I was going to say almost the same thing - in California it's cheaper to get a hot, juicy burger from In-N-Out (with convenient access to inexpensive fries and drinks) than it is to make yourself a sandwich with deli meat for lunch.
Facebook using commercially valuable photography or artwork posted to their site without asking or paying for it would certainly not hold up in court, no matter what is written in their terms of service.
And even if it did, there's no way they could claim right to the content and ask for the full-res files. I think you're right to be concerned about it, and watermarking is the right idea, but the chances of Facebook trying to use your stuff seem pretty small. I would be more concerned about your clients re-printing stuff without paying you or getting your permission:)
I mean, IANAL and honestly don't care what's in the TOS for Facebook, but I am a photographer too and pay attention to the legal position of photographers and hosting services (I post photos to Flickr and they don't take my copyright - and I did stop posting good photos on Facebook.) I can't imagine a judge not laughing Facebook out of court if they tried that, though.
One last thing - is using Facebook as a marketing tool without being a paying commercial partner allowed under their TOS?;)
If you like to share photography or artwork that has even the slightest chance of having commercial value with your friends, it only makes sense to do so on websites that explicitly don't take control of your data.
The two big ones are Flickr for photography and DeviantArt for artwork. Your friends and family can sign up for free accounts on those sites if they want to comment on your photos. Not as convenient, but if your work has value, it makes sense. I put my photos, some of which I think do have commercial value, on Flickr (see my homepage link.) On Flickr you retain all copyrights to your photographs. They even make it easy for you to apply any license you want (all rights reserved, creative commons, etc.) by default to your photos, and make it clear to all.
We must keep in mind of course that what one person calls valuable is benign or worthless to someone else - others have commented about Facebook providing their users' photos for commercial use. Chances are these were poorly made snapshots that most would consider worthless for commercial use, but if you've been around the internet at all you know that if that poorly made snapshot has an attractive girl in it, it is valuable. And you can imagine how this would work well for advertising, too - stock photography is so cheesy that having what looks like real photographs (because they are) instead could make it easier to connect to your company's message. And it's cheaper, because Facebook gets it for free without even having to ask, and can charge as little as they want for it.
To be clear, I agree with you completely. It is an abuse of Facebook's position, and only a matter of time before people realize what's going on and get pissed off about it. But, Facebook is really not the place to showcase your art or photography. They compress images you upload so much it's worthless as a showcase anyway, because it looks terrible. Like another replier said, put snapshots that aren't interesting to anyone but your friends and family on facebook, sure, but anything else, just link to it.
Now, I'm not one to do this normally, but seriously - what you need is Adblock Plus.
If you like to support sites you like by leaving the ads on, you can white-list them.
On Facebook, I see no ads. I also don't add many applications, though.
I'm freeloading, but I use the site so infrequently that it doesn't matter. You could say that I add value by making other people more likely to spend more time looking at their ads, because they have one more friend's profile to browse. That would imply that I have lots of friends that look at my facebook profile all the time, but still, even though I make no money for them directly, they still get something out of me:)
Facebook is making plenty from others with ads and data-mining. If you want to keep up with your friends while not "paying" for Facebook with your advertising eyes or data, block their ads and don't give them much personal data. Simple.
I agree that it has been performing sub-par for many people, but I don't think the failure rate on that Antarctica trip is the right thing to point to. See my earlier comment at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1128757&cid=26869539 for my analysis.
There are reports of earlier Antarctica trips on that site from previous years, with similar tallies of failed cameras. It doesn't tell you a whole lot other than that if you use your camera in extreme conditions it wasn't necessarily designed for, you have to expect that it may have problems.
The bigger issues (that haven't supposedly been fixed by firmware) - as discussed on the fake blog - are noise even at low ISOs and auto-focus performance. These are disappointing problems for this camera, especially the noise. This is marketed as a low-noise camera, even at high ISOs, yet many are saying the original 5D is better in that regard (I haven't looked into it too much myself, I can't afford an upgrade from my 40D anytime soon anyway.)
Just want to add that with the same two cameras, the 350D and my current 40D, I also haven't had problems.
I *have* had minor problems with lenses, especially third-party ones. That is where calibration/quality control is a major problem, even with Canon lenses (though I haven't had a problem with my Canon lenses, I know many others have.)
You forget to mention that on the Antarctica trip you mentioned, of 77 total 70% of photographers were using Canon, and 30% Nikon. Fifty percent of Canon users, so 35% of the total, were using 5D IIs, or 26 people.
They don't mention specifically how many people were using D700s, only "lots". I have no idea of course, but let's say for arguments sake that 50% of Nikon users had the D700 - though their wording lends me to believe it's probably less. That's approximately 12 D700s. Three dead 5D IIs out of 26 is 12%. Twelve percent of 12 rounds to 1. That means to have an equal failure rate, there had to be 1 dead D700.
Can you see that there simply weren't enough Nikons to provide equivalent statistics? How about the fact that maybe those with the failed cameras were people who simply took more risks with their equipment? We can't know.
Yes, it's disappointing of the 5D II that so many failed, but the 5D series and the XXD series are not marketed as being incredibly rough and rugged and waterproof. These are things you want in a camera you take to Antarctica.
Despite that, I personally would not hesitate to take my 40D to Antarctica. In fact I hope to have the opportunity sometime in the next few years (though perhaps I will have upgraded to something newer, it won't be a much more expensive weather-sealed one - in fact, my next upgrade will likely be to the 5D series, or whatever the equivalent is in the future.) I have used the 40D in moderately extreme conditions before, including being splashed with salt water and in light rain and snow, with no problem. I would hope that it wouldn't fail, but I accept the possibility that it might if I let too much moisture in, because it is not designed for that. And I wouldn't trust an equivalent Nikon to be any better, unless it was designed for it, which they aren't.
Not that I wouldn't ever use Nikon, I think they have good cameras and lenses. And Canon, I agree, is having serious problems right now. Having a few mediocre or problem-ridden releases is not enough for hobbyists, and most pros, to write them off completely, though. These companies go through cycles and you can guarantee that Canon will be back eventually. And they'll go through more downturns, too.
The 407 gives us an excellent example of where these automated toll systems will cause uproar. As you described, there is a ridiculous charge if you don't have a transponder - but if you're not from Ontario, it's far worse, because you aren't familiar with it, there are no signs saying how much it costs, and you can't get a transponder.
I'm from Buffalo and once accidentally drove on the 407 when trying to get through Toronto. I'm pretty familiar with the freeway system there, but as I'm sure you know it's easy to get confused, and when traffic is heavy you can get caught in the wrong lane and end up on the wrong road.
So - in heavy traffic, I got stuck on the 407. I normally would take the 401, of course, but I knew from looking at a map before heading out that the 407 would get me to the same place, so I went with it. I knew about the automated tolling, but figured it would be reasonable. I got sent a ~$20 CAD bill (this when USD and CAD were almost equal)! That's pretty outrageous. They really have it rigged for those not familiar with the area.
Now I live in Southern California, and they have toll roads with an Ez-Pass type system here (and I used Ez-Pass extensively on the Thruway system back in New York so I am familiar with it, but don't have a transponder here because I don't need to use those roads) - but they have huge warnings to let you know not to try to use that road if you don't have a transponder, and it is easy to get off on an alternate route, even in heavy traffic. Best of all, they have electronic signs that tell you the current toll - they change the toll amount depending on traffic conditions to regulate traffic on the toll road. I've seen it up to ~$15 during rush hour, which is outrageous, but at least they are clear about it, unlike in Toronto.
I think it's hilarious you finally got modded "Funny" for this, but really, thank you for swooping in and correcting everybody. With something new and interesting like this, the slashdot standard of not RTFA combined with the slashdot standard of jumping to conclusions and spouting off incorrect information as fact really does a disservice to everyone. So, thanks for trying to set everyone straight:)
Thanks for the link, it is pretty amusing. However, the store in the photos is actually mentioned in TFA, and though they don't get into specifics I feel that the stores they are planning on opening will be different, probably significantly so. I think they used the one at Microsoft headquarters (which is in the pictures you link) as a proof of concept/test bed for ideas. Also, the photo showing the door clearly has the parking lot photoshopped in.
It's probably actually in the back corner somewhere of a Microsoft complex (I don't know if they have a "campus" like Google does, but I would guess they probably do.) I only glanced over the details in your link briefly but I would guess this might have replaced/supplemented the Microsoft employee store, where they get discounted Microsoft stuff. Many years ago, a relative who works for Microsoft got me one of the original Intellimouse Explorer mice there, which I still use, and MS's first force-feedback joystick, that I used for years (back when they still used the gameport.)
Anyway - I strayed into being off topic but I just thought I'd clarify your link; it's interesting but probably not what the stores are going to look like. Obviously we can expect some similarities, like a lot of Xbox stuff, and probably the Surface tables.
I suspect I will never be inclined to actually go inside one, though, like I've never gone in an Apple store. I will confess, I went in a Sony store once. I do use Microsoft mice still, as I have found them to be most to my liking, and honestly I don't feel dirty doing so despite using openSUSE exclusively - Microsoft's one good product line is their mice:) I suspect that I will find better prices online or at Fry's, though, should I need a need a new mouse...
Getting rid of the chaff. Tags are for simple notification purposes (e.g. 'dup' for duplicates) or for search engines. They're not there to give glib compound word opinions, like 'wealreadyknewthat'.
Some of the biggest laughs to be found on here, at least for me, are from clever tags. It's an unusual and new avenue for humor and people have been taking great advantage of it - I agree with the earlier poster who lamented the fact that these tags now only last a few minutes.
The way it seemed to be working before the recent change was that we had the "useful" ones as you describe side-by-side with the funny ones.
Yes, many we can do without, like "correlationisnotcausation" and crap like that. But that doesn't mean we should have only serious or useful tags! They were really funny sometimes, honest!
Curious about the Mastercard fine for asking for ID - I have a Mastercard (my only credit card) and I get asked for ID all the time. I get asked at probably as much as half of the transactions I do with it! No one ever verifies the signature (my signature is different every time anyway so it's not like it would help), they ask for ID as soon as they see I'm using a credit card.
I'm guessing, thusly, that this is something that varies widely by state/county. I lived in Western New York most of my life. There, I have only been asked for ID when using a credit card maybe a couple of times, but they do check the signatures fairly frequently. I recently moved to California, which is where as described above no one checks signatures but frequently ask for ID. To make things difficult I show them my expired New York driver's license rather than my California one, so they can't try to swipe it (California licenses have a mag-strip.)
One place you can count on getting asked for ID if you use a credit card is Fry's. I've been asked 100% of the time there.
Since you're familiar with the area - what is that building with people's names written in stone put in the windows? Is that really an old building turned into a mausoleum?
I agree it is ridiculous how much exists. However, if you look at it, it's actually kind of interesting. If I'm utilizing a public stall I make it a point to read most of what's written (there is just about always stuff written unless it was just cleaned/repainted) and it's kind of a fun hobby.
I'm assuming it's less of a problem in offices and places like that where people have "real jobs", but as an undergraduate previously at one school and now a master's student at another, I have found that university bathrooms are among the most interesting. These are the bathrooms I, and obviously a lot of other people, spend a lot of time in while "working", but are still for the most part public (unlike at an office building.)
As there are very few public restrooms without graffiti, even at upscale businesses, one might as well take some enjoyment out of it. Marvel at the idiocy of the people who write it (it's really quite astounding sometimes), wonder if anyone really comes at 10:30 on Monday and taps their foot for a blow job, and - best of all - be amazed by the 1 out of 1000 piece of graffiti that is clever and makes you laugh.
Now, the funniest (though not surprising) part - you mention any of this to a female, and they will have no idea what you're talking about. Apparently there is little to no graffiti in even the most public of the public women's restrooms!
I know you won't like this - I don't like that I have to do this, either, and frankly think it's ridiculous that there's not a point-and-click way to handle external monitors reliably - but assuming you have the extended resolution set properly in xorg.conf you can write some extremely simple scripts for your various external screen needs, and they work every time (unlike the randr tray program, at least in KDE.)
If I want to run my laptop through a 1024x768 projector, cloned, here is my script:
If I want to use the projector as an extended desktop, simply replace the "--clone-of" with "--left-of" or "--right-of". Of course, make sure if you have a randr system tray program running that it's not set to "Unify outputs" - that is the only setting in the randr tray program that will override these scripts (as far as I know, I haven't tried everything.)
If I want to run it through my external monitor, same thing, just change the resolution (the external monitor and laptop screen are both 1680x1050, which makes it easy... using different resolutions on each screen does work, though.)
So you figure out all the possible settings you want, put the scripts in/home/user/bin/, then make links from your quicklaunch menu (or from your main menu, however you like to do things like that.) If you need a new setting at some point later, just duplicate one of the scripts and change the resolutions you need.
Not as easy as just plugging it in and having it work, sure, but it does work - when you plug it in to something different, just click on the link to your script and it switches right away and should always go, unlike flaky GUI programs.
To reiterate - I think it is absolutely ridiculous that this is necessary to use multiple monitors. If the scripts are this simple, KDE or Gnome should be able to produce the same results on the fly, and we should at least be able to specify this ourselves using a GUI. The GUIs are there, sometimes, but don't do anything or don't work.
The "Simulation" book sounds interesting, but I can't find any reference to it in my (admittedly quick) Amazon and Google searches... can you provide more information about it? Perhaps the author is wrong?
Paleoseismology as you described is actually quite difficult. In the case of the San Andreas, you can't really look at off-set streams and such. You can rarely discern more than one or two events along such offsets, and once you do, it is very difficult to determine the age of the offset. You can get the amount that it's moved, yes, but not the timing. Worse, since you don't know the timing, you don't know if the offset is from one or more events.
The way it's done for strike-slip faults like the San Andreas is to look at a cross-section perpendicular to the fault, looking for layers of material off-set (or suddenly changing thickness, etc.) along the fault. The best way to date those layers is through carbon-14 dating of organic material, which can give you accuracy only within ~1-200 years - and that's assuming that the organic material you date is not from elsewhere, is not from 200 year old trees, etc. If an event offsets every layer from the bottom up to a certain point, you date the top layer that it cuts through to get a maximum age, and the layer that it didn't cut through is the minimum age.
You can imagine the difficulty and ambiguous nature of this. The individual layers that you have to recognize and date are on the scale of centimeters to decimeters - I've seen some of the areas that were used, the famous one being along Pallet Creek which is along the San Andreas northeast of LA (I have a picture of it - well, it is a picture of a girl standing in front of it - here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/penguinchris/3037578910/) Here, luckily there was constant, relatively rapid deposition of material. In most places this is not the case, so any record of movement on the fault is eroded away.
For the San Andreas, we have a partial record going back ~1500 years. There really is no reliable way to reach back further than that - the record isn't normally visible in older rock units. Looking at the larger-scale structures is interesting by itself but doesn't tell you anything about when specifically there was movement. The fault system in the Sichuan region is fairly well understood - it is a kind of combination strike-slip/thrust fault (see http://quake.mit.edu/~changli/wenchuan.html for some nice diagrams.) But I want to call BS on the idea that they have any idea how frequently major earthquakes have happened there - and even if they do, the idea that it is "perhaps millions of years" since the last one is ridiculous no matter what.
And then, when you *do* figure out a approximate year for an earthquake, how do you determine how big it was? Again, extremely difficult! The best estimates come from comparing old written records of destruction with those from modern earthquakes - nothing scientific at all!
What's being done extensively with the San Andreas is physics-based computer modeling - we have some idea of the force building up, and combining that with records of historical earthquakes we can make an estimate of a major earthquake every ~150 years. But even for this, the best-studied earthquake area, it's not much more than a guess.
I don't know as much about the Teton fault (other than that it is a normal fault, not a thrust fault as you stated;) ) but I'll comment on the idea of a "magnitude 7 earthquake every 400-700 years." These kinds of estimates are based on the very difficult work I described earlier (and I'm not sure how much has been done for the Teton fault) and whatever geologist came up with that would probably admit it is a simple guess without much to base it on. I mean, think of it - is knowing there's a large earthquake every 400-700 years really all that useful anyway?
By the way, I assume any dating of the Teton fault would be done this way: when new patches of rock are exposed along the fault as you described, they start getting hit by cosmogenic radiation. By measuring the amount of cosmogenic radio isoto
It's worse than that. Many of the programs on the "platinum" list, which as you noted are supposed to "work flawlessly, no configuration" - don't. If you look at the write-ups people posted saying they tried it and it worked flawlessly, most of them will say they "didn't try" certain features (which are probably the ones you want, and which end up not working) or they even say that there ARE some problems... and in many cases these are serious problems.
But the program starts up, and it's feasible you could get something useful out of it, so it's "platinum" right? Chances are, those couple of things that weren't tried or didn't work quite right are the whole reason anyone wants to use the software in the first place, as in your Starcraft example with multiplayer!
The worst is that it's obvious in some cases that the people who submitted these reports weren't regular users of the software. They apparnetly just installed it and tried it to see if it would work with wine. That's great, seeing if things are compatible, helping out - but seriously, to be helpful you have to know what the program is supposed to do and what people actually use it for.
I'm not trying to incite anyone but I don't think anyone who's looked at the Wine AppDB would disagree with me too much. I appreciate the work people put into it, but there needs to be some better standards for deciding how well software works under Wine. It's hard to recommend Wine for anything when it's a total crapshoot whether comments in the AppDB are correct or not.
I personally don't have need to run anything with Wine, but I have attempted on occasion, and have helped others do so. I do run one piece of Windows software - Adobe Lightroom - but I do so in a Windows VM because Wine support for it is extremely limited.
As I think someone else in here noted, a lot of the really well-supported software is stuff like DVD rippers/burners and "utility" apps, of which there are usually multiple excellent open-source programs available to choose from. That's not the kind of software preventing people from switching to linux. Although, I did give up my favorite DVD burning program, ImgBurn, when I stopped using windows several years ago - it does work pretty much flawlessly under wine actually, but I like k3b too:)
I have a T61 with the intel 965 chipset too, and while I appreciate that it works better out of the box than I imagine an nvidia or ati video card does, I *do* occasionally have issues with it.
Now, I love the T61 in general - though not everything worked perfectly when I first got it a year ago, development has really come along well and just about everything works great (save for the HD APS as you mentioned, and fingerprint scanner support is still not really usable.)
Of course, I did get mine with SUSE preinstalled rather than windows when they still offered that, so you'd hope they would include hardware that works with linux:) I use openSUSE and wiped the out of date SUSE installation when I got it, by the way.
But, I do have problems with 3d, despite intel being completely open about it.
I'm not saying it's not supported well - it is, obviously - but it's far from flawless. And if you do have a problem, your only good option is to wait until the xorg video drivers are updated officially, because trying to compile the drivers from the intel video site is pretty ridiculous (I'm not exactly an expert but this is literally the only thing I haven't managed to compile into the kernel and get working.)
The main problem I've had (besides poor 3d performance in games) are certain applications using 3D (most notably Google Earth) completely hard-freezing the system. Google Earth is useful to me for my master's thesis project in geology so not having it working is an inconvenience.
Besides that, just working with the video card in general is never quite right - using dual displays never worked for me (other than straight cloning) until just last week when I updated to the latest video driver, for example. Also, when starting or shutting down x I get a scrambled, corrupted display for a second or two.
I agree with you that intel should be lauded for their support of open source, but it does have a lot of issues still. The big thing is that the intel video drivers that are available when a chipset is released don't seem to fully support the chipset well - as I said, it's only now that most things seem to work decently with the 965 chip, and it's been out for a while.
Of course, your mileage may vary, and it could just be me:) I know I'm expecting too much out of it to be able to run more advanced 3D games (Quake 3 and BZflag work fine, for example, but most of the newer games run very poorly.) I use my computer primarily as a workstation, though, and the fact that it has problems with Google Earth and things like that is an issue. The only game I spend a lot of time with is knetwalk, and that runs fine:)
Another thread was discussing HD video performance on intel video cards, and though my post is already long I'll throw this in - videos, HD or otherwise, run fine on the intel 965 and look great. I guess I don't know if it's hardware accelerated or not but it doesn't really matter, it looks and runs fine, even 1080p blu-ray rips.
It depends on where you live - when I lived in New York (Buffalo) I usually got things from them the next day, because they have warehouses in New Jersey and processing time is quick. I live in Southern California now, and also get things next day, because I believe they're based here (which means I pay tax, but the shipping is usually free and I get it next day.)
It's the same thing with Amazon - they say the free shipping will take more time, but in my experience it doesn't.
If you live in the middle of the country, away from Newegg or Amazon's distribution centers, then yeah, it's going to take longer.
I know you're joking, but, Life of Brian is on Blu-Ray and it looks really good at 1080p. It works as a joke for them that the TV show and their films were made cheaply and with low quality film stock, but realistically they don't look *that* much worse than most other films from the period.
That said, I've seen Life of Brian and Holy Grail in theaters projected on film, and you don't gain much from the experience (in fact it's almost worse, because literally everyone in the theater says every line out loud along with the film...) The great thing about the less than great quality is that not much is lost in the transition from big-screen to TV.
It was weird reading your post because I'm exactly the same way - I stopped buying loads of CDs like I used to when I was a downloading fiend, and nowadays I just don't feel like buying stuff (even if I like it.)
The funny thing though is that I did the exact same thing during the recent KPCC (Southern California NPR) fund-raising drive - fired up my mp3 player to play in the car for the first time in a while.
I just started listening to music in the car again for the first time since the fund-raising drive because NPR is spending so much time covering the inauguration - I voted for him too but there are only so many people gushing about Obama I can stand to listen to in a day.
I just listen to the same old stuff I was listening to before, though.
I do download stuff occasionally if I read about something that sounds good, but I don't have the drive to constantly seek out new stuff, and even less of a drive to buy anything.
By the way, soulseek (using Nicotine on linux) is the best current Napster-like music downloading tool I know of. Using Napster kind of sucked because it was hard to find full albums, but with soulseek/nicotine it's easy to manage. If I cared more, I'd be on there all day downloading stuff. I can almost always find what I'm looking for there, even obscure stuff.
No real point to my reply, just felt like sharing my experience too.
The only reason my girlfriend (yeah, yeah) usually wants to play videogames (which I don't play very often anyway) with me is so that she can be a Wookie in Battlefront 2 - so it's not as dumb as you might think. In fact it seems pretty smart to me.
I've been thinking that a third game was way overdue - I hope it gets released at some point; this is disappointing news. That, or they put out some decent Star Wars games like in the good old days (X-Wing, Dark Forces, etc.) The Battlefront series are the best "current" Star Wars games - the packaging for Battlefront 2 states that it's the sequel to the best selling Star Wars game of all time - and it's taking them forever to put out a next-gen sequel. I don't understand it, because they're guaranteed to make tons of money from it!
You're simply wrong - there were Britney Spears equivalents in the 60's, but that's not what the Beatles were. You're thinking of the Monkees, maybe. Good marketing at that time wasn't as important as today - the legitimately good musicians came through on top of the highly commercialized stuff.
Also - it just takes listening to the Beatles to get the answer you seek. They're very good, with very well written lyrics and musical accompaniment. I'm not sure what more of an answer you need than that - just listen to them!
That's great (and I'm glad to hear it) but please tell that to the police and security personnel that patrol these places who obviously didn't get the memo!
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I was going to say almost the same thing - in California it's cheaper to get a hot, juicy burger from In-N-Out (with convenient access to inexpensive fries and drinks) than it is to make yourself a sandwich with deli meat for lunch.
Facebook using commercially valuable photography or artwork posted to their site without asking or paying for it would certainly not hold up in court, no matter what is written in their terms of service.
And even if it did, there's no way they could claim right to the content and ask for the full-res files. I think you're right to be concerned about it, and watermarking is the right idea, but the chances of Facebook trying to use your stuff seem pretty small. I would be more concerned about your clients re-printing stuff without paying you or getting your permission :)
I mean, IANAL and honestly don't care what's in the TOS for Facebook, but I am a photographer too and pay attention to the legal position of photographers and hosting services (I post photos to Flickr and they don't take my copyright - and I did stop posting good photos on Facebook.) I can't imagine a judge not laughing Facebook out of court if they tried that, though.
One last thing - is using Facebook as a marketing tool without being a paying commercial partner allowed under their TOS? ;)
If you like to share photography or artwork that has even the slightest chance of having commercial value with your friends, it only makes sense to do so on websites that explicitly don't take control of your data.
The two big ones are Flickr for photography and DeviantArt for artwork. Your friends and family can sign up for free accounts on those sites if they want to comment on your photos. Not as convenient, but if your work has value, it makes sense. I put my photos, some of which I think do have commercial value, on Flickr (see my homepage link.) On Flickr you retain all copyrights to your photographs. They even make it easy for you to apply any license you want (all rights reserved, creative commons, etc.) by default to your photos, and make it clear to all.
We must keep in mind of course that what one person calls valuable is benign or worthless to someone else - others have commented about Facebook providing their users' photos for commercial use. Chances are these were poorly made snapshots that most would consider worthless for commercial use, but if you've been around the internet at all you know that if that poorly made snapshot has an attractive girl in it, it is valuable. And you can imagine how this would work well for advertising, too - stock photography is so cheesy that having what looks like real photographs (because they are) instead could make it easier to connect to your company's message. And it's cheaper, because Facebook gets it for free without even having to ask, and can charge as little as they want for it.
To be clear, I agree with you completely. It is an abuse of Facebook's position, and only a matter of time before people realize what's going on and get pissed off about it. But, Facebook is really not the place to showcase your art or photography. They compress images you upload so much it's worthless as a showcase anyway, because it looks terrible. Like another replier said, put snapshots that aren't interesting to anyone but your friends and family on facebook, sure, but anything else, just link to it.
Now, I'm not one to do this normally, but seriously - what you need is Adblock Plus.
If you like to support sites you like by leaving the ads on, you can white-list them.
On Facebook, I see no ads. I also don't add many applications, though.
I'm freeloading, but I use the site so infrequently that it doesn't matter. You could say that I add value by making other people more likely to spend more time looking at their ads, because they have one more friend's profile to browse. That would imply that I have lots of friends that look at my facebook profile all the time, but still, even though I make no money for them directly, they still get something out of me :)
Facebook is making plenty from others with ads and data-mining. If you want to keep up with your friends while not "paying" for Facebook with your advertising eyes or data, block their ads and don't give them much personal data. Simple.
I agree that it has been performing sub-par for many people, but I don't think the failure rate on that Antarctica trip is the right thing to point to. See my earlier comment at http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1128757&cid=26869539 for my analysis.
There are reports of earlier Antarctica trips on that site from previous years, with similar tallies of failed cameras. It doesn't tell you a whole lot other than that if you use your camera in extreme conditions it wasn't necessarily designed for, you have to expect that it may have problems.
The bigger issues (that haven't supposedly been fixed by firmware) - as discussed on the fake blog - are noise even at low ISOs and auto-focus performance. These are disappointing problems for this camera, especially the noise. This is marketed as a low-noise camera, even at high ISOs, yet many are saying the original 5D is better in that regard (I haven't looked into it too much myself, I can't afford an upgrade from my 40D anytime soon anyway.)
Just want to add that with the same two cameras, the 350D and my current 40D, I also haven't had problems.
I *have* had minor problems with lenses, especially third-party ones. That is where calibration/quality control is a major problem, even with Canon lenses (though I haven't had a problem with my Canon lenses, I know many others have.)
You forget to mention that on the Antarctica trip you mentioned, of 77 total 70% of photographers were using Canon, and 30% Nikon. Fifty percent of Canon users, so 35% of the total, were using 5D IIs, or 26 people.
They don't mention specifically how many people were using D700s, only "lots". I have no idea of course, but let's say for arguments sake that 50% of Nikon users had the D700 - though their wording lends me to believe it's probably less. That's approximately 12 D700s. Three dead 5D IIs out of 26 is 12%. Twelve percent of 12 rounds to 1. That means to have an equal failure rate, there had to be 1 dead D700.
Can you see that there simply weren't enough Nikons to provide equivalent statistics? How about the fact that maybe those with the failed cameras were people who simply took more risks with their equipment? We can't know.
Yes, it's disappointing of the 5D II that so many failed, but the 5D series and the XXD series are not marketed as being incredibly rough and rugged and waterproof. These are things you want in a camera you take to Antarctica.
Despite that, I personally would not hesitate to take my 40D to Antarctica. In fact I hope to have the opportunity sometime in the next few years (though perhaps I will have upgraded to something newer, it won't be a much more expensive weather-sealed one - in fact, my next upgrade will likely be to the 5D series, or whatever the equivalent is in the future.) I have used the 40D in moderately extreme conditions before, including being splashed with salt water and in light rain and snow, with no problem. I would hope that it wouldn't fail, but I accept the possibility that it might if I let too much moisture in, because it is not designed for that. And I wouldn't trust an equivalent Nikon to be any better, unless it was designed for it, which they aren't.
Not that I wouldn't ever use Nikon, I think they have good cameras and lenses. And Canon, I agree, is having serious problems right now. Having a few mediocre or problem-ridden releases is not enough for hobbyists, and most pros, to write them off completely, though. These companies go through cycles and you can guarantee that Canon will be back eventually. And they'll go through more downturns, too.
Here's the Luminous Landscapes article, for reference: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/antarctica-2009-worked.shtml
The 407 gives us an excellent example of where these automated toll systems will cause uproar. As you described, there is a ridiculous charge if you don't have a transponder - but if you're not from Ontario, it's far worse, because you aren't familiar with it, there are no signs saying how much it costs, and you can't get a transponder.
I'm from Buffalo and once accidentally drove on the 407 when trying to get through Toronto. I'm pretty familiar with the freeway system there, but as I'm sure you know it's easy to get confused, and when traffic is heavy you can get caught in the wrong lane and end up on the wrong road.
So - in heavy traffic, I got stuck on the 407. I normally would take the 401, of course, but I knew from looking at a map before heading out that the 407 would get me to the same place, so I went with it. I knew about the automated tolling, but figured it would be reasonable. I got sent a ~$20 CAD bill (this when USD and CAD were almost equal)! That's pretty outrageous. They really have it rigged for those not familiar with the area.
Now I live in Southern California, and they have toll roads with an Ez-Pass type system here (and I used Ez-Pass extensively on the Thruway system back in New York so I am familiar with it, but don't have a transponder here because I don't need to use those roads) - but they have huge warnings to let you know not to try to use that road if you don't have a transponder, and it is easy to get off on an alternate route, even in heavy traffic. Best of all, they have electronic signs that tell you the current toll - they change the toll amount depending on traffic conditions to regulate traffic on the toll road. I've seen it up to ~$15 during rush hour, which is outrageous, but at least they are clear about it, unlike in Toronto.
I think it's hilarious you finally got modded "Funny" for this, but really, thank you for swooping in and correcting everybody. With something new and interesting like this, the slashdot standard of not RTFA combined with the slashdot standard of jumping to conclusions and spouting off incorrect information as fact really does a disservice to everyone. So, thanks for trying to set everyone straight :)
Thanks for the link, it is pretty amusing. However, the store in the photos is actually mentioned in TFA, and though they don't get into specifics I feel that the stores they are planning on opening will be different, probably significantly so. I think they used the one at Microsoft headquarters (which is in the pictures you link) as a proof of concept/test bed for ideas. Also, the photo showing the door clearly has the parking lot photoshopped in.
It's probably actually in the back corner somewhere of a Microsoft complex (I don't know if they have a "campus" like Google does, but I would guess they probably do.) I only glanced over the details in your link briefly but I would guess this might have replaced/supplemented the Microsoft employee store, where they get discounted Microsoft stuff. Many years ago, a relative who works for Microsoft got me one of the original Intellimouse Explorer mice there, which I still use, and MS's first force-feedback joystick, that I used for years (back when they still used the gameport.)
Anyway - I strayed into being off topic but I just thought I'd clarify your link; it's interesting but probably not what the stores are going to look like. Obviously we can expect some similarities, like a lot of Xbox stuff, and probably the Surface tables.
I suspect I will never be inclined to actually go inside one, though, like I've never gone in an Apple store. I will confess, I went in a Sony store once. I do use Microsoft mice still, as I have found them to be most to my liking, and honestly I don't feel dirty doing so despite using openSUSE exclusively - Microsoft's one good product line is their mice :) I suspect that I will find better prices online or at Fry's, though, should I need a need a new mouse...
What's up with the tag-slaying lately?
Getting rid of the chaff. Tags are for simple notification purposes (e.g. 'dup' for duplicates) or for search engines. They're not there to give glib compound word opinions, like 'wealreadyknewthat'.
Some of the biggest laughs to be found on here, at least for me, are from clever tags. It's an unusual and new avenue for humor and people have been taking great advantage of it - I agree with the earlier poster who lamented the fact that these tags now only last a few minutes.
The way it seemed to be working before the recent change was that we had the "useful" ones as you describe side-by-side with the funny ones.
Yes, many we can do without, like "correlationisnotcausation" and crap like that. But that doesn't mean we should have only serious or useful tags! They were really funny sometimes, honest!
Curious about the Mastercard fine for asking for ID - I have a Mastercard (my only credit card) and I get asked for ID all the time. I get asked at probably as much as half of the transactions I do with it! No one ever verifies the signature (my signature is different every time anyway so it's not like it would help), they ask for ID as soon as they see I'm using a credit card.
I'm guessing, thusly, that this is something that varies widely by state/county. I lived in Western New York most of my life. There, I have only been asked for ID when using a credit card maybe a couple of times, but they do check the signatures fairly frequently. I recently moved to California, which is where as described above no one checks signatures but frequently ask for ID. To make things difficult I show them my expired New York driver's license rather than my California one, so they can't try to swipe it (California licenses have a mag-strip.)
One place you can count on getting asked for ID if you use a credit card is Fry's. I've been asked 100% of the time there.
Since you're familiar with the area - what is that building with people's names written in stone put in the windows? Is that really an old building turned into a mausoleum?
Commenting just on vandalism in restrooms -
I agree it is ridiculous how much exists. However, if you look at it, it's actually kind of interesting. If I'm utilizing a public stall I make it a point to read most of what's written (there is just about always stuff written unless it was just cleaned/repainted) and it's kind of a fun hobby.
I'm assuming it's less of a problem in offices and places like that where people have "real jobs", but as an undergraduate previously at one school and now a master's student at another, I have found that university bathrooms are among the most interesting. These are the bathrooms I, and obviously a lot of other people, spend a lot of time in while "working", but are still for the most part public (unlike at an office building.)
As there are very few public restrooms without graffiti, even at upscale businesses, one might as well take some enjoyment out of it. Marvel at the idiocy of the people who write it (it's really quite astounding sometimes), wonder if anyone really comes at 10:30 on Monday and taps their foot for a blow job, and - best of all - be amazed by the 1 out of 1000 piece of graffiti that is clever and makes you laugh.
Now, the funniest (though not surprising) part - you mention any of this to a female, and they will have no idea what you're talking about. Apparently there is little to no graffiti in even the most public of the public women's restrooms!
I know you won't like this - I don't like that I have to do this, either, and frankly think it's ridiculous that there's not a point-and-click way to handle external monitors reliably - but assuming you have the extended resolution set properly in xorg.conf you can write some extremely simple scripts for your various external screen needs, and they work every time (unlike the randr tray program, at least in KDE.)
If I want to run my laptop through a 1024x768 projector, cloned, here is my script:
xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1024x768
xrandr --output VGA --mode 1024x768
xrandr --output LVDS --clone-of VGA
If I want to use the projector as an extended desktop, simply replace the "--clone-of" with "--left-of" or "--right-of". Of course, make sure if you have a randr system tray program running that it's not set to "Unify outputs" - that is the only setting in the randr tray program that will override these scripts (as far as I know, I haven't tried everything.)
If I want to run it through my external monitor, same thing, just change the resolution (the external monitor and laptop screen are both 1680x1050, which makes it easy... using different resolutions on each screen does work, though.)
So you figure out all the possible settings you want, put the scripts in /home/user/bin/, then make links from your quicklaunch menu (or from your main menu, however you like to do things like that.) If you need a new setting at some point later, just duplicate one of the scripts and change the resolutions you need.
Not as easy as just plugging it in and having it work, sure, but it does work - when you plug it in to something different, just click on the link to your script and it switches right away and should always go, unlike flaky GUI programs.
To reiterate - I think it is absolutely ridiculous that this is necessary to use multiple monitors. If the scripts are this simple, KDE or Gnome should be able to produce the same results on the fly, and we should at least be able to specify this ourselves using a GUI. The GUIs are there, sometimes, but don't do anything or don't work.
The "Simulation" book sounds interesting, but I can't find any reference to it in my (admittedly quick) Amazon and Google searches... can you provide more information about it? Perhaps the author is wrong?
Paleoseismology as you described is actually quite difficult. In the case of the San Andreas, you can't really look at off-set streams and such. You can rarely discern more than one or two events along such offsets, and once you do, it is very difficult to determine the age of the offset. You can get the amount that it's moved, yes, but not the timing. Worse, since you don't know the timing, you don't know if the offset is from one or more events.
The way it's done for strike-slip faults like the San Andreas is to look at a cross-section perpendicular to the fault, looking for layers of material off-set (or suddenly changing thickness, etc.) along the fault. The best way to date those layers is through carbon-14 dating of organic material, which can give you accuracy only within ~1-200 years - and that's assuming that the organic material you date is not from elsewhere, is not from 200 year old trees, etc. If an event offsets every layer from the bottom up to a certain point, you date the top layer that it cuts through to get a maximum age, and the layer that it didn't cut through is the minimum age.
You can imagine the difficulty and ambiguous nature of this. The individual layers that you have to recognize and date are on the scale of centimeters to decimeters - I've seen some of the areas that were used, the famous one being along Pallet Creek which is along the San Andreas northeast of LA (I have a picture of it - well, it is a picture of a girl standing in front of it - here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/penguinchris/3037578910/) Here, luckily there was constant, relatively rapid deposition of material. In most places this is not the case, so any record of movement on the fault is eroded away.
For the San Andreas, we have a partial record going back ~1500 years. There really is no reliable way to reach back further than that - the record isn't normally visible in older rock units. Looking at the larger-scale structures is interesting by itself but doesn't tell you anything about when specifically there was movement. The fault system in the Sichuan region is fairly well understood - it is a kind of combination strike-slip/thrust fault (see http://quake.mit.edu/~changli/wenchuan.html for some nice diagrams.) But I want to call BS on the idea that they have any idea how frequently major earthquakes have happened there - and even if they do, the idea that it is "perhaps millions of years" since the last one is ridiculous no matter what.
And then, when you *do* figure out a approximate year for an earthquake, how do you determine how big it was? Again, extremely difficult! The best estimates come from comparing old written records of destruction with those from modern earthquakes - nothing scientific at all!
What's being done extensively with the San Andreas is physics-based computer modeling - we have some idea of the force building up, and combining that with records of historical earthquakes we can make an estimate of a major earthquake every ~150 years. But even for this, the best-studied earthquake area, it's not much more than a guess.
I don't know as much about the Teton fault (other than that it is a normal fault, not a thrust fault as you stated ;) ) but I'll comment on the idea of a "magnitude 7 earthquake every 400-700 years." These kinds of estimates are based on the very difficult work I described earlier (and I'm not sure how much has been done for the Teton fault) and whatever geologist came up with that would probably admit it is a simple guess without much to base it on. I mean, think of it - is knowing there's a large earthquake every 400-700 years really all that useful anyway?
By the way, I assume any dating of the Teton fault would be done this way: when new patches of rock are exposed along the fault as you described, they start getting hit by cosmogenic radiation. By measuring the amount of cosmogenic radio isoto
It's worse than that. Many of the programs on the "platinum" list, which as you noted are supposed to "work flawlessly, no configuration" - don't. If you look at the write-ups people posted saying they tried it and it worked flawlessly, most of them will say they "didn't try" certain features (which are probably the ones you want, and which end up not working) or they even say that there ARE some problems... and in many cases these are serious problems.
But the program starts up, and it's feasible you could get something useful out of it, so it's "platinum" right? Chances are, those couple of things that weren't tried or didn't work quite right are the whole reason anyone wants to use the software in the first place, as in your Starcraft example with multiplayer!
The worst is that it's obvious in some cases that the people who submitted these reports weren't regular users of the software. They apparnetly just installed it and tried it to see if it would work with wine. That's great, seeing if things are compatible, helping out - but seriously, to be helpful you have to know what the program is supposed to do and what people actually use it for.
I'm not trying to incite anyone but I don't think anyone who's looked at the Wine AppDB would disagree with me too much. I appreciate the work people put into it, but there needs to be some better standards for deciding how well software works under Wine. It's hard to recommend Wine for anything when it's a total crapshoot whether comments in the AppDB are correct or not.
I personally don't have need to run anything with Wine, but I have attempted on occasion, and have helped others do so. I do run one piece of Windows software - Adobe Lightroom - but I do so in a Windows VM because Wine support for it is extremely limited.
As I think someone else in here noted, a lot of the really well-supported software is stuff like DVD rippers/burners and "utility" apps, of which there are usually multiple excellent open-source programs available to choose from. That's not the kind of software preventing people from switching to linux. Although, I did give up my favorite DVD burning program, ImgBurn, when I stopped using windows several years ago - it does work pretty much flawlessly under wine actually, but I like k3b too :)
I have a T61 with the intel 965 chipset too, and while I appreciate that it works better out of the box than I imagine an nvidia or ati video card does, I *do* occasionally have issues with it.
Now, I love the T61 in general - though not everything worked perfectly when I first got it a year ago, development has really come along well and just about everything works great (save for the HD APS as you mentioned, and fingerprint scanner support is still not really usable.)
Of course, I did get mine with SUSE preinstalled rather than windows when they still offered that, so you'd hope they would include hardware that works with linux :) I use openSUSE and wiped the out of date SUSE installation when I got it, by the way.
But, I do have problems with 3d, despite intel being completely open about it.
I'm not saying it's not supported well - it is, obviously - but it's far from flawless. And if you do have a problem, your only good option is to wait until the xorg video drivers are updated officially, because trying to compile the drivers from the intel video site is pretty ridiculous (I'm not exactly an expert but this is literally the only thing I haven't managed to compile into the kernel and get working.)
The main problem I've had (besides poor 3d performance in games) are certain applications using 3D (most notably Google Earth) completely hard-freezing the system. Google Earth is useful to me for my master's thesis project in geology so not having it working is an inconvenience.
Besides that, just working with the video card in general is never quite right - using dual displays never worked for me (other than straight cloning) until just last week when I updated to the latest video driver, for example. Also, when starting or shutting down x I get a scrambled, corrupted display for a second or two.
I agree with you that intel should be lauded for their support of open source, but it does have a lot of issues still. The big thing is that the intel video drivers that are available when a chipset is released don't seem to fully support the chipset well - as I said, it's only now that most things seem to work decently with the 965 chip, and it's been out for a while.
Of course, your mileage may vary, and it could just be me :) I know I'm expecting too much out of it to be able to run more advanced 3D games (Quake 3 and BZflag work fine, for example, but most of the newer games run very poorly.) I use my computer primarily as a workstation, though, and the fact that it has problems with Google Earth and things like that is an issue. The only game I spend a lot of time with is knetwalk, and that runs fine :)
Another thread was discussing HD video performance on intel video cards, and though my post is already long I'll throw this in - videos, HD or otherwise, run fine on the intel 965 and look great. I guess I don't know if it's hardware accelerated or not but it doesn't really matter, it looks and runs fine, even 1080p blu-ray rips.
It depends on where you live - when I lived in New York (Buffalo) I usually got things from them the next day, because they have warehouses in New Jersey and processing time is quick. I live in Southern California now, and also get things next day, because I believe they're based here (which means I pay tax, but the shipping is usually free and I get it next day.)
It's the same thing with Amazon - they say the free shipping will take more time, but in my experience it doesn't.
If you live in the middle of the country, away from Newegg or Amazon's distribution centers, then yeah, it's going to take longer.
I know you're joking, but, Life of Brian is on Blu-Ray and it looks really good at 1080p. It works as a joke for them that the TV show and their films were made cheaply and with low quality film stock, but realistically they don't look *that* much worse than most other films from the period.
That said, I've seen Life of Brian and Holy Grail in theaters projected on film, and you don't gain much from the experience (in fact it's almost worse, because literally everyone in the theater says every line out loud along with the film...) The great thing about the less than great quality is that not much is lost in the transition from big-screen to TV.
It was weird reading your post because I'm exactly the same way - I stopped buying loads of CDs like I used to when I was a downloading fiend, and nowadays I just don't feel like buying stuff (even if I like it.)
The funny thing though is that I did the exact same thing during the recent KPCC (Southern California NPR) fund-raising drive - fired up my mp3 player to play in the car for the first time in a while.
I just started listening to music in the car again for the first time since the fund-raising drive because NPR is spending so much time covering the inauguration - I voted for him too but there are only so many people gushing about Obama I can stand to listen to in a day.
I just listen to the same old stuff I was listening to before, though.
I do download stuff occasionally if I read about something that sounds good, but I don't have the drive to constantly seek out new stuff, and even less of a drive to buy anything.
By the way, soulseek (using Nicotine on linux) is the best current Napster-like music downloading tool I know of. Using Napster kind of sucked because it was hard to find full albums, but with soulseek/nicotine it's easy to manage. If I cared more, I'd be on there all day downloading stuff. I can almost always find what I'm looking for there, even obscure stuff.
No real point to my reply, just felt like sharing my experience too.
The only reason my girlfriend (yeah, yeah) usually wants to play videogames (which I don't play very often anyway) with me is so that she can be a Wookie in Battlefront 2 - so it's not as dumb as you might think. In fact it seems pretty smart to me.
I've been thinking that a third game was way overdue - I hope it gets released at some point; this is disappointing news. That, or they put out some decent Star Wars games like in the good old days (X-Wing, Dark Forces, etc.) The Battlefront series are the best "current" Star Wars games - the packaging for Battlefront 2 states that it's the sequel to the best selling Star Wars game of all time - and it's taking them forever to put out a next-gen sequel. I don't understand it, because they're guaranteed to make tons of money from it!
You're simply wrong - there were Britney Spears equivalents in the 60's, but that's not what the Beatles were. You're thinking of the Monkees, maybe. Good marketing at that time wasn't as important as today - the legitimately good musicians came through on top of the highly commercialized stuff.
Also - it just takes listening to the Beatles to get the answer you seek. They're very good, with very well written lyrics and musical accompaniment. I'm not sure what more of an answer you need than that - just listen to them!
That's great (and I'm glad to hear it) but please tell that to the police and security personnel that patrol these places who obviously didn't get the memo!