"Embedded hardware outships PCs by probably 100 to 1"
I'm not in the field, but I can imagine that a single person can program a whole lot of different washing machines, but a single person won't provide me with office softwares, a MMORPG, professional musical applications, to name a few that I know of.
Given the new Lisbon treaty is the same thing as the French and Dutch people voted against not long ago, Europe is on it's merry way toward authoritarianism.
That cartoon shouldn't have existed. Too good. While watching some episodes I tried to imagine the amount of work that had been necessary for the voiceovers in my language (I'm always watching in vo so I've never heard them) I was amazed by the quality of most voices and the numerous subtle effects in some episodes (exemple: A Tale Of Two Santas). Must have been terribly expensive while aiming to a pretty limited public (the less than 80 years old that are not brain dead).
And when you're a monkey (an Arab I presume), no wonder that more than a few people want to take arms even against civilians, with the thought "hey! my country, well fuck my whole region, is the whore of Western money, real democratic attempt from the Arabs have been replaced by western-compliant half democracies in the bets of case, my children have no future exept for living in the country of the people that historically oppress us, so LET'S BLOW UP SOME SHIT. That's just very human.
"rid ourselves of that middle east monkey on our backs"
This is sad. I mean, because geopolitical interest have shredded those country to bits, no wonder there's even more extremism here than in Utah. Ever heard of the Oil curse ? it's really upsetting that someone that is on the good side of the militaro-economic Empire could say that kind of things. I'm appalled.
"Shaping gaming industry" here is sometime but not necessarily related to "creating great games". Otherwise the project involving Tim Cain and other great developers would have been a nice addition to the list.
If the news is wrong, Slashdot, remove it or amend it quickly. This is not serious at all and destroys a lot of support in this site. We're not talking puppies here, so be serious.
art is not interchangeable in the same way software can be. I can say "Microsoft isn't needed anymore" because there are alternatives that perform the same functions, and often better and cheaper (or even free), but I can't say "Artist X isn't needed anymore". Because art (music in this case) doesn't merely "perform" a "function". Not good music, anyway.
As a musician with a few dozen interested listeners [which is surprising given that my music is inspired by such different artists as pierre schaeffer, the spiral tribe, or claude debussy (some kind of modal, organic, tribal, fabulous electronic music)] and I don't get what you're babbling about. Yes music is different from a PC OS. Whoa dude. Where do you place architecture by the way ? you're just silly by trying to be clever.
Cult: organization pretending to be a religion
Like a vulgar blue collar bank robber would consider himself like a high rank corrupted politician. One can dream, but Scientology is not yet at the level of the big 3 monotheism when it comes to dictating everyone's life standards, as enforced by tradition and law. Now that's nasty.
Fact is, most users want a fairly modest average bandwidth, with rare bouts of high-bandwidth usage. It's only the few rare addicts and power users that want a big pipe open to their PC all the time To me IPTV seems moree than a "fairly modest average bandwidth" (and then people tend to look TV quite a few hours a day) so I'd like to share some numbers:
39% of the customers of the third ADSL operator in France by number of subscribers (2 747 000 subscribers on the 1st January 2007) are using IPTV, via a triple play bundle. 39euros ($50) a month buys: unbridled and uncapped internet, unlimited phone calls to 50 countries, and IPTV (which as I wrote above 39% of subscribers use.) Fiber optics and HDTV are both on the rise (but with rock solid 17mbps down in a town of 40,000 I'm rather happy already).
About the modem: The ADSL modem (...) allows Free to offer added services using ADSL as support, like HD television (1080p), video recording with timeshifting capabilities, digital radio and free telephony (via one or two RJ11 according to models). There are also a few shows (example: news, the serious kind of talk shows, programs about parenting or gardening) that are available on demand. Live audience are available. VOD again, weekly updated movies and serials are available with a small fee. There are neat things like that.
So, given that they are 5 different IPTV offers in France this makes for quite a noticable market, and for example both my siblings and parents have quickly succumbed to IPTV, simply because it is much better than air TV and comes as an interesting and low priced bundle with phone and net.
I'm not an economist but from reading the journal of the same name:
Northern Rock has not collapsed It has ("The government faces this stark choice--between finding a fully financed private-sector saviour (which now looks increasingly elusive), taking the bank into public ownership or just letting it go bust").
the bank itself is still trading normally. The government is injecting lots of money to make it so ("Taxpayers' total exposure amounts to at least half of Northern Rock's balance sheet").
I don't know those devices but I'm imagining that maybe in a few years from now camcorders could have very powerful image stabilization and those movies would suddenly look very dated !
I'm not sure that such standard could hold in an activity as scattered as making music (music is huge outside of the R'n'B/Pop-rock that focus 99% of the "modern man" musical attention, there music all over the world played on varied instruments, recorded by any means you can think of, including very low tech ones, and actually lots of great music has been recorded for ultra cheap in Africa or Asia this last century). Playing and recording fantastic music can be a deceptively simple and fragile thing to do. So that's why I don't really agree with your idea of standard. More reastically, in a world where some fantastic recordings have been lost forever and crap is showered upon us by the ton everyday, that doesn't seem such a bad idea. But this modern radio rnb emo pop music is where my love of music stops; it's too disingenuous.
The bulk of the comments here are about right, but just to precise it's not a law that's specifically intented against Amazon or US businesses. Actually it was set up against "la grande distribution" (our wallmart: Carrefour, Leclerq, Auchan, etc..).
Thanks to my awesome internet provider (Iliad, Free telecom, go learn on it you'll be surprised) I'm watching TV on my ADSL line, at 3.5mbps (lost of free channels included). Yes, it does make "bandwidth caps" totally irrelevant.
"and that won't stop until we can agree on a way to normalize the volume levels of CDs and other digital media."
I'm a musician. Not much success, but my music if not that bad and some people that I don't know happen to like it. My average RMS value is around 15 to 17dB, which is about the same as Boards of canada, jazz, or Classical. I don't use ANY global mixing effects. Not because I can't, but because I don't like global effects, especially multiband compression. I'm far from alone. Go and find such music for yourself, out of RIAA's way.
Oh, and finally, I don't get what you mean by "to normalize the volume levels of CDs and other digital media". There's something that we musician or audio engineers call "normalizing" but it has nothing to see with your interpretation, so I don't see what you're speaking about, honestly. Would you force anyone to do something against their will, I really don't get what you wish here. Let the good music not use global compression, and the bad music use it. That's life you know. If some disc is primarily made to be listened at the same time in clubs, bars or public transport, compression is necessary and loudness war a mere corollary.
Slashdot Mirror
"Embedded hardware outships PCs by probably 100 to 1"
I'm not in the field, but I can imagine that a single person can program a whole lot of different washing machines, but a single person won't provide me with office softwares, a MMORPG, professional musical applications, to name a few that I know of.
Given the new Lisbon treaty is the same thing as the French and Dutch people voted against not long ago, Europe is on it's merry way toward authoritarianism.
I wonder how military spaceships will really look like.
That cartoon shouldn't have existed. Too good. While watching some episodes I tried to imagine the amount of work that had been necessary for the voiceovers in my language (I'm always watching in vo so I've never heard them) I was amazed by the quality of most voices and the numerous subtle effects in some episodes (exemple: A Tale Of Two Santas). Must have been terribly expensive while aiming to a pretty limited public (the less than 80 years old that are not brain dead).
I'm still waiting for "Get Of My Lawn 2: Dread Lords".
And when you're a monkey (an Arab I presume), no wonder that more than a few people want to take arms even against civilians, with the thought "hey! my country, well fuck my whole region, is the whore of Western money, real democratic attempt from the Arabs have been replaced by western-compliant half democracies in the bets of case, my children have no future exept for living in the country of the people that historically oppress us, so LET'S BLOW UP SOME SHIT. That's just very human.
"rid ourselves of that middle east monkey on our backs"
This is sad. I mean, because geopolitical interest have shredded those country to bits, no wonder there's even more extremism here than in Utah. Ever heard of the Oil curse ? it's really upsetting that someone that is on the good side of the militaro-economic Empire could say that kind of things. I'm appalled.
You don't understand: because Google's motto is "don't do evil", they don't. How dare you doubt it.
Nobody has been murdered in Europe because of this story. Your point is valid, but stick to the facts please (which are damning enough already).
"Shaping gaming industry" here is sometime but not necessarily related to "creating great games". Otherwise the project involving Tim Cain and other great developers would have been a nice addition to the list.
If the news is wrong, Slashdot, remove it or amend it quickly. This is not serious at all and destroys a lot of support in this site. We're not talking puppies here, so be serious.
I highly suggest games by this now defunct developer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troika_Games
... first part is mainly about play through advices, second part derailed in "World of Darkness" lore and is very interesting.
And about the Vampire : Bloodlines game I'd also suggest to see this thread: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2429153&pagenumber=1
I absolutely share your opinion and experience.
As a musician with a few dozen interested listeners [which is surprising given that my music is inspired by such different artists as pierre schaeffer, the spiral tribe, or claude debussy (some kind of modal, organic, tribal, fabulous electronic music)] and I don't get what you're babbling about. Yes music is different from a PC OS. Whoa dude. Where do you place architecture by the way ? you're just silly by trying to be clever.
You certainly mean Eugenics.
Like a vulgar blue collar bank robber would consider himself like a high rank corrupted politician. One can dream, but Scientology is not yet at the level of the big 3 monotheism when it comes to dictating everyone's life standards, as enforced by tradition and law. Now that's nasty.
To correct myself, the triple play bundle is 29 euros ($42) a month. Sorry about that !
39% of the customers of the third ADSL operator in France by number of subscribers (2 747 000 subscribers on the 1st January 2007) are using IPTV, via a triple play bundle. 39euros ($50) a month buys: unbridled and uncapped internet, unlimited phone calls to 50 countries, and IPTV (which as I wrote above 39% of subscribers use.) Fiber optics and HDTV are both on the rise (but with rock solid 17mbps down in a town of 40,000 I'm rather happy already).
About the modem: The ADSL modem (...) allows Free to offer added services using ADSL as support, like HD television (1080p), video recording with timeshifting capabilities, digital radio and free telephony (via one or two RJ11 according to models).
There are also a few shows (example: news, the serious kind of talk shows, programs about parenting or gardening) that are available on demand. Live audience are available. VOD again, weekly updated movies and serials are available with a small fee. There are neat things like that.
So, given that they are 5 different IPTV offers in France this makes for quite a noticable market, and for example both my siblings and parents have quickly succumbed to IPTV, simply because it is much better than air TV and comes as an interesting and low priced bundle with phone and net.
http://www.gartner.com/press_releases/asset_148795_11.html (source for the IPTV related numbers)
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free (source for the number of subscribers of Iliad-Free)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebox (source for the modem related quote)
I forgot to link the article: http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10534235
Northern Rock has not collapsed It has ("The government faces this stark choice--between finding a fully financed private-sector saviour (which now looks increasingly elusive), taking the bank into public ownership or just letting it go bust").
the bank itself is still trading normally. The government is injecting lots of money to make it so ("Taxpayers' total exposure amounts to at least half of Northern Rock's balance sheet").
I don't know those devices but I'm imagining that maybe in a few years from now camcorders could have very powerful image stabilization and those movies would suddenly look very dated !
I'm not sure that such standard could hold in an activity as scattered as making music (music is huge outside of the R'n'B/Pop-rock that focus 99% of the "modern man" musical attention, there music all over the world played on varied instruments, recorded by any means you can think of, including very low tech ones, and actually lots of great music has been recorded for ultra cheap in Africa or Asia this last century). Playing and recording fantastic music can be a deceptively simple and fragile thing to do. So that's why I don't really agree with your idea of standard. More reastically, in a world where some fantastic recordings have been lost forever and crap is showered upon us by the ton everyday, that doesn't seem such a bad idea. But this modern radio rnb emo pop music is where my love of music stops; it's too disingenuous.
The bulk of the comments here are about right, but just to precise it's not a law that's specifically intented against Amazon or US businesses. Actually it was set up against "la grande distribution" (our wallmart: Carrefour, Leclerq, Auchan, etc..).
Thanks to my awesome internet provider (Iliad, Free telecom, go learn on it you'll be surprised) I'm watching TV on my ADSL line, at 3.5mbps (lost of free channels included). Yes, it does make "bandwidth caps" totally irrelevant.
"and that won't stop until we can agree on a way to normalize the volume levels of CDs and other digital media."
I'm a musician. Not much success, but my music if not that bad and some people that I don't know happen to like it. My average RMS value is around 15 to 17dB, which is about the same as Boards of canada, jazz, or Classical. I don't use ANY global mixing effects. Not because I can't, but because I don't like global effects, especially multiband compression. I'm far from alone. Go and find such music for yourself, out of RIAA's way.
Oh, and finally, I don't get what you mean by "to normalize the volume levels of CDs and other digital media". There's something that we musician or audio engineers call "normalizing" but it has nothing to see with your interpretation, so I don't see what you're speaking about, honestly. Would you force anyone to do something against their will, I really don't get what you wish here. Let the good music not use global compression, and the bad music use it. That's life you know. If some disc is primarily made to be listened at the same time in clubs, bars or public transport, compression is necessary and loudness war a mere corollary.