Personally I think it would suck a lot to have to pay a lost bet on credit. If I had a credit card company, I would already enforce not allowing gambling transactions on the cards. I feel like anyone who loses money this way would be less likely to pay the bill.
I agree completely. I still hate PDF and all, but I don't want anything worse, and I generally think the more functionality, the slower it can be. I use Foxit Reader for PDF because Acrobat is garbage and always has been.
I have a fast computer and everything but before I ever hit 2GHz I always hated opening PDF and was afraid everytime I did that my computer would go mega slow. I still believe PDF is really pointless, especially when companies prefer to make a PDF document of something when they could just display it in HTML. It's much faster that way.
But, where does it say that a company has to promote democracy/freedom of speech wherever it is. Show me this.
Even if you did I would disagree with such a law. The Chinese government most likely says censor or be deported, etc etc. Why would a company want to lose 1.3 billion potential customers?
Don't think I'm a communist or that I believe in censorship, it's just that a government is there to govern. Just because a company derives from another country with different laws doesn't mean that company is immune to laws of China, especially the ones that work for the company that are native-born. If I were in this situation that Google and Yahoo were, I would do exactly as they did. (If I were native-born living in China I would probably use proxying tools to avoid the Chinese firewall).
By the way, China is not a dictatorship. It's one huge communist party lead by a person just the same way the government of the US is lead by the president. It's the largest political party in the world, and first largest communist next to Japan's. See here for more info.
This hearing coming up will be a waste of time resulting in nothing happening at all, as usual. Remember the steroid use hearing?
---------------------
Free Tibet and Taiwan
Free China
I switched to Symantec AntiVirus a while ago and it seems to be much better. My school also runs this. I remember that Norton was a slow piece. This one labeled as just Symantec AntiVirus seems to only take up less 2MB of RAM at the most. Anyone else have an opinion on this version?
Getting definitions is exactly the same as Norton, but without a yearly subscription.
Who cares about stupid Windows 3.1/95/98 users?!
I seriously would only care about supporting IE 5, 6, and Firefox and say screw off to anyone using anything else.
From a business sense this sounds bad automatically. However, telling users that they suck at life in a nice way will help to spread some good knowledge. On said website, I would have a Spread Firefox link somewhere near the bottom.
Sure, helps for the web, but really can't help someone who steals the card and then goes for a little shopping. Stores will not accept a card number. No way no how.
The only place where piracy of NES games was rampant was China and Taiwan (and surrounding areas, including Russia). Cartridges did prevent piracy at the time in the US, but this was really because there was not many people with Internet access at the time.
Perhaps you would not even know about ROM cart systems had you not had enough Internet access in your lifetime. And the fact is, people see cartridges and never even begin to ponder being able to get/make/flash copies. This is also the same for console games and DVD's for (I would say) the MAJORITY of the US population. If anyone heres about burning games or DVDs, they then wonder how but then think that they are too stupid or too lazy or whatever to do it ("What's a modchip?" eh). Like the MPAA would like, not many know anything about computers, DRM, or the CSS protection still being (uselessly) placed on DVDs today. And now they put a "No copying" type of symbol on the covers. They don't know that average consumers don't read anything?
Regardless, I think cartridges are a slight solution to the piracy problem. If you are on the side for backing up your games legally (or piracy I guess), then we are so lucky that people in China/Taiwan/Asia area work so hard to make these. The fact is the majority of people do not know about these at all, nor do they know about ROMs, etc.
And then don't forget about the "I hate shit made in China" people or the "The Chinese are crazy!" people. These are the young men who are simply republican (and want to bring back laboring workforces to the US) because if they are democratic, they support gay rights and believe it or not, most men do not because they are homophobic.
It all links together somehow.
Yeah. You guys who think LP's are gone are really really uninformed. In case you didn't know, CDJ'ing (or MP3J'ing) is not nearly as easy as mixing vinyls. In all kinds of music, for DJ's (and for me who just likes that music (and it doesn't come out on CD!)), vinyl is great. The quality is just the same as CD if you ask me.
Audio tape is really what is dead. That shit was shit!
I'm completely with you on this. The entire software industry (including games of course) is just screwing consumers if you ask me. The big software titles and big games, all in all they really do cost a fortune (LICENSE FEES!) for the average person (or small business) yet there are these (arrogant) people out there who pay (most of which don't know about copying). We've got the big software titles (industry standard apparently and certainly not open source) like Autodesk software, Adobe software, Microsoft software etc. $300 for Photoshop, $265 for Windows XP, and an even higher price for software like Cubase SX, etc. Meanwhile new games of all types cost $50. All of these prices I consider to be ridiculous. I really remember a time when I could buy games, they were cheaper, and they were all real. Nowadays, I only buy a game if I want to play it online, and it's always a drag to pay $50 for something that would sell more if it costed less.
I bet that there were a bunch of kids (the ignorant arrogant consumer types) who went into this store with their birthday money and didn't even know they were being charged for the modding. And after reading a comment on CNet, it seems they had plasma screens to try out games, which makes their store better than the average stores, e.g. EB games, any chain retail store (fucking screens angled at the floor up high and you have to look up to play and your neck hurts after a few minutes), etc.
I know many people will disagree, but also I'm on the side where you can't calculate the losses to the companies. I somewhat doubt that the average kid who loves Halo will go buy a Xbox, Halo 1 and 2 (about $230 at the least now), when they can go to this store and get 77 total games for a slightly higher price. They might play them, but if this store wasn't around, they would've never bought any 77 games ever. No losses incurred, in my opinion.
On a side note, as soon as I saw the name, I was sure I did business with this guy before. After looking at my PayPal history I see
Sep. 22, 2005 Payment To Pei Cai Completed Details -$22.88 USD $0.00 USD -$22.88 USD
for a PS2 laser. I didn't know he was selling Xboxes preloaded with games; of course at this time I'm glad I never bought one if I ever had interest. Hopefully no one questions me about anything.
I have Trillian installed and I'm on AIM, MSN, ICQ, and Y! but I hate all of them. Trillian makes good for simplification but I still hate them. The good thing is no fucking ads all over the place like in all these clients.
The most annoying thing on earth is how AIM caught on fast with people my age (17). The protocol is OKAY but the fact that most of the users are kids my age and they are using regular AIM (and probably don't know how to disable the AIM today window which pops up every time they log in). It surprises me to death how people can stand to be bombarded with ads on AIM and still use the program.
IRC is just a better protocol even with PMs compared to AIM and every other instant messaging protocol. It's simple, no ads (for the servers I visit at least, and even if there were they would be in the MOTD (probably) but they can only be text-based), open, and the list goes on and on. I also think IRC is the best way to file transfer when compared to any IM service, email, FTP, and HTTP, although FTP is #2 on my list.
If you're thinking like CUE/MP3, I truly doubt it. On one of the "illegal" Russian MP3 services, they had a CD like that. It had no CUE file. Probably because they didn't know what a CUE did.
The question is whether WMA and AAC are gapless in the first place.
7. Note that a great deal of audio quality was lost in the process (including the conversion from AIF/WAVE or whatever to AAC on iTunes or WMA on Napster, etc).
Until the music services offer straight uncompressed ISO files or Wave files with no DRM (since it's pretty impossible unless they wish to make improper Wave files decodable only with their software, which I'm sure they could do easily), and high quality covers with it, I will not buy a damn thing from these online music services. I prefer to buy CDs and vinyls. Most are DRM free now and vinyls are always going to be DRM free. And I like having physical product.
What if your hard drive dies? Do they let you re-download every song again for free? I doubt that. CDs and vinyls can last for decades to come.
I always buy, rip, scan, then put back into the case and it's completely preserved. If I want to listen I either go onto my computer, burn it to a CD, or listen to it on my MP3 player. No burning from compressed files, no re-transcoding, no bullshit involved.
As far as the real topic involved here, no one should be stupid enough to buy from any of these stores, just because they are so called "legal." I really don't see what is wrong with real CDs and DVDs. The prices aren't necessarily nice, but I only buy every so often, and download every so often.
7. Note that a great deal of audio quality was lost in the process (including the conversion from AIF/WAVE or whatever to AAC on iTunes or WMA on Napster, etc).
Until the music services offer straight uncompressed ISO files or Wave files with no DRM (since it's pretty impossible unless they wish to make improper Wave files decodable only with their software, which I'm sure they could do easily), and high quality covers with it, I will not buy a damn thing from these online music services. I prefer to buy CDs and vinyls. Most are DRM free now and vinyls are always going to be DRM free. And I like having physical product.
What if your hard drive dies? Do they let you re-download every song again for free? I doubt that. CDs and vinyls can last for decades to come.
I always buy, rip, scan, then put back into the case and it's completely preserved.
So true! I live there too. It fucking sucks with no public transportation. I can drive but I think in many cases public transportation would be perfectly feasible. Damned greenies.
Or they could just get off the machine after the one time they use it (even after spending $800+) and watch TV on the couch like the fat asses they are.
Truth be told, every idiot who buys a treadmill is a fat ass thinking he/she might work out, but actually they buy it, set it up or have someone set it up (since they are so lazy), and then it sits in the corner of the room till they die.
I agree. I use Adblock everywhere, even Slashdot!:P
I love the script and iFrame blocking. And wildcarding is such a useful thing for nearly every site. And I've blocked common ad sites like falkag, 2mdn.net, admarketplace.net, adserver.com, advertising.com, and a whole lot of what I consider to be shit.
I know what TVtome was like. The only reason I ever use TV.com now is when epguides.com doesn't have the show on their listing. I like epguides, it's more minimal then TVtome ever was.
Maybe you guys who get bad rips should rip your own DVDs. I hardly ever download movie XviD rips because I can't trust quality from most people (especially non-scene groups). Some people are encoding 192kbps AC3 audio to MP3 for their DVDrips, and that's just stupid. I do download TV rips because I have no way currently of receiving HD and getting TS streams and all that fun stuff.
I've done a lot of squeezing for movies into 700MB XviD. The quality is quite fine on my 47" widescreen. The resolutions are 640x352/336/272/256 for widescreen, and 512x384/368 for fullscreen. I use my PS2 to play them. I've ripped about 80 movies so far (some are 2 CDs of course).
By the way, try ripping something like Jurassic Park to 2 CDs with XviD. You'll see true quality there. Impossible to see the difference between DVD and XviD in most cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I think it would suck a lot to have to pay a lost bet on credit. If I had a credit card company, I would already enforce not allowing gambling transactions on the cards. I feel like anyone who loses money this way would be less likely to pay the bill.
Like all messengers except IRC, Y! sucks ass.
I agree completely. I still hate PDF and all, but I don't want anything worse, and I generally think the more functionality, the slower it can be. I use Foxit Reader for PDF because Acrobat is garbage and always has been.
I have a fast computer and everything but before I ever hit 2GHz I always hated opening PDF and was afraid everytime I did that my computer would go mega slow. I still believe PDF is really pointless, especially when companies prefer to make a PDF document of something when they could just display it in HTML. It's much faster that way.
Yes it would be nice.
But, where does it say that a company has to promote democracy/freedom of speech wherever it is. Show me this.
Even if you did I would disagree with such a law. The Chinese government most likely says censor or be deported, etc etc. Why would a company want to lose 1.3 billion potential customers?
Don't think I'm a communist or that I believe in censorship, it's just that a government is there to govern. Just because a company derives from another country with different laws doesn't mean that company is immune to laws of China, especially the ones that work for the company that are native-born. If I were in this situation that Google and Yahoo were, I would do exactly as they did. (If I were native-born living in China I would probably use proxying tools to avoid the Chinese firewall).
By the way, China is not a dictatorship. It's one huge communist party lead by a person just the same way the government of the US is lead by the president. It's the largest political party in the world, and first largest communist next to Japan's. See here for more info.
This hearing coming up will be a waste of time resulting in nothing happening at all, as usual. Remember the steroid use hearing?
---------------------
Free Tibet and Taiwan
Free China
I switched to Symantec AntiVirus a while ago and it seems to be much better. My school also runs this. I remember that Norton was a slow piece. This one labeled as just Symantec AntiVirus seems to only take up less 2MB of RAM at the most. Anyone else have an opinion on this version? Getting definitions is exactly the same as Norton, but without a yearly subscription.
Who cares about stupid Windows 3.1/95/98 users?! I seriously would only care about supporting IE 5, 6, and Firefox and say screw off to anyone using anything else. From a business sense this sounds bad automatically. However, telling users that they suck at life in a nice way will help to spread some good knowledge. On said website, I would have a Spread Firefox link somewhere near the bottom.
Sure, helps for the web, but really can't help someone who steals the card and then goes for a little shopping. Stores will not accept a card number. No way no how.
How is it NOT blocky as fuck?
Commentary for big bird goes to Japan?
And what are the added features? Out-takes? I gotta see this DVD.
FLAC/any lossless is so stupid. I hate the idea of attempting to compress WAVs losslesly. These people are simply wasting space.
The only place where piracy of NES games was rampant was China and Taiwan (and surrounding areas, including Russia). Cartridges did prevent piracy at the time in the US, but this was really because there was not many people with Internet access at the time. Perhaps you would not even know about ROM cart systems had you not had enough Internet access in your lifetime. And the fact is, people see cartridges and never even begin to ponder being able to get/make/flash copies. This is also the same for console games and DVD's for (I would say) the MAJORITY of the US population. If anyone heres about burning games or DVDs, they then wonder how but then think that they are too stupid or too lazy or whatever to do it ("What's a modchip?" eh). Like the MPAA would like, not many know anything about computers, DRM, or the CSS protection still being (uselessly) placed on DVDs today. And now they put a "No copying" type of symbol on the covers. They don't know that average consumers don't read anything? Regardless, I think cartridges are a slight solution to the piracy problem. If you are on the side for backing up your games legally (or piracy I guess), then we are so lucky that people in China/Taiwan/Asia area work so hard to make these. The fact is the majority of people do not know about these at all, nor do they know about ROMs, etc. And then don't forget about the "I hate shit made in China" people or the "The Chinese are crazy!" people. These are the young men who are simply republican (and want to bring back laboring workforces to the US) because if they are democratic, they support gay rights and believe it or not, most men do not because they are homophobic. It all links together somehow.
Finally, someone who knows posts!
Yeah. You guys who think LP's are gone are really really uninformed. In case you didn't know, CDJ'ing (or MP3J'ing) is not nearly as easy as mixing vinyls. In all kinds of music, for DJ's (and for me who just likes that music (and it doesn't come out on CD!)), vinyl is great. The quality is just the same as CD if you ask me.
Audio tape is really what is dead. That shit was shit!
I'm completely with you on this. The entire software industry (including games of course) is just screwing consumers if you ask me. The big software titles and big games, all in all they really do cost a fortune (LICENSE FEES!) for the average person (or small business) yet there are these (arrogant) people out there who pay (most of which don't know about copying). We've got the big software titles (industry standard apparently and certainly not open source) like Autodesk software, Adobe software, Microsoft software etc. $300 for Photoshop, $265 for Windows XP, and an even higher price for software like Cubase SX, etc. Meanwhile new games of all types cost $50. All of these prices I consider to be ridiculous. I really remember a time when I could buy games, they were cheaper, and they were all real. Nowadays, I only buy a game if I want to play it online, and it's always a drag to pay $50 for something that would sell more if it costed less.
I bet that there were a bunch of kids (the ignorant arrogant consumer types) who went into this store with their birthday money and didn't even know they were being charged for the modding. And after reading a comment on CNet, it seems they had plasma screens to try out games, which makes their store better than the average stores, e.g. EB games, any chain retail store (fucking screens angled at the floor up high and you have to look up to play and your neck hurts after a few minutes), etc.
I know many people will disagree, but also I'm on the side where you can't calculate the losses to the companies. I somewhat doubt that the average kid who loves Halo will go buy a Xbox, Halo 1 and 2 (about $230 at the least now), when they can go to this store and get 77 total games for a slightly higher price. They might play them, but if this store wasn't around, they would've never bought any 77 games ever. No losses incurred, in my opinion.
On a side note, as soon as I saw the name, I was sure I did business with this guy before. After looking at my PayPal history I see
Sep. 22, 2005 Payment To Pei Cai Completed Details -$22.88 USD $0.00 USD -$22.88 USD
for a PS2 laser. I didn't know he was selling Xboxes preloaded with games; of course at this time I'm glad I never bought one if I ever had interest. Hopefully no one questions me about anything.
Why is this news just getting out? This was like a week ago!
My opinion is everything should be IRC style.
I have Trillian installed and I'm on AIM, MSN, ICQ, and Y! but I hate all of them. Trillian makes good for simplification but I still hate them. The good thing is no fucking ads all over the place like in all these clients.
The most annoying thing on earth is how AIM caught on fast with people my age (17). The protocol is OKAY but the fact that most of the users are kids my age and they are using regular AIM (and probably don't know how to disable the AIM today window which pops up every time they log in). It surprises me to death how people can stand to be bombarded with ads on AIM and still use the program.
IRC is just a better protocol even with PMs compared to AIM and every other instant messaging protocol. It's simple, no ads (for the servers I visit at least, and even if there were they would be in the MOTD (probably) but they can only be text-based), open, and the list goes on and on. I also think IRC is the best way to file transfer when compared to any IM service, email, FTP, and HTTP, although FTP is #2 on my list.
If you're thinking like CUE/MP3, I truly doubt it. On one of the "illegal" Russian MP3 services, they had a CD like that. It had no CUE file. Probably because they didn't know what a CUE did.
The question is whether WMA and AAC are gapless in the first place.
7. Note that a great deal of audio quality was lost in the process (including the conversion from AIF/WAVE or whatever to AAC on iTunes or WMA on Napster, etc).
Until the music services offer straight uncompressed ISO files or Wave files with no DRM (since it's pretty impossible unless they wish to make improper Wave files decodable only with their software, which I'm sure they could do easily), and high quality covers with it, I will not buy a damn thing from these online music services. I prefer to buy CDs and vinyls. Most are DRM free now and vinyls are always going to be DRM free. And I like having physical product.
What if your hard drive dies? Do they let you re-download every song again for free? I doubt that. CDs and vinyls can last for decades to come.
I always buy, rip, scan, then put back into the case and it's completely preserved. If I want to listen I either go onto my computer, burn it to a CD, or listen to it on my MP3 player. No burning from compressed files, no re-transcoding, no bullshit involved.
As far as the real topic involved here, no one should be stupid enough to buy from any of these stores, just because they are so called "legal." I really don't see what is wrong with real CDs and DVDs. The prices aren't necessarily nice, but I only buy every so often, and download every so often.
7. Note that a great deal of audio quality was lost in the process (including the conversion from AIF/WAVE or whatever to AAC on iTunes or WMA on Napster, etc). Until the music services offer straight uncompressed ISO files or Wave files with no DRM (since it's pretty impossible unless they wish to make improper Wave files decodable only with their software, which I'm sure they could do easily), and high quality covers with it, I will not buy a damn thing from these online music services. I prefer to buy CDs and vinyls. Most are DRM free now and vinyls are always going to be DRM free. And I like having physical product. What if your hard drive dies? Do they let you re-download every song again for free? I doubt that. CDs and vinyls can last for decades to come. I always buy, rip, scan, then put back into the case and it's completely preserved.
So true! I live there too. It fucking sucks with no public transportation. I can drive but I think in many cases public transportation would be perfectly feasible. Damned greenies.
Or they could just get off the machine after the one time they use it (even after spending $800+) and watch TV on the couch like the fat asses they are.
Truth be told, every idiot who buys a treadmill is a fat ass thinking he/she might work out, but actually they buy it, set it up or have someone set it up (since they are so lazy), and then it sits in the corner of the room till they die.
I agree. I use Adblock everywhere, even Slashdot! :P
I love the script and iFrame blocking. And wildcarding is such a useful thing for nearly every site. And I've blocked common ad sites like falkag, 2mdn.net, admarketplace.net, adserver.com, advertising.com, and a whole lot of what I consider to be shit.
Actually I really liked Wallace and Gromit. DVDs are all the history I need now I guess.
WHICH ONE OF YOU PRICKS SET FIRE TO THIS BUILDING?
I know what TVtome was like. The only reason I ever use TV.com now is when epguides.com doesn't have the show on their listing. I like epguides, it's more minimal then TVtome ever was.
As usual a dead link on a Slashdot news article. This would be great if (a) it loaded, and (b) it doesn't have flash all over the place live tv.com
Maybe you guys who get bad rips should rip your own DVDs. I hardly ever download movie XviD rips because I can't trust quality from most people (especially non-scene groups). Some people are encoding 192kbps AC3 audio to MP3 for their DVDrips, and that's just stupid. I do download TV rips because I have no way currently of receiving HD and getting TS streams and all that fun stuff. I've done a lot of squeezing for movies into 700MB XviD. The quality is quite fine on my 47" widescreen. The resolutions are 640x352/336/272/256 for widescreen, and 512x384/368 for fullscreen. I use my PS2 to play them. I've ripped about 80 movies so far (some are 2 CDs of course). By the way, try ripping something like Jurassic Park to 2 CDs with XviD. You'll see true quality there. Impossible to see the difference between DVD and XviD in most cases.