Several of the CDs I've purchased in the last few years are far from "bit-perfect digital copies". They've all had some form of screwing with like playing games with the song lengths or start time, or have had some sort of bit manipulation that produces errors in the ripped audio.
Buying discs and putting them on my phone is getting difficult enough to motivate me to download files that have already been ripped.
Do you have any tips for keeping your ISP from directing a "server not found" to one of their crappy ad-ridden search pages? I think that's a major reason people choose DNS servers that aren't at their ISP.
Direct all household surfing through a squid proxy, and put the ad-page url in a deny list?
A mixed lot, but still good.
on
Tron: Legacy
·
· Score: 1
I wasn't happy to see the movie become one big Ducati commercial. Some bum at Disney made his nut on that deal. (Light cycles? Sell in-movie ad deal to Ducati?) Lame, really lame. Reminds me of the Audi tie-in in I Robot.
Base jumping? Lame.
Well, it was a Disney movie. I guess I should be happy there was no stupid dancing included.
You know the 20 second mp3 loop that plays while the TRON demo loads on the iPhone? The whole soundtrack sounds like that 20 seconds looped for 45 minutes with just filter changes.
And the Daft Punk cameo? Super lame.
I did miss the Ford Econoline from the original movie.
And where were the grid bugs?
It sounded like Jeff was having a hard time hitting his lines for the voice acting. The CGI version of Jeff was very rubberfaced, looked like something out of Crysis. You could replace all the dialog with "shuh shuh shuh" and it would lipsync better with the rubber teeth motion.
One of them does research and generates patents, one of them pimps ink and Intel hardware, and one of them makes the Zune. Not sure why they tried to include them all in the same article.
I agree with your sentiment, but CRTs do not stay fresh very long. You might not notice much with a 20 year old standard definition TV, but CRTs get blurry pretty fast if they're used much.
From time to time, I'm tempted to round up a few used FW900s; a monitor I could not afford when it first came out. But there is also the weight, power consumption, and the desk space they take up.
Personally, I blame the endless stream of crap Intel video chipsets.
All through 2008 and 2009, people were buying small laptops with nearly useless video chipsets. When the GMA based stuff shows up used, you just want to take a hammer to it.
If you put a high resolution display on those systems, you'll just see how long it takes to update the screen. (When you're doing anything intensive.)
Larger pixel counts require powerful graphics chips. I remember when we had a used Precision M65. Updating all 1680x1050 pixels worked the Quadro FX350M so hard it would overheat.
My main displays are still a pair of 1600x1200 20" LCDs. Finding good dual-DVI video cards, that don't require supplemental power, was no easy task.
And if, like so many IT managers, you're running a pair of DVI capable 20" monitors on analog VGA, you need to hand in your geek card.
Back before the dolby board died in my (Sony) AV receiver, there was a setting that used a compressed version of the DVD audio stream.
Made the explosions as quiet as the dialog. I have not seen that feature in any of the software based DVD players, or described any place. I do miss the feature.
Back when we watched analog TV, I bought a little Sima "Volume Stabilizer".
It was basically about fifty cents worth of opamp in a little metal case, with an on-off switch and a two setting range control. (Two amplification ratios.)
I used this on the line level (fixed volume) outputs from the TV, before sending it to an AV/receiver/amp. Being a cheap device, it was susceptible to "pumping", but otherwise worked well.
The volume stabilizer amplified any quiet material, and then the AV amp was set for low volume. Overall, it worked really well.
When the CRT was replaced with a LCD, all the extra gear was re-purposed. These days we just don't watch much broadcast TV.
There was some color in Eden Log. It reminds me a bit of the way color was used in Schindler's List. Or maybe the first part of The Wizard of OZ. Color often has some connection with the visual metaphor.
The only blu-ray video quality problems I've seen so far are on some computer generated content on the new version of Star Trek.
There is noticeable video noise in the black portion of the starry background. I wouldn't be surprised if this has something to do with the content originally being mastered for HD-DVD.
I always wanted one of those. Other than maybe the Cisco AP-EC with mezzanine card, or the 486 on a card that goes in an Ultra 5, it was my favorite piece of obscure hardware.
Why on earth would you run a story that is essentially advertising, for those assholes "Retrevo" that come up as spam any time you do a key word search for some arbitrary product and "review"? They never have any reviews, just spam.
Might as well run a story published by Nigerian scammers or folks selling Viagra.
The subtext in the US has always been: give the resource to whatever business will make the most revenue out of it.
When lazy people began to fork over money every month instead of putting up an antenna, only the question of WHEN broadcast TV would die was left open.
The fact that cable TV included MTV, and could show soft-core porn or graphic violence set it above broadcast as well.
It is all bread an circuses. The FCC has spent so many years with its head up its ass that it really couldn't get any less relevant to anyone but the wireless providers.
I want a job that pays so well I will never need to work again.
Lets all get rich making movies that only the first world will watch. No seriously, you think anyone gives a tinker's damn about whether a record/movie/game is pirated in China or Russia?
Lowering the barrier to entry does not produce more good works. Anyone reading slashdot in the first world could score a free or almost free computer and a text editor. Would having access to that system result in some good books being written? Probably not.
Enough gear to produce a CD, or to make a movie? It is out there, and cheap too. Doesn't mean that people, even those with talent, are going to stop what they're doing to pay the bills to crank out some good material.
Some people will produce material. But without the shit-filtering function of the labels/networks/studios, how would you hear about anything good?
The very last time I ever went into a video rental store, I was looking to buy a used copy of "Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow". (Having seen an advert many times on the end of some other DVD I own.)
The batch of surly losers in line was too much to deal with, so I put the DVD back on the shelf and signed up for Netflix. When any movie you want is available or will soon be available on watch instantly or via mail, piracy is not worth the legal risk or effort, no matter how easy. Might as well pirate newspapers, broadcast radio, or broadcast TV. Pointless.
Any game worth playing (for me) has some social context in it, and likely needs a paid account of some sort to keep the game going. (Halo for the PC being one exception.) Piracy in EQ or WOW can't be a significant loss.
When Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, those Atlanta based pricks quickly brought back something closer to the original and called it Coke Classic. David Puttnam must be yet one more self-absorbed movie-industry asshole (as redundant as that is) to have missed that shining example.
When PC clones first showed up, you couldn't buy the circuit board and chips from the same company.
As boards with parts pre-installed became more common, board sellers did not sell them with a copy of DOS.
At that point, creating your own copy of DOS was as simple as: 1) Buy some floppies. 2) Go to a system with DOS installed and format the floppy. 3) SYS A: 4) Copy the files that made up DOS onto A:
Sure, there were reasons to buy a full copy: 1) Ethics, 2) You wanted the books that came in the box. 3) You wanted the newest version of DOS. 4) You wanted a pristine copy you knew the history of, and one that was reasonably free to be free of virii.
When you're building a new market segment, the benefits to massive uptake of your product may far outweigh the sales you loose to piracy. I would argue that during the whole commercial lifespan of DOS, this was true.
Standing the test of time is a stupid criteria to bring up in relation to this artist. She is this year's Paula Abdul?
I will say "The Fame" is the album to play in your car for your Women friends when you're out for the evening, if you're looking to get them riled enough to sex you up.
It has worked for me on several occasions, and therefore has a home in one of the six slots in the CD player.
About four months ago, I was issued a new Lenovo Thinkpad and an approximately 20" LCD display. We used laptops as our primary workstation, and having two screens allowed us to keep several applications open at once.
At one point the team got an extra docking bay, and they passed it to me. I was happy to gain a DVI connector this way, and scrounged up the requisite DVI cable to connect to the external display.
At this point, everything on my table was Lenovo, but the DVI cable would not plug in to the docking bay. The connectors on the cable and the docking bay were of such low quality and fit that they would not work together.
I examined it closely for a while, and found that I could make things work by bending the keying tab inside the cable slightly so that it lined up with the slot in the connector. I found it odd that there was no chamfering at all in the connector.
In my opinion, Lenovo quality is the bare minimum to get the job done. If you're using company money, and you're getting a great discount, then maybe. But if you're spending your own money, I'd look for something with better fit and finish.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time you tools play along and facilitate this stuff, you're helping create the problem.
Doesn't matter whether its Office, CS, or something else. If I can't plunk down 200-300$ and get a workable suite, I'm going to stay away.
Time for an army of people with screwdrivers to rove the world and steal all the Prnt Scrn keys?
Several of the CDs I've purchased in the last few years are far from "bit-perfect digital copies". They've all had some form of screwing with like playing games with the song lengths or start time, or have had some sort of bit manipulation that produces errors in the ripped audio.
Buying discs and putting them on my phone is getting difficult enough to motivate me to download files that have already been ripped.
Use your own ISP for DNS.
Do you have any tips for keeping your ISP from directing a "server not found" to one of their crappy ad-ridden search pages? I think that's a major reason people choose DNS servers that aren't at their ISP.
Direct all household surfing through a squid proxy, and put the ad-page url in a deny list?
I wasn't happy to see the movie become one big Ducati commercial. Some bum at Disney made his nut on that deal. (Light cycles? Sell in-movie ad deal to Ducati?) Lame, really lame. Reminds me of the Audi tie-in in I Robot.
Base jumping? Lame.
Well, it was a Disney movie. I guess I should be happy there was no stupid dancing included.
You know the 20 second mp3 loop that plays while the TRON demo loads on the iPhone? The whole soundtrack sounds like that 20 seconds looped for 45 minutes with just filter changes.
And the Daft Punk cameo? Super lame.
I did miss the Ford Econoline from the original movie.
And where were the grid bugs?
It sounded like Jeff was having a hard time hitting his lines for the voice acting. The CGI version of Jeff was very rubberfaced, looked like something out of Crysis. You could replace all the dialog with "shuh shuh shuh" and it would lipsync better with the rubber teeth motion.
The movie was too visually dark for 3d.
The scenes in Tron showing Flynn's with Journey playing, and the general Wendy Carlos soundtrack are both memorable, poignant, and enjoyable.
I'm really hoping that the music in the new film is as effective.
One of them does research and generates patents, one of them pimps ink and Intel hardware, and one of them makes the Zune. Not sure why they tried to include them all in the same article.
Hey guys, if you need to put a device on my car, could you also put a little gas in the tank? This thing doesn't get good mileage as it is.
And make sure to bolt the thing on, cause I tend to hit speed bumps at 45 or so.
I agree with your sentiment, but CRTs do not stay fresh very long. You might not notice much with a 20 year old standard definition TV, but CRTs get blurry pretty fast if they're used much.
From time to time, I'm tempted to round up a few used FW900s; a monitor I could not afford when it first came out. But there is also the weight, power consumption, and the desk space they take up.
Personally, I blame the endless stream of crap Intel video chipsets.
All through 2008 and 2009, people were buying small laptops with nearly useless video chipsets. When the GMA based stuff shows up used, you just want to take a hammer to it.
If you put a high resolution display on those systems, you'll just see how long it takes to update the screen. (When you're doing anything intensive.)
Larger pixel counts require powerful graphics chips. I remember when we had a used Precision M65. Updating all 1680x1050 pixels worked the Quadro FX350M so hard it would overheat.
My main displays are still a pair of 1600x1200 20" LCDs. Finding good dual-DVI video cards, that don't require supplemental power, was no easy task.
And if, like so many IT managers, you're running a pair of DVI capable 20" monitors on analog VGA, you need to hand in your geek card.
Sounds like a great thing to pick up on Craigslist for 75% off, when the early adopters figure out it is boring and doesn't work with Madden.
Back before the dolby board died in my (Sony) AV receiver, there was a setting that used a compressed version of the DVD audio stream.
Made the explosions as quiet as the dialog. I have not seen that feature in any of the software based DVD players, or described any place. I do miss the feature.
Back when we watched analog TV, I bought a little Sima "Volume Stabilizer".
It was basically about fifty cents worth of opamp in a little metal case, with an on-off switch and a two setting range control. (Two amplification ratios.)
I used this on the line level (fixed volume) outputs from the TV, before sending it to an AV/receiver/amp. Being a cheap device, it was susceptible to "pumping", but otherwise worked well.
The volume stabilizer amplified any quiet material, and then the AV amp was set for low volume. Overall, it worked really well.
When the CRT was replaced with a LCD, all the extra gear was re-purposed. These days we just don't watch much broadcast TV.
There was some color in Eden Log. It reminds me a bit of the way color was used in Schindler's List. Or maybe the first part of The Wizard of OZ. Color often has some connection with the visual metaphor.
The only blu-ray video quality problems I've seen so far are on some computer generated content on the new version of Star Trek.
There is noticeable video noise in the black portion of the starry background. I wouldn't be surprised if this has something to do with the content originally being mastered for HD-DVD.
I always wanted one of those. Other than maybe the Cisco AP-EC with mezzanine card, or the 486 on a card that goes in an Ultra 5, it was my favorite piece of obscure hardware.
The tape makers are working on adopting perpendicular reporting as well. Although with GMR type 2 heads.
Native capacities of 35TB per tape are expected. But the required tape drives will not sell for 149$ on Newegg.
Why on earth would you run a story that is essentially advertising, for those assholes "Retrevo" that come up as spam any time you do a key word search for some arbitrary product and "review"? They never have any reviews, just spam.
Might as well run a story published by Nigerian scammers or folks selling Viagra.
The subtext in the US has always been: give the resource to whatever business will make the most revenue out of it.
When lazy people began to fork over money every month instead of putting up an antenna, only the question of WHEN broadcast TV would die was left open.
The fact that cable TV included MTV, and could show soft-core porn or graphic violence set it above broadcast as well.
It is all bread an circuses. The FCC has spent so many years with its head up its ass that it really couldn't get any less relevant to anyone but the wireless providers.
I want a job that pays so well I will never need to work again.
Lets all get rich making movies that only the first world will watch. No seriously, you think anyone gives a tinker's damn about whether a record/movie/game is pirated in China or Russia?
Lowering the barrier to entry does not produce more good works. Anyone reading slashdot in the first world could score a free or almost free computer and a text editor. Would having access to that system result in some good books being written? Probably not.
Enough gear to produce a CD, or to make a movie? It is out there, and cheap too. Doesn't mean that people, even those with talent, are going to stop what they're doing to pay the bills to crank out some good material.
Some people will produce material. But without the shit-filtering function of the labels/networks/studios, how would you hear about anything good?
The very last time I ever went into a video rental store, I was looking to buy a used copy of "Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow". (Having seen an advert many times on the end of some other DVD I own.)
The batch of surly losers in line was too much to deal with, so I put the DVD back on the shelf and signed up for Netflix. When any movie you want is available or will soon be available on watch instantly or via mail, piracy is not worth the legal risk or effort, no matter how easy. Might as well pirate newspapers, broadcast radio, or broadcast TV. Pointless.
Any game worth playing (for me) has some social context in it, and likely needs a paid account of some sort to keep the game going. (Halo for the PC being one exception.) Piracy in EQ or WOW can't be a significant loss.
When Coca-Cola accidentally created 100 million cans of faulty Coke, those Atlanta based pricks quickly brought back something closer to the original and called it Coke Classic. David Puttnam must be yet one more self-absorbed movie-industry asshole (as redundant as that is) to have missed that shining example.
When PC clones first showed up, you couldn't buy the circuit board and chips from the same company.
As boards with parts pre-installed became more common, board sellers did not sell them with a copy of DOS.
At that point, creating your own copy of DOS was as simple as: 1) Buy some floppies. 2) Go to a system with DOS installed and format the floppy. 3) SYS A: 4) Copy the files that made up DOS onto A:
Sure, there were reasons to buy a full copy: 1) Ethics, 2) You wanted the books that came in the box. 3) You wanted the newest version of DOS. 4) You wanted a pristine copy you knew the history of, and one that was reasonably free to be free of virii.
When you're building a new market segment, the benefits to massive uptake of your product may far outweigh the sales you loose to piracy. I would argue that during the whole commercial lifespan of DOS, this was true.
Standing the test of time is a stupid criteria to bring up in relation to this artist. She is this year's Paula Abdul?
I will say "The Fame" is the album to play in your car for your Women friends when you're out for the evening, if you're looking to get them riled enough to sex you up.
It has worked for me on several occasions, and therefore has a home in one of the six slots in the CD player.
About four months ago, I was issued a new Lenovo Thinkpad and an approximately 20" LCD display. We used laptops as our primary workstation, and having two screens allowed us to keep several applications open at once.
At one point the team got an extra docking bay, and they passed it to me. I was happy to gain a DVI connector this way, and scrounged up the requisite DVI cable to connect to the external display.
At this point, everything on my table was Lenovo, but the DVI cable would not plug in to the docking bay. The connectors on the cable and the docking bay were of such low quality and fit that they would not work together.
I examined it closely for a while, and found that I could make things work by bending the keying tab inside the cable slightly so that it lined up with the slot in the connector. I found it odd that there was no chamfering at all in the connector.
In my opinion, Lenovo quality is the bare minimum to get the job done. If you're using company money, and you're getting a great discount, then maybe. But if you're spending your own money, I'd look for something with better fit and finish.