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Comment How do they know??? (Score 1) 545

The problem I've always had with this nonsense is the lack of accuracy. There could be 100 million songs downloaded, but how do they know what percentage of them are actually illegal? What about Indy bands? What about promotional material? What if the song is the original version that an artist released for free to promote his/her album? What about mixtapes? Small labels who are no longer around to or have no interest in suing? You could literally amass a collection of tens of thousands of songs that were just given away. The problem is once the album is released the labels always try to have websites remove potential hits - but it's too late. Once you give them away for free they're mine - forever.

The arrogance that every song on the planet is owned by them always seems to piss me completely off.
Idle

The Placebo Effect Not Just On Drugs 824

dvdme writes "It seems the placebo effect isn't just valid on drugs. It's also a fact on elevators, offices and traffic lights. An article by Greg Ross says: 'In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the 'close door' button has no effect. Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the Wall Street Journal in 2003. Similarly, many office thermostats are dummies, designed to give workers the illusion of control. "You just get tired of dealing with them and you screw in a cheap thermostat," said Illinois HVAC specialist Richard Dawson. "Guess what? They quit calling you." In 2004 the New York Times reported that more than 2,500 of the 3,250 "walk" buttons in New York intersections do nothing. "The city deactivated most of the pedestrian buttons long ago with the emergence of computer-controlled traffic signals, even as an unwitting public continued to push on."'"

Comment Re:Creator and Overseer of Android Responds (Score 1) 864

If Google really wanted to equate Android with "open", they'd stop allowing the use of the Android trademark by manufacturers and carriers who lock down devices that way...

You DO realize that what you're suggesting is the very thing that got a large segment of the OSS community at odds with Firefox right?

Submission + - Video quality less important if you enjoy the show (scienceblog.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Rice University researchers say new studies show that if you like what you're watching, you're less likely to notice the difference in video quality of the TV show, Internet video or mobile movie clip, putting a lie to some of the more extravagant marketing claims of electronics manufacturers. "If you're at home watching and enjoying a movie, we found that you're probably not going to notice or even concern yourself with how many pixels the video is or if the data is being compressed," said the lead researcher. "This strong relationship holds across a wide range of encoding levels and movie content when that content is viewed under longer and more naturalistic viewing conditions."

Comment Old news and overclocking is dead (Score 0, Troll) 251

First of all, I've been reading about unlocking AMD cores since 2008. So except for marketing hype from the motherboard manufacturers this isn't anything new.

Secondly, I can tell by a lot of the overclocking examples and chip prices that most of you don't build systems anymore. AMD 3.0Ghz QUAD CORE is only $150, and they've been selling relatively cheap for a while now. What's even funnier is the fact that 95% of users could get by with the $90 dual core Phenom X2.

It's 2010 - face it people overclocking is dead people. CPU's and ram have gotten way too cheap to risk ramming all the extra voltage through your system. I know it's a hobby for some people but some hobbies are just past their prime. Don't worry, I'm sure there are better ways to extend your e-penis.

Comment Hopefully Samsung will buy them... (Score 1) 98

That way they will stop having good phones is absolutely abysmal sofware. It isn't even limited to their smartphones - their flip/slide phones are buggy as hell too.

It's a shame really... Samsung phones are some of best phones physically, but their software can really use a boost. WebOS on the original Instinct might have actually produced a decent phone.

Comment Gnome 3 (Score 1, Troll) 368

Anyone else on here notice the video of Plasma Desktop on the release page? It looks awfully similar to the proposed Gnome Shell for Gnome 3.0. I don't believe in that KDE vs GNOME fanboy nonsense, but I think it's more than fair to compare them from a technological standpoint. The primary feature pushing Gnome 3.0 was Gnome Shell, but KDE has almost completely duplicated its functionality 6 months before 3.0's release date - assuming it won't be as buggy as Plasma was when it started out.

I wonder how this will affect the future of KDE and Gnome.

Comment Re:Still has a lead on nVidia (Score 5, Interesting) 97

This is how nVidia always manages to stay on top: assumption.

I don't know why, but people always assume that nVidia parts are at the least equal, and for the most part better than ATi. Granted they have been in the past, but anyone savvy enough to know about graphics cards should also know how much things can change with every next generation.

I've heard people actually say "It's safe to say that the HD 3800 was pretty much a failure". That had to be one of the dumbest comments I've ever heard from a so-called "true gamer".

Comment Look at it this way. (Score 4, Insightful) 863

I think everyone here is missing the point. This is less about how accurate IBM's claims are, and more about the fact a company as large as IBM with a name that established was actually willing to publicly say it. That by itself is a major benifit for Linux.

This is all about momentum, marketing, and market share. I mean seriously, we act as if Microsoft has never made erroneous or speculative claims in the spirit of customer coercion. This is how business works.

Comment Re:Waste MORE time!? (Score 1) 1073

Nobody knows exactly where Springfield is, but it seems to have an apparent barely-urban-island-in-an-ocean-of-countryside setting that'd make those comparable markets.

FWIW, the Simpsons live in Springfield, Kentucky. They've dropped numerous hints about it, but during the Behind the Scenes parody episode, they flat out told you. It was so blatant that 99% of the people didn't even hear it.

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