'm currently avoiding PhysX due to the fact that the license requires that credit be given to nVidia/PhysX in any advertisement that mentions the advertised product's physics capabilities.
Why is that a problem? Is nVidia a charity whose job it is to provide free physics engines at no benefit to them?
Funny thing about electromagnetic resonance. The wavelength in vacuum / free air matters only... in vacuum / free air. The wavelength of a signal in a different medium, with presumably different dielectric constant and impedance will be... different! Water molecules are famously resonant at 2.45 GHz, that's where microwave ovens operate, despite the vacuum wavelength of 2.45 GHz photons being about 12 cm. The inter- and intra-molecular impedance makes H2O absorb those photons quite well. Water is quite rather opaque at those frequencies, despite being transparent at higher frequencies, say in the visible spectrum, and despite individual H2O molecules being many orders of magnitude smaller than the vacuum wavelength of 2.54 GHz photons.
Helpful hint for posters: if you don't know a damned thing about physics, don't answer questions as if you do.
Helpful hint for moderators: if you don't know a damned thing about physics, don't mod up posts full of word-salad wharrgarbl like "intra-molecular impedance."
I think you can blame religion for several hundred years of lost science, maybe a thousand, but getting to Mars several thousand years earlier? That would've taken an act of God in itself.:-P
I'm about this close to ditching Firefox. Performance and stability issues are going unaddressed while they work on crap like Office-style ribbon UIs?
IE7 was a pile of crap but IE8 isn't that bad, frankly. If the Mozilla people don't get their shit together, and soon, their market share is likely to shift back towards IE just as surely as Netscape's did.
(And no, I wouldn't feel this strongly about it if I didn't really like Firefox and want to see it succeed.)
But now you're online everywhere, all the time, or close to it. I feel powerless using a computer without an Internet gateway. Don't you? It only makes sense for applications to evolve to take advantage of that fact.
Comparing the ubiquity of the Internet to having to trudge across campus to use a VT100 terminal, uphill both ways, in the snow, is absurd.
From Apple's response: "Apple does not know if there is a VoIP element in the way the Google Voice application routes calls and messages, and whether VoIP technology is used over the 3G network by the application."
So Apple "does not know" what Google Voice does, they just need to "ponder" it some more.
I wonder how FCC officials like being treated like idiots. Hopefully Apple is about to find out.
I know when I'm looking for insight into the software industry and the relative merits of different Web browsers, court decisions handed down by narcoleptic 70-year-old judges who still have their secretaries print all their emails are the first place I look.
So what I'm reading over and over in this thread is that "welfare" is just a polite term for "extortion." You're literally paying the chavs not to engage in assorted acts of shopcrasting and ultraviolence.
From any practical standpoint, you're quite wrong. I just spent a couple of hours going through the massive FOIA disclosure of the Air Force's internal emails dealing with the aftermath of the Air Force One flyby of the Statue of Liberty back in April. Much of the 553-page document is concerned with detailed observations of bloggers' reactions, even to the point of discussing the rate of change in "tweets per minute" criticizing the White House and USAF.
The US government, at least, takes amateur online journalism very seriously. It's safe to say other governments do as well.
To answer your question, while I haven't purchased any RIAA-labelled music since they started suing peoples' grandmothers, I do own plenty of standard-def DVDs and a few HD and BluRay titles. My defenses are that the protection on DVDs was widely disclosed by the industry, was not engineered expressly to violate the first-sale doctrine, is easily circumvented as a practical matter, has never to my knowledge included rootkits or other black-hat tools intended to subvert my control of my own hardware, has not been enforced by a RICO-like campaign of financial terrorism and extortion against individual consumers, and does not allow the publisher to revoke playback permission at a later time.
The last point doesn't apply to HD and BluRay discs, but as long as I can easily rip the discs I don't really care, and will continue to buy them.
I exempt myself from accusations of idiocy or victimhood because I understand the limitations that come with the media I purchase, I choose to direct my media purchases toward parties that won't use my money to attack my interests as a consumer, and am technically capable of securing my own rights under the original intent of US copyright law in spite of the publishers' wishes to the contrary. In addition I probably give $5 to activist organizations such as the EFF and ALA for every $1 I give to entertainment media publishers. I treat these donations as "carbon offsets."
The "idiot" in my post is someone who pays money for content without knowing, or caring, how easily its value can disappear, who blindly swallows propaganda from copyright holders, and who votes against their own interests as consumers. (If you voted for the recent Democratic presidential ticket that included Joe Biden, for instance, you arguably did far more harm to the cause of consumer rights than I do by purchasing the occasional DVD or BluRay disc.)
... The money I gave you for it still works. I don't get to take that back, do I?
People who buy DRM'ed media content are idiots. It's not as if the record companies have tried to hide their sense of entitlement, or their unethical beliefs and attitudes. It would be different if they had, but as things stand, there's nothing else to do but blame the "victims" who keep giving them their money.
I just got back from the Mission Viejo store. They're serving free beer! At least, they said it was beer, I've never had bright-red, fruit-flavored beer served with ice in a glass pitcher before. Anyway, apart from the cherry-flavored sugary stuff they said was beer, the Microsoft store experience is a well-executed, classy affair that calls to mind the most elegant retailers outside the technology sector, from Nordstrom's to Saks Fifth Avenue to Neiman Marcus. There was free beer, and the tranquil, soothing environment makes you feel like you're the only customer in the store (which I'm sure was just a coincidence in my case) and really puts the crowded, noisy atmosphere in the Apple store to shame.
Clearly, Microsoft, under the forward-looking leadership of CEO Ballmer, has taken a bold yet welcome step into the world of luxury retail. Their new storefront strategy looks like a can't-miss proposition. And the beer, did I mention the beer was really good? And it was free, too, I'm pretty sure I mentioned that. Anyway, I look forward to returning, once I've installed these new copies of Vista Ultimate Edition I just picked up. Thanks, Steve!
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'm currently avoiding PhysX due to the fact that the license requires that credit be given to nVidia/PhysX in any advertisement that mentions the advertised product's physics capabilities.
Why is that a problem? Is nVidia a charity whose job it is to provide free physics engines at no benefit to them?
Pro tip: Stop digging.
Helpful hint for posters: if you don't know a damned thing about physics, don't answer questions as if you do.
Helpful hint for moderators: if you don't know a damned thing about physics, don't mod up posts full of word-salad wharrgarbl like "intra-molecular impedance."
http://www.howeverythingworks.org/prints.php?topic=microwave_ovens&page=4
I think you can blame religion for several hundred years of lost science, maybe a thousand, but getting to Mars several thousand years earlier? That would've taken an act of God in itself. :-P
I'm about this close to ditching Firefox. Performance and stability issues are going unaddressed while they work on crap like Office-style ribbon UIs?
IE7 was a pile of crap but IE8 isn't that bad, frankly. If the Mozilla people don't get their shit together, and soon, their market share is likely to shift back towards IE just as surely as Netscape's did.
(And no, I wouldn't feel this strongly about it if I didn't really like Firefox and want to see it succeed.)
The primary mechanism of transmission is breathing in an infected person's sneeze.
[citation needed]
Who says cloud software has to cost anything? Your argument could have been applied to the small-computer software sector in general.
I modded him "Flamebait" because there's no "Ignorant of basic EM physics" option.
But now you're online everywhere, all the time, or close to it. I feel powerless using a computer without an Internet gateway. Don't you? It only makes sense for applications to evolve to take advantage of that fact.
Comparing the ubiquity of the Internet to having to trudge across campus to use a VT100 terminal, uphill both ways, in the snow, is absurd.
From Apple's response: "Apple does not know if there is a VoIP element in the way the Google Voice application routes calls and messages, and whether VoIP technology is used over the 3G network by the application."
So Apple "does not know" what Google Voice does, they just need to "ponder" it some more.
I wonder how FCC officials like being treated like idiots. Hopefully Apple is about to find out.
I know when I'm looking for insight into the software industry and the relative merits of different Web browsers, court decisions handed down by narcoleptic 70-year-old judges who still have their secretaries print all their emails are the first place I look.
Why would they do something that stupid?
Remember, we're talking about Adobe here, whose idea of innovation is a version of Acrobat Reader that ships on 2 DVDs instead of just 1.
Jobs has altered the corporate charter. The Board should pray he does not alter it further.
Apple is, literally, no longer a computer company. Jobs announced the name change from "Apple Computer" to "Apple" when he announced the iPhone.
So what I'm reading over and over in this thread is that "welfare" is just a polite term for "extortion." You're literally paying the chavs not to engage in assorted acts of shopcrasting and ultraviolence.
Do I have it right?
Do you have any actual points to make, or did you just want to randomly slag on the Reason Foundation some more?
From any practical standpoint, you're quite wrong. I just spent a couple of hours going through the massive FOIA disclosure of the Air Force's internal emails dealing with the aftermath of the Air Force One flyby of the Statue of Liberty back in April. Much of the 553-page document is concerned with detailed observations of bloggers' reactions, even to the point of discussing the rate of change in "tweets per minute" criticizing the White House and USAF.
The US government, at least, takes amateur online journalism very seriously. It's safe to say other governments do as well.
That makes them a "proper source."
Seconded, it's ridiculous to even consider any other free SPICEs than LTSpice.
I would also like to say that I buy DRMed content, fully aware of the risks involved, and I am definitely not an idiot. ;-)
As do I; see my response a couple of posts above this one.
To answer your question, while I haven't purchased any RIAA-labelled music since they started suing peoples' grandmothers, I do own plenty of standard-def DVDs and a few HD and BluRay titles. My defenses are that the protection on DVDs was widely disclosed by the industry, was not engineered expressly to violate the first-sale doctrine, is easily circumvented as a practical matter, has never to my knowledge included rootkits or other black-hat tools intended to subvert my control of my own hardware, has not been enforced by a RICO-like campaign of financial terrorism and extortion against individual consumers, and does not allow the publisher to revoke playback permission at a later time.
The last point doesn't apply to HD and BluRay discs, but as long as I can easily rip the discs I don't really care, and will continue to buy them.
I exempt myself from accusations of idiocy or victimhood because I understand the limitations that come with the media I purchase, I choose to direct my media purchases toward parties that won't use my money to attack my interests as a consumer, and am technically capable of securing my own rights under the original intent of US copyright law in spite of the publishers' wishes to the contrary. In addition I probably give $5 to activist organizations such as the EFF and ALA for every $1 I give to entertainment media publishers. I treat these donations as "carbon offsets."
The "idiot" in my post is someone who pays money for content without knowing, or caring, how easily its value can disappear, who blindly swallows propaganda from copyright holders, and who votes against their own interests as consumers. (If you voted for the recent Democratic presidential ticket that included Joe Biden, for instance, you arguably did far more harm to the cause of consumer rights than I do by purchasing the occasional DVD or BluRay disc.)
That must be one of those "Optimism is a strategy" affirmations...
We've heard lofty-sounding promises from Bezos before. Remember when he was going to spearhead a patent-reform effort, after the One-Click fiasco?
I keep thinking how these approaches would work when applied to books.
You don't have to imagine it -- that's exactly what just happened, when Amazon's Ministry of DRM unpublished '1984' on the Kindle!
... The money I gave you for it still works. I don't get to take that back, do I?
People who buy DRM'ed media content are idiots. It's not as if the record companies have tried to hide their sense of entitlement, or their unethical beliefs and attitudes. It would be different if they had, but as things stand, there's nothing else to do but blame the "victims" who keep giving them their money.
Stop feeding the machine, people.
I just got back from the Mission Viejo store. They're serving free beer! At least, they said it was beer, I've never had bright-red, fruit-flavored beer served with ice in a glass pitcher before. Anyway, apart from the cherry-flavored sugary stuff they said was beer, the Microsoft store experience is a well-executed, classy affair that calls to mind the most elegant retailers outside the technology sector, from Nordstrom's to Saks Fifth Avenue to Neiman Marcus. There was free beer, and the tranquil, soothing environment makes you feel like you're the only customer in the store (which I'm sure was just a coincidence in my case) and really puts the crowded, noisy atmosphere in the Apple store to shame.
Clearly, Microsoft, under the forward-looking leadership of CEO Ballmer, has taken a bold yet welcome step into the world of luxury retail. Their new storefront strategy looks like a can't-miss proposition. And the beer, did I mention the beer was really good? And it was free, too, I'm pretty sure I mentioned that. Anyway, I look forward to returning, once I've installed these new copies of Vista Ultimate Edition I just picked up. Thanks, Steve!