Along with that point, it destroys what I thought was eMusic's greatest virtue: It was really easy to go find some new band you had never heard of and see if you liked 'em. I've downloaded a lot of things off eMusic that sucked, but I've also downloaded some bands I'd never heard before that I thought were great. I *never* would have heard these bands if I had to pay per download. If you're limited to 40 tracks a month, you're never going to take a risk on something you don't already know you like. Especially if you like punk bands that have 25 1-1/2 minute songs @ CD.
Imagine how much TV would suck if there were never any new shows because nobody would be willing to give up the shows they already watch to see something new, especially if they were hitting their limit of viewable shows per month.
Hrm...this doesn't seem to be possible on Windows 2000, though I'm admittedly not logged in as an administrator right now. Right-Clicking on the drive in Explorer doesn't give me an Autoplay tab, right-clicking on the drive in the device manager doesn't give me the choice either.
The help menu only lists one thing about autorun/autoplay, and that's to hold down the shift key when disabling it.
I'll have to check if this is maybe an administrator only option when I get home, but I cannot turn off autorun at work through normal means.
Good point. However, SGI says that they contributed one million lines of code, and say that they made sure it wasn't infringing on any IP.
SCO's claim of one million lines of infringing code sounds kinda like them saying "well, we know that SGI contributed some lines of code that are just like our System V code, so therefore, all lines that they contributed must be."
IANAL so I have to ask: If, for instance, a book has a paragraph that was lifted from another author, does that make the entire book an IP violation under the eyes of the law? I.e., can that one paragraph be changed and fix everything?
Also, in that case, I would assume that anybody *reading* said book would not be responsible for paying restitution to the actual author of that paragraph.
So, worst comes to worst, the 2.4 kernels that have that code in them are taken off the mirrors and no longer readily available. All other versions of the kernel don't infringe, and the only entity that could reasonably be held liable would be SGI, an entity that would be able to fight off SCO.
On the other hand, what it does is refute SCO's claim that there are over 1 million lines of code that infringe on their IP. SGI makes it sound like, at most, 200 lines infringe, most of which has been removed and found redundant. Does that sound like something worth a $1,599 licensing fee (well, it's not October 15th yet, but do you know anyone planning on paying the licensing fee over the next two weeks?)
In the end, it sounds more like a company doing what most companies do: Realizing that there is absolutely no merit to the case, but taking the easy way out rather than spending money defending itself in court against charges that it doesn't feel like dealing with.
I haven't used SpamGourmet, but I do use SpamMotel pretty regularly. I've been very happy with them so far, I used them with an account that gets no spam to date, and no new spam has shown up after signing up with them. If SpamGourmet makes you nervous, my personal experience with SpamMotel has been absolutely flawless.
That's not entirely accurate, at least not in my experience.
My spam problem was getting so bad at work (I went on vacation, got back, and had 3,000 e-mails. 2,700 were spam) that I ended up changing my e-mail address. Now, the only things that get through are BCC'd e-mails.
It is true that I can't tell at all how many people are BCC'd. However, on all of these e-mails, there is a "Bcc:" header. I don't normally see that header on other e-mails.
This could, obviously, be something to do with the e-mail sender's program, and since I only get BCC'd by about 4 different spammers, that's not really a representative sample. Still, the point holds, I can tell that somebody was BCC'd in this case.
Tell me about it. I've been using nVidia since 3Dfx kinda died, but I finally buckled and picked up a Radeon 9800 Pro. What a difference from the old ATi stuff I had...this thing flies. I don't see weird artifacts like I used to with ATi cards/drivers, the image quality is amazing, and it renders fast.
It's nice to see two players in the high-end 3D market again, now lets see nVidia show up ATi with something amazing in their next iteration.
Ideally, this would have actually benefitted the little guy. We all know that the RIAA had no case here, all he did was index windows shares and make them searchable. If he could have had faith that the legal system would recognize this and that he would have won, it would have allowed him to take on the RIAA, knowing that the debt he incurred getting legal representation would be paid back to him by the RIAA.
The problem is that we don't have faith in the legal system to come back with the right verdict. Beyond that, we've seen repeatedly that the correct decision is rarely made when it comes to technical issues, and that money seems to talk very loudly when it comes to these things. That's when the loser pays system completely backfires...when you know you should win, you know you're right, but you also are fairly certain that the court won't rule in your favor anyway.
Unfortunately, none of the articles linked on this story give the information, but I distinctly remember reading in a previous story on this that his service did *not* stream the files through. All it really was was an indexing/searching system for standard Windows shares. It would crawl the university network looking for shared drives/directories, then index everything it could on them. Essentially, if you searched for something and it found it, it would just return a link like \\machinename\directory\filename. The user would link directly to the share on the other users machine, all this service did was index it and make it searchable.
The google comparisons made so far are absolutely spot on, in that respect.
Yep, almost all the launched coasters are using LIM/LSM motors, I believe the only others are Xcelerator and TTD using hydraulics and Hypersonic XLC & Dodonpa using pnuematic launches. Their launches are a heck of a lot fiercer too, I believe it's 1.8 seconds to 80mph for XLC and 1.8 seconds to 107mph for Dodonpa. Yowch!
I don't know much about Hulk actually. RCDB says it's a 40mph in 2 seconds launch, which doesn't have nearly the kick of these other four. Quick post about it here, but that's one that I've not had the time to really research much. I would, however, LOVE to ride it.
I think Intamin usually does use normal style block brakes on rides like Millennium Force & Superman: Ride of Steel, but the cycle on Xcelerator and TTD is so quick that they didn't really need it. Anyway, people would lose their minds of either of them had a brake system at the top of the tower;)
I was reading this usenet post earlier, and the guy describes screaming for the first second of the launch, then claims he basically lost his breath completely and went silent for the rest of it. He also claims that he can barely even remember the ride it was so much to take in all at once.
I have yet to hear *anyone* say anything bad about this ride, I can't wait to go and try it myself!
Unlike one of Intamin AG's older creations, Superman: The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain in CA (0-100mph in 7 seconds, though it's realistically only making about 88mph with a full car these days to conserve some electricity and keep the motors cool), this one does *not* use electromagnetic LSM/LIM motors to launch. This one is basically Xcelerator at Knott's Berry Farm's (0-82mph in 2.3 seconds) big brother, both using a hydrauliclaunch motor.
I remember a quote from someone at CP saying that if they were trying to use LSM's to launch a train at 0-120mph in 4 seconds, like TTD needs, they might well brown out all of Sandusky given all the power that a launch like that would consume. As is, I know that California Screamin' at Disney's California Adventure (sorta unrelated, so too lazy to link) actually has to spray water on their LSMs to avoid overheating them from all the launches.
On these, there's a cable that runs from the motor, back to the station, around a wheel, then back across the top of the box track. It connects to the back of a launch sled, then more cable runs from the front of the sled back to the motor. When the motor fires, it yanks the sled down a channel in the top of the track (you can barely see Xcelerator's in this shot, look at the center of the track immediately behind the train, you can see the sled as an object in the center of the track, then the channel running along behind it).
It does, however, use electromagnetics for the braking systems, on both the launch run and the final brake run. After launch, fins pop up into place to stop the train from rolling back if it fails to clear the tower (in the pic above, you can see that some of the fins have raised while the ones immediately behind the train have not). I would imagine that for brake fin systems that their default state, without power, is to have the fins up, and that it takes power to lower them. Not sure how that works, but generally that's the failsafe for a braking system like that. There aren't really any block brakes for the ride, other than through the entire unload -> load area, so the computer systems won't allow one train to launch until another train has completely cleared the brake run.
I'm not sure about the PLC for the ride, but I remember reading that Xcelerator's checks and adjusts the launch about 400 times in the 2.3 seconds it takes it. I would imagine they've got some relatively beefy hardware running this one as well...
Check out Bad Taste if you liked Dead Alive. It was, I believe, his first film, and while not nearly as strong of an effort as Dead Alive, it's still a funny and gory movie with plenty of goofy lines. It can be hard to find though.
Yeah, I tried to sorta correct myself, I realize that people don't *have* to buy each version. It may even be a good business decision on his part, but I consider it to be kinda sneaky and underhanded to plan it all out.
It was sorta like the Lord of the Rings DVD as well. I didn't buy the original DVD release because I knew a better one was coming later. If I hadn't known, and had bought the original, only to have a better version come out later, I would have been pretty upset. Sure, it probably made them more money, but to me it would have felt like they were trying to take advantage of those who were their biggest fans.
So while this may not make as much money in the long run, I think it's better from a customer relations standpoint.
If the rumor that they're going to release a super collector's edition type thing is true, that's a good enough reason for me right there.
If there's one thing that I hate about George Lucas, it's that he seems to purposefully release slightly better versions of the same movie every few years, just to make sure that he can get his fans to repeatedly buy the same film. They could have done the same thing with the Matrix, release a collector's edition now, then release yet another, even more feature-filled version in a year or two, making us buy three versions of the movie. Well, not making, but you get the idea.
I'd prefer that they wait and then release a *final* collector's edition of the movie, and if that's truly the case here, I'm all for this decision.
While that first lesbian moment took place at a very "un-sexy moment", I think that even more importantly, they didn't advertise it. Almost any other show would advertise the hell out of that, trying to get all the "ooooh, lesbians kissin'!" crowd to show up and watch, but I don't remember that being advertised at all. It just sorta happened on the show, if memory serves.
It was treated in almost the exact same way as the first kiss between a male & female character. I wish more shows could be like that, and not just sorta write in a situation like that to perk up ratings.
That's a good point. I've got a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and a Hercules Game Theater XP for sound. Both of them have unsigned drivers. Despite all of dxdiag's hollering, they both work just fine with the drivers from their respective websites.
The only driver I've seen updated on Windows Update for me was my MS Optical Mouse's drivers, which seems to behave just fine without any drivers in the first place.
Did anyone play the game Golgo 13 on the NES (I'm pretty sure it was the NES, not the SNES). It was one of my first introductions to "..." as a response, and I swear, that's practically the only thing he ever said. Or didn't say...
"You need to get out of here, you're in danger!" "....." "Quickly, this way!" "............."
You had to judge his reactions by how many dots the preceding statement got out of him.
Kinda looked like all he did was dismiss Ranma 1/2, I didn't see any overall dismissal of Manga.
I'm with him though, I just could not stand Ranma, it was painful to read, and even more painful to watch. Maybe I'm just not the target market though.
Likewise, insurance is designed to spread risk of a group of like people to reduce costs for everyone involved. Why should an exceptionally bad risk be glossed over and treated like everyone else? Why should someone with 6 speeding tickets pay the same as me? Why should someone with a recurring disease who requires daily medical care pay the same as a person who is fit, healthy, and requires no such care?
It is clear, despite you saying that "insurance is designed to spread risk of a group of like people to reduce costs for everyone involved", you have COMPLETELY missed the point of insurance.
The idea of insurance is that everyone's money is pooled into a single agency that will then take care of one of their own if something goes wrong. If you truly believe that someone with a recurring disease should have to pay to cover their problems while every other policy holder shouldn't have to pay for it, why the hell would you have insurance? Just make the people pay for their problems directly through payments!
Honestly, I've heard this told to me on more than one occasion. I, like some people, deal best with grief & shock by trying to laugh about it. It's never meant as truly mean spirited, and it never means that I don't care. It's just that that's how I deal with things.
I realize that this is offensive to many, which is why I don't post things like that here, and I would never tell a joke to someone directly affected by this. I do have tact. I just have a weird way of handling grief.
--BTW, I hope they launch an *extensive* investigation into NASA's current MO, and upgrade the whole shebang for more safety and efficiency. They need some kind of failsafe to preserve these people's lives if disaster strikes.
I tend to think that any MO like this is due to budget constraints, and so far the reaction to anything like this has never been to increase funding for more safety & efficiency, it's been to cut funding to NASA because the risk is not seen to be on par with the return.
Slashdot Mirror
Along with that point, it destroys what I thought was eMusic's greatest virtue: It was really easy to go find some new band you had never heard of and see if you liked 'em. I've downloaded a lot of things off eMusic that sucked, but I've also downloaded some bands I'd never heard before that I thought were great. I *never* would have heard these bands if I had to pay per download. If you're limited to 40 tracks a month, you're never going to take a risk on something you don't already know you like. Especially if you like punk bands that have 25 1-1/2 minute songs @ CD.
Imagine how much TV would suck if there were never any new shows because nobody would be willing to give up the shows they already watch to see something new, especially if they were hitting their limit of viewable shows per month.
Hrm...this doesn't seem to be possible on Windows 2000, though I'm admittedly not logged in as an administrator right now. Right-Clicking on the drive in Explorer doesn't give me an Autoplay tab, right-clicking on the drive in the device manager doesn't give me the choice either.
The help menu only lists one thing about autorun/autoplay, and that's to hold down the shift key when disabling it.
I'll have to check if this is maybe an administrator only option when I get home, but I cannot turn off autorun at work through normal means.
Good point. However, SGI says that they contributed one million lines of code, and say that they made sure it wasn't infringing on any IP.
SCO's claim of one million lines of infringing code sounds kinda like them saying "well, we know that SGI contributed some lines of code that are just like our System V code, so therefore, all lines that they contributed must be."
IANAL so I have to ask: If, for instance, a book has a paragraph that was lifted from another author, does that make the entire book an IP violation under the eyes of the law? I.e., can that one paragraph be changed and fix everything?
Also, in that case, I would assume that anybody *reading* said book would not be responsible for paying restitution to the actual author of that paragraph.
Ugh, the law makes my head hurt.
So, worst comes to worst, the 2.4 kernels that have that code in them are taken off the mirrors and no longer readily available. All other versions of the kernel don't infringe, and the only entity that could reasonably be held liable would be SGI, an entity that would be able to fight off SCO.
On the other hand, what it does is refute SCO's claim that there are over 1 million lines of code that infringe on their IP. SGI makes it sound like, at most, 200 lines infringe, most of which has been removed and found redundant. Does that sound like something worth a $1,599 licensing fee (well, it's not October 15th yet, but do you know anyone planning on paying the licensing fee over the next two weeks?)
In the end, it sounds more like a company doing what most companies do: Realizing that there is absolutely no merit to the case, but taking the easy way out rather than spending money defending itself in court against charges that it doesn't feel like dealing with.
I haven't used SpamGourmet, but I do use SpamMotel pretty regularly. I've been very happy with them so far, I used them with an account that gets no spam to date, and no new spam has shown up after signing up with them. If SpamGourmet makes you nervous, my personal experience with SpamMotel has been absolutely flawless.
That's not entirely accurate, at least not in my experience.
My spam problem was getting so bad at work (I went on vacation, got back, and had 3,000 e-mails. 2,700 were spam) that I ended up changing my e-mail address. Now, the only things that get through are BCC'd e-mails.
It is true that I can't tell at all how many people are BCC'd. However, on all of these e-mails, there is a "Bcc:" header. I don't normally see that header on other e-mails.
This could, obviously, be something to do with the e-mail sender's program, and since I only get BCC'd by about 4 different spammers, that's not really a representative sample. Still, the point holds, I can tell that somebody was BCC'd in this case.
Tell me about it. I've been using nVidia since 3Dfx kinda died, but I finally buckled and picked up a Radeon 9800 Pro. What a difference from the old ATi stuff I had...this thing flies. I don't see weird artifacts like I used to with ATi cards/drivers, the image quality is amazing, and it renders fast.
It's nice to see two players in the high-end 3D market again, now lets see nVidia show up ATi with something amazing in their next iteration.
It's the sixth month if you call January the zeroeth month.
I'll give you credit for it if you're using something like localtime().
Ya know, that explains why id Software never made it big...
Ideally, this would have actually benefitted the little guy. We all know that the RIAA had no case here, all he did was index windows shares and make them searchable. If he could have had faith that the legal system would recognize this and that he would have won, it would have allowed him to take on the RIAA, knowing that the debt he incurred getting legal representation would be paid back to him by the RIAA.
The problem is that we don't have faith in the legal system to come back with the right verdict. Beyond that, we've seen repeatedly that the correct decision is rarely made when it comes to technical issues, and that money seems to talk very loudly when it comes to these things. That's when the loser pays system completely backfires...when you know you should win, you know you're right, but you also are fairly certain that the court won't rule in your favor anyway.
Unfortunately, none of the articles linked on this story give the information, but I distinctly remember reading in a previous story on this that his service did *not* stream the files through. All it really was was an indexing/searching system for standard Windows shares. It would crawl the university network looking for shared drives/directories, then index everything it could on them. Essentially, if you searched for something and it found it, it would just return a link like \\machinename\directory\filename. The user would link directly to the share on the other users machine, all this service did was index it and make it searchable.
The google comparisons made so far are absolutely spot on, in that respect.
Yep, almost all the launched coasters are using LIM/LSM motors, I believe the only others are Xcelerator and TTD using hydraulics and Hypersonic XLC & Dodonpa using pnuematic launches. Their launches are a heck of a lot fiercer too, I believe it's 1.8 seconds to 80mph for XLC and 1.8 seconds to 107mph for Dodonpa. Yowch!
;)
I don't know much about Hulk actually. RCDB says it's a 40mph in 2 seconds launch, which doesn't have nearly the kick of these other four. Quick post about it here, but that's one that I've not had the time to really research much. I would, however, LOVE to ride it.
I think Intamin usually does use normal style block brakes on rides like Millennium Force & Superman: Ride of Steel, but the cycle on Xcelerator and TTD is so quick that they didn't really need it. Anyway, people would lose their minds of either of them had a brake system at the top of the tower
I was reading this usenet post earlier, and the guy describes screaming for the first second of the launch, then claims he basically lost his breath completely and went silent for the rest of it. He also claims that he can barely even remember the ride it was so much to take in all at once.
I have yet to hear *anyone* say anything bad about this ride, I can't wait to go and try it myself!
Augh, lost my whole post! Time to try again...
Unlike one of Intamin AG's older creations, Superman: The Escape at Six Flags Magic Mountain in CA (0-100mph in 7 seconds, though it's realistically only making about 88mph with a full car these days to conserve some electricity and keep the motors cool), this one does *not* use electromagnetic LSM/LIM motors to launch. This one is basically Xcelerator at Knott's Berry Farm's (0-82mph in 2.3 seconds) big brother, both using a hydraulic launch
motor.
I remember a quote from someone at CP saying that if they were trying to use LSM's to launch a train at 0-120mph in 4 seconds, like TTD needs, they might well brown out all of Sandusky given all the power that a launch like that would consume. As is, I know that California Screamin' at Disney's California Adventure (sorta unrelated, so too lazy to link) actually has to spray water on their LSMs to avoid overheating them from all the launches.
On these, there's a cable that runs from the motor, back to the station, around a wheel, then back across the top of the box track. It connects to the back of a launch sled, then more cable runs from the front of the sled back to the motor. When the motor fires, it yanks the sled down a channel in the top of the track (you can barely see Xcelerator's in this shot, look at the center of the track immediately behind the train, you can see the sled as an object in the center of the track, then the channel running along behind it).
It does, however, use electromagnetics for the braking systems, on both the launch run and the final brake run. After launch, fins pop up into place to stop the train from rolling back if it fails to clear the tower (in the pic above, you can see that some of the fins have raised while the ones immediately behind the train have not). I would imagine that for brake fin systems that their default state, without power, is to have the fins up, and that it takes power to lower them. Not sure how that works, but generally that's the failsafe for a braking system like that. There aren't really any block brakes for the ride, other than through the entire unload -> load area, so the computer systems won't allow one train to launch until another train has completely cleared the brake run.
I'm not sure about the PLC for the ride, but I remember reading that Xcelerator's checks and adjusts the launch about 400 times in the 2.3 seconds it takes it. I would imagine they've got some relatively beefy hardware running this one as well...
Ripoff might be a strong word :)
But yeah, he's right, Elsinore Brewery, the owner of the brewery's brother kills him, then takes over the brewery, etc etc.
Now *that* is a classic film, ya hoser.
Check out Bad Taste if you liked Dead Alive. It was, I believe, his first film, and while not nearly as strong of an effort as Dead Alive, it's still a funny and gory movie with plenty of goofy lines. It can be hard to find though.
Yeah, I tried to sorta correct myself, I realize that people don't *have* to buy each version. It may even be a good business decision on his part, but I consider it to be kinda sneaky and underhanded to plan it all out.
It was sorta like the Lord of the Rings DVD as well. I didn't buy the original DVD release because I knew a better one was coming later. If I hadn't known, and had bought the original, only to have a better version come out later, I would have been pretty upset. Sure, it probably made them more money, but to me it would have felt like they were trying to take advantage of those who were their biggest fans.
So while this may not make as much money in the long run, I think it's better from a customer relations standpoint.
If the rumor that they're going to release a super collector's edition type thing is true, that's a good enough reason for me right there.
If there's one thing that I hate about George Lucas, it's that he seems to purposefully release slightly better versions of the same movie every few years, just to make sure that he can get his fans to repeatedly buy the same film. They could have done the same thing with the Matrix, release a collector's edition now, then release yet another, even more feature-filled version in a year or two, making us buy three versions of the movie. Well, not making, but you get the idea.
I'd prefer that they wait and then release a *final* collector's edition of the movie, and if that's truly the case here, I'm all for this decision.
While that first lesbian moment took place at a very "un-sexy moment", I think that even more importantly, they didn't advertise it. Almost any other show would advertise the hell out of that, trying to get all the "ooooh, lesbians kissin'!" crowd to show up and watch, but I don't remember that being advertised at all. It just sorta happened on the show, if memory serves.
It was treated in almost the exact same way as the first kiss between a male & female character. I wish more shows could be like that, and not just sorta write in a situation like that to perk up ratings.
That's a good point. I've got a GeForce 4 Ti 4200 and a Hercules Game Theater XP for sound. Both of them have unsigned drivers. Despite all of dxdiag's hollering, they both work just fine with the drivers from their respective websites.
The only driver I've seen updated on Windows Update for me was my MS Optical Mouse's drivers, which seems to behave just fine without any drivers in the first place.
Did anyone play the game Golgo 13 on the NES (I'm pretty sure it was the NES, not the SNES). It was one of my first introductions to "..." as a response, and I swear, that's practically the only thing he ever said. Or didn't say...
"You need to get out of here, you're in danger!"
"....."
"Quickly, this way!"
"............."
You had to judge his reactions by how many dots the preceding statement got out of him.
Kinda looked like all he did was dismiss Ranma 1/2, I didn't see any overall dismissal of Manga.
I'm with him though, I just could not stand Ranma, it was painful to read, and even more painful to watch. Maybe I'm just not the target market though.
Likewise, insurance is designed to spread risk of a group of like people to reduce costs for everyone involved. Why should an exceptionally bad risk be glossed over and treated like everyone else? Why should someone with 6 speeding tickets pay the same as me? Why should someone with a recurring disease who requires daily medical care pay the same as a person who is fit, healthy, and requires no such care?
It is clear, despite you saying that "insurance is designed to spread risk of a group of like people to reduce costs for everyone involved", you have COMPLETELY missed the point of insurance.
The idea of insurance is that everyone's money is pooled into a single agency that will then take care of one of their own if something goes wrong. If you truly believe that someone with a recurring disease should have to pay to cover their problems while every other policy holder shouldn't have to pay for it, why the hell would you have insurance? Just make the people pay for their problems directly through payments!
Honestly, I've heard this told to me on more than one occasion. I, like some people, deal best with grief & shock by trying to laugh about it. It's never meant as truly mean spirited, and it never means that I don't care. It's just that that's how I deal with things.
I realize that this is offensive to many, which is why I don't post things like that here, and I would never tell a joke to someone directly affected by this. I do have tact. I just have a weird way of handling grief.
--BTW, I hope they launch an *extensive* investigation into NASA's current MO, and upgrade the whole shebang for more safety and efficiency. They need some kind of failsafe to preserve these people's lives if disaster strikes.
I tend to think that any MO like this is due to budget constraints, and so far the reaction to anything like this has never been to increase funding for more safety & efficiency, it's been to cut funding to NASA because the risk is not seen to be on par with the return.
We can expect bad things to happen to NASA now...