Domain: blogspot.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to blogspot.com.
Comments · 20,258
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Quackery.
Yes, but the benefit of this particular research is that it's actual science, while "BarleyGreen" is quackery. And while some argue that it's essentially harmless and might give people hope, quackery kills people. Take that shit somewhere else.
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Blue Pill
Can any of them detect blue pill?
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Re:ZFS
I seriously doubt Sun cares to add zfs to linux.
Why bother? There's a ZFS-on-FUSE/Linux project that has ZFS working, and is working on making it worth using. It's not clear that having a native filesystem is necessarily faster than a userspace driver, although FUSE probably still needs some work.
The driver already supports numerous features (including RAID, pooling, snapshots and more) and is still under development.
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Re:They already did that...Why is it that everything good and full of art, thought and wit must make way for what is base and stupid and vulgar?
It's the result of a bureaucraized world, mass democratic man, and the free market. The bad drives out the good. It's a world where Boston Sh***y Hall happens. -
Not!
Why not offer your users the option to simply download your material and let them use the player of their choosing?
Yeah right. I want to spend my time and CPU cycles exporting my video to different formats, then the money to host 3 or 4 versions of the same damn video on my website.
No way!
I can just upload any of a half a dozen formats to google video, let them wrap it in flash, then I embed it in my blog. Now grampa can watch videos of his grandson without me explaining the finer points of choosing a media player. My Mac friends can watch my stuff. My Mac&PC family people can watch my stuff. Even my 3 year old son can watch it himself on his computer. Yes that's right at 3 years old he has his own PC, it runs Edubuntu, and he can point and click. I for one welcome our new Flash video overlords! http://ukemike.blogspot.com/ -
Doomsday Clock
Atomic scientists prepared to move the hands this morning but found the batteries dead, now they're not sure how close the earth is to total destruction: http://carbolicsmokeblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/ato
m ic-scientists-discover-batteries.html -
Re:Precompiled read/write NTFS packages
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I really don't think serious games is a good name
for this type of thing.
I'm quite interested in games for education. I think games are made to educate and there's nothing wrong with exploiting this to make learning more fun for kids and adults. Games like Civilization and Colonization have done this to some extent for me when I was learning history at school. I know of one Polish guy who learnt his English with the help of Monkey Island one. Great! An exciting future. The DS already has a "brain training game" that lets you brush up on your maths as well as inmrove less defined "brain skills" and in Japan there are several language games that help you learn English, Spanish or French (and also deal with the history and sites of countries using those languages.)
So that's good, but what's not good is a growing number of people labelling such games as serious games. This is a bad bad label, if the person who created this label was here now I'd very much like to bop him (or her) on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and maybe waggle a warning finger at them. Here's the wikipedia definition of "serious games":
Serious games (SGs) are computer and video games that are intended to not only entertain users, but have additional purposes such as education and training. They can be similar to educational games, but are primarily focused on an audience outside of primary or secondary education.
Pah! Psst! Pah!
If you call one group of items serious you are suggesting all other items are some how less serious. Let's take people, if I said "serious people" you might form the following model in your mind.
Serious People: Buisness Men, World leaders, ...
Non-serious People: Comedians, Artists, Bums, Clowns, Mimes...
So imagine if this shadowy education group had targetted music instead of computer games, they would like us to form the following mental model.
Serious Music, music that educates:
Sing 2 School - Multiplication Hip Hop
Alphabet - Music for Clever Kids ...
Non-serious music, music that fails to educate:
Classical, Rock and Roll, Pop, Jazz, Rap, Indie ...
Non-serious music, is that worthless, for kids stuff, that has nothing to redeem it - it merely entertains - it doesn't convey FACTS! Therefore it's not "serious" - it's a waste of time and you should be feeling very guilty about listening to it at all! You grubby hippie frittering your life away by enjoying yourself, I hope this chastizes you sufficently.
The same labels could be applied to books, instead of fiction and non-fiction we could relabel them serious and non-serious (or waste of time, guilty pleasure, whatever label seems to fit best.)
As I hope you can see this way of naming things doesn't help anyone and is a little insulting to anyone not creating media that's not primarily educational. I'd intially distrust anyone "seriously" throwing the term around. Serious is quite subjective, let's keep that way.
This a blog post from http://einfall.blogspot.com/2006/08/irked-serious- games.html -
Re:Absolutely stunning ....
Your faith in our constitution is badly misplaced. We have no rights.
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Re:Why is it so hard?
Please do not read this as an insult or affront on your page design. The page is certainly less obnoxious than almost all of the MySpace pages I have seen elsewhere, and is actually readable.
However, the page does not validate for any of the standards that are linked to in the footer. Also, although it looks pretty, the layout is still not what I would call "functional." The links in the "Contacting Tom" section are difficult to read, there's a lot of whitespace that isn't very effective at easing eye strain, and the blog posts are oddly spaced. I recognize a lot of this isn't your fault, but I think it's tough to claim a "slashdotter can primp to his heart's delight." Even if he can (I don't have a MySpace; I don't know), it seems that MySpace makes it more difficult if validation and "good" design are your goals.
Bear it mind that I can't call myself a good page designer--I just used a default template on my blog, which I'm sure doesn't validate. Basically, I'm trying to say that the "typical slashdotter" per say, wouldn't want to use a MySpace if he were looking for fully validated or otherwise "good" designs. OTOH, MySpace isn't targeting that demographic, and is intended as a social-networking service.
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Re:I guess they don't want a "challenge"
"Obviously more people prefer WOW than Eve..."
No thats false. More people PLAY wow than eve. Its like saying more people prefer their honda civics to a bently. As in most people don't know the joy of a bently, or have it to compare, its a false choice. Eve is crazy good. You should read http://00experiment.blogspot.com/ from the beginning. Your experience will probably differ greatly, but its so very much better than grinding for trinkets, or completely walled off pvp. -
Apple iPhone
I think it was a nice move for apple to come out with the apple iPhone. The iPhone has most features consumers have been waiting to have. I also think the price will not deter people from buying the Apple iPhone. I even think they will sell more then the 10 million Apple iPhone they expect to sell within the next year.
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Re:Welcome to Anarcho-Tyranny Population You.
Flamebait? Troll? It's true.
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.25?The
.25 cents is a good figure for what electronic music should cost.Wait, is that
.25 cents or 25 cents? You don't happen to work for Verizon, do you? -
This site helps terrorists to reduce c.d.
http://targetargentina.blogspot.com/
With Google pictures and description. Having the target well tagged helps reducing accidental damage. -
Is the solution not obvious?
Step 1: If practical, all US military bases in Iraq suddenly get very fuzzy on Google Earth. Or better yet, they get photoshopped to try and screw the insurgients into planning their attack with the wrong data.
Step 2: If step 1 is not practical, just fuzz out all of Iraq. I believe they do something similiar with Israel and GPS and space photos - GPS is less accurate and public images are no better than 2M resolution, IIRC.
[The part referenced by my subject line ends here]
Step 3: Just admit that Iraq is the next Vietnam, and save a bunch of lives on both sides by leaving ASAP. The the hated government we're propping up is as useless and corrupt as the South Vietnamese government was. As in Vietnam, we've got a determined insurgiency that's being supported by outside forces (We're looking at YOU, Iran and Syria). As if to rub salt in the wound, this time they (Iran & Syria) finance their support using our own oil money. Once again, the enemy is proving that all our technology is fracking useless against them. Once again, we're spending outselves into a fiscal black hole.
And once again, we're discovering that our government lied to start this war (nit: Yeah, the Gulf of Tonkin incident was just the excuse to escalate), and frankly has been systematically lying ever since. Greeted as liberators - insurgiency in it's death throes - Don't need more troops - Pay for itself in oil exports - We don't torture - Undercounting civilian deaths - Yada yada yada. We even get our own version of Vietnamization ("We stand down as they stand up"), and we all know how well that went last time. Then again, Iraqi-ization is going nowhere because the Iraqi army will never, ever stand up (i.e. don't want to anger the insurgients that will control Iraq when we leave).
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. So the question is... How long until we leave with our tail between our legs this time? And after Bush is impeached (?), will Cheney pardon him? -
But what about their gynormous poos?
These giant rabbits are going to shit like rodent elephants. Rabbits are known to be very efficient composters, so there's another use for you. I wouldn't recommend it unless it was part of a package of some kind, but maybe if Great Leader Laurence Lessig can infiltrate they can CC-NK them and give every home a free rabbit...
They could also look elsewhere and see if they can simply add fat, but I hope they've taken this into consideration, but then again who says this isn't just a sci-fi lover's delicacy for those who are more "equal" than others?
Ale -
Re:catch up
I'm not forcing anything on anybody, except rationalism. Public schools should teach science, period. Its not society's job to teach your religious flavors to children, that is the parents job, if they are so willing. Teaching science and teaching religion are two different things, science is the capital that the whole world uses, religion is something that small communities use. I'm all for the ACLU's actions, btw, since the creationists are misusing the word "theory", their idea of the term is NOT the scientific idea of the term, the one that is actually applied to the concept of evolution. To label it "just a theory" is to be wrong, at least when your using theory in the christian science sense.
To be honest, I'm not against teaching the Christian creation myth in schools, I even wrote an article to that point, though no one would like the compromise.
In this case the community is wrong, and shouldn't be allowed to corrupt their, and other, children's learning with fallacious information. Should schools be allowed to teach children 2+2=5, or that the earth is flat and the universe revolves around it? The heliocentric solar system is just a theory, after all, as is Newtonian physics, relativity, continental drift, and just about anything else in science. Even the so-called scientific laws are just a subset of theories. By all means, tell them that certain fundamentalist sects of certain religions doubt that evolution exists, but do so in a cultural studies class next to the various creation myths of other world religions. Religion belongs in the home, not the school.
Again, I really don't care what you think, as long as it isn't inflicted on me or my children. No one has the right to inflict their religion on others, God arguments have no validity on those who don't believe in God, therefore it looses its cultural currency rather quickly, where logic and rationalism don't.
Again, I'm not arguing against RELIGION, if you have a faith, GO FOR IT. Rational Christians DO do good, and good, and good for them. Rational Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Buddhists, etc... do good too, and more power to them as well. Its when the religion gets to the point where it is blind dogma to be inflicted upon others for "their own good" that it becomes problematic. Nowhere did I say "religion = bad", I said fervor and self-righteousness, and these terms don't even have to apply to religion, ANY fervor and self-righteousness is bad, when ideology replaces empathy and humanity. These epitomize fundamentalists, Christian and Islamic.
Yes, most scientists were religious. Copernicus was pious, but the church still tried to ban the truth. Giordano Bruno was even a monk, and yet burned for daring to speak the truth. Galileo was forced to repent scientific fact for God too, though thankfully he rebelled. If your religion can't adapt to the truth, then your religion is doomed, as it should be. -
No, BAD idea - depends on UnobtaniumTwo kinds of Unobtanium, actually:
- The inexpensive, long-lived room-temperature hydrogen fuel cell, and
- Hydrogen fuel every 150 miles or so.
Without either of those, this is just a short-range electric car. <yawn>
PEM fuel cells have been one of the two stumbling blocks for hydrogen vehicles for years. It wasn't long ago that a stack for a car cost a half a million to a million dollars (due to hand-assembly and platinum content) and had a fairly short lifespan. Li-ion batteries to get the same range would cost a fraction as much, and they are coming down in price/kWh at a steady rate. Lifespan is going way up with the new chemistries and nanoparticle materials.
Hydrogen is the other form of Unobtanium. It would take something like a trillion dollars to build out a new hydrogen-fuelling infrastructure to replace petroleum motor fuels. (Got a spare trillion handy, or did it go for Bush's War?) Further, the production of hydrogen from non-fossil energy sources is very inefficient; a PEM electrolyzer is maybe 75% and a PEM fuel cell is about 60%, for a best-case throughput of 45% (before compression energy is considered). In contrast, a lithium-ion battery is about 95% efficient.
There are no ways around this; production of hydrogen from e.g. aluminum is much lossier than electrolysis. Making a renewable hydrogen economy requires not one but two kinds of Unobtanium.
So why's the US government pushing hydrogen? It's my suspicion that the oil interests want all the alt-energy money spent on things which cannot work, thus guaranteeing that taxpayer-funded research will never threaten their gravy train. A few million dollars in campaign funding thus buys them many $billions in increased revenue; probably the best investment they could ever make. -
No, BAD idea - depends on UnobtaniumTwo kinds of Unobtanium, actually:
- The inexpensive, long-lived room-temperature hydrogen fuel cell, and
- Hydrogen fuel every 150 miles or so.
Without either of those, this is just a short-range electric car. <yawn>
PEM fuel cells have been one of the two stumbling blocks for hydrogen vehicles for years. It wasn't long ago that a stack for a car cost a half a million to a million dollars (due to hand-assembly and platinum content) and had a fairly short lifespan. Li-ion batteries to get the same range would cost a fraction as much, and they are coming down in price/kWh at a steady rate. Lifespan is going way up with the new chemistries and nanoparticle materials.
Hydrogen is the other form of Unobtanium. It would take something like a trillion dollars to build out a new hydrogen-fuelling infrastructure to replace petroleum motor fuels. (Got a spare trillion handy, or did it go for Bush's War?) Further, the production of hydrogen from non-fossil energy sources is very inefficient; a PEM electrolyzer is maybe 75% and a PEM fuel cell is about 60%, for a best-case throughput of 45% (before compression energy is considered). In contrast, a lithium-ion battery is about 95% efficient.
There are no ways around this; production of hydrogen from e.g. aluminum is much lossier than electrolysis. Making a renewable hydrogen economy requires not one but two kinds of Unobtanium.
So why's the US government pushing hydrogen? It's my suspicion that the oil interests want all the alt-energy money spent on things which cannot work, thus guaranteeing that taxpayer-funded research will never threaten their gravy train. A few million dollars in campaign funding thus buys them many $billions in increased revenue; probably the best investment they could ever make. -
Re:Man, I thought it was bad when I lost 50 places
If only google already had a standard for it, respeced my multiple search engines....
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Re:Man, I thought it was bad when I lost 50 placesI made a proposal in the W3C AC forum a week ago that would kill linkspam. So far I have not managed to follow up with Google.
Should have linked this the first time. For more details on this scheme, see my personal blog.
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Re:catch upIf you want a list of "Christian" terrorists, just ask any Londoner who lived during the heyday of the IRA attacks in London.
As an ex Londoner, I'd like to point out that the IRA wasn't particularly Christian.
E.g. look at their political wing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinn_FéinA left wing, republican, and Irish nationalist political party, this iteration of Sinn Féin is linked to the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Certainly they were much less motivated by Christianity, than the July 7th bombers were motivated by Islam.
Got to say your comments reminded me of this
http://reformedchicksblabbing.blogspot.com/2006/04 /frank-j-explains-christianity.htmlSo, not only is murder in support of Christianity not encouraged, it itself is a sin. This wasn't always well known, though, and some people long long ago murdered people for not being Christians. That causes problems today, as people will say, "While other religions murder people now, some people a hundred million years ago murdered people in the name of Christianity, so Christianity is just the same."
And you might respond, "But that was very long ago and went against the principles of Christianity and thus is condemned."
And the person will rebut, "Yes, but I'm a moral retard who equivocates everything. As far as I'm concerned, A is the same as Z."
And there is no response to that. -
Here's YOUR problem
This is why global warming raises such an alarm bell with me, because it never seems to be presented in this way.
Then maybe you want to fast-forward twenty years, until the science is accepted without manufactured controversy and the classroom treatment has had time to develop.
It isn't that soon yet, but we can't wait that long to act.
I have a suggestion for doing so. It is subject to revision, but so is every element of science and every engineering proposal. No, I have no financial stakes in any of this - yet. -
Who needs The Real Steve Jobs?
Even if the real Steve Jobs is fired, we'll always have The Fake Steve Jobs to inspire and comfort us.
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hubris without limit
I've directly and indirectly encountered a mindset in American management and investor groups in which productive, skilled and well educated American technical workers are considered disposable and replaceable.
Ironically, American technical workers are the same people who carry on the most innovative and creative work permitting companies to build and keep markets and generate profits.
Though, I think that disparaging programmers and software engineers hit a high point under the Carly Fiorina years at HP when the Outsourceress lectured American engineers that their jobs weren't theirs "by right". I don't ever recall reading or hearing of American engineers or technical workers making such a claim but it was seeming useful for Fiorina to tar American workers as essentially lazy, second-rate and unreasonable while she axed them at HP by the thousands and pocketed enormous salaries, bonuses, stock options and retirement "contributions" before she left with a hefty "gold parachute". This situation is/was in now way unique as anyone who has worked at NCR, IBM, Oracle, Intel, Siemens, or Microsoft (to name but a few) will attest.
Sen. Jim Webb of VA wrote an interesting opinion piece for the WSJ several months ago on this topic. I copied it to my blog here: http://modernpatriot.blogspot.com/2006/11/populist -democracy-webb-and-dobbs.html -
Re:500 Million ?? It's all about the facts....
In 1968 the British high court decided that Roughs Tower(aka SeaLand) stood in international waters (at the time) and did not fall under the legal jurisdiction of the United Kingdom (abandonment), effectively forcing Parliament to recognize it. The Register is reporting 65 million pounds (UK), the 500 million comment seems to be a misread from the original article that states that available micronations start at 50,000 USD. That, in non-Verizon math, is read as fifty thousand dollars - a reasonable fund raising target - not 500 million dollars.
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Re:I find this funny
We do specialized web-based applications, not IPTV, so we've been following this in terms of "what does that mean to us". Maybe the IPTV companies are demanding free internet links, if so, then they're way out of line, they can buy whatever connections to whichever networks they want, just like everyone else.
This is how we see the issue as a service provider: ISP sees Company X making money (google, iTunes, etc), and wants a piece of it or their thug-routers might see to it that something terrible happens to their packets, where "a piece of it" comes from what is essentially protection money. When they tell us "buy our link for faster service" when our service is already fast enough for their customers, what we're hearing is "buy our link or be penalized". Even a little intentional throttling could become disastrous for us, if our clients' ISPs dropped every other packet, our bandwidth costs would essentially double (consider 1MB file+0.5MB retransmitted packets+0.25MB retransmitted retransmits+...=2MB) while our site would basically become unusable.
These aren't observations we've pulled out of our ass, these are things that the CEOs of the major telecoms are saying by themselves. A competitor could convince Bellsouth to put us out of business (especially if the merger with SBC/ATT completes, making just about everyone in the US who uses DSL affected). Of course, convincing our customers to switch to cable wouldn't help, Comcast is on the bandwagon, and they've already shown that they're more than happy to cut anything they don't like out of their service. -
Re:YACCS -Yet Another Computer Corkup in Space
Houston, we have the solution.
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Re:Is it possible...
One pays over $100, that's for certain. Of course, you might read this...
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Re:newsflash cheaper things sell more than expensi
And as a consumer (not a shareholder), why should I give a shit what their profit or loss is? As long as I get what I want for what I'm willing topay, that's all I care about as a consumer.
You as consumer would invest $600 into game console now, expecting that you would be abler to enjoy modern gaming twice longer than on e.g. Nintendo Wii. And then year later - BA-BAM!! - Sony discontinues PS3 production/sales since it is not profitable.
Sensible business plan is bit like additional insurance for consumers that company (they invest in products of) isn't going to flop under weight of taken obligations.
So this round is of course won by Nintendo. M$ and Sony here are both losers. I'm not sure about Sony - they have swallowed even bigger product failures before - but internal pressure mounts inside of M$ to dump Xbox/gaming division since they are not profitable. Company might survive many failed products, but they usually start losing good engineers who can/do design such products - and who do not like to be on losing side. Especially when product gets torpedoed by management/sales/marketing - like it seems it was in case of Sony. Changing spec on last minute did good to nobody.
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He's already met with the new Speaker
He met with Speaker Pelosi last November, didn't you know?
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2006/11/my-lunch-wit h-nancy-pelosi.html -
Canary Trap
Even more interesting LMH ran a canary trap and caught Jason Harris of Unsanity in it.
The canary trap the leak and the mole:
http://applefun.blogspot.com/2007/01/canary-trap-l eak-and-mole.html
This is also enlightening reading:
http://rixstep.com/1/1/20070109,02.shtml
I wouldn't have used APE before, but you'd have to be out of your tree to use it after this idiocy and shenanigans. -
Re:OLPC will retard democracy ..
"The fact that you are here, writing that, means they are democracies, or at least you have free speech. Go say that in China, or another real regime, and watch what happens"
We have free speech as long as we don't excercise it.
Jailed for blogging ..
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/27/opinion/eds age.php
Blogger arrested at Atlantica conference
br> http://oldmaison.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-few-hours -in-jail-with-saint-john.html
French Blogger Arrested Then Sued
http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-4 5-20050513FrenchBloggerArrestedThenSued.html
Canadian blogger arrested trying to enter the US.
http://www.ensight.org/archives/2005/03/17/the-end -of-the-story/ -
Three words - pre compiled binaries
Which is actually quite funny
.. because one of Gentoo's big things .. is compiling everything on your system .. with full optimizations for what you have. If you look at this posting in my blog, http://ps3penguins.blogspot.com/2007/01/gentoo-lin ux-on-ps3.html you can find several links relating to this .. key is the planet.gentoo link that talks about pre-compiled PS3 binaries. -
Re:Earth is colder now that it was 800 years ago.
that's a myth.
see : http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/03/greenlan d-used-to-be-green.html -
Release all the footage of the corrupt politicians
* Release all the footage of the corrupt politicians.
* Release all the evidence against the Mob, the Yakuza, the Mafia.
* Release a few exploits for MS Vista.
* Let my pet AI out of his virtual cage and onto the 'net.
* Release pictures of various Celebs doing "Very Wrong Things(TM)"
* Release information about how various Government Contracts _REALLY_ got awarded.
* Release evidence that the Bible, Quoran and various other religious books are fakes.
I think that's about all of it.
Damn, when I die there's gonna be a lot of people in deep du-du
8-)
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/ -
Video Lecture Blog
I have been collecting links to video lectures in my blog for a while now, not just MIT but tens of other universities as well. Check it out: Free Science Online Blog
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Re:Ah ha!
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Re:The Motherload
Okay, I'm not teaching at MIT, but I typically post a lot of material on my website and it just forces me to redo the course each semester. It's a lot of work, mainly because I can't reuse material once it gets published.
For those interested, here's one example site:
mth-121-2006-fall.blogspot.com -
Re:Wow. 720p. You don't say.
Yes, but once released I can get the thing up in running in a few minutes.
Never used XBMC, have you? It's about as plug-and-play as you can get. The only difficult part is modding your xbox, which can range from very easy to very difficult, depending on how much you want to spend. The really nice modchips just drop in and automagically work (like the Xenium). The XBOX Media Center's only rival in terms of user interface is the TiVo. It's really that good.
Not to mention, let me see you play media from iTunes on your crapbox.
Ah, so this answers my first question. You've never even used XBMC, and yet you somehow feel justified in criticizing it? XBMC has built-in iTunes integration. It won't play DRM'd crap you buy from the iTunes music store, however.
Now tell me, do you think the Apple iTV will have a built-in visualizations? XBMC does.
How about programatic extensions, like YouTube support or Google Video plugins? XBMC does.
Hey look, XMBC can even integrate with OS-X. -
Re:Knowing Your Neighbours
For a slightly more formal treatment see here. Sagan was talking out of his ass when he said that and there's nothing more annoying than people who keep quoting it.
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Dracula's Castle? Since when?
Well, the castle has little to do with Vlad Tepes, actually. As for Bram Stocker, there's an idea he mostly drew his inspiration from the actions of Elizabeth Bathory.
:) You should look more into the subject of this castle. It is beautiful, indeed, but you would really have the wrong expectations of it. Here's the story for those interested in this topic :
http://wordsofabrokenmirror.blogspot.com/2006/09/b reaking-dracula-myth.html -
MythTV on PS3
I am drooling at the opportunity to get a PS3 (at a reasonable price
... ) and get MythTV going on it! Ok .. .. but if you have any good / bad experiences on compiling MythTV than please post them on either http://ps3penguins.blogspot.com/ .. or http://groups.google.com/group/PS3Penguins I wanna see real IPTV from the PS3 before the XBox 360 guys beat us to it! --PS3 Penguin -
Re:liability shifty
From my experience with bank industry and fraud, fraud investigation by bank equals shifting liability. If they can shift it, they will. If they can't, they have to pay out. Hence the emphasis on creating a framework for denial of liability.
Technological exploits will come and go, denials of responsibility stay the same. Until government regulations -- or a tidal wave of negative media coverage -- hold banking industry's feet to the fire on security flaws, this will remain constant.
My experience: http://wamublamesgrandma.blogspot.com/ -
Re:Don't be silly
Taxes should be for raising money, not social engineering.
Depends on what you mean by "social engineering". My definition of it is trying to change people's behavior because you think it's good for them, like raising taxes on cigarettes. I oppose these taxes as well. But gas is different; it should be taxed not because it's bad for the buyer, but because it's bad for everyone else who has to pay for the increased pollution and dependence on unstable nations. That's why I'm an unofficial member of the Pigou Club.
(As an aside, one might try to argue that cigarette taxes compensate society because smokers tend to have higher medical bills that are often picked up by taxpayers. While this is true, they also die earlier which ends up being a net savings due to lower lifetime costs). -
Re:voip?There was a big announcement about supporting GoogleTalk on the N770 last year...I guess it works, but I can't find anything about it on the actual GoogleTalk site. I'd assume the 800 supports it too.
I nearly bought the 770 last year, but decided to buy a XV6700 instead. After playing w/ the 770 awhile, it just seemed to need a few extra bells/whistles (e.g., a camera - which the 800 now has), and the size/resolution of the screen wasn't that much better than the 6700. (Plus my carrier made the latter real cheap if I renewed my contract). I just downloaded the Skype beta that supports the 6700, so I guess I've got pretty much everything the 770/800 have, plus a cellphone, except the 6700 only has 802.11b, and a slightly smaller screen.
I wouldn't commit to these smaller devices until you've laid hands on the newer generation of UMPC's. The ASUS R2H looks pretty kewl, and the latest versions of the Samsung are getting much better as well. While they're 2.5x more expensive, the extra screen real estate and storage will likely more than make up for the difference.
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Re:Only ONE percent were Mexican...
That was from Steve Sailer. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2007/01/study-25-milli
o n-mexican-americans.html "Study: 25 million Mexican-Americans failing to contribute to high tech in America -- For years, I've been pointing at the dog that didn't bark -- the remarkable failure of Latin American immigrants to contribute to California's high tech industries. Granted, the new much-publicized Duke study finding that 1/4th of technology start-ups are founded by immigrants never gets around to saying that in so many words, but if you check the data carefully, that's what you find. You are going to hear a lot of heehawing over how this study proves we benefit from Open Borders, but what it shows instead is that tens of millions of illegal immigrants have contributed almost nothing to high tech in America. For example, Graph 5a is "Immigrant Groups Founding Engineering and Technology Companies in California." India is out in front at 20%, followed by Taiwan (13%), and China (10%). This time, Mexico makes the chart, but with only 1% (and that's not of all tech / engineering firms but 1% of just those with immigrant participants). That's not a lot of return for having 10,000,000 Mexicans in California. Similarly, Chart 10 shows patent applications by non-citizen immigrants over the last 20 years. Mexicans, who are by far the largest number of non-citizens in America, don't even make the top 20: Chinese & Taiwanese are first, followed by India, Canada, UK, Germany, France and Russia. Heck, Turkey makes the top 20, and there are hardly any Turks in America. But not Mexico (or any other Latin American country). Dennis Mangan adds: Uhh, hold on... the fact that 25% of these startups had "at least one senior executive... born outside the United States" would seem to exaggerate just a smidgen the responsibility of immigrants for these companies. If a company had a native-born founder, CEO, and president, but the CTO was from India, then supposedly immigrants are "behind" the company. A reader writes: Possibly the most politically incorrect joke in the history of South Park (which of course is saying something) is about this topic, from the episode "Fat Butt and Pancake Head" about Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck. The main story is about Cartman doing an over-the-top heavily-accented caricatured impersonation of Lopez, and Kyle's frustration that no one ever calls him on the offensive nature of it. But at the very beginning, just before Cartman unleashes his offensive prank at an Hispanic Cultural Appreciation Day assembly at their school, we catch the tail end of Kyle's more conscientious presentation. As we enter the scene, he is just concluding with words to the effect of: "...and that's my report on Hispanic contributions to the field of American technology." He gets an appreciative round of applause from the diversity judges and then it's off with the Cartman bit. The joke (which of course is: what the heck did his report SAY?) is slyer than the show's usual style and even more mischievous." -
Re:Favorite Flavor!
I have a blog full of favorites and some not so favorites.
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Finally...
more information at http://thoughtfix.blogspot.com/
I hope it features a powered USB connector (unlike the 770)