P.S:
We don't want to change something that works just fine because some people who only tangentially get involved with what we do every day decided they want to redefine our jargon.
Why are you so afraid of change? It's only two letters in a label! Why are you so attached to it? That doesn't seem like a very geeky or rational approach - what ever happened to looking to the future and improving things?
Also, you use "we" and "our" a lot. You say that "we" coined the term. Are you saying that you personally had something to do with coining these terms? I find that hard to believe. Who "owns" them? Again, we get back to the greek problem. Surely, "they" own their language, and you shouldn't be abusing it. Why don't you come up with your own damn alphabet and language? Huh?
But the fact is that this particular screwing with the language was done decades ago and the damage is done. Attempting to change it now will only make things worse.
I'd have to disagree. Decades is nothing. Computer technology is still in its infancy. What better time to break this bad habit than now, just before computing gets really widespread?
See my other reply for more of this argument, but we've held other misconceptions for centuries, even millenia - yet we are able to change those. Why should it be so hard to whack this silly bit of trivia on the head, when we are so early in the game?
Which contain the greek prefixes. So, they were coined in error.
There's no confusion, only some deception by HD manufacturers.
How can they be being deceptive when they are using accurate terms? And are network interface manufacturers being deceptive? Streaming video providers being deceptive?
Because the correct label is Gigabyte, which is 2^30 bytes.
No, it's not. You are using the label incorrectly, and not using standards.
We don't want to change something that works just fine because some people who only tangentially get involved with what we do every day decided they want to redefine our jargon.
But it doesn't work just fine. If it did, why does this argument even exist? How can it possibly work "just fine" when it is completely out of sync with every other field on the planet, and every other usage of these prefixes? And what do you mean "tangentially involved"? Who are "we"? I work with data every day, it's not tangential at all. What gives you authority over this?
Language is arbitrary. But it works a lot better when it's consistent. Some computer geek made a mistake some years ago, and used the wrong label. Why not just admit this mistake, change it, and move on? Science and human endeavor should be about improving ourselves, not getting stuck in old habits. A long time ago, somebody proclaimed that the sun revolves around the earth. Should we just stick to this incorrectness, just because it happened before we knew that it is not true? Somehow, the rest of the world manages to evolve and move on, yet computer geeks want to cling to incorrectness out of habit - even though the history of computers is like the blink of an eye compared to other fields of knowledge. Humans have gotten over much larger misconceptions, so why is it so difficult to get over something so trivial as this?
Her U.S. crew mate, astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, is an even bigger foodie.
Yeah, we know Americans are somewhat large on average - but do we really have to draw attention to his weight problem? It can't be that bad if he's an astronaut. Maybe he just has big bones?
I for one prefer that the computing world use a consistant system and simply ignore European confusion with metric prefixes.
It's perfectly fine to use base 2 - just use a different label don't incorrectly use language. "Mega" means 1,000, not 1024. It does not mean "around 1000." So, why did some idiot decide to use "Mega" to denote 1024?
I'm sick of technical and industry types ruining language for everybody. They've done enough damage with jargon and three-letter-abbreviations, why do they have to fuck with scientific language too?
Yeah, they coined the term and have been using it for 40 years, but they're wrong.
What? Software writers coined the greek language? I'm sorry, those greek prefixes have been around for a lot longer than 40 years.
Listen, just because someone comes up with a standard doesn't obligate everyone to use it, especially when they already have a perfectly workable system already
But it's obviously not perfectly workable, otherwise this confusion would never come up. And why would it be so hard for software to give me an option? It's my data - if I want it correctly labeled as Gibibytes, instead of incorrectly labeled - why don't I have that option? You can't change the size of a HD after it's made, but you can change how data is displayed in file lists. So, what's the problem?
Google run their server farms on commodity hardware - if they can do it, well, what's your excuse again?
Google have a vastly different role - and they use thousands of commodity computers to do it, not just one.
I'm not sure what you mean by my "excuse" - but the work I do with video and photography demands a lot of power in a single desktop machine. What's so hard to understand about that? Or do you have some way I can do that work without delays on a less powerful machine?
When did I say that everybody was doing it? I merely noted that some people have different needs. I said an old computer was fine for people who don't have those needs. So, why so angry?
Don't build a PC, re-use old hardware and keep it out of landfills.
The problem is that modern users have needs that won't be fulfilled by the old hardware. Sure, if you just browse the web and play solitaire, then an old PC is going to be fine. But these days people do things they didn't do in the past, like edit HD video, and manage thousands of RAW images from digital cameras. Those old PCs aren't going to cut it.
I've noticed this personally. Now, anecdotal evidence doesn't count for a lot, and it may be a case that we are pushing our drives more. But back in the day of 40MB hard drives that cost a fortune, they used to last forever. The only drive I ever had fail on me in the old days were the Syquest removable HD cartridges, for obvious reasons. But even they didn't fail that often, considering the extra wear-and-tear of having a removable platter with separate heads in the drive.
But these days, with our high-capacity ATA drives, I see hard drives failing every month. Sure, the drives are cheap and huge, but they don't seem to make them like they used to. I guess it's just a consequence of pushing the storage and speed to such high levels, and cheap mass-production. Although the drives are cheap, if somebody doesn't back up their data, the costs are incalculable if the data is valuable.
Well, the hard-drive makers are correct on the size thing - a Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes, and the OS and software makers are wrong. I wish the software side would fix this problem. Does anybody know of any way to change preferences in MacOS or Windows so that filesizes are read out correctly? i.e, that Gigabytes are actually displayed as Gigabytes, or that the listing is changed to correctly display Gibibytes as the value? (or Kibibytes, Mebibytes, whatever)
What is this "better OS" that you speak of? If you mean Windows, as far as I can tell, it's for wasting time and keeping helpdesk staff employed. I guess it's also a good excuse for low productivity. When your boss asks you why you haven't got anything done this month, you can just point to Windows.
However, some of us actually like to get work done and enjoy our jobs.
At this time portable CD players were non-existent or close to non-existent.
What?!? I bought my first CD player in 1990. It was a portable unit, and much cheaper than a shelf unit.
It's much more accurate to say that MD "hardly existed" in 1992. Sure, it may have been released then, but nobody knew about it, and it wasn't widely available until much later.
MiniDisc was intended to replace audio cassettes. It was never intended to replace compact discs as people claim.... I'm not a Sony fanboy, but a lot of people talk crap about how MD was supposed to replace CD and stuff like that and it's simply not true.
Well, that's bloody stupid then. CDs were extremely popular. Whether it was "intended" to or not, MD had to compete with the CD. Sony doesn't get immunity from market forces by saying it's only supposed to compete with cassettes. Why should we have one format for recording, and another for buying music on, and another for data?
Anyway, I doubt the accuracy of your words. If Minidisc was not supposed to compete with CDs, then why did they sell pre-recorded Minidiscs with music on them, right next to the CD racks? They were promoted as a more compact, more modern CD. Where did you get this idea that it was not supposed to compete with CD from?
Saving energy is great, but why do they have such an infestation of rats at these gyms? I would think the public hygeine issues of vermin would be the more pressing problem. Why not simply hire a pest exterminator?
So, sell it on DVD direct to the Australian market. As you said, new shows are worth more - so they can sell at a premium. If they wait until after it shows on Aussie TV, the DVDs are worth less, and people might pick them up from a bargian bin, if at all. After all that time, the show is less desirable, so people might forgo buying the DVDs altogether.
Just because something is illegal does not make it morally wrong. I download shows on bittorrent, and if I like a show, then I go and buy the DVD when it is later released. So, they are making more money from me than if I were watching them on TV. Everybody wins! I get the shows when I want them, the producers get to make money. Where's the crime or immoraility?
You might not be so flattered if you realized it meant you could no longer pay your rent or feed your family.
That doesn't make any sense. The developer was never getting any money from the pirate in the first place - so how would he be losing money? And why didn't the developer plan for the outcome of making no sales? When you make a new product, you start out with zero customers. There's nothing that guarantees you sales. So, if you're in a position that you couldn't pay rent or put food on your family unless you sell a new product - then you need to address that problem by looking at your finances or getting another job.
In reality, software that is widely pirated usually also sells a lot. If people want it badly enough to pirate it, then others must exist who want it bad enough to pay for it. on the other hand, software that isn't widely pirated, usually doesn't sell very well.
Re:Fortunately, it's still in infancy :)
on
AACS Device Key Found
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Well who's torsos are we talking about here? I mean, is it my torso? Or perhaps Condoleeza Rice's torso?
Sooner or later it's going to be your torso, unless you keep buying product. I didn't want to have to do this, but as nobody seems tyo be getting the joke
Not the same quality as CDs, but certainly good enough for a portable player. They're much smaller than CDs, and don't skip as much.
I guess they aren't the worst format ever invented, but they don't really fit anywhere. They're not quite good enough for professional use, but they were too expensive and user-unfriendly for recreational use. Most people can't stand the interface of minidisc players. Some players made it really hard to work out how to even start a recording.
The other problem was that to get the audio off the device onto your computer, you had to play back the content in real-time. I don't know of anyone who had a minidisc drive in their computer which could read the disc as data. Same for transferring audio from the computer to disc. May as well use a proper DAT tape if you have to do that.
The blank discs were also expensive, and when they did introduce the "Net MD" that could connect to a computer, the Sony software sucked, and it was full of proprietary formats.
Compare to the CD - cheap, ubiquitous, and you can rip or burn an entire CD in minutes - which was standards-compliant and could be used almost anywhere. Plus it has better audio quality.
Of course, as I write this, I'm listening to my iPod, which would answer why MDs didn't take off
Which is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format. It wasa obvious that hard drives and flash memory was the future - and they introduced a new optical audio disc right at the end of the optical audio disc's popularity and usefulness. Kind of like someone releasing a new line of 5.25" floppy disk drives with improved storage, at the same time as almost everybody had moved to 3.5" floppies.
Why didn't Sony just release their own "iPod" instead? They could have made a "pro" line of HD-based players that had professional quality audio inputs for recording, and a "consumer" line focused on playback, portability and fashion.
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Be careful, they're ruffled!
Why are you so afraid of change? It's only two letters in a label! Why are you so attached to it? That doesn't seem like a very geeky or rational approach - what ever happened to looking to the future and improving things?
Also, you use "we" and "our" a lot. You say that "we" coined the term. Are you saying that you personally had something to do with coining these terms? I find that hard to believe. Who "owns" them? Again, we get back to the greek problem. Surely, "they" own their language, and you shouldn't be abusing it. Why don't you come up with your own damn alphabet and language? Huh?
I'd have to disagree. Decades is nothing. Computer technology is still in its infancy. What better time to break this bad habit than now, just before computing gets really widespread?
See my other reply for more of this argument, but we've held other misconceptions for centuries, even millenia - yet we are able to change those. Why should it be so hard to whack this silly bit of trivia on the head, when we are so early in the game?
Which contain the greek prefixes. So, they were coined in error.
There's no confusion, only some deception by HD manufacturers.How can they be being deceptive when they are using accurate terms? And are network interface manufacturers being deceptive? Streaming video providers being deceptive?
Because the correct label is Gigabyte, which is 2^30 bytes.No, it's not. You are using the label incorrectly, and not using standards.
We don't want to change something that works just fine because some people who only tangentially get involved with what we do every day decided they want to redefine our jargon.But it doesn't work just fine. If it did, why does this argument even exist? How can it possibly work "just fine" when it is completely out of sync with every other field on the planet, and every other usage of these prefixes? And what do you mean "tangentially involved"? Who are "we"? I work with data every day, it's not tangential at all. What gives you authority over this?
Language is arbitrary. But it works a lot better when it's consistent. Some computer geek made a mistake some years ago, and used the wrong label. Why not just admit this mistake, change it, and move on? Science and human endeavor should be about improving ourselves, not getting stuck in old habits. A long time ago, somebody proclaimed that the sun revolves around the earth. Should we just stick to this incorrectness, just because it happened before we knew that it is not true? Somehow, the rest of the world manages to evolve and move on, yet computer geeks want to cling to incorrectness out of habit - even though the history of computers is like the blink of an eye compared to other fields of knowledge. Humans have gotten over much larger misconceptions, so why is it so difficult to get over something so trivial as this?
Yeah, we know Americans are somewhat large on average - but do we really have to draw attention to his weight problem? It can't be that bad if he's an astronaut. Maybe he just has big bones?
Duh. I mean "kilo" means 1000, of course.
It's perfectly fine to use base 2 - just use a different label don't incorrectly use language. "Mega" means 1,000, not 1024. It does not mean "around 1000." So, why did some idiot decide to use "Mega" to denote 1024?
I'm sick of technical and industry types ruining language for everybody. They've done enough damage with jargon and three-letter-abbreviations, why do they have to fuck with scientific language too?
What? Software writers coined the greek language? I'm sorry, those greek prefixes have been around for a lot longer than 40 years.
Listen, just because someone comes up with a standard doesn't obligate everyone to use it, especially when they already have a perfectly workable system alreadyBut it's obviously not perfectly workable, otherwise this confusion would never come up. And why would it be so hard for software to give me an option? It's my data - if I want it correctly labeled as Gibibytes, instead of incorrectly labeled - why don't I have that option? You can't change the size of a HD after it's made, but you can change how data is displayed in file lists. So, what's the problem?
How so? A gigabyte is 1000 megabytes. A gibibyte is 1024 megabytes. And there is no such thing as a "gibabyte."
Google have a vastly different role - and they use thousands of commodity computers to do it, not just one.
I'm not sure what you mean by my "excuse" - but the work I do with video and photography demands a lot of power in a single desktop machine. What's so hard to understand about that? Or do you have some way I can do that work without delays on a less powerful machine?
When did I say that everybody was doing it? I merely noted that some people have different needs. I said an old computer was fine for people who don't have those needs. So, why so angry?
The problem is that modern users have needs that won't be fulfilled by the old hardware. Sure, if you just browse the web and play solitaire, then an old PC is going to be fine. But these days people do things they didn't do in the past, like edit HD video, and manage thousands of RAW images from digital cameras. Those old PCs aren't going to cut it.
I've noticed this personally. Now, anecdotal evidence doesn't count for a lot, and it may be a case that we are pushing our drives more. But back in the day of 40MB hard drives that cost a fortune, they used to last forever. The only drive I ever had fail on me in the old days were the Syquest removable HD cartridges, for obvious reasons. But even they didn't fail that often, considering the extra wear-and-tear of having a removable platter with separate heads in the drive.
But these days, with our high-capacity ATA drives, I see hard drives failing every month. Sure, the drives are cheap and huge, but they don't seem to make them like they used to. I guess it's just a consequence of pushing the storage and speed to such high levels, and cheap mass-production. Although the drives are cheap, if somebody doesn't back up their data, the costs are incalculable if the data is valuable.
Well, the hard-drive makers are correct on the size thing - a Gigabyte is 1000 Megabytes, and the OS and software makers are wrong. I wish the software side would fix this problem. Does anybody know of any way to change preferences in MacOS or Windows so that filesizes are read out correctly? i.e, that Gigabytes are actually displayed as Gigabytes, or that the listing is changed to correctly display Gibibytes as the value? (or Kibibytes, Mebibytes, whatever)
They've finally released Windows Vista: Shellfish edition? Dr. Zoidberg will be most pleased with this news.
However, some of us actually like to get work done and enjoy our jobs.
What?!? I bought my first CD player in 1990. It was a portable unit, and much cheaper than a shelf unit.
It's much more accurate to say that MD "hardly existed" in 1992. Sure, it may have been released then, but nobody knew about it, and it wasn't widely available until much later.
MiniDisc was intended to replace audio cassettes. It was never intended to replace compact discs as people claim.Well, that's bloody stupid then. CDs were extremely popular. Whether it was "intended" to or not, MD had to compete with the CD. Sony doesn't get immunity from market forces by saying it's only supposed to compete with cassettes. Why should we have one format for recording, and another for buying music on, and another for data?
Anyway, I doubt the accuracy of your words. If Minidisc was not supposed to compete with CDs, then why did they sell pre-recorded Minidiscs with music on them, right next to the CD racks? They were promoted as a more compact, more modern CD. Where did you get this idea that it was not supposed to compete with CD from?
Saving energy is great, but why do they have such an infestation of rats at these gyms? I would think the public hygeine issues of vermin would be the more pressing problem. Why not simply hire a pest exterminator?
Australian produced TV isn't exactly high-braincell stuff.
So, sell it on DVD direct to the Australian market. As you said, new shows are worth more - so they can sell at a premium. If they wait until after it shows on Aussie TV, the DVDs are worth less, and people might pick them up from a bargian bin, if at all. After all that time, the show is less desirable, so people might forgo buying the DVDs altogether.
Just because something is illegal does not make it morally wrong. I download shows on bittorrent, and if I like a show, then I go and buy the DVD when it is later released. So, they are making more money from me than if I were watching them on TV. Everybody wins! I get the shows when I want them, the producers get to make money. Where's the crime or immoraility?
I went with a PAL/NTSC converter instead. Which comes with a color bar generator, which is nice to have for calibration.
That doesn't make any sense. The developer was never getting any money from the pirate in the first place - so how would he be losing money? And why didn't the developer plan for the outcome of making no sales? When you make a new product, you start out with zero customers. There's nothing that guarantees you sales. So, if you're in a position that you couldn't pay rent or put food on your family unless you sell a new product - then you need to address that problem by looking at your finances or getting another job.
In reality, software that is widely pirated usually also sells a lot. If people want it badly enough to pirate it, then others must exist who want it bad enough to pay for it. on the other hand, software that isn't widely pirated, usually doesn't sell very well.
Sooner or later it's going to be your torso, unless you keep buying product. I didn't want to have to do this, but as nobody seems tyo be getting the joke
Not the same quality as CDs, but certainly good enough for a portable player. They're much smaller than CDs, and don't skip as much.I guess they aren't the worst format ever invented, but they don't really fit anywhere. They're not quite good enough for professional use, but they were too expensive and user-unfriendly for recreational use. Most people can't stand the interface of minidisc players. Some players made it really hard to work out how to even start a recording.
The other problem was that to get the audio off the device onto your computer, you had to play back the content in real-time. I don't know of anyone who had a minidisc drive in their computer which could read the disc as data. Same for transferring audio from the computer to disc. May as well use a proper DAT tape if you have to do that.
The blank discs were also expensive, and when they did introduce the "Net MD" that could connect to a computer, the Sony software sucked, and it was full of proprietary formats.
Compare to the CD - cheap, ubiquitous, and you can rip or burn an entire CD in minutes - which was standards-compliant and could be used almost anywhere. Plus it has better audio quality.
Of course, as I write this, I'm listening to my iPod, which would answer why MDs didn't take offWhich is why i don't understand why Sony made the MD format. It wasa obvious that hard drives and flash memory was the future - and they introduced a new optical audio disc right at the end of the optical audio disc's popularity and usefulness. Kind of like someone releasing a new line of 5.25" floppy disk drives with improved storage, at the same time as almost everybody had moved to 3.5" floppies.
Why didn't Sony just release their own "iPod" instead? They could have made a "pro" line of HD-based players that had professional quality audio inputs for recording, and a "consumer" line focused on playback, portability and fashion.