Invent binary format with parent and child offsets and binary tags for the names and values.
Are the offsets going to be 32bit or 64bit? LSB or MSB? And how do you tell the value 16 from the tag 16? Do we pad datastructures? Will strings be zero terminated or have a prefixed length?
And decent human programmers can read them with a debugger or from a hexdump in a file, or write a tool to dump them as a human friendly ASCII during development.
I would like a demonstration of that with the example of Microsoft Word 2003 format, the binary variant, please.
You see, some of don't live on a farm or in our parent's basement. Some of us have to drive our cars that use fuel to work, so we can drive those same cars that use fuel to the grocery store where we buy food that was grown using equipment that used MORE fuel so we can feed our families.
You see, humanity for thousands of years managed to live without cars. People lived in cites for a long time now and just because someone 50 years ago thought it would be a great idea to sprawl the cities out over ever larger areas and make every distance so long, that you can not manage it without a car doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. If it becomes too expensive to sustain that way of life for you, then sorry, you will have to change it. Just because you think it is your god given right to live out in the woods does not mean all the rest of humanity has to pay the price for your choice.
And before you complain, I have the same problem. I live out too far, but by my choice and so I don't see why I would have a right to complain. Additionally I guess you are from the US, here gas costs $7.59 per gallon today (1.369 Euro per liter, a gallon is about 3.78 liters and one Euro is 1.4663$).
Ah, yes you are right. I didn't check thoroughly and only skimmed the wikipage and misread. But still it has been 1.5 years which is still quite long for only ~50%, no?
The possible downside is that precisely because these buggy pages work in IE, noone will bother to fix them. Imagine you're at IE12 and it's now a super anal 99.9% standards compatible browser in IE12 mode. What good will it do if pages still call for IE7 compatibility mode and are still broken on every other browser? That said, between "We won't fix the browser because it'd break sites" and "We won't fix the pages because they work" I think the latter is easier to fix and new code would presumably be written to spec and work in all browsers. So it's something of a percieved downside which I don't think is real.
It is even worse in my eyes. According to Wikipedia currently (after nearly 3 years) IE7 has barely overtaken IE6. So currently you have to make sure your pages render on both. When IE8 comes out, it will probably take quite a while until it has significant market share and will probably eat into IE7 and not into IE6. So I either have to hack one page which works in all browsers, then I will obviously use the compatibility mode of IE8 as I have to make the page render correctly in IE6 in any case. Or I have to create separate pages for IE6 and IE8 (and then I don't see the need for that meta thing at all).
So if that suggestion accomplishes anything, then that IE8 will have even slower adoption rates than IE7 as now even most web designers won't have a need to use it, as it won't break their pages.
What I find surprising in that whole discussion is, why Microsoft doesn't solve it the way, the other browsers would, by making it possible to install more than one version. Then you can just use IE6 for those few sites which don't work correctly in IE8. Sure, it would cost considerable effort to build an IE6 (or IE7) which would not integrate into the OS and make it impossible to run another version, but in comparison to adding all the quirks of all past versions of the browser to the next one, I know, which solution I would choose.
Every 3D input device created over the last 15 years has failed without exception.
May I present the exception: SpaceNavigator. It is nothing like that waving around stuff but a simple knob with sensors detecting the force you apply. I got one some weeks ago and haven't had time to play with it a lot, but even so after some minutes it started to get quite intuitive.
And why do you think that is any different with raytracing? Model geometry is very similar and I doubt that you will understand the math behind BDRF (Bidirectional Reflectance Function, a way to describe surface characteristics) or scattering in participating media without some time to study it. In fact they are so similar that OpenRT is a raytracer with an interface quite similar to OpenGL. The shader system is completely different, though as it wouldn't make sense to limit it to GPU-shaders without hardware support.
Raytracer handle big geometry quite well, but if you think you can just throw everything in a naive way at them, you will get a bad surprise on the terrible speed. I don't see that modeling would be much easier, you don't have to model low poly (which is indeed hard), but because of the way raytracers work you often can't get away with a texture but need to have geometry. Also the textures are as muchwork, writing efficient shaders is not a lot different and the complete game logic is the same.
Graphics hardware has gone down an entirely different route whereby you write little shader programs which create surface visual effects on top of the bread and butter polygons and textures. This is a well established system by now and has a naturally compressive effect. It's like making all your visual effects procedural in nature rather than giving objects simple real-world textures and then doing a load of crazy maths to simulate reality.
... a way which was pioneered by the Reyes renderer (if I am not istaken) and is standard in any contemporary rendering system. Actually at that level there isn't a lot of difference between raytracing and rasterization. Raytracers often have more freedom in the shaders because e.g. shadows interact very elegantly with this system. A rasterizer needs to integrate shadow calculations (e.g. shadow volumes) in the shader code, a raytracer just shoots a shadow ray and then "knows" which light source has an effect and which one doesn't.
Ways to aid game developers create content in parallel rather than throwing out the current rendering strategy adopted world wide by the games industry.
There is one of the advantages of raytracers, you can use incredibly find details as the performance doesn't degrade as fast with many objects and with detailed objects and there are ways to even handle many light sources (one way is called "Lightcuts" and handles in the order of 100k lights without degrading too badly). It is even possible to delay the loading of objects and only represent them as bounding box and only load them when that bounding volume is hit. A rasterizer can't do that so far down.
Wire transfer over the internet requires a one time pad in Germany. You receive a list of codes via secure mail (the same as the one used to send you credit card PIN).
They are called TAN-lists. The first time you receive that list of tans after you got your password in a different letter sent some days earlier. Later lists you get by mail as well, but you use one of the last remaining unused numbers on the old list to authorize the new one, so after you have used the first one nobody has much use for subsequent ones.
In the last year most banks changed the system a bit. Now the number sequences are numbered themself and the banking app asks for a specific number. They sold it as a countermeasure to phishing, as a phished TAN would be worthless for the next transaction as it would with high possibility ask a different one.
What is sad is, that it is a rather weak system, there is a much better one called HBCI. That one works with a card with a crypto chip and a card reader attached to the computer. Normally banks required "class 3 readers" which have their own keypad and display. When you do a transaction some of the details of that transaction would be shown in the display and you authorize the transaction over the keypad of the card reader. As the card reader only talks via a encrypted channel with the backing system it is quite secure. But it never was widely adopted as the readers were a bit expensive and banks prefer to use that TAN thing as it is cheaper for them.
You even have to subtract about 500 million dollars from the 6,5 billion, as that is the contribution of the ESA to the mission. (See FAQ item 10 (that page also must have been made in space, because who on Earth would sort a FAQ in reverse order and not even put anchors to the items on it)). So about $20 for each in the US and below $1 for us Europeans, not that it makes a difference and I fully agree with you.
What exactly does constitute commercial use? Can you answer if any of my examples constitute commercial use? Do ALL of them? What did you bring to the argument besides an attempt at belittling me?
Your examples were:
So what happens when Google Images shows your Flickr pics as search results with ads on the page? That's commercial use isn't it?
I don't know about your jurisdiction, in mine (Germany) judges have rules, that it isn't. As you put up the images without restrictions you implicitely gave your ok for users to see them and also for search engines to display them. Ads on the search page are irrelevant.
What if Johnson & Johnson put your picture on a free brochure about baby shampoo?
Commercial use. Being free has absolutely nothing to do with if it is commercial or not. If they use it to support their business then it is commercial.
What if the same company used it for a free AIDS test brochure?
I would say, that is probably also commercial. But I am not entirely sure about it, a judge would have to decide. But if asked I would license it for free for that, as CC is not exclusive it is possible.
What if a non-profit used it for the same brochure?
I don't see why "non-profit" matters if it is commercial or not. If they live from donations and use my photo for that purpose I would see it as commercial use.
So back to my original question... How do you determine what is commercial use?
I don't. If I think it might be commercial use I will ask a lawyer, if he suggests it is, I would have to sue the violating party and then see, if the judge agrees with my lawyer. I understand under commercial use when a company uses something to do its business.
What if I use a picture you put under CC non-commercial, non-derivative on my "free" website promoting my specific distro of Linux, which I give away for free? What if I gave it away for free but called it Verizon Linux and just used it as promotion for my cellular network?
I think the latter would also constitute commercial use, without the promotion part of a commercial entity I would see it as noncommercial. But in the end, it isn't me who defines it, but the law and a judge. To enforce my copyright I will have to sue.
I don't think you can render that directly so easily and if you want to work with that dataset it will cause even more trouble. I would try to change it to something simpler to work with. First create a height map which only covers the lowest parts of the model. Then extract all geometry that resides atop of it. That should result in a big height map and geometry which has a lot of disjoint parts. So next I would try to segment the geometry into disjunct objects so you can use level of detail on them, using it on one object is very hard to keep continuous. Without description of what you want to do with the model it is hard to say, if that would do or not.
There are renderers which can handle those datasets, but I don't know if they are available. Ingo Wald has done realtime raytracing of a Boing 777 with 350 million triangles.
(Also sleds have existed far longer than wheels with a similar purpose.)
Indeed, and are still used on appropriate surfaces -- like snow or loose sand. They kind of suck on hard or high-friction surfaces though, and you can't apply motive power through them, they have to be pulled or pushed by something that's not a sled. So what?
Or on surfaces which can be made low friction with water or by using something which reduces friction like rods. Or in the form of two sets which are used to move foreward heavy machinery like tunnel drilling machines? Obviously there are ways to propell a sledge, even if it is inefficient, a propellor can drive a sledge and so can a sail.
(So either I don't understand the "fundamental problem" wheels solve)
No, apparently not. Try thinking about it some more. (Hint, see how many different kinds of "wheeled conveyance" you can come up with.)
Ah, so you say, that wheels alone cannot solve the (still unnamed) "fundamental problem" then? So, what is the fundamental problem wheels solve? Wheels, not transportation systems based on wheels.
I brought this up, because it is exactly what in my eyes Jaron Lanier means. The problem to be solved is reduced to a narrow subset ("let's write a kind of UNIX") and so all the answers are obviously going to turn out to be a kind of UNIX. His goals seems to be, "let's start thinking how we can come up with an OS better than UNIX". And I kind of agree, the reduction to the goal "find something to move loads over smooth enough hard surfaces" from "find a means of transportation" is the same general problem. You claim a subset to be a "fundamental problem" when it is only a small part of it. The fundamental problem in my eyes is "transportation" and that includes many different kinds of solutions, every one with its own set of pros and cons. Sure, the wheel is obviously a very important element, but it is not the sole answer and by definiting the "fundamental problem" to be exactly matched to the solution "wheel" obviously the wheel can be the only efficient answer. But even if inefficient, other means of transportation also solve the fundamental problem, albeit not efficient. Or is "efficient" also part of the "fundamental problem" the wheel solves? See why I don't know, what that "fundamental problem" might be?
but changing the fundamental shape isn't one of them.
And what do you then say to the concept of maglev? Also sleds have existed far longer than wheels with a similar purpose. Then there are rails. And don't forget feet.
So either I don't understand the "fundamental problem" wheels solve (you conveniently let out what it would be) or you are simply too fixated at one means of transportation.
Would you have used your gun in that situation? The whole point of the taser was to give a cop the a less lethal alternative to lethal force.
And that shows that the taser has no place in the arsenal. Honestly, if an officer can't judge the situation to be not lethally dangerous, but that it might be or could become so, then his only choice is drawing a gun, because I don't see that anybody can safely handle both, a gun in one hand and a taser in the other. So the taser can only be drawn in a situation which doesn't threaten the officer lethally. But what is the point then to even use the taser? If someone is no danger, there is no reason to inflict pain so he can't harm you.
So I am not surprised that the taser seems to be mostly used when there was no real danger, because otherwise the officer would have drawn his gun, knowing fully well what it will do.
Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.[1] This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K (absolute zero). The ground state is defined at zero magnetic field.[1] The second thus defined is equivalent to the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements. (See Historical origin below.) The international standard symbol for a second is s (see ISO 31-1)
So seconds obviously are not a simple multiple of another base unit. The ISU uses some base units preferably defined by a constant of nature (speed of light, frequency of radiation of a material under defined conditions and so on, only mass is still missing). Multiples of the base unit are then following the metric system. The base units are often chosen in a way which maps to older units to ease transition.
In theory the base unit of length could be foot, the meter is just as arbitrary. It was just defined to be the base unit of length in the ISU.
And obviously lack a website? Heise (German computer magazine) for example has its own "service" to make it easier to print URLs. They call them Soft-Links. Additionally they have a link list for each issue together with the title and page numbers of the articles.
I really don't see, why a print publication would opt for a service which is unreliable in principle (or can anybody guarantee the links to still work in 5 years?) like TinyURL.
How much political power gets directed at stuff like this which could be more properly directed at new power sources?
Yeah, because in 100 years we might have a totally new power source and then all our problems will be solved. To eliminate standby is possible now, the energy not wasted doesn't need to be produced, you don't need to build a new power plant, you don't need to upgrade the network. There might not even be one "new power source" which can solve all problems, then there is no other option to try to diversify and saving electricity is one of those options.
Do the terms "preemtive multitasking" and "memory protection" sound familiar? MacOS introduced both with MacOS X in 2001 (MacOS 9 still lacked it), while MS had introduced it to their line of OSes with NT 3.5 in 94 and Win95 in 95.
But honestly neither are really fast to take up features invented often decades ago in different OSes, be it IBMs range of mainframe OSes (virtualization is a really, really old story on the/360 for example), MULTICS, UNIX, VMS and a hundred more.
I guess I am not alone in noticing that often the ads on a page drag the load time way down. I find it interesting, that there is no rule about minimizing content dragged in from other servers you have no or little control over. Blind spot because of Yahoo's business, I guess.
There are also moons which are considered to have been once independent objects caught by Saturns gravity. E.g. in this list the ones with a negative orbital period are retrograde. Saturn seems to have quite some of those.
Although there could be a way around that issue for Apple. The European GSM operates at different frequencies, GSM is at 900 MHz and 1800 MHz while US nets operate at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. So if they locked the phone to the right frequencies they could sell it without a lot of fear of grey market imports, the phones simply wouldn't work.
The problem is, that then the European unlocked versions would be useless for customers traveling to the US from time to time.
Right now we keep card data only for as long as it takes the transaction to settle. But it would be best if card data was only ever stored in RAM (and yeah, I know the swapfile is a vulnerability, too).
And why don't you do that then? A little more effort, but just use a second database but not the regular kind, but an in-memory database. That way the CC data is in a physically separate database and a SQL-injection in your main database can't get the CC data. Also nothing is written to the disc (except possibly swap file, but I think that is not really a big concern). There seem to be some OSS versions, sorry I only know of them, I have never used one.
That is where the "in principle" comes from. But your case is hampered by the same law here in Germany. An ISP may only store privacy related data when it needs it. The mapping IP->customer is obviously privacy related so on a flat rate the provider has to delete that data as soon as the connection is terminated. And yes, this has been tested in court and not only the lowest, but up to the highest court. Currently 7 days is considered tolerable, but the same group which reached the ruling in the story tries to also get the 7 days down to 0.
What that means for the impeding recording of all connection data for 6 months by ISPs which is now also law is still unknown. It seems as if from January 1st one law says an ISP has to log everything and keep it for 6 months, the other outright forbids it. Against that later EU law (which was adapted into national laws by most member states of the EU) Ireland has appealed to the EU court, outcome unknown.
If storing IP addresses is considered a privacy violation, then what about cookies? And what about forums, after all they store and display messages from users, normally together with the user alias for god knows how long!
If the cookie is necessary for the service you provide and you have a declaration of what information is contained in the cookie, how long you retain the information and allow a user to delete all privacy related information, then you are allowed to use a cookie. If you use it to track users I would say you might be in problems, but I am not entirly sure, because, at least in theory, you can deny accepting a cookie and delete it. That is not possible with your IP in a logfile. I am no lawyer, this is only how I understand the law in that area.
Forum postings are not privacy related data, as you had to agree to them being shown to the public, if not explicitely then implicitely, as a user posting in a forum can be assumed to know, that a posting will be public.
Slashdot Mirror
Are the offsets going to be 32bit or 64bit? LSB or MSB? And how do you tell the value 16 from the tag 16? Do we pad datastructures? Will strings be zero terminated or have a prefixed length?
I would like a demonstration of that with the example of Microsoft Word 2003 format, the binary variant, please.
You see, humanity for thousands of years managed to live without cars. People lived in cites for a long time now and just because someone 50 years ago thought it would be a great idea to sprawl the cities out over ever larger areas and make every distance so long, that you can not manage it without a car doesn't mean that it has to stay that way. If it becomes too expensive to sustain that way of life for you, then sorry, you will have to change it. Just because you think it is your god given right to live out in the woods does not mean all the rest of humanity has to pay the price for your choice.
And before you complain, I have the same problem. I live out too far, but by my choice and so I don't see why I would have a right to complain. Additionally I guess you are from the US, here gas costs $7.59 per gallon today (1.369 Euro per liter, a gallon is about 3.78 liters and one Euro is 1.4663$).
Ah, yes you are right. I didn't check thoroughly and only skimmed the wikipage and misread. But still it has been 1.5 years which is still quite long for only ~50%, no?
It is even worse in my eyes. According to Wikipedia currently (after nearly 3 years) IE7 has barely overtaken IE6. So currently you have to make sure your pages render on both. When IE8 comes out, it will probably take quite a while until it has significant market share and will probably eat into IE7 and not into IE6. So I either have to hack one page which works in all browsers, then I will obviously use the compatibility mode of IE8 as I have to make the page render correctly in IE6 in any case. Or I have to create separate pages for IE6 and IE8 (and then I don't see the need for that meta thing at all).
So if that suggestion accomplishes anything, then that IE8 will have even slower adoption rates than IE7 as now even most web designers won't have a need to use it, as it won't break their pages.
What I find surprising in that whole discussion is, why Microsoft doesn't solve it the way, the other browsers would, by making it possible to install more than one version. Then you can just use IE6 for those few sites which don't work correctly in IE8. Sure, it would cost considerable effort to build an IE6 (or IE7) which would not integrate into the OS and make it impossible to run another version, but in comparison to adding all the quirks of all past versions of the browser to the next one, I know, which solution I would choose.
May I present the exception: SpaceNavigator. It is nothing like that waving around stuff but a simple knob with sensors detecting the force you apply. I got one some weeks ago and haven't had time to play with it a lot, but even so after some minutes it started to get quite intuitive.
And why do you think that is any different with raytracing? Model geometry is very similar and I doubt that you will understand the math behind BDRF (Bidirectional Reflectance Function, a way to describe surface characteristics) or scattering in participating media without some time to study it. In fact they are so similar that OpenRT is a raytracer with an interface quite similar to OpenGL. The shader system is completely different, though as it wouldn't make sense to limit it to GPU-shaders without hardware support.
Raytracer handle big geometry quite well, but if you think you can just throw everything in a naive way at them, you will get a bad surprise on the terrible speed. I don't see that modeling would be much easier, you don't have to model low poly (which is indeed hard), but because of the way raytracers work you often can't get away with a texture but need to have geometry. Also the textures are as muchwork, writing efficient shaders is not a lot different and the complete game logic is the same.
... a way which was pioneered by the Reyes renderer (if I am not istaken) and is standard in any contemporary rendering system. Actually at that level there isn't a lot of difference between raytracing and rasterization. Raytracers often have more freedom in the shaders because e.g. shadows interact very elegantly with this system. A rasterizer needs to integrate shadow calculations (e.g. shadow volumes) in the shader code, a raytracer just shoots a shadow ray and then "knows" which light source has an effect and which one doesn't.
There is one of the advantages of raytracers, you can use incredibly find details as the performance doesn't degrade as fast with many objects and with detailed objects and there are ways to even handle many light sources (one way is called "Lightcuts" and handles in the order of 100k lights without degrading too badly). It is even possible to delay the loading of objects and only represent them as bounding box and only load them when that bounding volume is hit. A rasterizer can't do that so far down.
They are called TAN-lists. The first time you receive that list of tans after you got your password in a different letter sent some days earlier. Later lists you get by mail as well, but you use one of the last remaining unused numbers on the old list to authorize the new one, so after you have used the first one nobody has much use for subsequent ones.
In the last year most banks changed the system a bit. Now the number sequences are numbered themself and the banking app asks for a specific number. They sold it as a countermeasure to phishing, as a phished TAN would be worthless for the next transaction as it would with high possibility ask a different one.
What is sad is, that it is a rather weak system, there is a much better one called HBCI. That one works with a card with a crypto chip and a card reader attached to the computer. Normally banks required "class 3 readers" which have their own keypad and display. When you do a transaction some of the details of that transaction would be shown in the display and you authorize the transaction over the keypad of the card reader. As the card reader only talks via a encrypted channel with the backing system it is quite secure. But it never was widely adopted as the readers were a bit expensive and banks prefer to use that TAN thing as it is cheaper for them.
You even have to subtract about 500 million dollars from the 6,5 billion, as that is the contribution of the ESA to the mission. (See FAQ item 10 (that page also must have been made in space, because who on Earth would sort a FAQ in reverse order and not even put anchors to the items on it)). So about $20 for each in the US and below $1 for us Europeans, not that it makes a difference and I fully agree with you.
Your examples were:
I don't know about your jurisdiction, in mine (Germany) judges have rules, that it isn't. As you put up the images without restrictions you implicitely gave your ok for users to see them and also for search engines to display them. Ads on the search page are irrelevant.
Commercial use. Being free has absolutely nothing to do with if it is commercial or not. If they use it to support their business then it is commercial.
I would say, that is probably also commercial. But I am not entirely sure about it, a judge would have to decide. But if asked I would license it for free for that, as CC is not exclusive it is possible.
I don't see why "non-profit" matters if it is commercial or not. If they live from donations and use my photo for that purpose I would see it as commercial use.
I don't. If I think it might be commercial use I will ask a lawyer, if he suggests it is, I would have to sue the violating party and then see, if the judge agrees with my lawyer. I understand under commercial use when a company uses something to do its business.
I think the latter would also constitute commercial use, without the promotion part of a commercial entity I would see it as noncommercial. But in the end, it isn't me who defines it, but the law and a judge. To enforce my copyright I will have to sue.
I don't think you can render that directly so easily and if you want to work with that dataset it will cause even more trouble. I would try to change it to something simpler to work with. First create a height map which only covers the lowest parts of the model. Then extract all geometry that resides atop of it. That should result in a big height map and geometry which has a lot of disjoint parts. So next I would try to segment the geometry into disjunct objects so you can use level of detail on them, using it on one object is very hard to keep continuous. Without description of what you want to do with the model it is hard to say, if that would do or not.
There are renderers which can handle those datasets, but I don't know if they are available. Ingo Wald has done realtime raytracing of a Boing 777 with 350 million triangles.
Or on surfaces which can be made low friction with water or by using something which reduces friction like rods. Or in the form of two sets which are used to move foreward heavy machinery like tunnel drilling machines? Obviously there are ways to propell a sledge, even if it is inefficient, a propellor can drive a sledge and so can a sail.
Ah, so you say, that wheels alone cannot solve the (still unnamed) "fundamental problem" then? So, what is the fundamental problem wheels solve? Wheels, not transportation systems based on wheels.
I brought this up, because it is exactly what in my eyes Jaron Lanier means. The problem to be solved is reduced to a narrow subset ("let's write a kind of UNIX") and so all the answers are obviously going to turn out to be a kind of UNIX. His goals seems to be, "let's start thinking how we can come up with an OS better than UNIX". And I kind of agree, the reduction to the goal "find something to move loads over smooth enough hard surfaces" from "find a means of transportation" is the same general problem. You claim a subset to be a "fundamental problem" when it is only a small part of it. The fundamental problem in my eyes is "transportation" and that includes many different kinds of solutions, every one with its own set of pros and cons. Sure, the wheel is obviously a very important element, but it is not the sole answer and by definiting the "fundamental problem" to be exactly matched to the solution "wheel" obviously the wheel can be the only efficient answer. But even if inefficient, other means of transportation also solve the fundamental problem, albeit not efficient. Or is "efficient" also part of the "fundamental problem" the wheel solves? See why I don't know, what that "fundamental problem" might be?
And what do you then say to the concept of maglev? Also sleds have existed far longer than wheels with a similar purpose. Then there are rails. And don't forget feet.
So either I don't understand the "fundamental problem" wheels solve (you conveniently let out what it would be) or you are simply too fixated at one means of transportation.
And that shows that the taser has no place in the arsenal. Honestly, if an officer can't judge the situation to be not lethally dangerous, but that it might be or could become so, then his only choice is drawing a gun, because I don't see that anybody can safely handle both, a gun in one hand and a taser in the other. So the taser can only be drawn in a situation which doesn't threaten the officer lethally. But what is the point then to even use the taser? If someone is no danger, there is no reason to inflict pain so he can't harm you.
So I am not surprised that the taser seems to be mostly used when there was no real danger, because otherwise the officer would have drawn his gun, knowing fully well what it will do.
From Wikipedia:
Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.[1] This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K (absolute zero). The ground state is defined at zero magnetic field.[1] The second thus defined is equivalent to the ephemeris second, which was based on astronomical measurements. (See Historical origin below.) The international standard symbol for a second is s (see ISO 31-1)So seconds obviously are not a simple multiple of another base unit. The ISU uses some base units preferably defined by a constant of nature (speed of light, frequency of radiation of a material under defined conditions and so on, only mass is still missing). Multiples of the base unit are then following the metric system. The base units are often chosen in a way which maps to older units to ease transition.
In theory the base unit of length could be foot, the meter is just as arbitrary. It was just defined to be the base unit of length in the ISU.
And obviously lack a website? Heise (German computer magazine) for example has its own "service" to make it easier to print URLs. They call them Soft-Links. Additionally they have a link list for each issue together with the title and page numbers of the articles.
I really don't see, why a print publication would opt for a service which is unreliable in principle (or can anybody guarantee the links to still work in 5 years?) like TinyURL.
Yeah, because in 100 years we might have a totally new power source and then all our problems will be solved. To eliminate standby is possible now, the energy not wasted doesn't need to be produced, you don't need to build a new power plant, you don't need to upgrade the network. There might not even be one "new power source" which can solve all problems, then there is no other option to try to diversify and saving electricity is one of those options.
Do the terms "preemtive multitasking" and "memory protection" sound familiar? MacOS introduced both with MacOS X in 2001 (MacOS 9 still lacked it), while MS had introduced it to their line of OSes with NT 3.5 in 94 and Win95 in 95.
But honestly neither are really fast to take up features invented often decades ago in different OSes, be it IBMs range of mainframe OSes (virtualization is a really, really old story on the /360 for example), MULTICS, UNIX, VMS and a hundred more.
Easy, you claim it to be rare Scottish notes.
I guess I am not alone in noticing that often the ads on a page drag the load time way down. I find it interesting, that there is no rule about minimizing content dragged in from other servers you have no or little control over. Blind spot because of Yahoo's business, I guess.
There are also moons which are considered to have been once independent objects caught by Saturns gravity. E.g. in this list the ones with a negative orbital period are retrograde. Saturn seems to have quite some of those.
Although there could be a way around that issue for Apple. The European GSM operates at different frequencies, GSM is at 900 MHz and 1800 MHz while US nets operate at 850 MHz and 1900 MHz. So if they locked the phone to the right frequencies they could sell it without a lot of fear of grey market imports, the phones simply wouldn't work.
The problem is, that then the European unlocked versions would be useless for customers traveling to the US from time to time.
And why don't you do that then? A little more effort, but just use a second database but not the regular kind, but an in-memory database. That way the CC data is in a physically separate database and a SQL-injection in your main database can't get the CC data. Also nothing is written to the disc (except possibly swap file, but I think that is not really a big concern). There seem to be some OSS versions, sorry I only know of them, I have never used one.
That is where the "in principle" comes from. But your case is hampered by the same law here in Germany. An ISP may only store privacy related data when it needs it. The mapping IP->customer is obviously privacy related so on a flat rate the provider has to delete that data as soon as the connection is terminated. And yes, this has been tested in court and not only the lowest, but up to the highest court. Currently 7 days is considered tolerable, but the same group which reached the ruling in the story tries to also get the 7 days down to 0.
What that means for the impeding recording of all connection data for 6 months by ISPs which is now also law is still unknown. It seems as if from January 1st one law says an ISP has to log everything and keep it for 6 months, the other outright forbids it. Against that later EU law (which was adapted into national laws by most member states of the EU) Ireland has appealed to the EU court, outcome unknown.
If the cookie is necessary for the service you provide and you have a declaration of what information is contained in the cookie, how long you retain the information and allow a user to delete all privacy related information, then you are allowed to use a cookie. If you use it to track users I would say you might be in problems, but I am not entirly sure, because, at least in theory, you can deny accepting a cookie and delete it. That is not possible with your IP in a logfile. I am no lawyer, this is only how I understand the law in that area.
Forum postings are not privacy related data, as you had to agree to them being shown to the public, if not explicitely then implicitely, as a user posting in a forum can be assumed to know, that a posting will be public.