But if you're just using an iPod for storage it makes much more sense to just buy protable hard drives
Then it goes full circle... You can't play music on portable hard drives.
No one said this is either-or. I partition mine for twenty gigs of music, forty for files, and I'm able to carry around a full backup of every important project I'm working on.
There's a great silent theater on Fairfax in L.A. (I think it's still around, though I haven't paid attention for a few years) that shows old films, complete with live piano accompaniment. I think the Turner Classics channel also shows them occasionaly.
As for recent silent films-- there are plenty, but most are made by film students and obscure artistes. The "e" was intentional. It's a lost art, but like making a black and white movie today it's a conceit, so if you're doing it you better have a good reason and do it well... Most films of the silent era would have used sound if they could. It would be fun to see a major or large independant studio make one-- it really is a different kind of filmmaking, and works well with creepy horror and broad physical comedy-- but it's not likely to happen, since most moviegoers would avoid silent films like the plague. Also, they don't tend to play well on TV, it's harder for a silent film to hold your interest on the small screen... You really need to be in a theater.
I don't think any Kodak innovations are going to take at this point. Kodak has carved out a niche as a major player in the digital camera market... But it's at the low end. They make a great $89 digital camera that does exactly what it says it does. But if you're willing to pay more, you're going to buy a Canon, Nikon or Sony.
Also... I don't see why so many printers, and now cameras are working so hard to bypass the computer. The beauty of digital photos is that you can store and edit them on your PC. And it's not like there's a household left that doesn't have a PC...
I don't think there are many who love the iTunes music store so much that they run out and buy iPods. Sales may take a hit if the store is brought down, but the iPod won't lose its status any time soon. Anyway, there are so many other ways to acquire music for it-- and more importantly, most of us already have the collection to fill it.
What I think we may be looking at is that the labels want their own online music services (and in the case of Sony, also sell their own players) so there is no moody Apple middleman between them and the consumer. Again, Sony is already there, and others may be too. I'm not sure where the trails of Warner's parent and sister companies lead.
Or should you be responsible, because you should have known from years of examples that Windows is very vulnerabile to those kinds of attacks, and you should either have an external protection mechanism in place, or not use the software?
Unless the company specifically states that this isn't a product for the novice-- that you should have a degree or years of experience with prior or similar products in the field, or hire someone who does to properly install and maintain the application-- then this isn't something a new user should expect. Of course some companies will do this, and will provide their own techs if necessary, but just as many if not more claim their application is easy to learn, use and maintain.
If this kind of suit has merit, which I believe it does, it is because software (or any product) that claims to do a certain thing, and fails is liable. Meaning they can't market themselves as "100% secure" if they aren't. This also means if their code is compromised down the line and they don't make immediate good on a fix, it's their problem, not yours.
I'm not sure anyone is owed money-- though they may be-- for a critical failure. What I would hope the actual result would be is that developers can't make claims they can't back up. Instead of a EULA that frees them from responsibility, they should be warning the customer of possible repurcussions of relying on their product-- what the dangers are and what they can do to prevent them. This applies much more to Microsoft than Mozilla, because Microsoft charges a hefty premium for its products and with the price should come an expectation that they live up to their claims.
Then again, I am not the person who thinks "sue" when I slip on icy stairs in the winter and break my neck either. I think "maybe I should have bought better gooddamned shoes for walking around in the winter". The other commentors are right, there is not enough responsibility in the world today. Grow a backbone and stop sueing everyone.
Sorry, but lawsuits are how things are done in a civil society. Countless shady business practices have been squashed because consumers filed or threatened suits, and you're not a "victim" if you're burned by an expensive product with a critical flaw. Lawsuits, voting and protest are the few powers the little guy has to make a change. TFA is pretty clear and rational about why lawsuits are needed to re-think the laws to protect the consumer:
"After all, I can't sue Toyota if my car doesn't start and so I miss an important meeting, although I can sue it if a design fault means I crash on the motorway.
But the complete lack of any liability is an anomaly that should be removed. Carmakers have learned to accept the obligation to design safe cars, even though they complained about it at the time, and it is time software developers did the same."
This isn't trying to cash in by slipping on the ice on your neighbor's front steps. No one rational is saying software companies should give huge cash settlements to everyone who's been burned by a product. They are saying the laws should be changed to protect the consumer.
Throwing around Google search result numbers doesn't provide a very compelling argument for your case. Especially on Slashdot, where we all understand that after the first couple of pages you'll be getting hits that have nothing to do with the subject.
BTW, putting "ipod nano screen scratch" in quotes gets you 9 results. Does that prove that only 9 people had the problem?
Besides the obvious savings in bandwidth, the most appealing thing about Bittorrent is that popular files actually download faster, and the system is sturdier with the more people who are downloading. Even Apple or Viacom's site can be crippled if thousands and thousands of people want to download the same 100mb video at once from their server, but these numbers would make Bittorrent run smoother.
SONY lost the betamax vs VHS wars because the pr0n industry went with VHS. I think they learnt their lesson. One of the biggest sellers in the UMX format for the PSP is, pr0n! So I am pretty sure that SONY is going after the pr0n industry pretty heavilly for Blu-Ray as well.
No... Sony lost because they were the only ones who made Beta machines, but anyone could make VHS. So when a consumer walked into a store they'd see shelves and shelves of VHS machines from all different makers and then a handful of Betas. Not to mention, the VHS big name brands were cheaper because of the competition, and VHS no-name brands cheaper still.
Porn did have a place in the equation-- without porn the whole home videotape machine industry would have been dead in the water, or at least remained an expensive but somewhat obscure luxury like projection TVs.
"When the point was put to the head of Apple's iPod division, Jon Rubenstein - who in the past oversaw the development of the Titanium PowerBook - the one that killed off Wi-Fi reception, because metal cages do that - he replied: 'Nah, you don't really think that? It's made of the hardest polycarbonate... You keep it in a pocket with your keys?'"
Funny, have you seen a Titanium powerbook after a few years of wear and tear? I guarantee the paint will be gone and it will be covered in little dents and dings, and the hinge is often hanging by a thread. There's a reason they switched to Aluminum.
Sun, MS and all the other large corporate players forget that freedom is the most important feature of any computer.
What you're leaving out, and what is ultimately threatening to these corporate players, is that the PC is a very versatile and powerful tool that a lot of people know inside and out. Every product released for the PC can (and will) be hacked, modded and pirated. Because hacks, cracks and mods will inevitably be available for the price of a download the user is ultimately in control. In the case of software, the user gets to decide whether they feel like paying for the product or not, since there is little more than a symbolic prosecution of piracy.
This isn't the case for a console, phone, PSP, etc. Of course there will be those who can add mod chips, which takes know-how to design and cash and hassle to buy, or mess with the firmware to unlock features, but the average joe can't just open it up and tinker, or mess with the embedded OS and applications. The company is in nearly complete control of the product, as well as the user's experience. It's easy to see why the big players would prefer to drift to the latter...
Good point. You should save all emails from here until you inevitable demise. Because when the biographers are writing the story of your life, you want to make sure they have easy access to all of your correspondences.
Why's Gramps burying his fortune in the backyard?
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The Digital Dark Age
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Seriously, is this the best example they could come up with? Grampa leaving a treasure map on a CD Rom in the attic? Is he a pirate, or just insane? Will this ever happen to anybody?
How about a circumstance someone might actually deal with... Perhaps you're audited, or selling a small business, or a former employee sues you for funds owed years ago, and you need to access files from a tax or database program that's no longer made. Or you need to access old letters or contracts written in a word processing program no longer made (happened once to me, I had to access some info written with "WriteNow" on a Mac in the 80's.) I can tell you from experience that reading old television (and movie) scripts are a big problem, since the big two programs-- Final Draft and Movie Magic-- don't play nice with each other, and often can't even open files created by a different version. Non-standard software is the problem... And one solution is to backup everything in multiple formats, especially PDF. Just about everything can be saved as or printed to PDF now. That standard will eventually be replaced, but considering how much government and business has invested in storing just about everything in the format the ability to read it won't go away in our lifetimes. I would bet there will be also be jpeg and mp3 readers for a long time to come.
The article also omits emulation-- which is how I solved the WriteNow problem. Is there an outdated computer or OS that hasn't been emulated yet? I can't see this going away, either.
As for hardware-- say, reading old disk formats-- if the data is still there, and if the device was mass produced, it can be done. Maybe not cheap, but it can be done. I guarantee some packrat somewhere will still have a machine... There are still working kinetoscopes out there, for God's sake. The problem isn't that CD, tape or disk readers won't exist-- the problem is that the mediums themselves (especially CDs) are a crapshoot. It's really only common sense that important info should be backup up a few places-- on a hard drive, to a server, and to CD/DVD/whatever's next.
I'd much rather not spend the extra $50 (or $100, whatever) for the color screen and photos.
You're not. The 20 gig with color screen is the same price as last years' 20 gig with black and white (both $299), they didn't raise the price. Actually, it's cheaper than earlier ipods with smaller capacity (at one point a 15 gig was $399.)
The difference in price for color over b&w screens is likely pennies for Apple, not $50 or $100.
A radio could be quite useful, but not nearly as useful as a couple of cases of bottled water.
Is it an either-or choice?
A week or so ago the power went out all across the city here in L.A. The very first thing I did was turn on the radio to see what was was going on.
I'd say a radio is extremely important to let you know the scope of the emergency, if for nothing else to keep your sanity. (Or conversely, if even the die-hard AM stations are out, to let you know you're fucked.) Getting one with shortwave bands wouldn't be a bad idea either.
It's revolutionary, and it's a model that iTunes could stand to look at. Never will I pay 99 cents a song again.
While it's legal (or at least allowed to exist) it's ridiculous to suggest Jobs adopt their model and/or pricing structure. It's "revolutionary" in the sense that a Czar was overthrown ninety years ago-- AllofMp3 exists because Russia is a state without a long history of copyright or intellectual property protection... they are not working with the artists or record labels because they don't have to.
Also, the low prices are in no small part due to the fact that the ruble is worthless.
Face it, five years from now, an article on a satirical pseudo-cult will be of passing interest. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be an article on it. But it does indicate that the relative priorities of Wikipedia contributors are very short sighted.
I don't know about that. The FSM is a joke, but it's a reaction to Intelligent Design, which is a very real and significant issue that isn't going to go away any time soon. Someone researching exactly why we are no longer allowed to teach evolution in Bible Belt schools ten or fifteen years from now would certainly find some insight in this entry.
I look at Wikipedia as a pop culutre encyclopedia, the kind we have never seen before... And that's a good thing. A good way to understand how people lived day-to-day in a time period is through "low-brow" literature, folk art, journals of common citizens, etc. Tradionally these things are lost and forgotten and certainly aren't easy to access when they do exist. The historical importance in a greater sense might be minimal, but the beauty of Wiki is that there is no shortage of space to store information... No need to condense the articles to fit into a bookcase. An article about the FSM will likely be forgotten as the fad passes, to be replaced by what's next, but it will always be there for whoever is interested.
Wrong. Your only choice lies between paying a few k dollars to an extortionist company, or getting many millions to be able to afford lawyers and stand through the trial.
A lawsuit doesn't have to cost millions. One competent lawyer could effectively drag this out in a very public trial, costing the RIAA's lawyers more time and money and bad press than they're willing to spend. There might not be much money in it-- but the attention could be worth it to, say, an aspiring civil rights lawyer's career.
I'm not even sure the RIAA would go through with a full trial. All it would take is to lose a couple (or even one) high profile civil suits to see this whole strategy blow up in their face. This could also lead to countersuits, perhaps even a class action by those who have settled. Better for the RIAA to just get more mileage announcing rounds of suits in the press then continue to quietly settle or drop them. Do we even have proof that they've filed as many suits as they claim?
Hopefully we'll eventually see an ACLU-type organization step forward to take cases like this on, perhaps with the mission to protect individual rights in an increasingly corporate culture. There are issues greater than whether it's cool for a teenager to download music from Kazaa (which I think is morally wrong, btw, I'm not defending the action, but I am repelled by the RIAA's response)-- such as the responsibility of an ISP to protect their customers privacy (remember, most handed over the info to whoever asked, no subpoenas involved) and whether or not billion dollar corporations can use the law to bully individuals for their own PR's sake.
Video games aren't cheap. Where are kids getting the $40-70 to buy a Grand Theft game in the first place? I'm not talking about 16-year olds with fast food jobs, I mean the elementary and junior high kids who we're passing laws to protect. Seems to me like one way for a responsible parent to monitor what their kids are bringing home would be to limit their disposable income. I question the morality of giving a 9, 13 or even 15-year old the spending power to buy an M-rated game... or whatever other trouble wads of cash can buy.
When I skimmed your post I thought you were complaning about buying a U2 iPod.
Then I realized, of course you weren't, because no one has ever bought a U2 iPod.
Funny thing is Apple killed its best seller, the iPod mini, but still proudly offers the inexplicable U2 iPod. Which, again, I can't imagine has sold a single unit, as U2 is a band older than most iPod buyers. A fine band, mind you, but the last time I bought a U2 record it was on vinyl. And yes, they're still in the spotlight, but so's Aerosmith. They play U2 on the classic rock station for God's sake.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, Steve Jobs is a Bono fanboy.
Five years or so ago I did freelance work for a short-lived "online greeting card company" (shut up, I know.) Basically I'd go to a control panel to get an order, adjust the proof in the Flash template and send it back. I had absolutely no access to any other part of the site, the databases, not even the customer's contact info (much less credit card #'s.)
I still had to change my password every two weeks, with conditions similar to what you describe-- IIRC ten or more characters, mix of numbers and letters, had to be substantially different than the one before. I eventually a system down for remembering what it was, but I'll be the first to admit I was using my Mac's "stickies" to keep track of the password for the first six months. Considering they were dealing primarliy with graphic designers, not programmers, I can only imagine what some of the other employees were doing. Since they also weren't the easiest employers to deal with, I can only imagine that the lack of give-a-shit factor kept many employees from trying to hard to keep that ever-changing password a closely guarded secret. Let me stress that the damage that could be done if my password was compromised was completely negligible-- maybe someone could have inserted a dirty message in a greeting card, but it still had another check to go through before it went online!
Basically my point is, there's a point where security for security's sake is an annoyance. I'm certainly not an expert in these matters but IMO making low-level users go through hoops is just going to foster ill will, better to lock down their privileges in the first place and make sure no damage could be done if that account was compromised. Frequently changing admin passwords is of course another matter, but that's part of the responsibility that comes with the job.
I can see why a country would want to go to Mars. There is always the national honor, staking territorial claims, etc. for a Mars landing. I just can't see spending billions of dollars for no financial return at all.
The most obvious is all of the tech that will be discovered along the way, which would be valuable both to private industry and the military. And that company would hold the patents. This would also establish that organization as the premier space exploration/transport company... Think what it would mean to their earth-based enterprises.
The second answer is marketing. This company would be in the news every day for years, and they would certainly be in every schoolchild's history books for centuries to come. Doesn't Coke have a roughly $1.5 billion advertising budget? Not saying they'd be the one to do it (though Virgin does have a cola, too...) Putting this kind of money into the greatest technological accomplishment in history may be worth it...
With all due respect... I don't think this is very good advice at all. A document scanner is made to do just that. The lighting is uniform, it's easy to keep the document straight to get a level scan (no cropping and rotation needed), bitmap mode is crisp and clean for black and white text (or sheet music.)
To get a good shot of a document from a digital camera-- and I mean something that could be printed again at copy machine quality-- you would need a good, soft background light (not a flash!) and a way to keep the camera and/or document straight. That, or spend time making up the difference with an image manipulation program. For best results you'd also have to be shooting with the lens perfectly parallel to the document-- not so easy, and an "off" angle is something you can't correct later in Photoshop or Gimp or whatever.
It's not like scanners are prohibitively expensive-- A good scanner can be had for $250, a good enough one for $50. If you're not trying to duplicate color perfectly for print reproduction, or if you don't expect to ever scan negatives, then "good enough" is perfectly fine. In this case it sounds like the submitter's sis needs 400 dpi or so bitmap scans, which any low end Epson or Canon can easily handle.
Also in the submitter's case, I seriously doubt his sister is going to have any success getting an OCR app to read a digital photograph. The best bet for her, IMO, is to contact the company that sells the program and ask what scanners they recommend. Ideally the ones they used to test and develop the application...
I will admit, there is an occasional breakout hit: The Matrix, Sin City were amazing, Spiderman was not as bad as it could have been. But it hardly makes up for the disasters they wage in the process (Daredevil, Elektra, The Incredible Hulk, come on).
Superhero movies are a pretty safe bet because they do make their money back, eventually. Even the "failures" you mentioned (Daredevil actually did quite well, BTW) make the cash back in foreign markets and on DVD. And the ones that do well do spectacularly well-- as in, people will see it in the theater, buy the DVD and still watch it on cable.
And yes the die-hard fans will complain about liberties being taken... But the die-hards are never happy. The superhero genre relies more on the casual fan, those who used to read the books when they were kids, or those who just like superhero movies... And there are a lot more of these people than the die-hards.
Yet they keep making these movies because they don't need to put a lot of thought into them; their designers already put their hearts into it and spent their life drawing these characters out in the comic books.
Well, maybe in Sin City's case, or Ghost World, or V is For Vendetta... But come on, there's no heart and soul in Marvel's assembly line. A Marvel comic might have a talented artist or writer pass through every now and again, but that's all they're doing-- passing through. Most of the time it's done by hacks for hire. I don't consider The Fantastic Four to be too sacred for a B-movie adaption.
It really is evident in the hollywood scheme of things that they have ran out of movie ideas because the corporation is stifling the idealists.
You think this is something new? There have always been shitty movies. And shitty movie sequels. Superhero movies certainly aren't a new trend, and cheesy sci-fi serials have been made since the thirties. Movies have always been made for the lowest common demoninator, with a few bold talents managing to squeak through (and the same goes for comic books, doubly so.) We tend to forget the crap, so it's easy to say Hollywood is going to hell... But the good-to-crap ratio has been pretty steady for eighty-plus years.
BTW there are a lot of good movies being made right now, you just have to know where to look. With the advent of cheap DV editing suites, for example, documentaries have never been better.
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But if you're just using an iPod for storage it makes much more sense to just buy protable hard drives
Then it goes full circle... You can't play music on portable hard drives.
No one said this is either-or. I partition mine for twenty gigs of music, forty for files, and I'm able to carry around a full backup of every important project I'm working on.
There's a great silent theater on Fairfax in L.A. (I think it's still around, though I haven't paid attention for a few years) that shows old films, complete with live piano accompaniment. I think the Turner Classics channel also shows them occasionaly.
As for recent silent films-- there are plenty, but most are made by film students and obscure artistes. The "e" was intentional. It's a lost art, but like making a black and white movie today it's a conceit, so if you're doing it you better have a good reason and do it well... Most films of the silent era would have used sound if they could. It would be fun to see a major or large independant studio make one-- it really is a different kind of filmmaking, and works well with creepy horror and broad physical comedy-- but it's not likely to happen, since most moviegoers would avoid silent films like the plague. Also, they don't tend to play well on TV, it's harder for a silent film to hold your interest on the small screen... You really need to be in a theater.
I don't think any Kodak innovations are going to take at this point. Kodak has carved out a niche as a major player in the digital camera market... But it's at the low end. They make a great $89 digital camera that does exactly what it says it does. But if you're willing to pay more, you're going to buy a Canon, Nikon or Sony.
Also... I don't see why so many printers, and now cameras are working so hard to bypass the computer. The beauty of digital photos is that you can store and edit them on your PC. And it's not like there's a household left that doesn't have a PC...
I don't think there are many who love the iTunes music store so much that they run out and buy iPods. Sales may take a hit if the store is brought down, but the iPod won't lose its status any time soon. Anyway, there are so many other ways to acquire music for it-- and more importantly, most of us already have the collection to fill it.
What I think we may be looking at is that the labels want their own online music services (and in the case of Sony, also sell their own players) so there is no moody Apple middleman between them and the consumer. Again, Sony is already there, and others may be too. I'm not sure where the trails of Warner's parent and sister companies lead.
Or should you be responsible, because you should have known from years of examples that Windows is very vulnerabile to those kinds of attacks, and you should either have an external protection mechanism in place, or not use the software?
Unless the company specifically states that this isn't a product for the novice-- that you should have a degree or years of experience with prior or similar products in the field, or hire someone who does to properly install and maintain the application-- then this isn't something a new user should expect. Of course some companies will do this, and will provide their own techs if necessary, but just as many if not more claim their application is easy to learn, use and maintain.
If this kind of suit has merit, which I believe it does, it is because software (or any product) that claims to do a certain thing, and fails is liable. Meaning they can't market themselves as "100% secure" if they aren't. This also means if their code is compromised down the line and they don't make immediate good on a fix, it's their problem, not yours.
I'm not sure anyone is owed money-- though they may be-- for a critical failure. What I would hope the actual result would be is that developers can't make claims they can't back up. Instead of a EULA that frees them from responsibility, they should be warning the customer of possible repurcussions of relying on their product-- what the dangers are and what they can do to prevent them. This applies much more to Microsoft than Mozilla, because Microsoft charges a hefty premium for its products and with the price should come an expectation that they live up to their claims.
Then again, I am not the person who thinks "sue" when I slip on icy stairs in the winter and break my neck either. I think "maybe I should have bought better gooddamned shoes for walking around in the winter". The other commentors are right, there is not enough responsibility in the world today. Grow a backbone and stop sueing everyone.
Sorry, but lawsuits are how things are done in a civil society. Countless shady business practices have been squashed because consumers filed or threatened suits, and you're not a "victim" if you're burned by an expensive product with a critical flaw. Lawsuits, voting and protest are the few powers the little guy has to make a change. TFA is pretty clear and rational about why lawsuits are needed to re-think the laws to protect the consumer:
"After all, I can't sue Toyota if my car doesn't start and so I miss an important meeting, although I can sue it if a design fault means I crash on the motorway.
But the complete lack of any liability is an anomaly that should be removed. Carmakers have learned to accept the obligation to design safe cars, even though they complained about it at the time, and it is time software developers did the same."
This isn't trying to cash in by slipping on the ice on your neighbor's front steps. No one rational is saying software companies should give huge cash settlements to everyone who's been burned by a product. They are saying the laws should be changed to protect the consumer.
Googling 'ipod nano screen scratch' yields 521,000 results.
Throwing around Google search result numbers doesn't provide a very compelling argument for your case. Especially on Slashdot, where we all understand that after the first couple of pages you'll be getting hits that have nothing to do with the subject.
BTW, putting "ipod nano screen scratch" in quotes gets you 9 results. Does that prove that only 9 people had the problem?
Besides the obvious savings in bandwidth, the most appealing thing about Bittorrent is that popular files actually download faster, and the system is sturdier with the more people who are downloading. Even Apple or Viacom's site can be crippled if thousands and thousands of people want to download the same 100mb video at once from their server, but these numbers would make Bittorrent run smoother.
SONY lost the betamax vs VHS wars because the pr0n industry went with VHS. I think they learnt their lesson. One of the biggest sellers in the UMX format for the PSP is, pr0n! So I am pretty sure that SONY is going after the pr0n industry pretty heavilly for Blu-Ray as well.
No... Sony lost because they were the only ones who made Beta machines, but anyone could make VHS. So when a consumer walked into a store they'd see shelves and shelves of VHS machines from all different makers and then a handful of Betas. Not to mention, the VHS big name brands were cheaper because of the competition, and VHS no-name brands cheaper still.
Porn did have a place in the equation-- without porn the whole home videotape machine industry would have been dead in the water, or at least remained an expensive but somewhat obscure luxury like projection TVs.
"When the point was put to the head of Apple's iPod division, Jon Rubenstein - who in the past oversaw the development of the Titanium PowerBook - the one that killed off Wi-Fi reception, because metal cages do that - he replied: 'Nah, you don't really think that? It's made of the hardest polycarbonate... You keep it in a pocket with your keys?'"
Funny, have you seen a Titanium powerbook after a few years of wear and tear? I guarantee the paint will be gone and it will be covered in little dents and dings, and the hinge is often hanging by a thread. There's a reason they switched to Aluminum.
Sun, MS and all the other large corporate players forget that freedom is the most important feature of any computer.
What you're leaving out, and what is ultimately threatening to these corporate players, is that the PC is a very versatile and powerful tool that a lot of people know inside and out. Every product released for the PC can (and will) be hacked, modded and pirated. Because hacks, cracks and mods will inevitably be available for the price of a download the user is ultimately in control. In the case of software, the user gets to decide whether they feel like paying for the product or not, since there is little more than a symbolic prosecution of piracy.
This isn't the case for a console, phone, PSP, etc. Of course there will be those who can add mod chips, which takes know-how to design and cash and hassle to buy, or mess with the firmware to unlock features, but the average joe can't just open it up and tinker, or mess with the embedded OS and applications. The company is in nearly complete control of the product, as well as the user's experience. It's easy to see why the big players would prefer to drift to the latter...
Good point. You should save all emails from here until you inevitable demise. Because when the biographers are writing the story of your life, you want to make sure they have easy access to all of your correspondences.
Seriously, is this the best example they could come up with? Grampa leaving a treasure map on a CD Rom in the attic? Is he a pirate, or just insane? Will this ever happen to anybody?
How about a circumstance someone might actually deal with... Perhaps you're audited, or selling a small business, or a former employee sues you for funds owed years ago, and you need to access files from a tax or database program that's no longer made. Or you need to access old letters or contracts written in a word processing program no longer made (happened once to me, I had to access some info written with "WriteNow" on a Mac in the 80's.) I can tell you from experience that reading old television (and movie) scripts are a big problem, since the big two programs-- Final Draft and Movie Magic-- don't play nice with each other, and often can't even open files created by a different version. Non-standard software is the problem... And one solution is to backup everything in multiple formats, especially PDF. Just about everything can be saved as or printed to PDF now. That standard will eventually be replaced, but considering how much government and business has invested in storing just about everything in the format the ability to read it won't go away in our lifetimes. I would bet there will be also be jpeg and mp3 readers for a long time to come.
The article also omits emulation-- which is how I solved the WriteNow problem. Is there an outdated computer or OS that hasn't been emulated yet? I can't see this going away, either.
As for hardware-- say, reading old disk formats-- if the data is still there, and if the device was mass produced, it can be done. Maybe not cheap, but it can be done. I guarantee some packrat somewhere will still have a machine... There are still working kinetoscopes out there, for God's sake. The problem isn't that CD, tape or disk readers won't exist-- the problem is that the mediums themselves (especially CDs) are a crapshoot. It's really only common sense that important info should be backup up a few places-- on a hard drive, to a server, and to CD/DVD/whatever's next.
I'd much rather not spend the extra $50 (or $100, whatever) for the color screen and photos.
You're not. The 20 gig with color screen is the same price as last years' 20 gig with black and white (both $299), they didn't raise the price. Actually, it's cheaper than earlier ipods with smaller capacity (at one point a 15 gig was $399.)
The difference in price for color over b&w screens is likely pennies for Apple, not $50 or $100.
A radio could be quite useful, but not nearly as useful as a couple of cases of bottled water.
Is it an either-or choice?
A week or so ago the power went out all across the city here in L.A. The very first thing I did was turn on the radio to see what was was going on.
I'd say a radio is extremely important to let you know the scope of the emergency, if for nothing else to keep your sanity. (Or conversely, if even the die-hard AM stations are out, to let you know you're fucked.) Getting one with shortwave bands wouldn't be a bad idea either.
It's revolutionary, and it's a model that iTunes could stand to look at. Never will I pay 99 cents a song again.
While it's legal (or at least allowed to exist) it's ridiculous to suggest Jobs adopt their model and/or pricing structure. It's "revolutionary" in the sense that a Czar was overthrown ninety years ago-- AllofMp3 exists because Russia is a state without a long history of copyright or intellectual property protection... they are not working with the artists or record labels because they don't have to.
Also, the low prices are in no small part due to the fact that the ruble is worthless.
Face it, five years from now, an article on a satirical pseudo-cult will be of passing interest. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be an article on it. But it does indicate that the relative priorities of Wikipedia contributors are very short sighted.
I don't know about that. The FSM is a joke, but it's a reaction to Intelligent Design, which is a very real and significant issue that isn't going to go away any time soon. Someone researching exactly why we are no longer allowed to teach evolution in Bible Belt schools ten or fifteen years from now would certainly find some insight in this entry.
I look at Wikipedia as a pop culutre encyclopedia, the kind we have never seen before... And that's a good thing. A good way to understand how people lived day-to-day in a time period is through "low-brow" literature, folk art, journals of common citizens, etc. Tradionally these things are lost and forgotten and certainly aren't easy to access when they do exist. The historical importance in a greater sense might be minimal, but the beauty of Wiki is that there is no shortage of space to store information... No need to condense the articles to fit into a bookcase. An article about the FSM will likely be forgotten as the fad passes, to be replaced by what's next, but it will always be there for whoever is interested.
Wrong. Your only choice lies between paying a few k dollars to an extortionist company, or getting many millions to be able to afford lawyers and stand through the trial.
A lawsuit doesn't have to cost millions. One competent lawyer could effectively drag this out in a very public trial, costing the RIAA's lawyers more time and money and bad press than they're willing to spend. There might not be much money in it-- but the attention could be worth it to, say, an aspiring civil rights lawyer's career.
I'm not even sure the RIAA would go through with a full trial. All it would take is to lose a couple (or even one) high profile civil suits to see this whole strategy blow up in their face. This could also lead to countersuits, perhaps even a class action by those who have settled. Better for the RIAA to just get more mileage announcing rounds of suits in the press then continue to quietly settle or drop them. Do we even have proof that they've filed as many suits as they claim?
Hopefully we'll eventually see an ACLU-type organization step forward to take cases like this on, perhaps with the mission to protect individual rights in an increasingly corporate culture. There are issues greater than whether it's cool for a teenager to download music from Kazaa (which I think is morally wrong, btw, I'm not defending the action, but I am repelled by the RIAA's response)-- such as the responsibility of an ISP to protect their customers privacy (remember, most handed over the info to whoever asked, no subpoenas involved) and whether or not billion dollar corporations can use the law to bully individuals for their own PR's sake.
Forty is the new thirty. At least that's what I keep telling myself.
I agree, and let me add something...
Video games aren't cheap. Where are kids getting the $40-70 to buy a Grand Theft game in the first place? I'm not talking about 16-year olds with fast food jobs, I mean the elementary and junior high kids who we're passing laws to protect. Seems to me like one way for a responsible parent to monitor what their kids are bringing home would be to limit their disposable income. I question the morality of giving a 9, 13 or even 15-year old the spending power to buy an M-rated game... or whatever other trouble wads of cash can buy.
When I skimmed your post I thought you were complaning about buying a U2 iPod.
Then I realized, of course you weren't, because no one has ever bought a U2 iPod.
Funny thing is Apple killed its best seller, the iPod mini, but still proudly offers the inexplicable U2 iPod. Which, again, I can't imagine has sold a single unit, as U2 is a band older than most iPod buyers. A fine band, mind you, but the last time I bought a U2 record it was on vinyl. And yes, they're still in the spotlight, but so's Aerosmith. They play U2 on the classic rock station for God's sake.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, Steve Jobs is a Bono fanboy.
Yeah, I use that now. This was 1999-2000ish on an OS9 machine.
Five years or so ago I did freelance work for a short-lived "online greeting card company" (shut up, I know.) Basically I'd go to a control panel to get an order, adjust the proof in the Flash template and send it back. I had absolutely no access to any other part of the site, the databases, not even the customer's contact info (much less credit card #'s.)
I still had to change my password every two weeks, with conditions similar to what you describe-- IIRC ten or more characters, mix of numbers and letters, had to be substantially different than the one before. I eventually a system down for remembering what it was, but I'll be the first to admit I was using my Mac's "stickies" to keep track of the password for the first six months. Considering they were dealing primarliy with graphic designers, not programmers, I can only imagine what some of the other employees were doing. Since they also weren't the easiest employers to deal with, I can only imagine that the lack of give-a-shit factor kept many employees from trying to hard to keep that ever-changing password a closely guarded secret. Let me stress that the damage that could be done if my password was compromised was completely negligible-- maybe someone could have inserted a dirty message in a greeting card, but it still had another check to go through before it went online!
Basically my point is, there's a point where security for security's sake is an annoyance. I'm certainly not an expert in these matters but IMO making low-level users go through hoops is just going to foster ill will, better to lock down their privileges in the first place and make sure no damage could be done if that account was compromised. Frequently changing admin passwords is of course another matter, but that's part of the responsibility that comes with the job.
I can see why a country would want to go to Mars. There is always the national honor, staking territorial claims, etc. for a Mars landing. I just can't see spending billions of dollars for no financial return at all.
The most obvious is all of the tech that will be discovered along the way, which would be valuable both to private industry and the military. And that company would hold the patents. This would also establish that organization as the premier space exploration/transport company... Think what it would mean to their earth-based enterprises.
The second answer is marketing. This company would be in the news every day for years, and they would certainly be in every schoolchild's history books for centuries to come. Doesn't Coke have a roughly $1.5 billion advertising budget? Not saying they'd be the one to do it (though Virgin does have a cola, too...) Putting this kind of money into the greatest technological accomplishment in history may be worth it...
With all due respect... I don't think this is very good advice at all. A document scanner is made to do just that. The lighting is uniform, it's easy to keep the document straight to get a level scan (no cropping and rotation needed), bitmap mode is crisp and clean for black and white text (or sheet music.)
To get a good shot of a document from a digital camera-- and I mean something that could be printed again at copy machine quality-- you would need a good, soft background light (not a flash!) and a way to keep the camera and/or document straight. That, or spend time making up the difference with an image manipulation program. For best results you'd also have to be shooting with the lens perfectly parallel to the document-- not so easy, and an "off" angle is something you can't correct later in Photoshop or Gimp or whatever.
It's not like scanners are prohibitively expensive-- A good scanner can be had for $250, a good enough one for $50. If you're not trying to duplicate color perfectly for print reproduction, or if you don't expect to ever scan negatives, then "good enough" is perfectly fine. In this case it sounds like the submitter's sis needs 400 dpi or so bitmap scans, which any low end Epson or Canon can easily handle.
Also in the submitter's case, I seriously doubt his sister is going to have any success getting an OCR app to read a digital photograph. The best bet for her, IMO, is to contact the company that sells the program and ask what scanners they recommend. Ideally the ones they used to test and develop the application...
I will admit, there is an occasional breakout hit: The Matrix, Sin City were amazing, Spiderman was not as bad as it could have been. But it hardly makes up for the disasters they wage in the process (Daredevil, Elektra, The Incredible Hulk, come on).
Superhero movies are a pretty safe bet because they do make their money back, eventually. Even the "failures" you mentioned (Daredevil actually did quite well, BTW) make the cash back in foreign markets and on DVD. And the ones that do well do spectacularly well-- as in, people will see it in the theater, buy the DVD and still watch it on cable.
And yes the die-hard fans will complain about liberties being taken... But the die-hards are never happy. The superhero genre relies more on the casual fan, those who used to read the books when they were kids, or those who just like superhero movies... And there are a lot more of these people than the die-hards.
Yet they keep making these movies because they don't need to put a lot of thought into them; their designers already put their hearts into it and spent their life drawing these characters out in the comic books.
Well, maybe in Sin City's case, or Ghost World, or V is For Vendetta... But come on, there's no heart and soul in Marvel's assembly line. A Marvel comic might have a talented artist or writer pass through every now and again, but that's all they're doing-- passing through. Most of the time it's done by hacks for hire. I don't consider The Fantastic Four to be too sacred for a B-movie adaption.
It really is evident in the hollywood scheme of things that they have ran out of movie ideas because the corporation is stifling the idealists.
You think this is something new? There have always been shitty movies. And shitty movie sequels. Superhero movies certainly aren't a new trend, and cheesy sci-fi serials have been made since the thirties. Movies have always been made for the lowest common demoninator, with a few bold talents managing to squeak through (and the same goes for comic books, doubly so.) We tend to forget the crap, so it's easy to say Hollywood is going to hell... But the good-to-crap ratio has been pretty steady for eighty-plus years.
BTW there are a lot of good movies being made right now, you just have to know where to look. With the advent of cheap DV editing suites, for example, documentaries have never been better.