It's actually interesting that a lot of people here (Canada) use mixed units. Personally, I usually use feet if I'm estimating a distance (it's just a very convienient size - the closest metric equivalent is a decimeter, just doesn't quite cut it), and pounds and feet/inches for human weight/height. We still order a pound of wings and a pint of beer (I think you get beat up if you ask for 568mL of beer in a bar). Most other things are metric: road signs are km/h, the weather report is in celcius. Most stores sell things by the kilogram, meter, or liter/milliliter. I'm not sure what they teach kids in school now, but my generation (mid 20's) seems to be decently fluent in both systems (I remember learning how to add inches as part of learning fractions).
I am currently in school. Until, university I hardly saw the imperial system in school. Usually if the teacher felt like making a "challenge question" he/she would give the info in imperial. Now in 2nd year engineering the emphasis is on the metric system. That's not to say there's no exposure to imperial (the slightest hint as to what the working world predominantly uses), just the the focus is on metric.
Contrast, this with the "real" world where most older people use imperial exclusively and scorn metric. There is a few dedicated people who see the convenience of conversions with metric and can switch between systems with ease.
After 37 years, the imperial system is still used in most technical work places. It looks like it's gonna be awhile before we are 100% metric.
Just a thought, but doesn't that mean that you could use superposition to your advantage.
I'm no expert on the intricacies of microprocessor design, but it seems to me that being able to re-use the most frequently used elements would be quite beneficial. This would cut down on a huge amount of circuitry. At the very least, physically the chip could be smaller.
At this point this is purely speculation on my part. Until someone figures out how to control photons with other photons (rather than electrically) the benefits will likely be offset by the extra support circuits required to control the logic gates etc.
This is true. There is always those that buy at the first opportunity.
My point is that the mass market, not just those that must have the latest (not always greatest), will adopt whichever platform is cheaper and has the movies they like. As you pointed out, at this point it looks like the Xbox 360 and it's HD add-on is winning.
However, it is still to early to tell who has won the format wars.
Two things to note:
Records are not dead. Most DJ's still use them for ease of beat-matching, scratching, etc. I realize there is also a large number of more modern technologies out there, but for now there is still a lot of people who love vinyl.
Secondly,
People will continue to buy DVD's because they're cheaper. Nearly every computer you can buy has at least a DVD player most have writers as well. In order for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to succeed they need two things:
1) Cheaper players. ~$1000 for a fancy new DVD player is outrageous.
2) Good movies.
On the whole though you do raise some good points about the current state of DRM.
I would like to add that a lot of Macs have popped up at my university. Last year a walk through the Engineering building you could see maybe 1 PowerBook out of 50 laptops. Now Macs make up are close to 30-40%.
Just a random fact of interest for those in favor of Apple.
I assume by older code you mean the code that no one (and I do mean no one including the M$ programmers) knows what it does. It is just code left from the early days of NT. http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/
You mean education in the sense that you're informing them of the correct way. You simply need to educate them with whatever propaganda will make them see the light so to speak.
They have a similar scheme on some of the school buses. It works like this: at some point the camera at the front may be on, for the rest it may not. At first, kids were doing exactly as you described, but after a while no one cared anymore. Whether this was due to the fact that the vids were not posted to YouTube daily or that everyone figured the cameras were never on as nothing ever happened as a result of video evidence (at least in my area). Overall, I think if cameras were installed in schools the vids would be very artificial at first (no "dumb questions" etc.) but they would gradually become a reflection of what life was like before the cameras, resulting in an effective objective view into any possible disputes.
I think that it's more than just the school kids in Quebec whose sanity is threatened, what with a premier who wants to create the Sovereign Nation of Quebec and lots of people supporting him.
That seems to me partly what makes a good teacher; the ability to "slap around" the students who need it with nonviolent means such as reasoning.
Some people are much more difficult to reason with (ie students with discipline problems)but that's why good teachers are so hard to come by.
Maybe the teacher should try the same trick on the students. It couldn't be that hard to convince another student to to film the girls swearing at the teacher or some other similar offense. Then YouTube it.
Also because the power output is so low, you need to turn the volume up quite a lot(ie max) to get a decent signal. This is fine if you buy a unit that also charges the battery but if you don't own an iPod you're pretty much screwed in that respect.
Slashdot Mirror
the browser/security can't protect users from being dumb
Contrast, this with the "real" world where most older people use imperial exclusively and scorn metric. There is a few dedicated people who see the convenience of conversions with metric and can switch between systems with ease.
After 37 years, the imperial system is still used in most technical work places. It looks like it's gonna be awhile before we are 100% metric.
Just a thought, but doesn't that mean that you could use superposition to your advantage.
I'm no expert on the intricacies of microprocessor design, but it seems to me that being able to re-use the most frequently used elements would be quite beneficial. This would cut down on a huge amount of circuitry. At the very least, physically the chip could be smaller.
At this point this is purely speculation on my part. Until someone figures out how to control photons with other photons (rather than electrically) the benefits will likely be offset by the extra support circuits required to control the logic gates etc.
This is true. There is always those that buy at the first opportunity.
My point is that the mass market, not just those that must have the latest (not always greatest), will adopt whichever platform is cheaper and has the movies they like. As you pointed out, at this point it looks like the Xbox 360 and it's HD add-on is winning.
However, it is still to early to tell who has won the format wars.
Two things to note:
Records are not dead. Most DJ's still use them for ease of beat-matching, scratching, etc. I realize there is also a large number of more modern technologies out there, but for now there is still a lot of people who love vinyl.
Secondly, People will continue to buy DVD's because they're cheaper. Nearly every computer you can buy has at least a DVD player most have writers as well. In order for HD-DVD or Blu-Ray to succeed they need two things:
1) Cheaper players. ~$1000 for a fancy new DVD player is outrageous.
2) Good movies.
On the whole though you do raise some good points about the current state of DRM.
Why is this +3 insightful? Sure it's interesting but the current discussion is about Opera and (possibly) faulty pages.
I would like to add that a lot of Macs have popped up at my university. Last year a walk through the Engineering building you could see maybe 1 PowerBook out of 50 laptops. Now Macs make up are close to 30-40%. Just a random fact of interest for those in favor of Apple.
waste of effort (tagging beta)
I assume by older code you mean the code that no one (and I do mean no one including the M$ programmers) knows what it does. It is just code left from the early days of NT.
http://blogs.msdn.com/philipsu/
>"Since you are such a big fan of Audible.com" Did anyone else notice he has realized Audible.com sucks?
They don't censor anymore. They simply shut you down and arrest you. It's much easier than trying to implement a nationwide firewall.
Sounds like The IT Crowd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd/
In the words of Homer Simpson, "You can use statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that."
You mean education in the sense that you're informing them of the correct way. You simply need to educate them with whatever propaganda will make them see the light so to speak.
They have a similar scheme on some of the school buses. It works like this: at some point the camera at the front may be on, for the rest it may not. At first, kids were doing exactly as you described, but after a while no one cared anymore. Whether this was due to the fact that the vids were not posted to YouTube daily or that everyone figured the cameras were never on as nothing ever happened as a result of video evidence (at least in my area). Overall, I think if cameras were installed in schools the vids would be very artificial at first (no "dumb questions" etc.) but they would gradually become a reflection of what life was like before the cameras, resulting in an effective objective view into any possible disputes.
I think that it's more than just the school kids in Quebec whose sanity is threatened, what with a premier who wants to create the Sovereign Nation of Quebec and lots of people supporting him.
That seems to me partly what makes a good teacher; the ability to "slap around" the students who need it with nonviolent means such as reasoning. Some people are much more difficult to reason with (ie students with discipline problems)but that's why good teachers are so hard to come by. Maybe the teacher should try the same trick on the students. It couldn't be that hard to convince another student to to film the girls swearing at the teacher or some other similar offense. Then YouTube it.
Obviously then we should simply say nothing by your logic.
Also because the power output is so low, you need to turn the volume up quite a lot(ie max) to get a decent signal. This is fine if you buy a unit that also charges the battery but if you don't own an iPod you're pretty much screwed in that respect.