Don't get me wrong/.'s a great site and you're right the discussion here is valuable (outside of any ID flamewars, they're getting boring;-).
But there's room for improvement too. My earlier comment basicaly was to indicate that/. got scooped on this story.
Digg has good points and bad points, just like/.
Slashdots REALLY strong point is the discussion attached to the stories.
Diggs strong point is there story submission and (effectively) story moderation system. Slashdot need to work on getting stories posted faster and eliminating dupes (notably dups are a digg problem too). Perhaps/. could use subscribers to help editors choose what story submissions should be posted. Note: I'm not a subscriber, but that would be a great perk to add to/.
Digg of course, needs to competely revamp its comment system since as you have said, it blows.
All in all/. has some competition for technology stories. I RTFA from a digg posting, so from that perspective this story was behind, but obviously I'm now involved in the discussion here.
All I really want is for both sites to engage in friendly competition to make each other better, so I'll have two great sites to frequent instead of just one.
I was in a fairly inexpensive state college 13 years ago and it cost me way more than $ 138 / semester, more on the order of $ 1300 a semester. Sure its quite a bit more expensive now, but...
I would have to agree with you. The music industry is looking INSANELY greedy with this move. I hope Apple holds out and holds their feet to the fire.
My prediction: If Apple goes to $ 1.99 for popular songs (read all but a small token number of the songs on the sight), allofmp3.com will begin to become an _enourmous_ hit (think Napster at its height). The RIAA is going to absolutely freak out and do everything in their power to shut them down. The funny thing is that that sight is bringing true market dynamics to selling music online (along with giving customers what they want, no DRM crap), but as much as they _say_ they are capitalists, the RIAA is just a price fixing oligarchy.
When you slice it that way there isn't much mixing.
To bad (the major) american political parties aren't aligned that way. I really wish the libertarians could present more of a force in american politics, as I feel both parties really do not provide enough for any libertairian to wholeheartedly back either one party or the other.
liberty-oriented activism was considered radical-far-left
WTF? While I agree that the far right is not promoting liberty in its truest sense, the far left is no better.
When on side promotes telling people what they can an can't do in private (the right), the extreme on the left promotes taking property from all and redistributing it based on _their_ beliefs (hardly true liberty there either).
Liberty in truth lives in the middle or at least in a stange mix of both left (social) and right ( fiscal/ownership) policies.
The market you described them wanting is one where Millons of customers will just walk away.
I think that PVR thing will be the biggest impact. I have some shows on my Myth box that are almost 3 years old. Auto delete, no thank you. I realize Myth will never have autodelete, but then again it may become illegal to have. The restrictions wanted by the networks for PVRs will eventually cause the biggest consumer backlash in a long time.
I know they're trying to cook frogs here by doing things slowly, but they will reach a point where they will say "you can't record this show on a PVR" and have a law to back them up.
The basic point is that there are NO CUSTOMERS WHATSOEVER that want the things they are trying to do. I a truly free market DRM would die a horrid death, and unencumbered content would be sold at a reasonable price. They're too damn greedy to let that happen.
The only thing what you list is going to cause is a dramatic shrinking of their market.
Look at CDs, only one demographic matters: everyone under 30 (or even 25). There are literally 10s of millions of people older who have grown to almost completely ignore the music business, by the music business' own design.
Actaully I probably should have phrased my original sentiment as "athiests can be religious" , not "athiests are religious", as there are definately athiests who are not at all religous, even though there some who are very evangalistic.
I'm sure they could get it to work in Vista.... As an application.
Of course if they could do that it'd prove that all the "IEs part of the OS and can't be removed" stuff was bunk. Wheter that's actually provable already is also up for debate.
It really baffles me how you can come to this conclusion for _this_ case. It sure sounds to me like the Texas Attorney General is defending the states consumers from the underhanded practices of Sony. So what if lawyers, make money, or the state fines Sony.
The point is Texas is taking a stand for its citizens (as intented) to defend them from the kind of wrongdoing that is Sony DRM. This will serve to deter Sony, and other companies, from engaging in this kind of activity in the future. Good for more than just Texas citizens there. The Texas AG is doing a good thing here.
The only thing that bothers me is that I believe than in any other industry the kind of whooping that's going to be doled out here would totally stop the activity that caused the problems. But the RIAA members are so crazed with DRM that I think this will be only the first of many major screwups (and court battles).
I disagree with you about atheism. I most definately count it as a religion. There are many atheists out there (and here at/.) that are more evangalistic about their beliefs than most Christians.
Agnostics however, I agree, by definition are non-religious.
Back on topic, while I agree that ID is a poor subject for science class, I wish the court had found some other grounds for excluding it. The school is most definately Not "establishing" a religion by teaching ID (as long as it is attributed to an outside power, which it generally is). What _I_ feel the school board did wrong was take the control of the curriclum out of the teacher hands and ordered them to teach a theory that has almost all its merit coming from philosophy and not science. And the teachers are the ones who should have that final decision (or at least a large say in it), not a bunch of buearucrats(sp?).
But the thing is you can actually do more with that connection can't you? I didn't specify a specific timeline in my post because I knew that the speeds there are already pretty fast, and figured there might be a "we're already there" type of post.
But damn, this just isn't fair. Other countries are enabling their populations to do more in the information age and our country is just trying to lock in higher profit. What you mean they could deliver more over a faster pipe? Naah, all they need to do to make more in the future is raise prices.
Yay! They're trying to gain more of our business by limiting what we can do no the intenet and making things suck.
As a "consumer" that exactly what I look for. I wouldn't want the greedy telcos to have to actually price stuff based on a competitive market.
I look forward to a few years from now when Japan and other countries in Asia will have cheap, and abundant bandwith (at least 100Mb/s, probably wireless to boot) and I'll still have a 1.5Mb/s DSL line and be paying MORE for it. Yeah, that'll be great.
If the telco's succeed in this we (US internet users) will be relegated to a second class status on the net.
And that doesn't even take into account the chokehold they'll have on innovation in the IT sector. Then we'll get passed there too.
Don't get me wrong its not a US and them internet, the net is a global endeavor. It just that in the future being from the US I'd like to participate in it and not get blown past because increasing our bandwidth has take a back seat to Telco profits.
I just got done going to Burger King incessantly so my son could get all of the Star Wars toys, now my kids are going to want to go to McDonalds over and over again to get movies!
Actually I don't mind subtle product placement. Like if someone is drinking beer in a show, I think its more annoying to label the can BEER than to have a real brand there. Some of the product placement should just be there because thats the way it is in real life.
Now I do agree that some product placement gets out of hand. For example, Matrix Reloaded had that amazing chase scene on the interstate, BUT it just so happens that every vehicle in the scene was a GM product. After a few minutes I was watching to identify the products and not watching the scene only as part of a movie. It pulls you out of the experience, which is not good.
Like you've said earlier, subtle product placement is the way to go because overbearing product placement set off bells and whistles about things being out of place. But of course in the real world product placement is everywhere as well.
As for real commercials, MythTV skips those for me. It is actually amazing how much time in a show is dedicated to commercials, but you get that time back when you use a DVR.
I was going to be all snide about the lack of jobs and all, but how about this idea.
You could try and get the companies that have been hiring your grads to make a bit of a splash about it. Create literature to promote your school that contains testomonials from the companies that hire your grads. Have the companies come on campus to interview if you can and make it fairly high profile so that people notice. After that you'll have real proof that students from your program are getting hired and finding jobs.
Another path, not one you might like, but one nonetheless is to promote your school to foreign students. The local university in my town has quite a few foreign students and has traditionally had quite a few Indoneasian students. A lot of them come from word of mouth from other students. It another way to help your enrollment and from groups that are growing instead of shrinking.
Yeah, that one was the coolest. I can't wait to try that one;-). Actaully I've already done some things with that. My son had a water propelled rocket that he had bought and we wondered what would happen if we substituted pop for the water and then pumped it up and then gave it a good shake.
Oh, there have been many instances where they have been injured. The famous vaccuum incident with Adam comes to mind, and Jaime was actually in the building for the rocket test that instantly filled the entire warehouse with smoke.
They (the non dummies;-) have been in danger many times.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm.... Ok apparently I can't make fun :-) of /.
/.'s a great site and you're right the discussion here is valuable (outside of any ID flamewars, they're getting boring ;-).
/. got scooped on this story.
/.
/. could use subscribers to help editors choose what story submissions should be posted. Note: I'm not a subscriber, but that would be a great perk to add to /.
/. has some competition for technology stories. I RTFA from a digg posting, so from that perspective this story was behind, but obviously I'm now involved in the discussion here.
Don't get me wrong
But there's room for improvement too. My earlier comment basicaly was to indicate that
Digg has good points and bad points, just like
Slashdots REALLY strong point is the discussion attached to the stories.
Diggs strong point is there story submission and (effectively) story moderation system. Slashdot need to work on getting stories posted faster and eliminating dupes (notably dups are a digg problem too). Perhaps
Digg of course, needs to competely revamp its comment system since as you have said, it blows.
All in all
All I really want is for both sites to engage in friendly competition to make each other better, so I'll have two great sites to frequent instead of just one.
I digg
/.'s a little slow on the uptake here.
Oh wait...
This story has been on digg TWICE already.
I was in a fairly inexpensive state college 13 years ago and it cost me way more than $ 138 / semester, more on the order of $ 1300 a semester. Sure its quite a bit more expensive now, but...
Are you sure you weren't meaning 31 years ago?
I would have to agree with you. The music industry is looking INSANELY greedy with this move. I hope Apple holds out and holds their feet to the fire.
My prediction: If Apple goes to $ 1.99 for popular songs (read all but a small token number of the songs on the sight), allofmp3.com will begin to become an _enourmous_ hit (think Napster at its height). The RIAA is going to absolutely freak out and do everything in their power to shut them down. The funny thing is that that sight is bringing true market dynamics to selling music online (along with giving customers what they want, no DRM crap), but as much as they _say_ they are capitalists, the RIAA is just a price fixing oligarchy.
When you slice it that way there isn't much mixing.
To bad (the major) american political parties aren't aligned that way. I really wish the libertarians could present more of a force in american politics, as I feel both parties really do not provide enough for any libertairian to wholeheartedly back either one party or the other.
liberty-oriented activism was considered radical-far-left
WTF? While I agree that the far right is not promoting liberty in its truest sense, the far left is no better.
When on side promotes telling people what they can an can't do in private (the right), the extreme on the left promotes taking property from all and redistributing it based on _their_ beliefs (hardly true liberty there either).
Liberty in truth lives in the middle or at least in a stange mix of both left (social) and right ( fiscal/ownership) policies.
Does your Internet connection have the bandwidth to stream HD video in real time?
Not in the United States for the foreseeable future... But other places are going to love it.
The market you described them wanting is one where Millons of customers will just walk away.
I think that PVR thing will be the biggest impact. I have some shows on my Myth box that are almost 3 years old. Auto delete, no thank you. I realize Myth will never have autodelete, but then again it may become illegal to have. The restrictions wanted by the networks for PVRs will eventually cause the biggest consumer backlash in a long time.
I know they're trying to cook frogs here by doing things slowly, but they will reach a point where they will say "you can't record this show on a PVR" and have a law to back them up.
The basic point is that there are NO CUSTOMERS WHATSOEVER that want the things they are trying to do. I a truly free market DRM would die a horrid death, and unencumbered content would be sold at a reasonable price. They're too damn greedy to let that happen.
The only thing what you list is going to cause is a dramatic shrinking of their market.
Look at CDs, only one demographic matters: everyone under 30 (or even 25). There are literally 10s of millions of people older who have grown to almost completely ignore the music business, by the music business' own design.
No problem ;-)
Actaully I probably should have phrased my original sentiment as "athiests can be religious" , not "athiests are religious", as there are definately athiests who are not at all religous, even though there some who are very evangalistic.
I'm sure they could get it to work in Vista.... As an application.
Of course if they could do that it'd prove that all the "IEs part of the OS and can't be removed" stuff was bunk. Wheter that's actually provable already is also up for debate.
It really baffles me how you can come to this conclusion for _this_ case. It sure sounds to me like the Texas Attorney General is defending the states consumers from the underhanded practices of Sony. So what if lawyers, make money, or the state fines Sony.
The point is Texas is taking a stand for its citizens (as intented) to defend them from the kind of wrongdoing that is Sony DRM. This will serve to deter Sony, and other companies, from engaging in this kind of activity in the future. Good for more than just Texas citizens there. The Texas AG is doing a good thing here.
The only thing that bothers me is that I believe than in any other industry the kind of whooping that's going to be doled out here would totally stop the activity that caused the problems. But the RIAA members are so crazed with DRM that I think this will be only the first of many major screwups (and court battles).
Umm, evolutionary theory does come from science. I think you misread my post.
I was talking about Intelligent Design. It uses philosophy as a basis for its theory.
Of course you could be cynical about it.
Joss realizes that this news will get out to the rabid fans IMMEDIATELY BEFORE RELEASE OF THE DVD... Is it coincedence?? I don't think so.
I disagree with you about atheism. I most definately count it as a religion. There are many atheists out there (and here at /.) that are more evangalistic about their beliefs than most Christians.
Agnostics however, I agree, by definition are non-religious.
Back on topic, while I agree that ID is a poor subject for science class, I wish the court had found some other grounds for excluding it. The school is most definately Not "establishing" a religion by teaching ID (as long as it is attributed to an outside power, which it generally is). What _I_ feel the school board did wrong was take the control of the curriclum out of the teacher hands and ordered them to teach a theory that has almost all its merit coming from philosophy and not science. And the teachers are the ones who should have that final decision (or at least a large say in it), not a bunch of buearucrats(sp?).
I concur with the other reply to your post.
;-)
You Suck!!
But the thing is you can actually do more with that connection can't you? I didn't specify a specific timeline in my post because I knew that the speeds there are already pretty fast, and figured there might be a "we're already there" type of post.
But damn, this just isn't fair. Other countries are enabling their populations to do more in the information age and our country is just trying to lock in higher profit. What you mean they could deliver more over a faster pipe? Naah, all they need to do to make more in the future is raise prices.
This is a sad, sad deal.
Could worse grammar and speling I had in that last sentance?
Sorry about that. Grammar Nazis need not reply, I know that was horrible.
Yay! They're trying to gain more of our business by limiting what we can do no the intenet and making things suck.
As a "consumer" that exactly what I look for. I wouldn't want the greedy telcos to have to actually price stuff based on a competitive market.
I look forward to a few years from now when Japan and other countries in Asia will have cheap, and abundant bandwith (at least 100Mb/s, probably wireless to boot) and I'll still have a 1.5Mb/s DSL line and be paying MORE for it. Yeah, that'll be great.
If the telco's succeed in this we (US internet users) will be relegated to a second class status on the net.
And that doesn't even take into account the chokehold they'll have on innovation in the IT sector. Then we'll get passed there too.
Don't get me wrong its not a US and them internet, the net is a global endeavor. It just that in the future being from the US I'd like to participate in it and not get blown past because increasing our bandwidth has take a back seat to Telco profits.
Great study!! Thanks for the link!
You forgot the part about where they have to write the password down and stick it to their monitor with a post it note.
It would be really interesting to see a study to determine whether changing passwords frequently actually increases or decreases your vulnerability.
I just got done going to Burger King incessantly so my son could get all of the Star Wars toys, now my kids are going to want to go to McDonalds over and over again to get movies!
Its a great idea, and I don't like it one bit.
Actually I don't mind subtle product placement. Like if someone is drinking beer in a show, I think its more annoying to label the can BEER than to have a real brand there. Some of the product placement should just be there because thats the way it is in real life.
Now I do agree that some product placement gets out of hand. For example, Matrix Reloaded had that amazing chase scene on the interstate, BUT it just so happens that every vehicle in the scene was a GM product. After a few minutes I was watching to identify the products and not watching the scene only as part of a movie. It pulls you out of the experience, which is not good.
Like you've said earlier, subtle product placement is the way to go because overbearing product placement set off bells and whistles about things being out of place. But of course in the real world product placement is everywhere as well.
As for real commercials, MythTV skips those for me. It is actually amazing how much time in a show is dedicated to commercials, but you get that time back when you use a DVR.
but just as the Romans couldn't even imagine in their wildest dreams a B2 bomber
;-)
Of course, it would have to be a B2 instead of a B1 or any other type of bomber so that it won't be detected by the Romans RADAR.
I was going to be all snide about the lack of jobs and all, but how about this idea.
You could try and get the companies that have been hiring your grads to make a bit of a splash about it. Create literature to promote your school that contains testomonials from the companies that hire your grads. Have the companies come on campus to interview if you can and make it fairly high profile so that people notice. After that you'll have real proof that students from your program are getting hired and finding jobs.
Another path, not one you might like, but one nonetheless is to promote your school to foreign students. The local university in my town has quite a few foreign students and has traditionally had quite a few Indoneasian students. A lot of them come from word of mouth from other students. It another way to help your enrollment and from groups that are growing instead of shrinking.
Yeah, that one was the coolest. I can't wait to try that one ;-). Actaully I've already done some things with that. My son had a water propelled rocket that he had bought and we wondered what would happen if we substituted pop for the water and then pumped it up and then gave it a good shake.
It took us a while to find that rocket.
Oh, there have been many instances where they have been injured. The famous vaccuum incident with Adam comes to mind, and Jaime was actually in the building for the rocket test that instantly filled the entire warehouse with smoke.
;-) have been in danger many times.
They (the non dummies