I can confirm that it is classified as a critical update. I review updates on my Windows machines before updating, but if you just have Automatic Updates set to download and install (which is what Microsoft urges users to do) the WGA "patch" is installed without any confirmation.
Did you actually read the post you quoted? It doesn't say Linux is scary, it says that Linux is different (people are scared of different). I guess I just don't see the "Big difference" between being "different" and not being "what everyone's accustomed to".
The hypothetical case you describe is never true. The number of copies, both legal and ilegal, varies proportionately with sales. This may change in the future, but so far this system works fine.
While the hypothetical case is never true, neither is the number of copies made directly porportional to sales. There are many other factors involved, not the least of which is the target audience of the music. I don't care how many albums they sell, music aimed at the 60+ crowd isn't going to be copied as much as the pop music purchased by the younger generation(s).
Are you serious? What's wrong with the government getting around the need for subpoenas by buying information from that may or may not have been obtained illegally? According the article, law enforcment is doing this because it is "quicker and easier than subpoenas"; so basically they don't have enough evidence for a subpoena so they buy the information they want. You're right, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I can't speak for Sirius, but XM has plenty of channels that play censored versions of songs. For example, of their three channels that play current hip-hop (66-68), only one is uncensored (66). A quick glance at their lineup shows that only 4 of their 14 rock stations contain "frequent explicit language". So XM at least will "destroy a good song by bleeping out words".
So, by your definition, "inventing" is identifying a problem/need and waiting around for someone else to come up with a solution? I guess I've been mistaken for all these years when I thought inventing something was not only identifying a problem but coming up with a way to solve it.
A summary with several links to more info can be found here. And another report on it here. Don't know if that's the "proof" you want, but it sure looks like MS was/is astroturfing to me.
I'm well aware that most people don't install XP themselves. My post was in response to a claim that WMP in a clean install of XP will automatically download any codec it needs and will therefore play DVDs without the user installing any codecs/drivers. In my experience, this isn't the case.
I would have to agree. I picked up a Mac Mini and have switched to it for almost all of my basic home use (web browsing, email, etc). However, the lack of keyboard shortcuts for a lot of tasks drives me back to my Windows machine more often than I would like. My girlfriend loves the Mac and almost never switches over to the XP machine, but she also uses the mouse for everything. I am a fan of OS X, and I am moving more and more of my tasks to the Mac, but I am still much more productive in XP because my hands don't have to leave the keyboard as often.
On your webforms complaint, that's an IE thing. Using Firefox on Windows you would type "New" (as another poster noted). This works exactly the same way in Firefox and Safari on the Mac. Of all the keyboard shortcuts that are lacking, that's one that is the same on both systems. Switching between tabs, however, that's one I haven't figured out yet on the Mac.
Have you actually tried to play a DVD in WMP on a clean install of XP? Every time I've rebuilt an XP box WMP has no sound when playing DVDs until I install the proper codec (either by installing the drivers for the DVD drive or by installing a 3rd party DVD player). Once the codec is installed WMP plays back DVDs without any problems, but it doesn't have sound "built in".
I've used both a Tivo and a Cox DVR in the past, and am currently using Time Warner's offering (same hardware as Cox, different software) and a MythTV box. I loved Tivo (it was my roommate's box, so I lost it when I moved out), but I wanted dual-tuners and HD more than I wanted the Tivo interface (and didn't want to go to sattelite). I would have to say that the Time Warner software is much better than the Cox software, but it's been about a year since I moved and switched to TW and the Cox software has probably improved quite a bit since then. All that being said, if I was offered the option to trade in either the Cox or TW DVR for a Tivo that supported dual-tuners and HD, I would do it immediately. I also have experience with the older Dish DVRs (my mom uses one), and I would pay Cox to get rid of that monstrosity in exchange for a Tivo. The problem is getting people who have only ever tried their current DVR to switch. My mom loves her Dish DVR even though it is nothing more than a glorified VCR (she can't say record "ShowX" at anytime, she can only do 8-9 Wed Ch. 7), and until she tried out Tivo she wouldn't know what she was missing.
As for screwing with people's display, of course they don't like it. Many people have their sets set to stretch 4:3 images to fill the screen to avoid uneven burn on their display, something that drives the fiddlers nuts. Colour balance is subjective with the environment, and everyone thinks their particular tweaks are correct. Detail is completely subjective as well, as to what is most asthetically pleasing. Don't screw with people's sets.
I'm sure there are some people who stretch their picture to avoid burn, but the majority of people stretching their image are doing it because they want to watch everything "widescreen". When my roommate moved in with his HD set, the first thing I did was turn off the stretching so the picture wasn't distorted. His immediate response was "Why did I pay for a widescreen if you aren't using the whole picture?" He doesn't care about burn, he just doesn't want to waste one inch of his screen, even if that means that all non-widescreen content is distorted. After two years, the screen is still on either stretch or zoom whenever he has been watching non-HD channels, and his argument has never had anything to do with burn.
This is far from an isolated incident as I have visited several friends who stretch their picture (many are so used to stretching that they stretch widescreen content too). The response from all of them when I asked why they stretched their picture was that they paid for 47 (or whatever their screen size is) inches of screen and they aren't going to waste any of it with black or gray bars.
I've been using the Mozilla Calendar extension for Thunderbird for a couple of months, and while I like the tighter integration between Lightening and Thunderbird, it doesn't work as well for me as the old Calendar extension. A few of my issues:
-- Tasks appear on every day between the start and due date. I don't need to see the same task every day. If my taxes are due on the April 15th, I just want to see that I need to get them done before then. (Actually, this is the main reason I removed Lightening and went back to the Calendar extension. I just couldn't see my actual events with the same Tasks repeated on every day of the month).
-- It doesn't seem to handle remote calendars as well. I am currently running a Web DAV server to synch my calendars between my Mac at home and Thunderbird at work, so all of my calendars are remote. Lightening had issues with several events that have never been a problem in either iCal or the Calendar extension. This caused those calendars to mount read-only until I went and changed it. However, this happened every time I launched Thunderbird and it came across the same problem. A quick look at the error message implies that it has to do with either start or due dates on some tasks, but I haven't had a problem with any other calendar programs reading them, so I wouldn't expect Lightening to either.
-- Finally, just a bunch of small visual things. There's no multi-week view, no indication of all day events other than the lack of a start time, events with short names don't span the whole cell (which causes it to look really crappy if you have multiple events with different lenght titles on the same day), etc.
It looks like a good start, and I hope that these few bugs get taken care of because I would love to have the calendar integrated into Thunderbird instead of having to launch it separately, but for me it doesn't work as well as the Mozilla Calendar extension that I was already using.
Well, for $39.94 (not including taxes of course, but i doubt that there are $36.40 worth of taxes) you can get unlimited nationwide long distance and unlimited local calls. I'm not sure what your point is, but a 10 second visit to SBC shows that you paid almost twice as much for a smaller calling area.
I hate the Baby Bells as much as the next guy (and in fact do not purchase any services from them), but you can't possibly argue that phone service isn't cheaper now (adjusted for inflation) than what you were paying before the breakup.
I watched Serenity without ever having seen an episode of Firefly. I loved the movie and went out and bought the series on DVD. After watching the series, I watched Serenity again and was surprised at how disappointed I was with the movie. With no prior experience with Firefly, Serenity was great. However, after being spoiled by the original episodes the movie doesn't cut it.
I think this says more about the quality of Firefly than it does about Serenity. I haven't talked to anyone that has seen the movie that didn't like it, but none of them actually watched Firefly to compare it to.
Re:One detail I'd like to know...
on
A Look at Google DRM
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· Score: 4, Informative
According to CNN it currently only supports Windows.
In another distinction from iTunes, Google Video so far works only on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows-based PCs and not yet on Apple's Macintosh computers.
Maybe in the future they'll support Mac/Linux, but it looks like only Windows for now.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, because we all know that /. is so pro-Microsoft.
I can confirm that it is classified as a critical update. I review updates on my Windows machines before updating, but if you just have Automatic Updates set to download and install (which is what Microsoft urges users to do) the WGA "patch" is installed without any confirmation.
I think you meant "drive 50 miles to save $0.05/gallon on gas".
Did you actually read the post you quoted? It doesn't say Linux is scary, it says that Linux is different (people are scared of different). I guess I just don't see the "Big difference" between being "different" and not being "what everyone's accustomed to".
Are you serious? What's wrong with the government getting around the need for subpoenas by buying information from that may or may not have been obtained illegally? According the article, law enforcment is doing this because it is "quicker and easier than subpoenas"; so basically they don't have enough evidence for a subpoena so they buy the information they want. You're right, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I know slashdot is land of the bad analogy, but are you really trying to relate playing a video game to soldiers in Iraq?
Thanks for the link. I hadn't come across that talk before, and it's one of the best and most well laid out arguments against DRM I've read.
That post must have taken a while to write. Little Timmy had a birthday halfway through.
I can't speak for Sirius, but XM has plenty of channels that play censored versions of songs. For example, of their three channels that play current hip-hop (66-68), only one is uncensored (66). A quick glance at their lineup shows that only 4 of their 14 rock stations contain "frequent explicit language". So XM at least will "destroy a good song by bleeping out words".
So, by your definition, "inventing" is identifying a problem/need and waiting around for someone else to come up with a solution? I guess I've been mistaken for all these years when I thought inventing something was not only identifying a problem but coming up with a way to solve it.
True, but the base PS3 is priced 100% more than the Wii (assuming the $250 report is true).
A summary with several links to more info can be found here. And another report on it here. Don't know if that's the "proof" you want, but it sure looks like MS was/is astroturfing to me.
I'm well aware that most people don't install XP themselves. My post was in response to a claim that WMP in a clean install of XP will automatically download any codec it needs and will therefore play DVDs without the user installing any codecs/drivers. In my experience, this isn't the case.
I would have to agree. I picked up a Mac Mini and have switched to it for almost all of my basic home use (web browsing, email, etc). However, the lack of keyboard shortcuts for a lot of tasks drives me back to my Windows machine more often than I would like. My girlfriend loves the Mac and almost never switches over to the XP machine, but she also uses the mouse for everything. I am a fan of OS X, and I am moving more and more of my tasks to the Mac, but I am still much more productive in XP because my hands don't have to leave the keyboard as often.
On your webforms complaint, that's an IE thing. Using Firefox on Windows you would type "New" (as another poster noted). This works exactly the same way in Firefox and Safari on the Mac. Of all the keyboard shortcuts that are lacking, that's one that is the same on both systems. Switching between tabs, however, that's one I haven't figured out yet on the Mac.
Have you actually tried to play a DVD in WMP on a clean install of XP? Every time I've rebuilt an XP box WMP has no sound when playing DVDs until I install the proper codec (either by installing the drivers for the DVD drive or by installing a 3rd party DVD player). Once the codec is installed WMP plays back DVDs without any problems, but it doesn't have sound "built in".
$600 is a pretty decent price for a Blu-Ray player
Isn't claiming that $600 is a decent price for a Blu-Ray player OVER 6 MONTHS FROM NOW a little premature?
I've used both a Tivo and a Cox DVR in the past, and am currently using Time Warner's offering (same hardware as Cox, different software) and a MythTV box. I loved Tivo (it was my roommate's box, so I lost it when I moved out), but I wanted dual-tuners and HD more than I wanted the Tivo interface (and didn't want to go to sattelite). I would have to say that the Time Warner software is much better than the Cox software, but it's been about a year since I moved and switched to TW and the Cox software has probably improved quite a bit since then. All that being said, if I was offered the option to trade in either the Cox or TW DVR for a Tivo that supported dual-tuners and HD, I would do it immediately. I also have experience with the older Dish DVRs (my mom uses one), and I would pay Cox to get rid of that monstrosity in exchange for a Tivo. The problem is getting people who have only ever tried their current DVR to switch. My mom loves her Dish DVR even though it is nothing more than a glorified VCR (she can't say record "ShowX" at anytime, she can only do 8-9 Wed Ch. 7), and until she tried out Tivo she wouldn't know what she was missing.
As for screwing with people's display, of course they don't like it. Many people have their sets set to stretch 4:3 images to fill the screen to avoid uneven burn on their display, something that drives the fiddlers nuts. Colour balance is subjective with the environment, and everyone thinks their particular tweaks are correct. Detail is completely subjective as well, as to what is most asthetically pleasing. Don't screw with people's sets.
I'm sure there are some people who stretch their picture to avoid burn, but the majority of people stretching their image are doing it because they want to watch everything "widescreen". When my roommate moved in with his HD set, the first thing I did was turn off the stretching so the picture wasn't distorted. His immediate response was "Why did I pay for a widescreen if you aren't using the whole picture?" He doesn't care about burn, he just doesn't want to waste one inch of his screen, even if that means that all non-widescreen content is distorted. After two years, the screen is still on either stretch or zoom whenever he has been watching non-HD channels, and his argument has never had anything to do with burn.
This is far from an isolated incident as I have visited several friends who stretch their picture (many are so used to stretching that they stretch widescreen content too). The response from all of them when I asked why they stretched their picture was that they paid for 47 (or whatever their screen size is) inches of screen and they aren't going to waste any of it with black or gray bars.
I've been using the Mozilla Calendar extension for Thunderbird for a couple of months, and while I like the tighter integration between Lightening and Thunderbird, it doesn't work as well for me as the old Calendar extension. A few of my issues:
-- Tasks appear on every day between the start and due date. I don't need to see the same task every day. If my taxes are due on the April 15th, I just want to see that I need to get them done before then. (Actually, this is the main reason I removed Lightening and went back to the Calendar extension. I just couldn't see my actual events with the same Tasks repeated on every day of the month).
-- It doesn't seem to handle remote calendars as well. I am currently running a Web DAV server to synch my calendars between my Mac at home and Thunderbird at work, so all of my calendars are remote. Lightening had issues with several events that have never been a problem in either iCal or the Calendar extension. This caused those calendars to mount read-only until I went and changed it. However, this happened every time I launched Thunderbird and it came across the same problem. A quick look at the error message implies that it has to do with either start or due dates on some tasks, but I haven't had a problem with any other calendar programs reading them, so I wouldn't expect Lightening to either.
-- Finally, just a bunch of small visual things. There's no multi-week view, no indication of all day events other than the lack of a start time, events with short names don't span the whole cell (which causes it to look really crappy if you have multiple events with different lenght titles on the same day), etc.
It looks like a good start, and I hope that these few bugs get taken care of because I would love to have the calendar integrated into Thunderbird instead of having to launch it separately, but for me it doesn't work as well as the Mozilla Calendar extension that I was already using.
Well, for $39.94 (not including taxes of course, but i doubt that there are $36.40 worth of taxes) you can get unlimited nationwide long distance and unlimited local calls. I'm not sure what your point is, but a 10 second visit to SBC shows that you paid almost twice as much for a smaller calling area.
r oductOfferId=26
https://swot.sbc.com/swot/telcoProductDetail.do?p
I hate the Baby Bells as much as the next guy (and in fact do not purchase any services from them), but you can't possibly argue that phone service isn't cheaper now (adjusted for inflation) than what you were paying before the breakup.
I watched Serenity without ever having seen an episode of Firefly. I loved the movie and went out and bought the series on DVD. After watching the series, I watched Serenity again and was surprised at how disappointed I was with the movie. With no prior experience with Firefly, Serenity was great. However, after being spoiled by the original episodes the movie doesn't cut it.
I think this says more about the quality of Firefly than it does about Serenity. I haven't talked to anyone that has seen the movie that didn't like it, but none of them actually watched Firefly to compare it to.
According to CNN it currently only supports Windows.
In another distinction from iTunes, Google Video so far works only on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows-based PCs and not yet on Apple's Macintosh computers.
Maybe in the future they'll support Mac/Linux, but it looks like only Windows for now.