now possible to build your entire interface as a vector.
This means that you'll no longer have Windows' ugly "Large Fonts" mode for high-dpi monitors (like those on a laptop that display 1600x1200 in a 14" LCD) - rather, you'll simply tell Windows the DPI of your monitor and it will be able to scale the entire system UI to fit - from icons to text to graphical elements in the GUI. Instead of having to choose between a) everything being really small, b) using a lower, non-native resolution that causes your LCD to become blurry, or c) putting up with "Large Fonts" mode, you will now simply enjoy the same-sized interface but with greater clarity.
This seems like a minor point, but it removes a huge barrier that, in my opinion, has plagued applications since day 1: dependence on pixel size. This is the most important aspect of Aero, and it really is something MS can be proud of if they pull it off. Licensing, pirating, and "activation" issues aside, the Aero interface in Vista will be something that every teenage girl and geek alike will want, in the end. It will make our computing experience just a little bit better.
It's no wonder other countries are screaming to get the ICANN out of the control of the US. With diplomacy policies that make no sense and our worldwide reputation in shreds, I can't blame them, at all, for wanting this organization to be in the hands of this increasingly retarded government. Let's see... billions to education or billions in 2600 subscriptions?
It's one thing to put forth tons of money in true defense, to protect ourselves from such attacks from abroad. It's another one entirely to support (and especially announce) that we're making it a point to gather offensive moves.
I've noticed more and more lately that popular singles (take Feel Good Inc. for example) are no longer offered as single-track downloads on iTunes. Instead, you must purchase the entire album, and for more than the original $10 price-per-album cap. As soon as this trend hits a critical point, iTMS will start losing users again since, as you mention, that is the primary benefit of the service. Why buy a downloaded album for $13 when I could buy a used CD with no DRM for $6?
Every time the RIAA or MPAA accidentally give the customer more choice, either by experiment or by slipup, they'll fix it in the future by eroding fair use even further. To them, iTMS was a nice experiment, but they have now realized that they accidentally gave users the ability to choose not to buy crappy tracks; now they're fixing that little loophole. Be sure that a format as open as redbook CD will never happen again.
"In the 80's and 90's Word Perfect was the defacto standard for an office suite, and Claris Works was popular on the mac. Then microsoft brought out it's office suite, and has all but put the competition out of buisness."
This fact doesn't support your argument concerning bundling because these products are not necessarily included in Windows. Rather, the fact that Office became the standard is either due to a) improved quality over the competition, or b) improved marketing over the competition, neither of which is illegal. When you buy a stock computer from a company like Dell, they most often include WordPerfect by default, and you have to pay an extra $NNN to have Office included instead. People must make an active decision to pay extra for the product, so if they have it, they must feel that it's worth it. If Corel is losing money as a result of people making this decision, it's their own fault, one way or another.
The strange thing about this article is that it makes MS out to be the bad guys. Viruses and spyware feed on weaknesses in the OS, therefore so do anti-virus and anti-spyware products. When Microsoft improves the security of their OS and therefore hurts the businesses that leeched on those holes, are they really the bad guys? All MS does is improve the experience built into the operating system. How is it their fault to make an operating system that fixes itself, even if the "fixing" is done by a part of the system that happens to be called "MS Antivirus" or "MS Antispyware"?
Tell the media to go fuck themselves. Do your own investigations and read personal blogs around the world for a more
dynamic outlook into our global society.
This is a nice ideal, but the only people with time to "do [their] own investigations" are journalists. I don't have the time, resources, or connections to travel to Iraq and see what's happening there. The media have huge resources that we pay for in the form of watching ads (or donating in the case of NPR), and in return they specialize in using that money efficiently to tell us about current events. They're far from perfect, but they're really all we've got. Blogs are a good supplement, but like Wikipedia, they aren't a primary source of information so you're still receiving a filter.
A person can rely on the media and still stay atop current events as long as they make an active attempt to get their news from varied sources, like NPR and BBC in addition to CNN. If you get news from sources that have many different filters, eventually the filters will become 100% transparent. It's just not practical to ignore these resources.
Does that mean he went to sleep and let himself be boiled? It doesn't count if you just put the frog in a boiler and didn't let him escape. Either way, it's sick.
This sounds like a really bad financial move, considering the stability of online systems' finances. What happens when you buy $2000 worth of computer equipment on your card, only to have WoW roll back to before you made the purchase and wipe out your side earnings? Until online currency has the same financial and legal protections as true currency, stay away. No thanks.
When Smilnar director James Smith presented at the annual HARVL conference, he introduced that the Smilnar project would be joining the Yarbel group to create a new product code-named "Woolpun". Critics of the merger cite problems with Smilnar's compatibility problems with other Romolad systems, but Smith had some choice words for them: "Stewfoo"
I appreciate Epic's approach with the original UT and UT2004. For a few months after each game was released, you needed the CD in the drive to play the game. After a few months, a standard patch is released that removes the CD requirement, after the most significant piracy problems have died down. From then on, you no longer need to deal with the original CD.
"Just throw this out there... is there any free (legal) software other than iTunes that has unlimited ripping and burning support?"
While it lacks a little bit in user-friendliness with regard to setup, Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is by far my favorite ripping software. You just throw in a recent LAME dll and rip with ease. It also claims to handle burning, though I've never tried that feature. The best selling point of EAC is its slow but extremely reliable "secure copy" mode, which reads the disc "very carefully" (my words) in order to make absolutely sure there are no glitches. I can't remember the last time it made a bad mp3.
Minor sticking point, though, is that it doesn't seem to handle the Japanese stuff very well either... "??????" it says:)
I stick to the old Winamp ml_ipod plugin for my iPod management, since my iPod can't do photos or video. I prefer it to iTunes partially because I prefer Winamp for my listening experience, and partially because it gives me more flexibility to define what to sync and other transfers.
What's the best way to get out of doing the dishes as a kid? Do a sucky job cleaning them. The USPTO has been saying for years that its patent officers are underpaid and that it needs far more to handle the huge flood of patents it gets these days. Eventually they'll allow a patent that directly affects legislators* and will finally see their needs met. Until then, they have a clear incentive to continue screwing up until someone takes notice and gives them more money.
We'll either see the USPTO getting lots more $$$ and (hopefully) becoming more competent at awarding truly insightful patents, or legislation introduced that greatly restricts ideas that can be patented (or make it easier to destroy existing lame patents). Either of those is better than what we currently have, and the worse job the USPTO does now, the more likely those solutions will be implemented.
*the Blackberry lawsuits are close, but maybe something like patenting the filibuster would help. "Method for preventing the passage of legislation through sustained verbalization". Sounds innovative to me! So many syllables!
Slashdot Mirror
It seems he's not referring to ported games being inferior to their original platforms, but rather that they'll be inferior to other games on the Revolution that take full advantage of the new control scheme. As long as the Revolution supports the original Gamecube controller, only processor power will limit its ability to run ported games.
The RIAA will probably just fight this by claiming the artists don't understand economics and don't realize the RIAA is helping them. The RIAA will always have a larger propaganda machine than the artists - a propaganda machine used against them but powered by their own blood; the only way to solve the problem in the long term is for new artists to keep their work out of the hands of RIAA-based labels. Only then will the RIAA lose its power.
The theme song for the game by Utada Hikaru, titled "Passion", is awesome as well. I recommend everyone find a way to listen to it if you're open to Japanese music. If you like the song, check out the music video.
Second, I usually get better speed out of IE6 than I do from my fully extension-loaded Firefox. That's easily explained though: it does less work. It cheats on speed by rendering pages incorrectly, cheats on memory usage by sharing much of its code with the OS, and has way less features than I get from extensioned FF. However, even a brand new install of FF already does more than IE and performs almost as well, even despite IE's aforementioned "cheating".
Think of IE as a "lite" browser and it makes sense - less features* with slightly more speed.
Last, "Firefox doesn't like ColdFusion" can easily be reversed to mean "ColdFusion doesn't like Firefox". Assuming you're correct in that they have some incompatibilities (no experience, myself), I'm betting CF was developed specifically for IE and does things contrary to standards, and FF can't figure out what it wants.
*features like security, HTML rendering quality, CSS capabilities, customizability, etc.
I think emphasis on the Acid test is a bit overblown, since it tests far more than just standard valid CSS handling. It also takes into account very specific points about fallback methods, handling of bad tags, improper syntax, etc. Even Safari, which passes the Acid test, still doesn't allow web developers to replace the goofy Aqua buttons on a site with standard ones. In general, what we need in IE7 (well, all browsers) is support for all the features properly-coded standard CSS; full compliance with Acid is a luxury for another day.
*See Wikipedia for an explanation of the competing versions of "Adblock Plus"
Maybe he used a simple cipher because he wanted the codes to be cracked. Now the police have been arresting his enemies because he "secretly" mentioned them in his letters.
Even worse, people decode random-substitution ciphers in newspapers daily, for fun. A rotating cipher is even easier to break since the letters remain sequential. I guess we could give the guy a break though, since, according to the article, he only has about a 3rd-grade education.
That means the glasses (and TFA) make sense. However, like your first point, the /. article summary and title do not. But since when did the editors actually edit?
This means that you'll no longer have Windows' ugly "Large Fonts" mode for high-dpi monitors (like those on a laptop that display 1600x1200 in a 14" LCD) - rather, you'll simply tell Windows the DPI of your monitor and it will be able to scale the entire system UI to fit - from icons to text to graphical elements in the GUI. Instead of having to choose between a) everything being really small, b) using a lower, non-native resolution that causes your LCD to become blurry, or c) putting up with "Large Fonts" mode, you will now simply enjoy the same-sized interface but with greater clarity.
This seems like a minor point, but it removes a huge barrier that, in my opinion, has plagued applications since day 1: dependence on pixel size. This is the most important aspect of Aero, and it really is something MS can be proud of if they pull it off. Licensing, pirating, and "activation" issues aside, the Aero interface in Vista will be something that every teenage girl and geek alike will want, in the end. It will make our computing experience just a little bit better.
Check out this video if you want to understand why Aero really is something important: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=1146 94
Vector icons: http://www.iconbase.com/iconbase/aero-eps.html
Oh the humanity!
It's one thing to put forth tons of money in true defense, to protect ourselves from such attacks from abroad. It's another one entirely to support (and especially announce) that we're making it a point to gather offensive moves.
Every time the RIAA or MPAA accidentally give the customer more choice, either by experiment or by slipup, they'll fix it in the future by eroding fair use even further. To them, iTMS was a nice experiment, but they have now realized that they accidentally gave users the ability to choose not to buy crappy tracks; now they're fixing that little loophole. Be sure that a format as open as redbook CD will never happen again.
This fact doesn't support your argument concerning bundling because these products are not necessarily included in Windows. Rather, the fact that Office became the standard is either due to a) improved quality over the competition, or b) improved marketing over the competition, neither of which is illegal. When you buy a stock computer from a company like Dell, they most often include WordPerfect by default, and you have to pay an extra $NNN to have Office included instead. People must make an active decision to pay extra for the product, so if they have it, they must feel that it's worth it. If Corel is losing money as a result of people making this decision, it's their own fault, one way or another.
The strange thing about this article is that it makes MS out to be the bad guys. Viruses and spyware feed on weaknesses in the OS, therefore so do anti-virus and anti-spyware products. When Microsoft improves the security of their OS and therefore hurts the businesses that leeched on those holes, are they really the bad guys? All MS does is improve the experience built into the operating system. How is it their fault to make an operating system that fixes itself, even if the "fixing" is done by a part of the system that happens to be called "MS Antivirus" or "MS Antispyware"?
This is a nice ideal, but the only people with time to "do [their] own investigations" are journalists. I don't have the time, resources, or connections to travel to Iraq and see what's happening there. The media have huge resources that we pay for in the form of watching ads (or donating in the case of NPR), and in return they specialize in using that money efficiently to tell us about current events. They're far from perfect, but they're really all we've got. Blogs are a good supplement, but like Wikipedia, they aren't a primary source of information so you're still receiving a filter.
A person can rely on the media and still stay atop current events as long as they make an active attempt to get their news from varied sources, like NPR and BBC in addition to CNN. If you get news from sources that have many different filters, eventually the filters will become 100% transparent. It's just not practical to ignore these resources.
Does that mean he went to sleep and let himself be boiled? It doesn't count if you just put the frog in a boiler and didn't let him escape. Either way, it's sick.
This sounds like a really bad financial move, considering the stability of online systems' finances. What happens when you buy $2000 worth of computer equipment on your card, only to have WoW roll back to before you made the purchase and wipe out your side earnings? Until online currency has the same financial and legal protections as true currency, stay away. No thanks.
When Smilnar director James Smith presented at the annual HARVL conference, he introduced that the Smilnar project would be joining the Yarbel group to create a new product code-named "Woolpun". Critics of the merger cite problems with Smilnar's compatibility problems with other Romolad systems, but Smith had some choice words for them: "Stewfoo"
I appreciate Epic's approach with the original UT and UT2004. For a few months after each game was released, you needed the CD in the drive to play the game. After a few months, a standard patch is released that removes the CD requirement, after the most significant piracy problems have died down. From then on, you no longer need to deal with the original CD.
While it lacks a little bit in user-friendliness with regard to setup, Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is by far my favorite ripping software. You just throw in a recent LAME dll and rip with ease. It also claims to handle burning, though I've never tried that feature. The best selling point of EAC is its slow but extremely reliable "secure copy" mode, which reads the disc "very carefully" (my words) in order to make absolutely sure there are no glitches. I can't remember the last time it made a bad mp3.
Minor sticking point, though, is that it doesn't seem to handle the Japanese stuff very well either ... "??????" it says :)
I stick to the old Winamp ml_ipod plugin for my iPod management, since my iPod can't do photos or video. I prefer it to iTunes partially because I prefer Winamp for my listening experience, and partially because it gives me more flexibility to define what to sync and other transfers.
Does "burning up in the atmosphere" count as a hazard?
Think of the electricity usage!
...is that he committed a felony, which means he'll no longer be allowed to vote on the machines he's trying to fix!
How better to prove that your invention is useless than to have it be just as useful when shut off? That's gotta suck!
We'll either see the USPTO getting lots more $$$ and (hopefully) becoming more competent at awarding truly insightful patents, or legislation introduced that greatly restricts ideas that can be patented (or make it easier to destroy existing lame patents). Either of those is better than what we currently have, and the worse job the USPTO does now, the more likely those solutions will be implemented.
*the Blackberry lawsuits are close, but maybe something like patenting the filibuster would help. "Method for preventing the passage of legislation through sustained verbalization". Sounds innovative to me! So many syllables!