Yes but google's motto it "don't be evil". Maybe they should change that to "don't be quite as evil as the other guys". But I guess that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
But they aren't evil, just look:
This month, Google announced that it would build a new computer center in Lenoir, bringing as much as $600 million in investment and as many as 200 jobs.
We have the numbers, so we are right. Because it's popular to say its man-caused, you know its right. Because a bunch of obvious unbiased greenies and socialist say its right, it must be right. We poop on your science and replace it with our hysteria cloaked in scientific terms.
I know you are joking and all, but science is decidedly not a popularity contest, you are thinking of religion. Scientists that make vague assertions based on little or no data usually have no credibility in the scientific community. The facts are available to refute and are largely documented and published. The fact that the opposition doesn't receive much of a voice is due in great part to their theories not being founded upon solid science, but rather political motivation from oil companies. We surely need to absolve this notion that the scientific community is driven solely by popular opinion. If that were the case then we wouldn't have had many of the developments we have had today, such as evolution, which is still today a subject of debate. Scientists might back one theory over another, but it usually has very little to do with belief (although person investment might taint opinion). I'm sick of all this science is the new religion crap. Science is about meticulous pursuit of truth, pseudo-science and religion are popularity contests, Charles Darwin and Copernicus weren't popular with religion and overall opinion until the validity of their theories were seen to surpass the belief structures they supposedly poked holes in. Science isn't belief, it's process.
Google personalized page loads in 1 second. Yahoo takes about the same, maybe a bit longer but is harder to use due to visually noisy design. Windows Live personalized page takes 6 seconds. Net Vibes takes even longer.
The winner is Google, case closed.
Not to mention it integrates with gmail without having to give it something it already knew, whereas you are providing net vibes with info. And gmail is the only web e-mail that actually has a nice mobile solution as well. If you are going to have a portal, it would probably be best to have your web e-mail align with it, and gmail has to be the best web e-mail I've seen.
I'm floored that new titles aren't being released in both DVD and in their respective HD format at the same time. The studios seem too busy trying to 'catch up', releasing titles already available on DVD. I know they're doing this in hopes that people purchase both the DVD version and HD version when it's released later, in an effort to double their money.
What's to say that people will buy the HD version when it's released? Look, I own an HD TV, and let me tell you, DVD is pretty good for those too. I doubt many people will re-buy the HD version of Golden Girls, season 2 even if they were dumb enough to buy the original DVD version.
People seem to forget that these drives are backwards compatible and play DVDs, most people won't bother buying both even if they have the HD player in a few years when you can buy them two for $50 at walmart. VHS and DVD were kind of incompatible formats and DVD offered a lot of actual convenience benefits. HD-DVDs are just DVDs with better quality, nobody is gonna re-buy their whole collection, especially when they can still watch the old discs with the new player. I understand the technical differences and I wouldn't do this.
Sorry, blaming problems on everyone but us doesn't do anything except prevent the problems from being solved (and it can cause even more problems).
The problem I have with linux is that the answers aren't centralized due to its fragmented way of functioning. I understand choice in distro, etc. But the fact is that if I want to find a wireless card that will work with linux, there's no hotbutton website I can go to that will ensure the thing will work. Recently, I had to figure out a way to get wireless access to a linux PC I had setup at my girlfriend's house and I did an exhaustive search trying to determine what if any wireless card I could get that would be certified to work. I couldn't find anything but loosely put together and poorly organized and somewhat outdated hardware suggestion sites with various reviews on the topics. The fact of the matter is that no hardware vendors are coming out to support it fully. If I could buy hardware I _knew_ worked in linux to phase out windows piece by piece in all of my computers I would do it, quite simply put. But to take the chance of converting a perfectly working media center system into a semi-useful run of the mill computer isn't worth it to me. I would go out of my way to buy open source compatible hardware given that it was at least tolerable in every other aspect in order to phase in the ability to run linux, but I can't find reference materials or vendors that agree with this mentality.
The solution to my problem ended up just being to put a hardware wireless bridge in downstairs and then run a line to the box's ethernet card. Only solution I knew before I bought it that it would work without an insane amount of tweaking. But sincerely, this should not be the way. Linux seems too hackerish to use for the average person just yet, I can't count on anything just working. It doesn't stop me from running it, but I do so as an expert or "power" user, I couldn't imagine asking other people to do the same as a realistic choice.
We need a set of hardware vendors that will actually support linux and stand behind that support. Then I can start phasing out non-linux compatible peripherals and cards and put in ones I know will work, and install linux on all of my boxes eventually. Until then, there's no way to tell.
I don't blame the airline industries and auto industries for deciding to support only the iPod. It's kind of a "Hey asshats, if you're going to keep being retarded and uncooperative with eachother, then we will just support this guy who has 75% of the market anyway".
Oh please, like you can't get a RCA out for just about every media player on the market including the iPod. If they didn't wanna be Apple shills they could've easily installed monitors with a set of RCA in ports and made everyone happy. They are probably just irritated that they wouldn't be able to sell the cables that way. Anyone who doesn't think that whole thing was just a scam isn't opening their eyes wide enough.
Bah.
Are you going to school to get a grade or to get an education? If the former, then by all means focus on giving the instructor exactly what he/she wants. If the latter, then put in the extra effort, do what's cool, and accept that some instructors will dock your grade because you confused them. Obviously, if you want to come out of the experience with a degree, you do have to play their game enough to pass the classes -- but don't, by any means, allow your focus on getting a degree to prevent you from getting the best education you can from the experience.
IMO, both should be one in the same, however, they are not as teachers are sometimes either envious of their students' abilities or misunderstand them. I had an assignment in my health class to create a "health magazine" including things such as horoscope, advertisements, etc. I completed the entire thing using professional style page layout software and it looked almost like an actual magazine. However, when I got the item back, the teacher assumed that I had plagiarized because the magazine was "too professional." She was confused at how I was able to make horoscopes without professional guidance, as if it takes a professional to make vague assertions (perhaps she found hers fit or something) and thought the advertisements were ripped off I guess. When she handed it back to me I was like, "so you want me to make it look crappier?" and she replied, basically, yes. Now, maybe I screwed myself by doing a professional looking thing for a health project, but it wasn't much more work than making a crummy one so I figured used the better software. Long story short, I handed in a crappier looking magazine and was given a B or something, and I learned that teachers are often looking for amateur work.
Hmmm? Linux already supports more hardware out of the box than Windows does. I'm not talking ancient SCSI cards either; I mean components like an onboard Intel PRO 10/100 NIC from a few years ago that requires an extra driver on XP SP2, but works automagically with e100 on Linux. The only segment where Linux falls down is on very new hardware.
I am sure this is the case statistically, but anecdotally I've noticed that things I don't expect to "just work" (TM) with linux oftentimes do. My girlfriend's digital camera working without a driver install really sort of surprised me as I expected it not to work at all. The same camera often requires driver installs on windows (differing per version). I'm actually quite impressed with Linux's hardware support.
We do have SIM cards in our phones here in America, but providers can choose to lock their phones so that they won't work with a SIM card from another provider. It's not a technological issue, it's a business decision. And last time I checked, cell service carriers are enormously profitable.
Yep, but if you are smart you can also use the Internet to your advantage and buy your phone from Canada where the market/politicians/business/whatever prevents phone makers from doing this, and everything works just as it should once you get it past the border. An internet search on "unlocked phones" will help you never have to buy another cell phone simply because you switched providers.
Ergo, this is just market forces at work. The market has spoken, and people prefer the iPod and iTunes to the competition. Until there's good evidence that iTunes prevents someone from, say, playing a WMA file on Windows or the like, Apple's in the clear on this. Let them have their success, and stop monkeying with the system.
What would you say if I told you that Windows being the dominant OS and IE being the dominant browser was also the market forces? There's a reason why laissez faire capitalism is equally comparable (as far as idealism goes) to communism. Over or under control of the "market" both have their issues. Apple hasn't yet displayed really anti-competitive behavior yet, but give them time. If given the choice between a shareholder's wishes and a customer's, especially if the customer is unlikely to notice, the shareholder always wins.
But they invariably _have_ to have some benchmark-breaking super-card to grab the headlines with. The way it works is that while only a minority of people will actually buy the top-end graphics card, there are millions of people who just need a reminder that "nVidia is fast" or "ATIs are fast". They'll go to some benchmark site to see some "nVidia's 8800 GTX is faster than ATI's X1900XTX!" article (not entirely unexpected, it's one generation ahead), end up with some vague "nVidia is faster than ATI" idea, then go buy a 5200. Which is the lowest end of two generations behind the ATI, or 3 behind that 8800 GTX.
Maybe I'm in the minority of people here, but I've always gone to sites that have actual reviews of the card I will potentially be buying. Companies have different models and each one of those models of product has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think a lot of the people that do a lot of shopping comparison online (i.e. most of the market that's actually going to be buying/installing their own graphics card) know this and do the same. ATI and Nvidia cards are only going to sell to a certain section of the market other than OEMs, and I doubt very severely that this is the approach that the type of people upgrading video cards would use in determining which card to purchase. I know I usually check out anandtech.com and look for benchmarks on the price range that I'm in.
This is like saying "Alpine stereos are better" and buying the lowest model level alpine without comparing it to anything else in the price range, nobody who is going to be installing it themselves can be that stupid, unless they were fanboys looking for a reason to hype up their favorite company anyway. Either way it doesn't look like a real market strategy to me.
Oh the horror. Just imagine if Wikipedia was written only by people who knew what they were talking about. Terrors like that keep me up at night.
I'm sick and tired of this particular beef with wikipedia. Just because you can't quote wikipedia in your thesis for your doctorate doesn't mean its useless. If you want reliable source material look elsewhere, if you want an exorbitant quantity of information, Wikipedia has that. It's the quick and dirty resource for people who might just need to know a few things about a subject without having to fact check and such. That's what it should be treated as. The fact that non-experts are allowed to edit entries is what made it grow to be the resource it is today.
If some of the information is inaccurate, so what? It's not like heart surgeons are looking up how to conduct an operation on Wikipedia. People need to stop beating on its potential for inaccuracy and instead see it as what it is, a great resource for learning about topics or at least a starting point given no other resources. The Internet as a whole tends to have a large amount of inaccurate information, but that doesn't make the Internet useless. The quantity of information largely and fully outweighs the risk of inaccuracy. Everything has inaccuracies anyway, and Wikipedia's usefulness makes any mistakes it has well worth the benefit of having it versus not having it. It's a mighty powerful resource, and I'm tired of hearing it bashed just because some random vandal could and sometimes does screw up a few entries (even though they are usually fixed in a pretty timely manner). It's an online resource, take it for what it is and quit bitching about how one entry out of 10,000 is inaccurate, and just be thankful you have the 10,000 entries. Or better yet, just don't use it if you find it offensive.
Even having the option seems dangerous, as many "power users" will probably enable everything in the BIOS they can, regardless of risk/reward.
Having the option in the BIOS isn't dangerous. I'm sorry, but I don't think "power users" need to be protected from themselves. BIOS has plenty of dangerous settings already that can seriously screw up your computer or at least change its configuration to something undesirable, and if people who don't know what they are doing are just going willy nilly through the BIOS enabling things they don't understand, that's completely their own fault and they shall deserve the consequences. Please don't say a computer company protecting us from ourselves is a good thing. It's our equipment, we should be able to do what we like with it.
Let me be the first to say "Tengo un gato en mis pantalones."
Either that or "Tengo un sandwich de jamón en mi sombrero." After that, the conversation usually goes downhill from there.
This reminds me of a practice I used to have in Spanish class where I'd fill in Spanish gibberish when I forgot to do my homework while the teacher was walking around checking everyone's stupid little workbooks. I was caught once at this as she, for once, actually read a portion of what I wrote in my book. There was a question in the workbook, something like "what time is it?" and my response, which she read aloud with a question mark was "Me gusta cocinar in el coche?"
I suggest you look up the word killed. It is not a synonym for murder. She was killed. When you commit sucide you "kill yourself" not "die yourself."
You'll have to forgive him, our parent seems to be a member of the dreaded word police. His post is brought to you by the same group of assholes that thinks "if you change the name of the condition you change the condition."
We're not handicapped, we're hand-i-capable!
Either way a mother is dead over a plastic gadget and a stupid radio contest.
See George Carlin for more occurrences of this phenomenon.
This is a pipe dream even with a fully regulated hardware path, because in a lot of cases the only difference between an infringing use and a non-infringing one is the human's intent.
Not only this, but it doesn't take into account the fact that pirates are often not even going through DRMed channels to obtain their material. While I'm sure some on the scene do crack DRM to upload to the Internet, some of the material isn't even out of the theater yet, which shows that they are obviously _not_ getting the material from even a DVD.
Non-DRMed media will be copied and shared from its leaked source, and unless hardware makers want to attempt to make any non-corporately sponsored video not work on Windows, it will be able to be played. Given those two factors the piracy never, EVER, stops. So in the end DRM has to be about one thing if it's not preventing piracy, and that's lock-in. Pure and simple. They want it to be hard for you to rip your CDs to MP3 so they can sell you the CD and also the MP3...
I mean... looking at IMDB... the Tom Clancy movies, Air Force One (Worst Idea Ever), The Fugitive, Firewall, K-19... the guy's become a grim automaton. Some of those movies were decent, but his characters were pretty much the same in every damn one. Anyway, let's hope that IJ4 breaks the long grey-brown streak.
The Fugitive was a bit more than decent, and few other actors could have pulled that role off with such authenticity. That film given to any other actor would've probably been a disaster. And that movie was excellent. Even "pee on your parade" IMDB gives it a 7.7/10.
Right on. I think the only reason more people don't point out the parallels between HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray to the last format war (SACD vs. DVD-Audio) was that SACD and DVD-Audio were both such catastrophic failures that only audiophiles even know what they were. Because in the mean time, mp3s took over.
Convenience kicks quality's ass. Even for people who know that MP3s are on a whole worse than CD. First of all, most speakers we buy, you can't really tell the difference. Most headphones, same. DVDs won because VHS was the equivalent of the audio tape (no ability to skip to scenes, had to rewind, etc). There is a good chance that HD-DVD could end up the same as SACD and DVD-A. MP3s are the next step forward in convenience. They mean not having to carry around stacks of CDs and having portable access to a lot of music. Arguably, once they catch on widely, xvid and divx are the next step in convenience. If there were computer attachable devices, or a widely marketed portable player that played some type of open video format, this would take off more as well. The price point is also somewhat high, this is for early adopters. Having access to more movies easier is better than having access to the 1080i version of talledega nights, and this convenience can be achieved a lot cheaper than its quality counterpart. More than likely, on demand services will continue to take off, and in HD format. Even my parents have started renting on demand HD movies, if the price point for these would come down, that would eliminate the need for most HD format discs immediately. Add the ability to permanently purchase somehow, and it would completely eliminate it.
What's with the massive anti-HD sentiment regarding porn? What happened when you guys see a woman in real life? Do you go "EWWWWWWW! She's so hi-def! I can see her pores!" Christ, if detail really turns you off that much why not just confine yourself to viewing hentai?
If a slashdot user does ever get laid, they usually take off their coke bottle glasses first, effectively turning the HD woman into a DVD or even 56k WMV version.
Cringely points out that the original Jobs MacIntosh bombed because he locked out third-party hardware vendors. Now Jobs is doing the same with the iPhone, but this time locking out third-party software vendors. The only real question here is "Will this stop people from buying the iPhone?" Won't worry Grandma or little Bobby, but would it bother your tech savy user? Jobs is betting it won't.
It seems to me, and I didn't think of it until now, but Apple has always, in my mind, been on the same level an enemy of openness as Microsoft. I've refused to buy the iPod because of its ridiculously unneeded closed system and the idea of having to "hack" my own device (paying for the "privilege") to get it to function the way it should out from the gate, all because the maker of the device wanted to lock me into some sort of application and/or store.
Creative, Microsoft, etc. have all seen this as a way to commit the same evils themselves. Instead of allowing direct hard disk access to their devices, they'd rather subject us to their vendor lockin, relying on their crummy proprietary software packages to put our music on our players. Instead of taking the opportunity to see Apple as good in certain ways, but needing an alternative, they release me too players. Anyone who buys one of these devices which aren't compatible across platform and are completely the opposite of open are helping make the problem larger.
Cue the iPhone, which at first I thought was a return to sanity for phone makers. I thought it at first to be the end of having to "download" ringtones and graphics and having to "download and purchase" everything that you could easily put on for free. (BTW, check out mbuzzy.com to see if you can at least kind of get away with putting your own ringtones on your phone without paying an arm and a leg.) I thought it was the end of the "you are basically just leasing my phone, now pay sucker" policies that phone makers seem to have with telecom companies. But it appears that Apple because of need, greed, or whatever it is has continued to placate these forces that exist to thwart the customers abilities. Apple, in the end, is seen as I thought all along a stark enemy to openness.
I won't buy an overpriced "smartphone" that's dumb as a brick when it really gets down to it. Maybe some phone maker will finally get the clue, that the telecom companies, are, in the end, going to have to give up this crappy ringtones, graphics, apps and pay to email your own pictures to yourself market. Until then, I'll take the cheapest phone I can tolerate.
(The problem I find with alternative smartphones isn't the openness but rather the storage space and costs. I can't replace my mp3 player with a 1gb SD stick, 8gb was barely gonna cut it (mine is a 20gb), when will a company implement a smart phone with a larger hard drive for media applications? The main purpose is to have an all purpose device so that you don't have to carry around 5 different ones, if it's a replacement for nothing, it's useless.)
I'd be inclined to promote Nintendo's competition factor, but I wouldn't start counting them as a threat (they don't seem to feel any need to eliminate competitors), and I think it's a BIG mistake to count Sony out as a threat.
It seems to me that this stems from the fact that they are the only game console maker that has been in the business so long. They've seen competition change, come and go. Sega used to be a major competitor for Nintendo dollar, and now their games peacefully co-exist on the same set of consoles as Nintendo games. Nintendo knows, that in the end, being profitable, especially when games are your only business, is the real key to being a long term player in the market. Sony has used its "market dominance" ideals this round to attempt to push media players, and it's clear that the focus of the gaming division isn't really even gaming anymore. Sony can lose in their gaming division, and take a loss on console sales, Nintendo has to be profitable. Sony also might, if they lose, just go back to making other electronics. MS always has other sections of its business. This is Nintendo's bread and butter and it has to be good at it. They have to have a product people want because that's where they make their money. They don't want to recoup loses, they want to have no loses. The only way to achieve these goals and increase marketshare is to be innovative and look at the market's unfulfilled potential.
Slashdot Mirror
But they aren't evil, just look:
200 jobs! What a miracle...what a great company.
I know you are joking and all, but science is decidedly not a popularity contest, you are thinking of religion. Scientists that make vague assertions based on little or no data usually have no credibility in the scientific community. The facts are available to refute and are largely documented and published. The fact that the opposition doesn't receive much of a voice is due in great part to their theories not being founded upon solid science, but rather political motivation from oil companies. We surely need to absolve this notion that the scientific community is driven solely by popular opinion. If that were the case then we wouldn't have had many of the developments we have had today, such as evolution, which is still today a subject of debate. Scientists might back one theory over another, but it usually has very little to do with belief (although person investment might taint opinion). I'm sick of all this science is the new religion crap. Science is about meticulous pursuit of truth, pseudo-science and religion are popularity contests, Charles Darwin and Copernicus weren't popular with religion and overall opinion until the validity of their theories were seen to surpass the belief structures they supposedly poked holes in. Science isn't belief, it's process.
Not to mention it integrates with gmail without having to give it something it already knew, whereas you are providing net vibes with info. And gmail is the only web e-mail that actually has a nice mobile solution as well. If you are going to have a portal, it would probably be best to have your web e-mail align with it, and gmail has to be the best web e-mail I've seen.
What's to say that people will buy the HD version when it's released? Look, I own an HD TV, and let me tell you, DVD is pretty good for those too. I doubt many people will re-buy the HD version of Golden Girls, season 2 even if they were dumb enough to buy the original DVD version.
People seem to forget that these drives are backwards compatible and play DVDs, most people won't bother buying both even if they have the HD player in a few years when you can buy them two for $50 at walmart. VHS and DVD were kind of incompatible formats and DVD offered a lot of actual convenience benefits. HD-DVDs are just DVDs with better quality, nobody is gonna re-buy their whole collection, especially when they can still watch the old discs with the new player. I understand the technical differences and I wouldn't do this.
The problem I have with linux is that the answers aren't centralized due to its fragmented way of functioning. I understand choice in distro, etc. But the fact is that if I want to find a wireless card that will work with linux, there's no hotbutton website I can go to that will ensure the thing will work. Recently, I had to figure out a way to get wireless access to a linux PC I had setup at my girlfriend's house and I did an exhaustive search trying to determine what if any wireless card I could get that would be certified to work. I couldn't find anything but loosely put together and poorly organized and somewhat outdated hardware suggestion sites with various reviews on the topics. The fact of the matter is that no hardware vendors are coming out to support it fully. If I could buy hardware I _knew_ worked in linux to phase out windows piece by piece in all of my computers I would do it, quite simply put. But to take the chance of converting a perfectly working media center system into a semi-useful run of the mill computer isn't worth it to me. I would go out of my way to buy open source compatible hardware given that it was at least tolerable in every other aspect in order to phase in the ability to run linux, but I can't find reference materials or vendors that agree with this mentality.
The solution to my problem ended up just being to put a hardware wireless bridge in downstairs and then run a line to the box's ethernet card. Only solution I knew before I bought it that it would work without an insane amount of tweaking. But sincerely, this should not be the way. Linux seems too hackerish to use for the average person just yet, I can't count on anything just working. It doesn't stop me from running it, but I do so as an expert or "power" user, I couldn't imagine asking other people to do the same as a realistic choice.
We need a set of hardware vendors that will actually support linux and stand behind that support. Then I can start phasing out non-linux compatible peripherals and cards and put in ones I know will work, and install linux on all of my boxes eventually. Until then, there's no way to tell.
Oh please, like you can't get a RCA out for just about every media player on the market including the iPod. If they didn't wanna be Apple shills they could've easily installed monitors with a set of RCA in ports and made everyone happy. They are probably just irritated that they wouldn't be able to sell the cables that way. Anyone who doesn't think that whole thing was just a scam isn't opening their eyes wide enough.
IMO, both should be one in the same, however, they are not as teachers are sometimes either envious of their students' abilities or misunderstand them. I had an assignment in my health class to create a "health magazine" including things such as horoscope, advertisements, etc. I completed the entire thing using professional style page layout software and it looked almost like an actual magazine. However, when I got the item back, the teacher assumed that I had plagiarized because the magazine was "too professional." She was confused at how I was able to make horoscopes without professional guidance, as if it takes a professional to make vague assertions (perhaps she found hers fit or something) and thought the advertisements were ripped off I guess. When she handed it back to me I was like, "so you want me to make it look crappier?" and she replied, basically, yes. Now, maybe I screwed myself by doing a professional looking thing for a health project, but it wasn't much more work than making a crummy one so I figured used the better software. Long story short, I handed in a crappier looking magazine and was given a B or something, and I learned that teachers are often looking for amateur work.
I am sure this is the case statistically, but anecdotally I've noticed that things I don't expect to "just work" (TM) with linux oftentimes do. My girlfriend's digital camera working without a driver install really sort of surprised me as I expected it not to work at all. The same camera often requires driver installs on windows (differing per version). I'm actually quite impressed with Linux's hardware support.
Yep, but if you are smart you can also use the Internet to your advantage and buy your phone from Canada where the market/politicians/business/whatever prevents phone makers from doing this, and everything works just as it should once you get it past the border. An internet search on "unlocked phones" will help you never have to buy another cell phone simply because you switched providers.
What would you say if I told you that Windows being the dominant OS and IE being the dominant browser was also the market forces? There's a reason why laissez faire capitalism is equally comparable (as far as idealism goes) to communism. Over or under control of the "market" both have their issues. Apple hasn't yet displayed really anti-competitive behavior yet, but give them time. If given the choice between a shareholder's wishes and a customer's, especially if the customer is unlikely to notice, the shareholder always wins.
From the first post:
From this (new) post:
Way to be able to tell the difference between a fighter jet and a biplane. I know this is slashdot and all, but you could at least read the summary.
It's not like the bunch of quacks that drummed up the "intelligent design" theory invented the word "design." Using it doesn't make anyone religious.
Maybe I'm in the minority of people here, but I've always gone to sites that have actual reviews of the card I will potentially be buying. Companies have different models and each one of those models of product has its own advantages and disadvantages. I think a lot of the people that do a lot of shopping comparison online (i.e. most of the market that's actually going to be buying/installing their own graphics card) know this and do the same. ATI and Nvidia cards are only going to sell to a certain section of the market other than OEMs, and I doubt very severely that this is the approach that the type of people upgrading video cards would use in determining which card to purchase. I know I usually check out anandtech.com and look for benchmarks on the price range that I'm in.
This is like saying "Alpine stereos are better" and buying the lowest model level alpine without comparing it to anything else in the price range, nobody who is going to be installing it themselves can be that stupid, unless they were fanboys looking for a reason to hype up their favorite company anyway. Either way it doesn't look like a real market strategy to me.
I'm sick and tired of this particular beef with wikipedia. Just because you can't quote wikipedia in your thesis for your doctorate doesn't mean its useless. If you want reliable source material look elsewhere, if you want an exorbitant quantity of information, Wikipedia has that. It's the quick and dirty resource for people who might just need to know a few things about a subject without having to fact check and such. That's what it should be treated as. The fact that non-experts are allowed to edit entries is what made it grow to be the resource it is today.
If some of the information is inaccurate, so what? It's not like heart surgeons are looking up how to conduct an operation on Wikipedia. People need to stop beating on its potential for inaccuracy and instead see it as what it is, a great resource for learning about topics or at least a starting point given no other resources. The Internet as a whole tends to have a large amount of inaccurate information, but that doesn't make the Internet useless. The quantity of information largely and fully outweighs the risk of inaccuracy. Everything has inaccuracies anyway, and Wikipedia's usefulness makes any mistakes it has well worth the benefit of having it versus not having it. It's a mighty powerful resource, and I'm tired of hearing it bashed just because some random vandal could and sometimes does screw up a few entries (even though they are usually fixed in a pretty timely manner). It's an online resource, take it for what it is and quit bitching about how one entry out of 10,000 is inaccurate, and just be thankful you have the 10,000 entries. Or better yet, just don't use it if you find it offensive.
Having the option in the BIOS isn't dangerous. I'm sorry, but I don't think "power users" need to be protected from themselves. BIOS has plenty of dangerous settings already that can seriously screw up your computer or at least change its configuration to something undesirable, and if people who don't know what they are doing are just going willy nilly through the BIOS enabling things they don't understand, that's completely their own fault and they shall deserve the consequences. Please don't say a computer company protecting us from ourselves is a good thing. It's our equipment, we should be able to do what we like with it.
Why didn't you just use yEnc?
This reminds me of a practice I used to have in Spanish class where I'd fill in Spanish gibberish when I forgot to do my homework while the teacher was walking around checking everyone's stupid little workbooks. I was caught once at this as she, for once, actually read a portion of what I wrote in my book. There was a question in the workbook, something like "what time is it?" and my response, which she read aloud with a question mark was "Me gusta cocinar in el coche?"
Still my favorite Spanish phrase.
You'll have to forgive him, our parent seems to be a member of the dreaded word police. His post is brought to you by the same group of assholes that thinks "if you change the name of the condition you change the condition."
We're not handicapped, we're hand-i-capable!
Either way a mother is dead over a plastic gadget and a stupid radio contest.
See George Carlin for more occurrences of this phenomenon.
Not only this, but it doesn't take into account the fact that pirates are often not even going through DRMed channels to obtain their material. While I'm sure some on the scene do crack DRM to upload to the Internet, some of the material isn't even out of the theater yet, which shows that they are obviously _not_ getting the material from even a DVD.
Non-DRMed media will be copied and shared from its leaked source, and unless hardware makers want to attempt to make any non-corporately sponsored video not work on Windows, it will be able to be played. Given those two factors the piracy never, EVER, stops. So in the end DRM has to be about one thing if it's not preventing piracy, and that's lock-in. Pure and simple. They want it to be hard for you to rip your CDs to MP3 so they can sell you the CD and also the MP3...
The Fugitive was a bit more than decent, and few other actors could have pulled that role off with such authenticity. That film given to any other actor would've probably been a disaster. And that movie was excellent. Even "pee on your parade" IMDB gives it a 7.7/10.
Convenience kicks quality's ass. Even for people who know that MP3s are on a whole worse than CD. First of all, most speakers we buy, you can't really tell the difference. Most headphones, same. DVDs won because VHS was the equivalent of the audio tape (no ability to skip to scenes, had to rewind, etc). There is a good chance that HD-DVD could end up the same as SACD and DVD-A. MP3s are the next step forward in convenience. They mean not having to carry around stacks of CDs and having portable access to a lot of music. Arguably, once they catch on widely, xvid and divx are the next step in convenience. If there were computer attachable devices, or a widely marketed portable player that played some type of open video format, this would take off more as well. The price point is also somewhat high, this is for early adopters. Having access to more movies easier is better than having access to the 1080i version of talledega nights, and this convenience can be achieved a lot cheaper than its quality counterpart. More than likely, on demand services will continue to take off, and in HD format. Even my parents have started renting on demand HD movies, if the price point for these would come down, that would eliminate the need for most HD format discs immediately. Add the ability to permanently purchase somehow, and it would completely eliminate it.
If a slashdot user does ever get laid, they usually take off their coke bottle glasses first, effectively turning the HD woman into a DVD or even 56k WMV version.
It seems to me, and I didn't think of it until now, but Apple has always, in my mind, been on the same level an enemy of openness as Microsoft. I've refused to buy the iPod because of its ridiculously unneeded closed system and the idea of having to "hack" my own device (paying for the "privilege") to get it to function the way it should out from the gate, all because the maker of the device wanted to lock me into some sort of application and/or store.
Creative, Microsoft, etc. have all seen this as a way to commit the same evils themselves. Instead of allowing direct hard disk access to their devices, they'd rather subject us to their vendor lockin, relying on their crummy proprietary software packages to put our music on our players. Instead of taking the opportunity to see Apple as good in certain ways, but needing an alternative, they release me too players. Anyone who buys one of these devices which aren't compatible across platform and are completely the opposite of open are helping make the problem larger.
Cue the iPhone, which at first I thought was a return to sanity for phone makers. I thought it at first to be the end of having to "download" ringtones and graphics and having to "download and purchase" everything that you could easily put on for free. (BTW, check out mbuzzy.com to see if you can at least kind of get away with putting your own ringtones on your phone without paying an arm and a leg.) I thought it was the end of the "you are basically just leasing my phone, now pay sucker" policies that phone makers seem to have with telecom companies. But it appears that Apple because of need, greed, or whatever it is has continued to placate these forces that exist to thwart the customers abilities. Apple, in the end, is seen as I thought all along a stark enemy to openness.
I won't buy an overpriced "smartphone" that's dumb as a brick when it really gets down to it. Maybe some phone maker will finally get the clue, that the telecom companies, are, in the end, going to have to give up this crappy ringtones, graphics, apps and pay to email your own pictures to yourself market. Until then, I'll take the cheapest phone I can tolerate.
(The problem I find with alternative smartphones isn't the openness but rather the storage space and costs. I can't replace my mp3 player with a 1gb SD stick, 8gb was barely gonna cut it (mine is a 20gb), when will a company implement a smart phone with a larger hard drive for media applications? The main purpose is to have an all purpose device so that you don't have to carry around 5 different ones, if it's a replacement for nothing, it's useless.)
It seems to me that this stems from the fact that they are the only game console maker that has been in the business so long. They've seen competition change, come and go. Sega used to be a major competitor for Nintendo dollar, and now their games peacefully co-exist on the same set of consoles as Nintendo games. Nintendo knows, that in the end, being profitable, especially when games are your only business, is the real key to being a long term player in the market. Sony has used its "market dominance" ideals this round to attempt to push media players, and it's clear that the focus of the gaming division isn't really even gaming anymore. Sony can lose in their gaming division, and take a loss on console sales, Nintendo has to be profitable. Sony also might, if they lose, just go back to making other electronics. MS always has other sections of its business. This is Nintendo's bread and butter and it has to be good at it. They have to have a product people want because that's where they make their money. They don't want to recoup loses, they want to have no loses. The only way to achieve these goals and increase marketshare is to be innovative and look at the market's unfulfilled potential.
From here, it looked like a picture of 7-11s in Japan _not_ selling the PS3. I bet our 7-11s are glad they can just make profits on slurpees.