And who is going to stop the USSR if it aggressively invades those countries that don't want to 'come back to the fold'? Their economy is already screwed, any sanctions would just hurt the already poor people. The rich will always stay rich, no matter what sanctions are in place. Look at Saddam Hussein as an example. Would the US send troops into these countries to help them? No way - no oil, no financial incentive to do so. Plus, the USSR has nukes, and Putin wouldn't be afraid to use them I suspect. No major country would be foolish enough to interfere with the USSR illegally invading sovereign countries, the USSR is simply too large to fool with, even now. I suspect Ms Rice and others know this, and they're concerned. I also suspect that this is why the US wants to wipe out Iraq, Iran, Syria and Palestine, with Israel's illegal help, so that it has a powerbase in the middle east, close to the USSR. It also is strategic in stopping the USSR from taking the middle east first. Think about it - whilst some of what I've said may sound silly, deep down, it's more than likely highly accurate.
See the first where it mentions David Fury and what was meant to happen in Season 6. Some things were pushed forward as you mention (Wesley's death), but there was life in our heroes after that last filmed episode.
> That's all right, I have said it enough times to make up for you. Even Rutger Hauer was bad in it.
It wasn't that bad. A bad movie has no redeeming features, no good parts. The Buffy movie had a few good parts, albeit I really stress the word, few;-)
> They die, while attempting to die heroically.
You don't know this. Joss and Co. had plans for a seasons 6 and 7 for Angel, so I think it's safe to assume that at least Angel doesn't die. Yes, Gunn was almost certainly going to die, although perhaps Illyria would have done something magically. I was both surprised and saddened to see Wesley die, but that's the way it is. People die in real life as well, so it makes sense to make a TV series realistic by killing off popular characters, for the right reaons, and with the right timing.
My biggest regret was Joss killing off Anya - she was my favourite female Buffy character, she was just wacky in that part. I would have preferred to have seen Anya live, and her and Xander rekindle their love/marriage, with the realistion that life is short, and that marriage between the two of them, despite their individual fears, would have been the right thing.
Krevlornswath was my favourite Angel character - I just found him an enormously fun character to watch.
> Which Lucas would never have had, without a hit like American Graffitti. Alas, Joss Whedon has never had his.
I really beg to differ here. Joss has been a much better director than George, and a much, much, much better writer. Both have had original stories that built up into their own worlds, with dedicated fans. That's about the only similarity. Star Wars sold George Lucas, not American Grafitti.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ran its full seven seasons to the end as Joss planned it. Angel, sadly, only ran to 5 seasons, despite being a more grown up show, dealing with adult issues (Buffy was more a comedy, although it had its serious moments).
Firefly was a brilliant series, undeserved of a quick exit.
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that Joss is a brilliant writer, and his direction isn't that far behind it either. I always wondered why Aliens IV was my favourite story of the series, it wasn't until a few days ago that I learned that Joss wrote it. Pretty much explains everything to me...
Every single Joss TV show has had a huge cult following, the fans love the shows, and in reality, it's the fans that count. Well, that's how it should be, sadly, American TV land is a very very sad place...the few bright sparks that make it onto the TV get canned quickly, the absolute crap and crud makes it and stays on way past its expiry date. Go figure.
I'd love to see Joss return to Buffy and re-do the original pilot movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar and a corrected story to tie it in with the series. I'm not saying the Kirsty Swanson movie was bad, it wasn't, but the TV series was more true to Joss' vision. I'd like to see Angel run its natural course, not be cut at the end of Season 5 and you don't know what happens to the characters that you've grown to love and care for as a viewer. I'd like to see Firefly given a chance to run its course proper.
It's a sad pity that Joss doesn't have the financial clout of George Lucas - where he can stick his finger up at Hollywood etc and do his own stuff, his own way, and know that the fans will swarm to it.
The sooner that Hollywood etc remove the brain dead goons at the top that try to run it badly (and don't even succeed at that imho), the better. TV might get better, TV shows that deserve air time might actually get air time, and the fans might actually be happy.
How on Earth did this get marked as +5 informative? Most modern turntables use a laser? Bollocks. That was a fad by one particular company ten years ago that NEVER took off. NEVER. Every modern turntable uses a Stylus to trace the groove. Good quality Styli do very little damage to the vinyl groove, especially if it's made from virgin vinyl as opposed to recycled vinyl. See, recycled vinyl has both a lower noise floor and is also softer. The main thing is that it's cheaper to produce for the record companies than virgin vinyl, which is why they used it in the 80s. As they tried to cut costs to increase their profits, they sacrified the quality of the vinyl. And don't give me that bullshit about crackles and pops. A good turntable, a good cartridge and styli and good vinyl result in a very low noise floor.
I suspect you're probably 20 something and have never used a quality turntable, or heard a high quality LP recording (which was another thing that suffered in the 80s, along with poorly made plastic turntables). These are the reasons why to the average person, records sounded so poor vs CDs. True, CDs are portable, and imho, that's the only advantage that they have over vinyl. Another thing with CDs is that it was more cost effective for retail outlets to stock and store CDs in the store (bigger markups, smaller, so you can pack more in). They didn't want to carry LPs partly because of that, and partly because the record industry wanted them to switch to CDs, which contained larger profit margins. Oh, and one more thing, average turntables back in the 80s, that most people bought, used ceramic cartridges, with conical styli. Ceramic cartridges are the worst in terms of performance - moving magnet and moving coiling are much better, especially when combined with high quality designed styli/cantilevers.
Oh, and you do most certainly get downsampling with DVD-audio and SACD - all digital reproduction involves downsampling to some extent. It's part and parcel of the process of the A&D conversion. True, the higher quality digital mediums perform better than standard audio CDs, but by how much? How easy is it to rock into a record store and pick up DVD-audio and SACD releases? At least in Australia, not easy from my experience. A mate of mine has a rather expensive hi fi system (read: more expensive than most of your cars), and he still uses audio CDs. True, he's not a vinyl lover, but he's tried and recognised that whilst the newer digital mediums are better, they're not necessarily better by a big enough range to warranty new hardware to play them.
Me? I also have an expensive hi fi system (read: more expensive than most of your cars), but I still love analogue. It has a natural sound, non aggressive, no hardness or unduly brightness that is such a common complaint of the digital medium. I'm not totally biased - I still own a pretty decent cd system (DPA PDM 1 Series DAC and Esoteric P-500 CD transport, not deltraned). My turntable system (SystemDek IIX/900 + Rega RB300 tonearm + Lyra Clavis MC cartridge) isn't the most high end at all, it's more mid end, but it easily equals my cd front end, which was considered much more high end in its day.
Oh, and finally - natural music isn't digital, it's analogue. That's how nature designed it. If you have problems with that, take it up with nature.
Please - get your facts right. Some links for you to read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable (note that few models were released, were very late to the market, and very expensive 0 backing up my comments that it was an unrealist fad)
Amen. For anyone that doesn't know, to get the truth about the US government, read anything by Noam Chomsky. Brilliantly honest and direct political commentator.
They'll probably get away with this shite - I mean, the RIAA and MPAA owns lots of nice US gangsters, oops, I mean politicians. Perhaps the US government should get Wolfowitz "wolfie" involved, I mean he has lots of prior experience of helping the rich get richer, the powerful stay more powerful, and fucking over the normal, average person.
Sadly, Australian ISPs are following the US lead (what is it with following the US?), and illegally tampering with people's connections. Proving it is awkwardly difficult, at least for the average consumer. No government is interested in protecting the rights of the ordinary citizen, they're too busy playing to the will of the rich and the powerful, and working out new ways to lie to their constituents and enforce more forms of control over the normal populace. Nice eh?
Dave
None of these distros have any real percentage of users. Turbolinux has been all but dead for a long while. Novell Linux is a joke, but then, so is Novell. Linspire, no better. Xandros, no better either. Just ignore them, don't buy their shit, oops, I mean distributions. Again, this is why the Linux kernel MUST be moved to GPL v3. This would cut this patent bullshit from Microsoft out, or at least force these parasites to bloody well fucking fork their own kernels under a GPL v2 release.
As a nature photographer, specialising in macro photography of Insects & Arachnids, I can state that getting in flight shots of Dragonflies is quite difficult unless they are males staking out a territory and in a regular flight pattern. If said robotics are only slighter larger than a Dragonfly, then a camera phone would have no hope whatsoever. I use a Canon 1D Mark IIn and in most cases it's superb AF system cannot lock onto a fast moving Dragonfly, and let's just say that the AF system in my camera east a mobile phone camera's abilities for breakfast and then some.
how the hell is this comment insightful? Quite simply put, the vast majority of the software that Linspire uses is GPL'd. Consorting with Microsoft for patent covenants is not in the spirit of the GPL. Period.
This is why it's more and more important for the Linux kernel, and key software applications to migrate to GPl v3 - it'll put a stop to this type of behaviour from so called distributions.
I personally would never have recommended Linspire even prior to all of this, for a variety of technical, and security related reasons.
From memory, the United Nations gives an individual the right to question their detention, and challenge the government. If this is the case, and applies to all individuals, worldwide, then the US has no right to remove those rights from non US citizens within the US.
Of course, the US is a known world bully, is one of the most undemocratic nations in the world imho (don't even get me started). The US might want to look at things like this, because it explains why they're fast becoming one of the most despised nations worldwide. It's not only 'islamist extremists' who despise Americans.
I personally despise the current American regime, and all those proponents who argue that the current regime does nothing wrong. The rest of the Amerians are OK by me. Sadly, Americans are one of the worst nations when it comes to criticism, they seem to have a "we can fucking do what we want" attitude, probably best summed up by Denis Leary's comments "we got the fucking bombs" in his "I'm an asshole" song. If you even dare criticise America, most Americans brand you a terrorist. Let's see, socially ostracise someone and censor their opinions. Does that sound like a free and democratic nation to you? It sure as hell doesn't to me.
I personally would NEVER visit the US, any country that requires me to be mug shotted and finger printed prior to entry is a country that I have no desire to visit. At least you share the North American continent with Canada, what I consider an Amercica done mostly right.
The GIMP is as good as Photoshop, or competes on features? Whatever. I'm an open source advocate (well, I should really make that a Free Software advocate), I'd like the GIMP to succeed, but it's just not good enough for the serious photographer to consider using. Period.
This is what the MPAA/RIAA wants...I want to know how much the MPAA paid this so called Judge, or how much pressure the corrupt Bush Jr. government placed on said Judge (so that Bushie Jr. can keep his rick pricks happy).
Simple answer to this - Torrenstpy - relocate the servers to another country (hint hint: where piratebay.org lives). Do NOT comply with this Judge's order.
[rant]It never ceases to amaze me how people don't react to the MPAA/RIAA like they should. A product boycott would both kill them financially (if done long enough). This would have dire results not only for the MPAA/RIAA, but for the US economy. Either the US government would take draconian measures and invade countries illegally (hey, it did it to Iraq, and is contemplating the same to Iran and North Korea). True, hurting the US economy would hurt the average US citizen, and that's something that I'd prefer not to happen. It's time for the American citizens to start demanding that their government stop spending their hard earned money on things that do not benefit the US citizen.
Look at your military spending, it's not needed. Your medical and welfare systems are pathetic, they are based on a "damn the poor" attitude, and that is not a decent and modern society.[/rant]
Exactly. This is the problem with EULAs, and I've long said this myself. To expect a normal person to be legally literate is just unreasonable. To expect a normal person to present said EULA to a lawyer is again, what I consider unreasonable. Why are EULAs needed anyways? I mean, the software vendor's software is covered by the Copyright act. And now, the horrid DMCA. Software patents cover the software, duplicating the work of the copyright protection imho. Why is the EULA really needed?
Are they trying to say that normal copyright law/software patent/DMCA don't protect them enough?
They didn't have to use the GPL. This is a company that has deliberately sought to reduce end users rights with DRM, something I find abhorrent. The GPL v3 is an attempt to stop companies from using GPL'd software and doing this particular thing to its end users.
My heart really bleeds TIVO. You should have used BSD software, that allows you to screw over end users without a 2nd thought:)
The US stance is purely because the US government knows it would ruin its own fragile economy by doing something about our global ecology. The US government would rather make a buck, and screw the world, than save the world and lose economical face. Funny eh?
The world now needs to recognise the US stance and take full economic sanctions against the US government and US industry. Sadly, this will hurt the average American, but this is your own fault for allowing the type of government to lead your people. You've had one revolution in the past, it is time for another, so that true democracy is returned to the people of the United States of America. That's my honest appraisal.
This comment made me laugh...let's rethink this comment...SCO vs IBM...4 years and still no proof...If SCO can make a case go on for 4 years, with limited funds to pour into a legal case, imagine what Microsoft could do!!!
Fuck off with that shite. You don't own Australia. You might own our fucking weak, wanker pollies like Johnny "can I bend over any further for you George" Howard, but you don't own the majority of Aussies. Most aussies dislike the US government, and we think Bush Jr. is a wanker without a brain. Pommies call them types of peoples "gits". Not sure what Americans call them. Owning the government, and the people are completely two different things. Tell that to the poor Americans stationed in Iraq at the moment;-)
I do absolutely agree with you that the US of A is a bully, and needs to be told to fuck off and stood up to, with full economic sanctions against them. Unfortunately, countries and governments care more about trade and money than they do about what's right. The first thing that needs to be done is to remove the UN. Dissolve it. Start a new organisation, with a 50% majority rules vote on issues, and NO veto votes. It's compulsory for each member state to donate a percentage of their GDP to the running of the organisation. That's the first step. Each and every country in this new organisation is worth one, and ONLY one vote. I don't care if your China with 1.5 billion people, you are ONE country, and you only get one vote. A small country like Fiji with 1 million or so people also gets that one vote. That's the only fair and equitable way of doing it. Ban ALL 'deals', like the US did with several UN nations to entice them to vote on US led votes.
When you've done that, then you'll start to see the small countries like Venezuela and Iran having some ability to deal with the US bully. The US can't just veto things like it does consistently with Israel. If it doesn't get more than 50% of the votes, without bribes, tough shit. That's how a REAL democracy works. If enough countries realise that they can stand up to the US, and start doing so, it'll snowball. The only way to hurt the US and make it behave is full economic sanctions. Whilst this is great in theory, it does hurt the people:( The US already has one of the worst human rights records of any civilised country, one of the most corrupt governments, one of the worst social welfare systems and also one of the worst public medical systems. Oh, and I forgot the education system;-) Don't get me wrong, Australia isn't much better and is in some areas, worse.
Bleh, I've had my rant:)
Dave
Note: I don't have anything against the American people, but I have an intense dislike and hatred of American business, American politics, and American government.
Amen. It's nice to see an American admitting that their government is corrupt, most Americans seem to be so patriotic that they'll cast a blind eye to it.
Anyone who knows what they're talking about will know that Canon DSLRs have had very poor incandescent and tungsten WB settings for quite some time now. Nikon seems to have it right with their cameras from my experience. I usually set my camera on AWB now as it seems to offer the best WB from my experience. If it's a critical shoot, I'll take a WB shot off a macbeth card.
I guess it depends on how you define 'enough light' doesn't it? And what you define by photography, and by a certain level of reasonable quality. Camera phones are like Audio CDs were to LPs - convenient, certainly not better quality, and pushed by marketing companies so that ill-informed people think they're actually getting a higher quality product that's better than quality products.
From a technical point of view, the resolution on these camera phones is ALWAYS going to be inferior to a DSLR (just as a digital compact is inferior to a DSLR). Resolution is dictated by the given number of pixels within a certain sensor area. Considering that the sensor in this mobile phone is probably 5mm x 5mm...and smaller sensor sizes, lead to smaller pixels, which means more noise WILL be contained within the image. Reducing the images to web sized images only helps doctor the mobile phones inadequacies as a quality imaging device. I'm not even touching on lens quality, there's no way that these plastic, cheap mobile phone lenses are going to even remotely compare to a quality SLR lens. Period.
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And who is going to stop the USSR if it aggressively invades those countries that don't want to 'come back to the fold'? Their economy is already screwed, any sanctions would just hurt the already poor people. The rich will always stay rich, no matter what sanctions are in place. Look at Saddam Hussein as an example. Would the US send troops into these countries to help them? No way - no oil, no financial incentive to do so. Plus, the USSR has nukes, and Putin wouldn't be afraid to use them I suspect. No major country would be foolish enough to interfere with the USSR illegally invading sovereign countries, the USSR is simply too large to fool with, even now. I suspect Ms Rice and others know this, and they're concerned. I also suspect that this is why the US wants to wipe out Iraq, Iran, Syria and Palestine, with Israel's illegal help, so that it has a powerbase in the middle east, close to the USSR. It also is strategic in stopping the USSR from taking the middle east first. Think about it - whilst some of what I've said may sound silly, deep down, it's more than likely highly accurate.
Dave
Amen, although I disagree with the bit about America being a democracy - it isn't and never was. Read some Noam Chomsky books and you'll see why :-)
Dave
I doubt it, there are many references to an Angel 6 series, including adapted comics for it:
http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=110457
See the first where it mentions David Fury and what was meant to happen in Season 6. Some things were pushed forward as you mention (Wesley's death), but there was life in our heroes after that last filmed episode.
Dave
> That's all right, I have said it enough times to make up for you. Even Rutger Hauer was bad in it.
;-)
It wasn't that bad. A bad movie has no redeeming features, no good parts. The Buffy movie had a few good parts, albeit I really stress the word, few
> They die, while attempting to die heroically.
You don't know this. Joss and Co. had plans for a seasons 6 and 7 for Angel, so I think it's safe to assume that at least Angel doesn't die. Yes, Gunn was almost certainly going to die, although perhaps Illyria would have done something magically. I was both surprised and saddened to see Wesley die, but that's the way it is. People die in real life as well, so it makes sense to make a TV series realistic by killing off popular characters, for the right reaons, and with the right timing.
My biggest regret was Joss killing off Anya - she was my favourite female Buffy character, she was just wacky in that part. I would have preferred to have seen Anya live, and her and Xander rekindle their love/marriage, with the realistion that life is short, and that marriage between the two of them, despite their individual fears, would have been the right thing.
Krevlornswath was my favourite Angel character - I just found him an enormously fun character to watch.
> Which Lucas would never have had, without a hit like American Graffitti. Alas, Joss Whedon has never had his.
I really beg to differ here. Joss has been a much better director than George, and a much, much, much better writer. Both have had original stories that built up into their own worlds, with dedicated fans. That's about the only similarity. Star Wars sold George Lucas, not American Grafitti.
Dave
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ran its full seven seasons to the end as Joss planned it. Angel, sadly, only ran to 5 seasons, despite being a more grown up show, dealing with adult issues (Buffy was more a comedy, although it had its serious moments).
Firefly was a brilliant series, undeserved of a quick exit.
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that Joss is a brilliant writer, and his direction isn't that far behind it either. I always wondered why Aliens IV was my favourite story of the series, it wasn't until a few days ago that I learned that Joss wrote it. Pretty much explains everything to me...
Every single Joss TV show has had a huge cult following, the fans love the shows, and in reality, it's the fans that count. Well, that's how it should be, sadly, American TV land is a very very sad place...the few bright sparks that make it onto the TV get canned quickly, the absolute crap and crud makes it and stays on way past its expiry date. Go figure.
I'd love to see Joss return to Buffy and re-do the original pilot movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar and a corrected story to tie it in with the series. I'm not saying the Kirsty Swanson movie was bad, it wasn't, but the TV series was more true to Joss' vision. I'd like to see Angel run its natural course, not be cut at the end of Season 5 and you don't know what happens to the characters that you've grown to love and care for as a viewer. I'd like to see Firefly given a chance to run its course proper.
It's a sad pity that Joss doesn't have the financial clout of George Lucas - where he can stick his finger up at Hollywood etc and do his own stuff, his own way, and know that the fans will swarm to it.
The sooner that Hollywood etc remove the brain dead goons at the top that try to run it badly (and don't even succeed at that imho), the better. TV might get better, TV shows that deserve air time might actually get air time, and the fans might actually be happy.
Dave
How on Earth did this get marked as +5 informative? Most modern turntables use a laser? Bollocks. That was a fad by one particular company ten years ago that NEVER took off. NEVER. Every modern turntable uses a Stylus to trace the groove. Good quality Styli do very little damage to the vinyl groove, especially if it's made from virgin vinyl as opposed to recycled vinyl. See, recycled vinyl has both a lower noise floor and is also softer. The main thing is that it's cheaper to produce for the record companies than virgin vinyl, which is why they used it in the 80s. As they tried to cut costs to increase their profits, they sacrified the quality of the vinyl. And don't give me that bullshit about crackles and pops. A good turntable, a good cartridge and styli and good vinyl result in a very low noise floor.
I suspect you're probably 20 something and have never used a quality turntable, or heard a high quality LP recording (which was another thing that suffered in the 80s, along with poorly made plastic turntables). These are the reasons why to the average person, records sounded so poor vs CDs. True, CDs are portable, and imho, that's the only advantage that they have over vinyl. Another thing with CDs is that it was more cost effective for retail outlets to stock and store CDs in the store (bigger markups, smaller, so you can pack more in). They didn't want to carry LPs partly because of that, and partly because the record industry wanted them to switch to CDs, which contained larger profit margins. Oh, and one more thing, average turntables back in the 80s, that most people bought, used ceramic cartridges, with conical styli. Ceramic cartridges are the worst in terms of performance - moving magnet and moving coiling are much better, especially when combined with high quality designed styli/cantilevers.
Oh, and you do most certainly get downsampling with DVD-audio and SACD - all digital reproduction involves downsampling to some extent. It's part and parcel of the process of the A&D conversion. True, the higher quality digital mediums perform better than standard audio CDs, but by how much? How easy is it to rock into a record store and pick up DVD-audio and SACD releases? At least in Australia, not easy from my experience. A mate of mine has a rather expensive hi fi system (read: more expensive than most of your cars), and he still uses audio CDs. True, he's not a vinyl lover, but he's tried and recognised that whilst the newer digital mediums are better, they're not necessarily better by a big enough range to warranty new hardware to play them.
Me? I also have an expensive hi fi system (read: more expensive than most of your cars), but I still love analogue. It has a natural sound, non aggressive, no hardness or unduly brightness that is such a common complaint of the digital medium. I'm not totally biased - I still own a pretty decent cd system (DPA PDM 1 Series DAC and Esoteric P-500 CD transport, not deltraned). My turntable system (SystemDek IIX/900 + Rega RB300 tonearm + Lyra Clavis MC cartridge) isn't the most high end at all, it's more mid end, but it easily equals my cd front end, which was considered much more high end in its day.
Oh, and finally - natural music isn't digital, it's analogue. That's how nature designed it. If you have problems with that, take it up with nature.
Please - get your facts right. Some links for you to read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable (note that few models were released, were very late to the market, and very expensive 0 backing up my comments that it was an unrealist fad)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LP_album (note what it says about virgin vinyl on the page)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD (read the part where it talks about down sampling)
http
Amen. For anyone that doesn't know, to get the truth about the US government, read anything by Noam Chomsky. Brilliantly honest and direct political commentator.
Dave
They'll probably get away with this shite - I mean, the RIAA and MPAA owns lots of nice US gangsters, oops, I mean politicians. Perhaps the US government should get Wolfowitz "wolfie" involved, I mean he has lots of prior experience of helping the rich get richer, the powerful stay more powerful, and fucking over the normal, average person. Sadly, Australian ISPs are following the US lead (what is it with following the US?), and illegally tampering with people's connections. Proving it is awkwardly difficult, at least for the average consumer. No government is interested in protecting the rights of the ordinary citizen, they're too busy playing to the will of the rich and the powerful, and working out new ways to lie to their constituents and enforce more forms of control over the normal populace. Nice eh? Dave
None of these distros have any real percentage of users. Turbolinux has been all but dead for a long while. Novell Linux is a joke, but then, so is Novell. Linspire, no better. Xandros, no better either. Just ignore them, don't buy their shit, oops, I mean distributions. Again, this is why the Linux kernel MUST be moved to GPL v3. This would cut this patent bullshit from Microsoft out, or at least force these parasites to bloody well fucking fork their own kernels under a GPL v2 release.
Linus is a stubborn, cowardic fool.
Dave
On the premise of your answer, then mankind should still be in the dark ages, I mean, why bother to learn new things when the old things suffice?
Dave
As a nature photographer, specialising in macro photography of Insects & Arachnids, I can state that getting in flight shots of Dragonflies is quite difficult unless they are males staking out a territory and in a regular flight pattern. If said robotics are only slighter larger than a Dragonfly, then a camera phone would have no hope whatsoever. I use a Canon 1D Mark IIn and in most cases it's superb AF system cannot lock onto a fast moving Dragonfly, and let's just say that the AF system in my camera east a mobile phone camera's abilities for breakfast and then some.
Dave
how the hell is this comment insightful? Quite simply put, the vast majority of the software that Linspire uses is GPL'd. Consorting with Microsoft for patent covenants is not in the spirit of the GPL. Period.
This is why it's more and more important for the Linux kernel, and key software applications to migrate to GPl v3 - it'll put a stop to this type of behaviour from so called distributions.
I personally would never have recommended Linspire even prior to all of this, for a variety of technical, and security related reasons.
Dave
From memory, the United Nations gives an individual the right to question their detention, and challenge the government. If this is the case, and applies to all individuals, worldwide, then the US has no right to remove those rights from non US citizens within the US.
Of course, the US is a known world bully, is one of the most undemocratic nations in the world imho (don't even get me started). The US might want to look at things like this, because it explains why they're fast becoming one of the most despised nations worldwide. It's not only 'islamist extremists' who despise Americans.
I personally despise the current American regime, and all those proponents who argue that the current regime does nothing wrong. The rest of the Amerians are OK by me. Sadly, Americans are one of the worst nations when it comes to criticism, they seem to have a "we can fucking do what we want" attitude, probably best summed up by Denis Leary's comments "we got the fucking bombs" in his "I'm an asshole" song. If you even dare criticise America, most Americans brand you a terrorist. Let's see, socially ostracise someone and censor their opinions. Does that sound like a free and democratic nation to you? It sure as hell doesn't to me.
I personally would NEVER visit the US, any country that requires me to be mug shotted and finger printed prior to entry is a country that I have no desire to visit. At least you share the North American continent with Canada, what I consider an Amercica done mostly right.
Dave
The GIMP is as good as Photoshop, or competes on features? Whatever. I'm an open source advocate (well, I should really make that a Free Software advocate), I'd like the GIMP to succeed, but it's just not good enough for the serious photographer to consider using. Period.
Dave
This is what the MPAA/RIAA wants...I want to know how much the MPAA paid this so called Judge, or how much pressure the corrupt Bush Jr. government placed on said Judge (so that Bushie Jr. can keep his rick pricks happy).
Simple answer to this - Torrenstpy - relocate the servers to another country (hint hint: where piratebay.org lives). Do NOT comply with this Judge's order.
[rant]It never ceases to amaze me how people don't react to the MPAA/RIAA like they should. A product boycott would both kill them financially (if done long enough). This would have dire results not only for the MPAA/RIAA, but for the US economy. Either the US government would take draconian measures and invade countries illegally (hey, it did it to Iraq, and is contemplating the same to Iran and North Korea). True, hurting the US economy would hurt the average US citizen, and that's something that I'd prefer not to happen. It's time for the American citizens to start demanding that their government stop spending their hard earned money on things that do not benefit the US citizen.
Look at your military spending, it's not needed. Your medical and welfare systems are pathetic, they are based on a "damn the poor" attitude, and that is not a decent and modern society.[/rant]
Dave
It's a sinkhole.
Dave
Exactly. This is the problem with EULAs, and I've long said this myself. To expect a normal person to be legally literate is just unreasonable. To expect a normal person to present said EULA to a lawyer is again, what I consider unreasonable. Why are EULAs needed anyways? I mean, the software vendor's software is covered by the Copyright act. And now, the horrid DMCA. Software patents cover the software, duplicating the work of the copyright protection imho. Why is the EULA really needed?
Are they trying to say that normal copyright law/software patent/DMCA don't protect them enough?
Dave
They didn't have to use the GPL. This is a company that has deliberately sought to reduce end users rights with DRM, something I find abhorrent. The GPL v3 is an attempt to stop companies from using GPL'd software and doing this particular thing to its end users.
:)
My heart really bleeds TIVO. You should have used BSD software, that allows you to screw over end users without a 2nd thought
Dave
For those looking for a PDF of the leaked document...go here :-)
m it%20Declaration%20-%20US%20comments%20May%2014-1. pdf
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/G8%20Sum
The US stance is purely because the US government knows it would ruin its own fragile economy by doing something about our global ecology. The US government would rather make a buck, and screw the world, than save the world and lose economical face. Funny eh?
The world now needs to recognise the US stance and take full economic sanctions against the US government and US industry. Sadly, this will hurt the average American, but this is your own fault for allowing the type of government to lead your people. You've had one revolution in the past, it is time for another, so that true democracy is returned to the people of the United States of America. That's my honest appraisal.
Cheers,
Dave
This comment made me laugh...let's rethink this comment...SCO vs IBM...4 years and still no proof...If SCO can make a case go on for 4 years, with limited funds to pour into a legal case, imagine what Microsoft could do!!!
Dave
Fuck off with that shite. You don't own Australia. You might own our fucking weak, wanker pollies like Johnny "can I bend over any further for you George" Howard, but you don't own the majority of Aussies. Most aussies dislike the US government, and we think Bush Jr. is a wanker without a brain. Pommies call them types of peoples "gits". Not sure what Americans call them. Owning the government, and the people are completely two different things. Tell that to the poor Americans stationed in Iraq at the moment ;-)
:( The US already has one of the worst human rights records of any civilised country, one of the most corrupt governments, one of the worst social welfare systems and also one of the worst public medical systems. Oh, and I forgot the education system ;-) Don't get me wrong, Australia isn't much better and is in some areas, worse.
:)
I do absolutely agree with you that the US of A is a bully, and needs to be told to fuck off and stood up to, with full economic sanctions against them. Unfortunately, countries and governments care more about trade and money than they do about what's right. The first thing that needs to be done is to remove the UN. Dissolve it. Start a new organisation, with a 50% majority rules vote on issues, and NO veto votes. It's compulsory for each member state to donate a percentage of their GDP to the running of the organisation. That's the first step. Each and every country in this new organisation is worth one, and ONLY one vote. I don't care if your China with 1.5 billion people, you are ONE country, and you only get one vote. A small country like Fiji with 1 million or so people also gets that one vote. That's the only fair and equitable way of doing it. Ban ALL 'deals', like the US did with several UN nations to entice them to vote on US led votes.
When you've done that, then you'll start to see the small countries like Venezuela and Iran having some ability to deal with the US bully. The US can't just veto things like it does consistently with Israel. If it doesn't get more than 50% of the votes, without bribes, tough shit. That's how a REAL democracy works. If enough countries realise that they can stand up to the US, and start doing so, it'll snowball. The only way to hurt the US and make it behave is full economic sanctions. Whilst this is great in theory, it does hurt the people
Bleh, I've had my rant
Dave
Note: I don't have anything against the American people, but I have an intense dislike and hatred of American business, American politics, and American government.
Amen. It's nice to see an American admitting that their government is corrupt, most Americans seem to be so patriotic that they'll cast a blind eye to it.
Dave
Anyone who knows what they're talking about will know that Canon DSLRs have had very poor incandescent and tungsten WB settings for quite some time now. Nikon seems to have it right with their cameras from my experience. I usually set my camera on AWB now as it seems to offer the best WB from my experience. If it's a critical shoot, I'll take a WB shot off a macbeth card.
Dave
I guess it depends on how you define 'enough light' doesn't it? And what you define by photography, and by a certain level of reasonable quality. Camera phones are like Audio CDs were to LPs - convenient, certainly not better quality, and pushed by marketing companies so that ill-informed people think they're actually getting a higher quality product that's better than quality products.
From a technical point of view, the resolution on these camera phones is ALWAYS going to be inferior to a DSLR (just as a digital compact is inferior to a DSLR). Resolution is dictated by the given number of pixels within a certain sensor area. Considering that the sensor in this mobile phone is probably 5mm x 5mm...and smaller sensor sizes, lead to smaller pixels, which means more noise WILL be contained within the image. Reducing the images to web sized images only helps doctor the mobile phones inadequacies as a quality imaging device. I'm not even touching on lens quality, there's no way that these plastic, cheap mobile phone lenses are going to even remotely compare to a quality SLR lens. Period.
Dave
Reel to reel decks - as far as I'm aware, the best is Revox. I don't have a lot of experience with reel to reel, but I've heard good things about it.
Dave