We're living in a world where groups of people are willing to kill other people over a god damn cartoon! That should be a sure sign that we're not ready for the Utopian world that was sold to us in Star Trek.
So why don't we just pack up, move to Mars, and start our utopia there? After all, that's what the Pilgrams did when they hopped into the Mayflower.;)
As long as there are platforms with highly unique capabilities; there will be no common API. How could one create a WiiMote if the Wii had to execute a common platform?
I predict that the common platform will only be viable for games that are using minimal hardware. An example are Flash games that run in the browser, yet really aren't very technically advanced.
IF you had all of this working in software, then you could copy the cable company's key into as many other devices as you want. That way, you could pay for one TV, but have other TVs authorized. But, you would have to keep copying the key to all the other devices. You absolutely could not get perpetual free cable. The best you can do is pay for one but actually have many. Hardly even seems worth it.
If it's software based, the DEVICE could have its own key in its ROM. Thus, you would have to call the cable company for each and every device you use.
Now there's a misleading quote if I ever heard one. Magnetic drives currently allow for storage of 250GB and up for a cost of $0.50/GB or less. In comparison, Flash Drives are are still measured in dollars per GB. The hybrid drive allows a bit of a tradeoff. A fast storage cache combined with massive space in exchange for a slight increase in price. Thus it's possible to have 1TB or more of storage, but with the performance characteristics of Flash memory under most circumstances.
I agree, I think we'll see hybrid approaches for 5-15 years. There's absolutly no performance advantage to storing my MP3 or video collection in flash. In addition, we'll probably see mechanical storage used for filesystems that allow older versions of files to be restored.
Granted the plane will not be great. But I bet it will outperform this POS.
Yeah, but then you have to rent a car when you get to your destination, and you have to pay for a hanger.
For example, if I want to go skiing, it's a 4-5 hour DRIVE. If I had one of these vehicles, I could drive to the closest airport in about 15 minutes, FLY to the mountains in about an hour and a half, and then pull directly onto the road for a short 15 minute drive to the ski area. It'll cut my travel time in half, and I don't have to worry about paying for a hanger or renting a car.
I remember when I bought a giant LCD TV and DVD player with my father... The salesman tried to sell us a cable that was more expensive then the DVD player!
HDMI is where it's truly insane -- yeah, let's gold-plate a cable that transmit a digital signal. Digital is different -- either it worked or it didn't. HDMI even moreso -- if it didn't work, your entire audio/video is likely to cut out all at once, probably for a second or two, until it can be reestablished. If the video works at all, you have a good enough HDMI cable.
I heard that HDMI really doesn't do so well over distances; it's actually poorly designed. It's my understanding that a poor HDMI connection will cause pixels to be dropped, resulting in a few black pixels showing up in each frame.
That's really unfortunate, because in the analog world a poor cable will just cause a fuzzier picture.
There IS a difference in the quality of cable. Really, it is just the "quality of construction" type stuff. Cheap connectors will eventually start to corrode, and maybe even corrode itself to the device so that you break something when you unplug it (been there, done that). Getting a good quality of construction is important: nice strong strain relief, quality crimping/soldering, gold plating is sure nice to have to prevent corrosion. Also, for speaker wire, bigger is always better. This helps reduce I^2/R losses. Monster does seem to provide pretty good quality. However, with that being said, unless you find an absolute steal of a bargain, Monster is overpriced for what you get.
About four years ago, there was an article on Slashdot comparing cable quality. The moral of the article was that the freebie cables really suck, but anything that costs a few dollars is good enough. Monster cables were "better" when used with a scope, however, the difference was so small that no one could percieve it. What was really funny was that they compared a $40 monster composite cable to a freebie S-Video cable, and the S-video cable (obviously) won.
I immediatly spent about $50 replacing all of my freebie cables with (almost) cheapest cables the store carried. It actually was worth the money. If I bought Monster, I would have spent $200!
Tesla, the company that's making the ultra-fast electric car, claims that battery capacity doubles every 5 years. This means that, 30 years from now, a laptop that can run for 2 hours on a charge will be able to run for 128 hours!
Just to stay on topic: Radiohead's new album is the first that I will ever purchase for download-to-own, assuming it's a decent bitrate MP3 or AAC.
Yes, CDs sound better than mp3s, but if you rip half decently then the difference is negligible for the vast majority of people, say 95% of them. Double blind tests bear this out. Sure, a handful of audiophiles can tell the difference, but you guys are far and away in the minority. No one really cares about your airless gold plated cables on your hi-fi that cost more than my car. Most people listen to mp3s on an ipod using low end earbuds, and most people are perfectly happy with that.
I've found that the air between my speakers and ears, combined with ambient noise, causes more "loss" then "lossy" compression. With the exception of bud earphones that can push an unmodified signal directly into the ear, all systems, includng my hand-built ultra-high-end system, will induce some form of loss.
Thus, one can conclude that the signal that hits your ears, even in $20,000 systems, has significant phase changes, harmonic distortion, and an EQ curve that is NOT flat. As a result, the human ear has tolerance for loss; granted, there is debate as to what these tolerances are.
I'm not sure, but it would seem to me that Google would have thought of spoofing it's IPs long ago, to avoid people being able to track them, though I can't say how you'd go about that.
Simple: Contract with consumer ISPs like Comcast and Verizon.
The problem with SPF and friends is that they require the recipient to implement a technical fix. I've been publishing SPF for a few years. A few weeks ago, some asshole spammer decided to spoof my domain for 24 hours; resulting in about one bounce a minute to my catch-all. No one checks SPF.
This is why I'm saying $8-$9 is too much for a single album; when the industry is willing to do all-you-can-eat for slightly more per month. I'd be willing to pay $1-$2 to download an older album, and a few dollars more for a newer album. If the industry can make money on volume in all-you-can-eat, why can't they make money on volume for downloads a-la-carte?
I think it's because you can pay the $9 once and have the album forever. If I only buy a few albums per year, a monthly subscription is pointless and a waste of money.
Thus lower costs work in your favor! They will also work in the favor of someone who wants to download 80 gigs LEGALLY. That's the person who'll really keeping the the industry afloat.
You're going to purchase the pre-ripped and tagged version of the album, they're throwing out the "distribution costs" that aren't applicable, and you're mad they're not giving you a better deal?
This is what most people have been asking for: DRM-free, downloadable tunes that are priced without the distribution overhead.
The music industry is willing to allow an all-you-can-eat subscription model for (based on memory) anywhere from $8-$15 a month. If you use portable devices that work with their DRM, you can essentially have all-you-can-eat music, all the time, even without an internet connection, for very little money.
This is why I'm saying $8-$9 is too much for a single album; when the industry is willing to do all-you-can-eat for slightly more per month. I'd be willing to pay $1-$2 to download an older album, and a few dollars more for a newer album. If the industry can make money on volume in all-you-can-eat, why can't they make money on volume for downloads a-la-carte?
I suspect you won't be happy until it's free. I hope you enjoy leeching the new Britney Spears album off of Bittorrent.
Don't put words in my mouth, I kept paying for my CDs for many years, in recent years paying in excess of $40 a month. I was the guy who bought the CD "because it sounded better and I wanted to support the artist." Now I'm fed up because it's economically feasable to give everyone access to all recorded works for much less money then I paid in the last few years.
It's like they took the distribution costs of a CD, (which could be estimated at $5-$8,) chopped them off, and are still expecting to make the same profit. Why can't they charge much less and make up the profits on volume?
Until 9/30 most all of the CDs are $7 which includes a physical CD and 192K MP3 files loaded nicely and permanently into your locker.
I personally think $7 is too much to pay for an album. I'm at a point where I just want the bits, not the plastic. I'm probably preaching to the choir, but why does music have to be so damn expensive now that it can be sold in volume?
eMusic no traction? They are the second largest digital music retailer. The #1 largest DRM-free retailer and probably the only major digital retailer with (recently updated) Linux support. It's a great resource for slightly older music or anything even remotely off the beaten path (my main interest).
So what? Their billing terms suck. If I choose to pay online, they'll charge my credit card every month. If I just want to buy songs a-la-carte, I have to DRIVE to a store to buy a gift card.
WTF????
Really, eMusic will never take off until they have normal billing terms.
However, as Kurzweil and other's have observed, the speed of _computation_ has doubled over time before Moore's law and there is no reason or hint that this will stop once Moore's law is obsolete.
By the time Moore's law runs out for Silicon, we will see it sustain for non-silicon-based computing.
Whitelisting works for consoles.;) I think whitelisting will work for computing devices that aren't meant to be used as high-powered general-purpose comptuers; or for devices that could be a serious target.
For example, I might stick a device on my nightstand JUST for web browsing. Being whitelist-driven, I don't have to worry about babysitting it like I babysit my Macs and Wintels.
Each time you click on one of our ads you take somewhere between 5 cents to $1.00 directly out of our pocket.
Disclaimer: I don't advertise with Google.
I think some merchants mistakenly think that all leads from Google will generate a sale, or that they will get a higher percentage of sales from Google. The average Google user has no concept of pay-per-click; thus the average user will click away, not realizing that he/she is costing YOU money.
I also happen to know many of the merchants listed on the right advertising for those key words; after all, the high end collectible bead family is relatively small. I would *never* click on one of their ads, because I know it costs them money every time I do. If I wouldn't do this to my competitors, why would you do it to a random stranger?
So how come you're paying so much? If you know the people you're bidding against, why don't you agree to bid less? Is it as important to be the topmost link? Why not fight to be 2nd, or 3rd? You're in a situation where you can deflate the value of a click, which works in you favor!
On the other hand, I find it QUITE surprising that the Wii can so handily outsell the 360 when its game library is, all things considered, horribly outmatched. This is a very strong example of the fact that games do NOT sell the system, as many gamers like to think. Advertisements and price tag do a LOT more than the shelves of dvd-size plastic boxes with the console's logo on them, it seems.
Given two similarly-capable systems, the one with better games is the one that I would choose. In this case, however, the Wii's novelty factor is what got me to buy it. Besdies, I really don't care how large a console's game library is, as long as there are a 2-3 exellent games when I buy the console, and a reasonable garuntee that there will be at least 2-3 excellent games developed per year.
Slashdot Mirror
So why don't we just pack up, move to Mars, and start our utopia there? After all, that's what the Pilgrams did when they hopped into the Mayflower. ;)
As long as there are platforms with highly unique capabilities; there will be no common API. How could one create a WiiMote if the Wii had to execute a common platform?
I predict that the common platform will only be viable for games that are using minimal hardware. An example are Flash games that run in the browser, yet really aren't very technically advanced.
If it's software based, the DEVICE could have its own key in its ROM. Thus, you would have to call the cable company for each and every device you use.
I agree, I think we'll see hybrid approaches for 5-15 years. There's absolutly no performance advantage to storing my MP3 or video collection in flash. In addition, we'll probably see mechanical storage used for filesystems that allow older versions of files to be restored.
Yeah, but then you have to rent a car when you get to your destination, and you have to pay for a hanger.
For example, if I want to go skiing, it's a 4-5 hour DRIVE. If I had one of these vehicles, I could drive to the closest airport in about 15 minutes, FLY to the mountains in about an hour and a half, and then pull directly onto the road for a short 15 minute drive to the ski area. It'll cut my travel time in half, and I don't have to worry about paying for a hanger or renting a car.
Actually, it's perfect for day trips to go skiing, or weekend jaunts to a city on the other side of a state... Now if only I had $150K lying around...
I remember when I bought a giant LCD TV and DVD player with my father... The salesman tried to sell us a cable that was more expensive then the DVD player!
HDMI is where it's truly insane -- yeah, let's gold-plate a cable that transmit a digital signal. Digital is different -- either it worked or it didn't. HDMI even moreso -- if it didn't work, your entire audio/video is likely to cut out all at once, probably for a second or two, until it can be reestablished. If the video works at all, you have a good enough HDMI cable.I heard that HDMI really doesn't do so well over distances; it's actually poorly designed. It's my understanding that a poor HDMI connection will cause pixels to be dropped, resulting in a few black pixels showing up in each frame.
That's really unfortunate, because in the analog world a poor cable will just cause a fuzzier picture.
About four years ago, there was an article on Slashdot comparing cable quality. The moral of the article was that the freebie cables really suck, but anything that costs a few dollars is good enough. Monster cables were "better" when used with a scope, however, the difference was so small that no one could percieve it. What was really funny was that they compared a $40 monster composite cable to a freebie S-Video cable, and the S-video cable (obviously) won.
I immediatly spent about $50 replacing all of my freebie cables with (almost) cheapest cables the store carried. It actually was worth the money. If I bought Monster, I would have spent $200!
Tesla, the company that's making the ultra-fast electric car, claims that battery capacity doubles every 5 years. This means that, 30 years from now, a laptop that can run for 2 hours on a charge will be able to run for 128 hours!
Just to stay on topic: Radiohead's new album is the first that I will ever purchase for download-to-own, assuming it's a decent bitrate MP3 or AAC.
Yes, CDs sound better than mp3s, but if you rip half decently then the difference is negligible for the vast majority of people, say 95% of them. Double blind tests bear this out. Sure, a handful of audiophiles can tell the difference, but you guys are far and away in the minority. No one really cares about your airless gold plated cables on your hi-fi that cost more than my car. Most people listen to mp3s on an ipod using low end earbuds, and most people are perfectly happy with that.I've found that the air between my speakers and ears, combined with ambient noise, causes more "loss" then "lossy" compression. With the exception of bud earphones that can push an unmodified signal directly into the ear, all systems, includng my hand-built ultra-high-end system, will induce some form of loss.
Thus, one can conclude that the signal that hits your ears, even in $20,000 systems, has significant phase changes, harmonic distortion, and an EQ curve that is NOT flat. As a result, the human ear has tolerance for loss; granted, there is debate as to what these tolerances are.
Simple: Contract with consumer ISPs like Comcast and Verizon.
The problem with SPF and friends is that they require the recipient to implement a technical fix. I've been publishing SPF for a few years. A few weeks ago, some asshole spammer decided to spoof my domain for 24 hours; resulting in about one bounce a minute to my catch-all. No one checks SPF.
Thus lower costs work in your favor! They will also work in the favor of someone who wants to download 80 gigs LEGALLY. That's the person who'll really keeping the the industry afloat.
The music industry is willing to allow an all-you-can-eat subscription model for (based on memory) anywhere from $8-$15 a month. If you use portable devices that work with their DRM, you can essentially have all-you-can-eat music, all the time, even without an internet connection, for very little money.
This is why I'm saying $8-$9 is too much for a single album; when the industry is willing to do all-you-can-eat for slightly more per month. I'd be willing to pay $1-$2 to download an older album, and a few dollars more for a newer album. If the industry can make money on volume in all-you-can-eat, why can't they make money on volume for downloads a-la-carte?
I suspect you won't be happy until it's free. I hope you enjoy leeching the new Britney Spears album off of Bittorrent.Don't put words in my mouth, I kept paying for my CDs for many years, in recent years paying in excess of $40 a month. I was the guy who bought the CD "because it sounded better and I wanted to support the artist." Now I'm fed up because it's economically feasable to give everyone access to all recorded works for much less money then I paid in the last few years.
$8-$9 is too much for an album.
It's like they took the distribution costs of a CD, (which could be estimated at $5-$8,) chopped them off, and are still expecting to make the same profit. Why can't they charge much less and make up the profits on volume?
And if the cost of an x386 kept up with inflation...
Will you pay double for your next computer? It'll be twice as fast!
The fact is that the value of information is deflating.
Actualy, AnywhereCD's sale prices are lower then Amazon's MP3 downloads. What I'm trying to express is that music prices are waaaay toooooo high.
I personally think $7 is too much to pay for an album. I'm at a point where I just want the bits, not the plastic. I'm probably preaching to the choir, but why does music have to be so damn expensive now that it can be sold in volume?
So what? Their billing terms suck. If I choose to pay online, they'll charge my credit card every month. If I just want to buy songs a-la-carte, I have to DRIVE to a store to buy a gift card.
WTF????
Really, eMusic will never take off until they have normal billing terms.
This sounds just like Micheal Chrigton's Terminal Man
By the time Moore's law runs out for Silicon, we will see it sustain for non-silicon-based computing.
Whitelisting works for consoles. ;) I think whitelisting will work for computing devices that aren't meant to be used as high-powered general-purpose comptuers; or for devices that could be a serious target.
For example, I might stick a device on my nightstand JUST for web browsing. Being whitelist-driven, I don't have to worry about babysitting it like I babysit my Macs and Wintels.
Disclaimer: I don't advertise with Google.
I think some merchants mistakenly think that all leads from Google will generate a sale, or that they will get a higher percentage of sales from Google. The average Google user has no concept of pay-per-click; thus the average user will click away, not realizing that he/she is costing YOU money.
I also happen to know many of the merchants listed on the right advertising for those key words; after all, the high end collectible bead family is relatively small. I would *never* click on one of their ads, because I know it costs them money every time I do. If I wouldn't do this to my competitors, why would you do it to a random stranger?So how come you're paying so much? If you know the people you're bidding against, why don't you agree to bid less? Is it as important to be the topmost link? Why not fight to be 2nd, or 3rd? You're in a situation where you can deflate the value of a click, which works in you favor!
Given two similarly-capable systems, the one with better games is the one that I would choose. In this case, however, the Wii's novelty factor is what got me to buy it. Besdies, I really don't care how large a console's game library is, as long as there are a 2-3 exellent games when I buy the console, and a reasonable garuntee that there will be at least 2-3 excellent games developed per year.
Try a different business model. Perhaps you can sell services or a server-based function?