Do you know how much it costs for those DVDs?
on
Top 50 DVDs
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I mean, look at what goes into them
* Totally new digital transfers of all the shows
* For a whole season, tens of hours of "blooper-reel" type footage has to be found, approved,and edited in.
* A bunch of documentry films have to be shot
* Then, the big one - the commentarys. You need to bring in the cast/crew, make them sit through hours and hours of their old shows, and comment on them. Hint: Actors don't do this for free.
I mean, sure, they are taking a nice profit. So is the store selling the DVDs. But the cost is not *totally* unjustifed, nor is it completely outragous. For a huge fan, being able to get insight into the mindset of the script writers and actors for the whole series is worth a few hundred bucks. Mind you, I am not that huge of a fan though:)
Note that if you RTFA they are only opening 500 patents currently (IBM was granted over 3,800 patents last year alone, they have hundreds of thousands), not their whole portfolio. So, while this is awesome and should be applauded (I love IBM), it is just one step on the road.
The release date for us humans that want to see it is still the summer of 1983. I guess it takes that long to score all the music, do all the film-editing, prepare all the promo material, and all that junk.
I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster. I can't really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts of the Star Wars series.
Why would A Wikinews writer even fly over to Faluja when someone who *lives in* Faluja can give a first hand report?
This is what is blatantly missing from big media, and why WikiNews will succeed. A big media journalist flys into the middle of a conflict (often at least 24 hours after it has begun - too late!), and starts reporting. However, he doesn't *live* there. The people who live and work in the area should be the ones filing the reports. They are the ones with first-hand access to the information.
Sure, there is bias when locals do the reporting. But it is no different than the bias that occurs when a foreigner does the reporting, it is just usually the opposite side of the bias. This way you get both sides of the story and a more balanced viewpoint than you ever would by relying on big media alone.
Sure, there are specialized companies that do this of course. Most are hosting providers and the like.
But CNN doesn't make money by selling the code that runs CNN.com. The NY Times doesn't sell the code that runs their site. MSNBC.com doesn't sell their code either. The code behind these types of sites could be immensely useful to someone wanting to start their own fringe-hobby news site.
I saw this on CBC as well. At first I thought "that's cool", but then I went to the site. All it is is a standard website - there is no great CMS or anything else here. I can't imagine there is much below the HTML here... some simple server-side stuff, but nothing special.
On that note though - I do applaud the idea. All company websites' code should be Open Sourced under a free license IMO. After all, the company is not making revenue by selling that code, so what good is it to them?
For these people posting "800$! I can get a laptop that can do this for that!"
Aside form the fact that this thing is about 1/8 the size of any laptop, your claim is totally bogus. Show me where I can buy a new laptop with the Archos specs (30 GB, 802.11B, everything) that also has a TV input (can't be external, that'd make it useless) for $800. I can't even find a used one on ebay for anywhere near that price.
For these people posting "Why would I want a $800 PDA?" / "iPod is Better"
This thing is not an iPod. It's essentially a TiVo+iPod+PDA that you can carry in your pocket. It's like the ultimate tool for the road warrior - killer in the back of a cab or on a plane or bus. It is not for you to carry with you 24/7, it is to take on trips to watch those shows you missed.
The more files you're willing to share, the faster any individual torrent downloads
I think maybe he was confusing "more files" with "more uploads". As in, the more your computer is uploading your portion of the file to others, the faster your download will be. This is indeed true - bittorrent does this 'tit-for-tat' so that if you rate-limit the upload to only 1k for example, your download will suffer.
.. on if he wants to be a web *designer* or a web *developer - two totally different things. You are going more the designer approach, and from that point of view I mostly agree, except that i would suggest he learn XHTML 1.1 rather than HTML (start with the latest - XHTML works great in all current browsers, and a compliant, doctype'd page renders faster than HTML 4.0 in Mozilla and IE, and there is no need to suport netscape 3.0 anymore).
However, if you want to be a web *developer*, Javascript is very important. Something most slashdotters seem to forget about web development is there is a whole other side to it, and that is developing web-based applications to run on corperate intranets. In these types of situatons, where the clients can be assimed to be relativly powerful machines with good bandwidth, a rich interface utilizing Javascript and CSS can **really** give your product the edge over someone else's.
Simple things like being able to write pulldown menus in Javascript are essential for a modern web app. Also nice are customized context menus and widgets like Tabs and Sliders.
The things I would reccomend when learning Javascript are
Learn the DOM. Know it like the back of your hand.
Learn the Mozilla/W3C and IE event models. They are very different from eachother, and you will likely have to work with both of them.
Get yourself a good cross-platform scripting library. I like DomAPI myself, but there are many. These make the differences between Mozilla and IE vanish for the most part, and also give you lots of nice utilities and widgets to work with. There are plenty that are freely available.
Practice makes perfect:)
AKA "Carlson gets a better, more visible job"
on
CNN Cancels Crossfire
·
· Score: -1
Did the poster and editor even RTFA? They let him go because he wanted his own prime time show, and they didn't have one open. And it looks like he is getting one on MSNBC regardless. So basically, the public will be seeing this jackass even more frequently.
An MSNBC spokesman had no comment on CNN's decision.
We think Tucker is a great journalist and we're exploring our options for a new 9 p.m. show, said MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines.
The worst your average consumer-level laser pointer can do is cause "flash blindness". That is, if you point the thing *directly* into your eye, at a closer distance, you could be blinded in that eye for ~10 minutes.
They aren't high powered enough to permanatly blind you. However, obviously, they are still dangerous to people driving vehicles and aircraft!
Was this guy using a laptop while pointing a laser at the plane, or what?
Aside from that - I could care less what this guy gets. Even if I agree with the posters claiming that the pilot could obviously not see the laser - anyone who is flashing a laser pointer off at a POLICE HELICOPTER these days is obviously a complete idiot/jackass. To me this is natural selection in action.
It doesn't matter in the slightest if humans are actually the cause of the problem or not. The **real** issue is that we are *not* being part of the solution.
Regardless of the root cause, it is indisputable that global warming will have a detrimental effect on the planet in the short term. Of course in the long term, it will recover, that doesn't matter. What *does* matter is the survival of my children and grandchildren, and possibly even the human species. On a global timescale, we have not been around very long. Even assuming this is part of a natural cycle, we could easily be wiped out by it.
Humans are the only species with the intelligence and resources to actually *combat* and even *reverse* their contributions to global warming. The fact that they do nothing (in a relative sense) is the real problem.
.. because to prove something, you have to believe in something. At a very basic level, you need to believe that you exist in more than a simulation, or else all that you see and experience could be nothing more than lies, and the laws of the actual universe could be totally different.
On a less philosophical note, for example, you can't prove an axiom.
All of those devices come with listings of the codes and what they mean. I myself own two of them, one for Ford and one for GM. I got them two years ago so some codes may be out of date, but really paying another $30 to upgrade the unit is in no way cost prohibitive.
Loads of top-level tool windows is a usability nightmare. It os not intuitive at all, and a new user has a hell of a time figuring out what things are in what window.
There is a reason both the Gnome and KDE projects have HCI guidelines. And this app doesn't follow either of them.
Just as every garage didn't instantly get equipment to handle radials in the 60s, or electronic engine testers in the 80s, they won't instantly get tire-rebonders in the 00s (is that what this decade is called?1?)
But they will over time... just like it originally cost hundreds of dollars and a huge machine to electronically test your engine, and now you can buy a $29.95 device to do it at home.
Yet another set of phones that amalgamates more crappy functionality and drives the cost up for the user who simply wants a phone...
I can go get a phone for free, and get unlimited evenings and weekends plus hundreds of daytime minutes from nearly any cell carrier I can think of for under 20 bucks. Is this still not cheap enough for you? Get a pay-as-you-go phone.
3GB disk? Too small for most music collections.
You know, not everyone wants to carry around their whole music collection. For some people being able to listen to 16+ hours of music non-stop is enough. WTF is your commute anyway?
Even aside from that your complaints make no sense. My music collection is over 90 GB. You going to put that on a portable player? So much for your iPod - way too small. I guess the iPod sucks too since it can't "fit my whole music collection".
Oh and yet another camera with mildly low resolution...
It's not for taking professional photos. It's for taking that snapshot of the funny sign to email to your buddy. Not everyone wants to carry around a 4 lb camera bag for their 8MP SLR everywhere.
The point of convergence is not to have a best-of-breed anything. There will always be standalone digital cameras, standalone MP3 players. Just like you can still go out and buy standalone home theater components. But just because the radio in my alarm clock doesn't bring in the stations as well as my JVC receiver, doesn't mean my alarm clock "sucks" or "has no purpose".
I dont' know what POS VOIP solution you were using, but here I can run Skype at modem-like speeds ( 5 KB/s ) and get quality as good (or even better than) my landline.
Since Vonage is developing the phone themselves, they could license Skype's technology, or develop their own, or any number of things. It is *very* doable.
In other news, it was discovered today that people in India generally make far less than the average American/European and have a lower standard of living.
It was also discovered that Slashdot editors know nothing about economics and that you can't just convert things to US dollars and declare "it's cheaper!".
News at 11.
Re:Don't think that's exactly correct
on
Defining Google
·
· Score: 1
Your own paragraph betrays some lack of knowledge of Java. The difference between a Vector and a List? Well, the only real difference in Java is thread stuff which I might not expect everyone to know - but the difference between List and Map, now that's pretty crucial.
See, this is the exact thing I am talking about. You are displaying your ignorance of algorithms here. A vector and a List (eg, ArrayList in Java) are *very* different. Sure, the both implement the java.util.List interface, but that is of no real concern. A Vector can access elements in O(1) time - a list can not. However, inserting into a list is O(1) time, inserting into a vector is not. These ideas are *fundamental* and are very important, regardless of the language being used.
I would expect a C# programmer to throughly know the IDE if I wanted someone with experience, and I would expect a Java programmer to know a reasonbly good subset of the libraries if they had been at it a while.
Why? Why should I care what IDE someone uses as long as they write the code properly. If they are more efficient using SharpDevelop or vi, all the power to them.
Same thing goes with the Java libraries. You don't need to know them by heart, all you need to know is the URL to the API spec and what youa re looking for. It is **far** more important to decide to use the correct algorithm (eg, a list vs a vector), before you get to the API.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, look at what goes into them
:)
* Totally new digital transfers of all the shows
* For a whole season, tens of hours of "blooper-reel" type footage has to be found, approved,and edited in.
* A bunch of documentry films have to be shot
* Then, the big one - the commentarys. You need to bring in the cast/crew, make them sit through hours and hours of their old shows, and comment on them. Hint: Actors don't do this for free.
I mean, sure, they are taking a nice profit. So is the store selling the DVDs. But the cost is not *totally* unjustifed, nor is it completely outragous. For a huge fan, being able to get insight into the mindset of the script writers and actors for the whole series is worth a few hundred bucks. Mind you, I am not that huge of a fan though
Note that if you RTFA they are only opening 500 patents currently (IBM was granted over 3,800 patents last year alone, they have hundreds of thousands), not their whole portfolio. So, while this is awesome and should be applauded (I love IBM), it is just one step on the road.
azure!randals Jun 8 1982, 10:53 pm
The release date for us humans that want to see it is
still the summer of 1983. I guess it takes that long to score
all the music, do all the film-editing, prepare all the promo
material, and all that junk.
I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster.
I can't really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts
of the Star Wars series.
emerge sys-kernel/grsec-sources
Why would A Wikinews writer even fly over to Faluja when someone who *lives in* Faluja can give a first hand report?
This is what is blatantly missing from big media, and why WikiNews will succeed. A big media journalist flys into the middle of a conflict (often at least 24 hours after it has begun - too late!), and starts reporting. However, he doesn't *live* there. The people who live and work in the area should be the ones filing the reports. They are the ones with first-hand access to the information.
Sure, there is bias when locals do the reporting. But it is no different than the bias that occurs when a foreigner does the reporting, it is just usually the opposite side of the bias. This way you get both sides of the story and a more balanced viewpoint than you ever would by relying on big media alone.
But CNN doesn't make money by selling the code that runs CNN.com. The NY Times doesn't sell the code that runs their site. MSNBC.com doesn't sell their code either. The code behind these types of sites could be immensely useful to someone wanting to start their own fringe-hobby news site.
I saw this on CBC as well. At first I thought "that's cool", but then I went to the site. All it is is a standard website - there is no great CMS or anything else here. I can't imagine there is much below the HTML here... some simple server-side stuff, but nothing special.
On that note though - I do applaud the idea. All company websites' code should be Open Sourced under a free license IMO. After all, the company is not making revenue by selling that code, so what good is it to them?
Aside form the fact that this thing is about 1/8 the size of any laptop, your claim is totally bogus. Show me where I can buy a new laptop with the Archos specs (30 GB, 802.11B, everything) that also has a TV input (can't be external, that'd make it useless) for $800. I can't even find a used one on ebay for anywhere near that price.
For these people posting "Why would I want a $800 PDA?" / "iPod is Better"
This thing is not an iPod. It's essentially a TiVo+iPod+PDA that you can carry in your pocket. It's like the ultimate tool for the road warrior - killer in the back of a cab or on a plane or bus. It is not for you to carry with you 24/7, it is to take on trips to watch those shows you missed.
The more files you're willing to share, the faster any individual torrent downloads
I think maybe he was confusing "more files" with "more uploads". As in, the more your computer is uploading your portion of the file to others, the faster your download will be. This is indeed true - bittorrent does this 'tit-for-tat' so that if you rate-limit the upload to only 1k for example, your download will suffer.
.. on if he wants to be a web *designer* or a web *developer - two totally different things. You are going more the designer approach, and from that point of view I mostly agree, except that i would suggest he learn XHTML 1.1 rather than HTML (start with the latest - XHTML works great in all current browsers, and a compliant, doctype'd page renders faster than HTML 4.0 in Mozilla and IE, and there is no need to suport netscape 3.0 anymore).
However, if you want to be a web *developer*, Javascript is very important. Something most slashdotters seem to forget about web development is there is a whole other side to it, and that is developing web-based applications to run on corperate intranets. In these types of situatons, where the clients can be assimed to be relativly powerful machines with good bandwidth, a rich interface utilizing Javascript and CSS can **really** give your product the edge over someone else's.
Simple things like being able to write pulldown menus in Javascript are essential for a modern web app. Also nice are customized context menus and widgets like Tabs and Sliders.
The things I would reccomend when learning Javascript are
Did the poster and editor even RTFA? They let him go because he wanted his own prime time show, and they didn't have one open. And it looks like he is getting one on MSNBC regardless. So basically, the public will be seeing this jackass even more frequently.
An MSNBC spokesman had no comment on CNN's decision.
We think Tucker is a great journalist and we're exploring our options for a new 9 p.m. show, said MSNBC's Jeremy Gaines.
The worst your average consumer-level laser pointer can do is cause "flash blindness". That is, if you point the thing *directly* into your eye, at a closer distance, you could be blinded in that eye for ~10 minutes.
They aren't high powered enough to permanatly blind you. However, obviously, they are still dangerous to people driving vehicles and aircraft!
Was this guy using a laptop while pointing a laser at the plane, or what?
Aside from that - I could care less what this guy gets. Even if I agree with the posters claiming that the pilot could obviously not see the laser - anyone who is flashing a laser pointer off at a POLICE HELICOPTER these days is obviously a complete idiot/jackass. To me this is natural selection in action.
It doesn't matter in the slightest if humans are actually the cause of the problem or not. The **real** issue is that we are *not* being part of the solution.
Regardless of the root cause, it is indisputable that global warming will have a detrimental effect on the planet in the short term. Of course in the long term, it will recover, that doesn't matter. What *does* matter is the survival of my children and grandchildren, and possibly even the human species. On a global timescale, we have not been around very long. Even assuming this is part of a natural cycle, we could easily be wiped out by it.
Humans are the only species with the intelligence and resources to actually *combat* and even *reverse* their contributions to global warming. The fact that they do nothing (in a relative sense) is the real problem.
.. because to prove something, you have to believe in something. At a very basic level, you need to believe that you exist in more than a simulation, or else all that you see and experience could be nothing more than lies, and the laws of the actual universe could be totally different.
On a less philosophical note, for example, you can't prove an axiom.
All of those devices come with listings of the codes and what they mean. I myself own two of them, one for Ford and one for GM. I got them two years ago so some codes may be out of date, but really paying another $30 to upgrade the unit is in no way cost prohibitive.
Loads of top-level tool windows is a usability nightmare. It os not intuitive at all, and a new user has a hell of a time figuring out what things are in what window.
There is a reason both the Gnome and KDE projects have HCI guidelines. And this app doesn't follow either of them.
All they would have to do is create new spikebelts with curved, grabbing spikes, that *shred* the tire more than puncture it.
It doesn't matter what the wheel is ade of, it isn't going to perform too well if it isn't round and pieces of it are all over the road.
Just as every garage didn't instantly get equipment to handle radials in the 60s, or electronic engine testers in the 80s, they won't instantly get tire-rebonders in the 00s (is that what this decade is called?1?)
But they will over time... just like it originally cost hundreds of dollars and a huge machine to electronically test your engine, and now you can buy a $29.95 device to do it at home.
Yet another set of phones that amalgamates more crappy functionality and drives the cost up for the user who simply wants a phone...
I can go get a phone for free, and get unlimited evenings and weekends plus hundreds of daytime minutes from nearly any cell carrier I can think of for under 20 bucks. Is this still not cheap enough for you? Get a pay-as-you-go phone.
3GB disk? Too small for most music collections.
You know, not everyone wants to carry around their whole music collection. For some people being able to listen to 16+ hours of music non-stop is enough. WTF is your commute anyway?
Even aside from that your complaints make no sense. My music collection is over 90 GB. You going to put that on a portable player? So much for your iPod - way too small. I guess the iPod sucks too since it can't "fit my whole music collection".
Oh and yet another camera with mildly low resolution...
It's not for taking professional photos. It's for taking that snapshot of the funny sign to email to your buddy. Not everyone wants to carry around a 4 lb camera bag for their 8MP SLR everywhere.
The point of convergence is not to have a best-of-breed anything. There will always be standalone digital cameras, standalone MP3 players. Just like you can still go out and buy standalone home theater components. But just because the radio in my alarm clock doesn't bring in the stations as well as my JVC receiver, doesn't mean my alarm clock "sucks" or "has no purpose".
I dont' know what POS VOIP solution you were using, but here I can run Skype at modem-like speeds ( 5 KB/s ) and get quality as good (or even better than) my landline.
Since Vonage is developing the phone themselves, they could license Skype's technology, or develop their own, or any number of things. It is *very* doable.
... right above the article, declaring how Windows is cheaprer, less error prone, and more cost effective than Linux.
These same ironic banners are on Slashdot all the time. It's hilarious.
Considering I get 3 MBps in Canada for $34.95 CDN, and judging form the US commercials I have seen, I would say it is about average.
In other news, it was discovered today that people in India generally make far less than the average American/European and have a lower standard of living.
It was also discovered that Slashdot editors know nothing about economics and that you can't just convert things to US dollars and declare "it's cheaper!".
News at 11.
Your own paragraph betrays some lack of knowledge of Java. The difference between a Vector and a List? Well, the only real difference in Java is thread stuff which I might not expect everyone to know - but the difference between List and Map, now that's pretty crucial.
See, this is the exact thing I am talking about. You are displaying your ignorance of algorithms here. A vector and a List (eg, ArrayList in Java) are *very* different. Sure, the both implement the java.util.List interface, but that is of no real concern. A Vector can access elements in O(1) time - a list can not. However, inserting into a list is O(1) time, inserting into a vector is not. These ideas are *fundamental* and are very important, regardless of the language being used.
I would expect a C# programmer to throughly know the IDE if I wanted someone with experience, and I would expect a Java programmer to know a reasonbly good subset of the libraries if they had been at it a while.
Why? Why should I care what IDE someone uses as long as they write the code properly. If they are more efficient using SharpDevelop or vi, all the power to them.
Same thing goes with the Java libraries. You don't need to know them by heart, all you need to know is the URL to the API spec and what youa re looking for. It is **far** more important to decide to use the correct algorithm (eg, a list vs a vector), before you get to the API.