Very true- in my case I used to use my PC for recording shows when I wasn't around, which served me well at university, despite niggling driver problems. It did the job.
A year ago I got a Philips PVR/DVD recorder and it was a mini revolution. No fiddling, minimal power consumption, and no crashes (except that one time, but I was kinda taking the piss). What's more, it caches the last 6 hours of TV on the HD and has a very good interface for creating recordings. When a recording is done, I can burn a 2 hour movie to DVD in about 15 minutes and watch that pretty much anywhere.
The critical difference in my revolution was the little bit of stress involved in maintaining a PC to do my recordings, worrying that the machine would crash when it was recording, managing the HD space required and not being able to play games while recording.
People need something that they can just sit down in front of and use as easily as a VCR. Nothing else will do for someone just wanting to come in and flop down in front of the TV.
TiVos, Sky+ Boxes and PVRs are the way things will evolve; those boxes will eventually come to the level of functionality of a full media PC- natural selection will ensure that they stay easy to use.
People want the 'aaah' factor of sitting down in front of the TV.
I don't know if any astrarchaeologist could afford a detector in their mobile phone.
Even if they did add that to a mobile phone I'm sure we'd get complaints that it makes the phone too complicated and why can't we have a phone that's just a phone;)
In an ideal situation there would be thousands music selling services out there, in much the same way that there are lots and lots of book retailers in the world. In that kind of scenario, Google could act as a sort of directory or a froogle for music that lets you find a particular artist's music for sale in the format you want. They could charge for referrals and skim 2-3c off of every transaction for their services.
That'd be nice, but it's unlikely to happen too soon, as we're stuck with a slew of different formats, business models and DRM lockins that mean if you want to buy music online, it's vendor lock-in all the way:o|
The bottom line is people need to be able to change vendors and hardware the way you could change CD players and the shop you bought CDs in.
DVDs are commodity goods sold over the counter, not works for hire, and not contracts. You OWN the copy of the content, NOT license it.
When you buy a DVD, the only thing you own is a plastic disc with a copy of the movie's data and an agreement (i.e licence) that says you can watch the content, provided you don't go charging entry. You might notice the terms of this agreement flashing up for 20 seconds when you put a DVD into your player. You own the DVD. You do not in any way own the movie on that disc because you didn't write it, direct it, act in it, do any of the production work or pay for the whole project.
The person who owns the movie is the copyright holder. That's not you, it's not the MPAA. It's the movie studio.
Fair use includes the r by.ight to watch that movie, loan the physical disc to people and to make copies for your own use, and that is the right that I'm defending and the right that the MPAA feel so threatened
The MPAA have alreay had their money out of this deal. The consumer in question has already paid for their DVD and it's licence to use the content, so all CC are doing is taking the effort out of the consumer's choice to exercise their right to fair use of their legally licenced content. Of course the MPAA don't see this.
This service is almost identical in nature to the services where you cn ship off a box of your CDs and get them sent back to you all ripped as MP3s to a DVD.
Now you're scaring me. Even scarier is the thought that the already moderately annoying windows startup sound becoming a randomly downloaded advert for Viagra, penis enlargement patches and transquilisers.
Yea, in the UK and Ireland we use dd/mm/yyyy ; we say 'The twenty-ninth of july two-thousand and six' more than we say something like 'July twenty-ninth two thousand and six (unless we're talking along to the Daily Show intro.
Apart from that, doing it dd/mm/yy make logical sense, as the values are ordered in order of significance/magnitude like a numerical system (albeit in reverse order).
Also it makes ordering dates in a list via computer easy, as they'll naturally order themselves chronologically in a list if the list is sorted alphanumerically.
As far as I can remember there was a Darwin award given out a few years ago to a Marine who lost a bet that he could be stabbed hard in the chest while wearing his body armour and he wouldn't be hurt.
Being on YouTube within about 15 seconds of hitting the ground.
Since in N.Ireland and large parts of Scotland a 'tube' is an idiot, we tend to find that YouTube is a name that can be used as an exclamation upon seeing such a video.
It sounds like your idea, (which is pretty nifty), might be implementable with XML to tag the paragraphs and javascript to control the display on the web. - a bit like the expanding comments system here on/..... it'd be something that properly takes advantage of the web as a medium, too.
Of course there is a large extent to which an author would need to write and rewrite the content, but that's hardly your fault, is it?
Game makers might achieve photorealistic representations of human appearance and motion, but our new (mostly welcome) digital overlords will still bump into walls, get stuck behind things, get in your way, not look at you while they're talking and generally make mistake and act like they're just computer representations. Game makers for the most part have all the graphical juice they need to convince us of a world's authenticity.
Though I really do enjoy advances in the level of graphical detail that increasing sophistication in hardware and software bring, I feel we need better AI, not fancier graphics . If a game's AI was as big a selling point (and therefore had the same amount of money invested in developing technologies and software for it's advancement) as the graphical prowress of the hardware then I think Alyx in Half Life 2 would probably have gone sentient at this stage.
"I'm sorry Gordon, but your apparent lack of regard for your own safety means I don't want to get involved with you, i'm just afraid of getting hurt."
Slashdot Mirror
A funny one.
No-one show them this :|
A keyboard that phones home? I want a phone that lets me type at 120wpm. Now that would be impressive ^^
Very true- in my case I used to use my PC for recording shows when I wasn't around, which served me well at university, despite niggling driver problems. It did the job.
A year ago I got a Philips PVR/DVD recorder and it was a mini revolution. No fiddling, minimal power consumption, and no crashes (except that one time, but I was kinda taking the piss). What's more, it caches the last 6 hours of TV on the HD and has a very good interface for creating recordings. When a recording is done, I can burn a 2 hour movie to DVD in about 15 minutes and watch that pretty much anywhere.
The critical difference in my revolution was the little bit of stress involved in maintaining a PC to do my recordings, worrying that the machine would crash when it was recording, managing the HD space required and not being able to play games while recording.
People need something that they can just sit down in front of and use as easily as a VCR. Nothing else will do for someone just wanting to come in and flop down in front of the TV. TiVos, Sky+ Boxes and PVRs are the way things will evolve; those boxes will eventually come to the level of functionality of a full media PC- natural selection will ensure that they stay easy to use.
People want the 'aaah' factor of sitting down in front of the TV.
Maybe there's a 'tried to sue us' column in their database (or tag in some sort of semantic cluster) that does your pagerank no good at all ^^
I don't know if any astrarchaeologist could afford a detector in their mobile phone.
;)
Even if they did add that to a mobile phone I'm sure we'd get complaints that it makes the phone too complicated and why can't we have a phone that's just a phone
I'm not sure he wasn't being ironic. Not a great troll, and not really that funny either. Aw well :)
In an ideal situation there would be thousands music selling services out there, in much the same way that there are lots and lots of book retailers in the world. In that kind of scenario, Google could act as a sort of directory or a froogle for music that lets you find a particular artist's music for sale in the format you want. They could charge for referrals and skim 2-3c off of every transaction for their services.
:o|
That'd be nice, but it's unlikely to happen too soon, as we're stuck with a slew of different formats, business models and DRM lockins that mean if you want to buy music online, it's vendor lock-in all the way
The bottom line is people need to be able to change vendors and hardware the way you could change CD players and the shop you bought CDs in.
Release a sequel with better graphics but shitty gameplay and an incoherent plot.
DVDs are commodity goods sold over the counter, not works for hire, and not contracts. You OWN the copy of the content, NOT license it.
When you buy a DVD, the only thing you own is a plastic disc with a copy of the movie's data and an agreement (i.e licence) that says you can watch the content, provided you don't go charging entry. You might notice the terms of this agreement flashing up for 20 seconds when you put a DVD into your player. You own the DVD. You do not in any way own the movie on that disc because you didn't write it, direct it, act in it, do any of the production work or pay for the whole project.
The person who owns the movie is the copyright holder. That's not you, it's not the MPAA. It's the movie studio.
Fair use includes the r by.ight to watch that movie, loan the physical disc to people and to make copies for your own use, and that is the right that I'm defending and the right that the MPAA feel so threatened
"a cut of the money to the MPAA"
The MPAA have alreay had their money out of this deal. The consumer in question has already paid for their DVD and it's licence to use the content, so all CC are doing is taking the effort out of the consumer's choice to exercise their right to fair use of their legally licenced content. Of course the MPAA don't see this.
This service is almost identical in nature to the services where you cn ship off a box of your CDs and get them sent back to you all ripped as MP3s to a DVD.
Now you're scaring me. Even scarier is the thought that the already moderately annoying windows startup sound becoming a randomly downloaded advert for Viagra, penis enlargement patches and transquilisers.
One in which everyone is their age, obviously.
And your attitude reveals why you will never be satisfied with your life. Good luck with that, by the way. You'll need it.
Real's media player is so bad that you could tuck Firefox into the buffering time on a video on their shitty player and most people wouldn't notice.
We were the invaded, not the invaders.
If you get bribed, get them to bribe you not to turn them... in ......... oh wait that won't work, will it?
Yea, in the UK and Ireland we use dd/mm/yyyy ; we say 'The twenty-ninth of july two-thousand and six' more than we say something like 'July twenty-ninth two thousand and six (unless we're talking along to the Daily Show intro.
;)
Apart from that, doing it dd/mm/yy make logical sense, as the values are ordered in order of significance/magnitude like a numerical system (albeit in reverse order).
Also it makes ordering dates in a list via computer easy, as they'll naturally order themselves chronologically in a list if the list is sorted alphanumerically.
Crazy Americans
Ireland.
Root kit takes on a different meaning in this context.
Root: Kiwi/Australian slang that is used in place of the more commonly used term "fuck."
Superfluous third nipples. The fashion statement of 2019.
As far as I can remember there was a Darwin award given out a few years ago to a Marine who lost a bet that he could be stabbed hard in the chest while wearing his body armour and he wouldn't be hurt.
Being on YouTube within about 15 seconds of hitting the ground.
Since in N.Ireland and large parts of Scotland a 'tube' is an idiot, we tend to find that YouTube is a name that can be used as an exclamation upon seeing such a video.
Ouch.
It sounds like your idea, (which is pretty nifty), might be implementable with XML to tag the paragraphs and javascript to control the display on the web. - a bit like the expanding comments system here on /. .... it'd be something that properly takes advantage of the web as a medium, too.
Of course there is a large extent to which an author would need to write and rewrite the content, but that's hardly your fault, is it?
Game makers might achieve photorealistic representations of human appearance and motion, but our new (mostly welcome) digital overlords will still bump into walls, get stuck behind things, get in your way, not look at you while they're talking and generally make mistake and act like they're just computer representations. Game makers for the most part have all the graphical juice they need to convince us of a world's authenticity.
Though I really do enjoy advances in the level of graphical detail that increasing sophistication in hardware and software bring, I feel we need better AI, not fancier graphics . If a game's AI was as big a selling point (and therefore had the same amount of money invested in developing technologies and software for it's advancement) as the graphical prowress of the hardware then I think Alyx in Half Life 2 would probably have gone sentient at this stage.
"I'm sorry Gordon, but your apparent lack of regard for your own safety means I don't want to get involved with you, i'm just afraid of getting hurt."