The first one we'll see will be the sort that is more or less permanently installed, and can therefore be plugged into the wall all or some of the time.
That's what I want. I mean, ActiveDesktop is cool, and all, and I've got webcams and wether reports and traffic cameras and the like on my desktop, but at any given moment maybe 90% of my screen is covered with windows. And if I were to hook up a third monitor, I'd want to use it as more desktop space, not as a permanent "information poster."
But, if I could have a 3x2 foot "poster" hanging on the wall of my office, plugged into the USB port on the computer, and feed data to it, then that'd be great. I could put up webcams, stock tickers, anything that'd be interesting to see but not important enough to keep in a foreground window.
It'd be great to be able to simply glance up and say "ugh, traffic's getting bad, I'd better head home soon."
Sure, I'm all about tracking stuff visually, so you can actually *see* what it is you're tracking, but what's the resolving power of the facility? If I recall correctly, the US already tracks thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or millions) bits of space junk, down to the size of small bolts. If the Russians have an optical facility that can resolve those, then I'll be truly impressed.
The best optical imaging of orbiting objects I've ever seen came from a Boston museum (I think), which managed to use the GOTO[1] functionality on a 12-inch telescope to track the Shuttle while docked with ISS. If you squinted, you could just recognize it. And they fly in a (relatively) low orbit. [here's a site with some nice shots]
So, again, if they can manage to optically track very small objet d'junk, I'll be very impressed. If they're only visually tracking larger objects (like, say, US spy satellites), then I'd say they've probably got a different purpose in mind.
Does anyone know whether this will support collaborative multiplayer modes? I just got through with Baldur's Gate on the PS2, and my wife and I are just about finished with Halo, so we're really looking for video games which we can both play together. Sure, things like Spyro or Tomb Raider are great, but when one person has to watch for a half hour while the other finishes off a challenging level, then it gets kind of old, pretty fast.
Anyway, I thought I'd read that KotOR would support two or three simultaneous players, like Baldur's Gate, but the review sort of half-implies otherwise. Does anyone know for sure?
(better yet, can anyone recommend a good collaborative multi-player Xbox adventure / exploration game? Or even a *good* gaming site (there are so many out there, and they're all pretty horrid))
Okay, I just checked Starbucks, and either I'm entirely mistaken and they've always had an alternative, or they recently added their own "starbucks account" option. Either way, you can now use something other than Passport, if you like.
Very annoying. So, I signed up for passport, gave them only the barest minimum of information (and NOT my CC number -- I gave that only for the one transaction. Granted, I'm trusting they don't store it w/out my consent, but what can I do?).
At this point, I think I've done this two or three different times. Each time, a few months later, my passport's expired, or I forgot the password, so I just create a new one.
By and large, though, I'd like to agree with you, but the point is, it's already happening....
Huh? Isn't that exactly what jabber do? There are several jabber servers on the net and you can run your own if you like. It works very much like email and your address looks like an emailaddress.
True, the approach is very like what I described (and is probably where I channeled my post from:) ), but it only works for people using *jabber*. The "big four" IM systems don't support this, and until they do, we'll never see the united IM system that I thought we were talking about.
Plus, one downside to Jabber is that, if your server happens to go down, it doesn't "route around" it in any way. Granted, neither does AOL (except in terms of local-to-AOL round-robin or hot-spare servers), but when you've got a bunch of lesser-funded servers with less reliable performance, having some way to temporarily "move" your profile to another server (and have people be able to find you transparently) becomes critical. This may have changed, I haven't used Jabber in a while, 'cause everyone I talked to uses AIM and AOL hates Jabber servers, it seems...
Before more people post "Just use Jabber!" or "Trillian already does this!" keep this in mind:
With these clients, you still need an account (and a software interface) for multiple IM services.
That is, you may have a single client, but you've still got multiple AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts. Maybe even a jabber account (and that one isn't even universal -- it's based on wherever your account's server).
What is needed is, essentially, SMTP for IM. A way to embed a service name/address into the message traffic. So that, for example, a user "harry.truman" on MSN could send, using MSN, an IM to "aim:dcooper", and have it go through. A little quiet reflection should convince you that this is a server-side problem, and one the current services haven't addressed. (I'll leave the question of why, be it technical, political, or economic reasons, to others).
Anyway, I've already seen a couple "just use trillian" sort of responses and wanted to head 'em off.:)
There is a EULA on the OUTSIDE of the xbox package.
You know, I bought an Xbox about two weeks ago, and I never saw any EULA on the box. Certainly, I didn't see it before I bought it, and completed the transaction.
I'm guessing it's in small print somewhere -- I didn't look too closely at the box 'cause it looked like it was all marketing crap (pictures of cool games, accessories you can buy, etc.), and because I wanted to get it home and plugged in. There was also no sticker on the box keeping me from opening it without agreeing to anything, there was nothing on the unit itself, and I certainly didn't need to open the manual to get it running.
So, unproven philosophical discussions on the enforceability of a non-negotiated EULA aside, they certainly didn't go out of their way to make me see the agreement. I know I was specifically surprised by this, and went looking for such a EULA after I had it running (but, apparently, I didn't look close enough).
HOWEVER, that doesn't change the fact that anyone should be able to develop their own software for the box and have it run on NON-modded systems. I don't buy the crap (which I've never seen proven) about MS or Sony losing money on each console sold. And, if that's the case, then they need to sell consoles for their actual cost, tough luck, bad business model. The Xbox is a computer. People are allowed to write software for computers. They don't need permission from anyone to do it, and never have before now. Remember the "trouble" Activision got into when they started producing their own Atari 2600 cartridges? I seem to recall that Atari lost big-time on that.
So, has anyone started trying to crack the signature scheme used by Xboxes, so that people could distribute their own software w/out needing to pay an MS fee for a signed disk (or however it works)?
* Anti-bacterial deoderant * Anti-bacterial shower soap bar * Anti-bacterial toothpaste * Anti-bacterial mouthwash * Anti-bacterial liquid hand soap * Anti-bacterial hand lotion (why?!)
Of course, what exactly is the anti-bacterial agent in these products? Is it a true antibiotic, or simply some kind of cell-killing agent like bleach?
I doubt that the super-expensive "magic bullet" antibiotics that we're afraid of germs getting immune to aren't in these products, so they're really contributing to adapted bacteria. Or so I'd guess.
there's ExtractStream [9thtee.com] to pull the MPEG data off the hard drive
I thought (and I may be wrong here) that you needed to set some kind of system flag ahead of time to disable local encryption of the stream. So that anything you've already got on the box was non-extractable? (I'm unsure because I haven't had the time, lately, to watch these developments too closely...)
A related question: Has anyone managed to modify the myworld program on TiVo to allow it to, basically, function as a TV tuner with MPEG-2 output? I'm specifically considering trying to hook an ethernet port to my DirecTV tivo unit and use it as a streaming source for my home network...
In order to notice that our planet is generating signals, [aliens] would still have to notice and intercept our broadcast trasmissions, which have only been travelling at the speed of light. ... Anyone can come up with all sorts of a sci-fi explanations to dispute this
I assume, basically, that if FTL travel is possible, then at least one of these advanced civilizations will eventually wander by us, sometime, somehow. Maybe an annual (for some interplanetary definition of the word) survey of systems with life-supporting planets. Remember, I'm assuming very low cost for the travel on that survey.
So, I suppose there's a third possibility -- FTL travel is possible, but nobody's invaded us because nobody's noticed us yet. So, hopefully, by the time we *get* noticed, we'll have developed sufficient shielding to withstand the Romulan onslaught. But if they're nearby, we'll be wiped out and/or enslaved, which is also really depressing.
So, then, my modified conjecture points to a 67% requirement for depression when thinking about FTL travel and aliens visiting us.
1) Faster-than-light (FTL, warp, whatever) travel is possible, and nobody's invaded us because there's some overarching federation of planets that's keeping us protected from outside influence until we're ready, and that's way cool.
or
2) FTL travel is not possible, and so nobody's coming here 'cause it's just not worth the trip. And that's depressing as hell.
Sure, we "hate" the MPAA. But do we hate the movie producers? The directors, actors, and writers? Do we stop being entertained simply because we don't like a single trade organization operating "on behalf" of those moviemakers?
Come on. A/. mention of Real Genius on DVD isn't about advertising an MPAA product, it's about a great movie. One with more quotable lines than just about any other movie, other than the Grail.
Don't like the MPAA? Fight *them*, not the movie industry they purport to represent.
This "don't we hate the MPAA?" crap is getting old.
They should stay clear of the Ralph Nader-like economic fascism and stick to product reviews.
Okay, I'll grant you that they can be a little, er, leaning.
But it's hard to argue with the facts that, since deregulation for the industries cited in the article, service has gone down, prices haven't changed appreciably (or, in the case of Cable, have gone up significantly), and choice has evaporated.
Buy the issue, read the article, and then tell me you think it's crap. But at least point out specific problems with the article, rather than dismissing it as nader-esque fringe politics.
Cell phones? A lot of the cost is government license fees
Yeah, there are a lot of government taxes. But that's not what I was getting at -- there are too many "standards," none of them interoperate worth a damn, most of the cell phone companies restrict you from moving your phone from one provider to another, and NONE of the phone hardware interoperates with others. So, you buy a phone, and everything that goes with it, and if you decide your provider sucks, you're out a lot of bucks to replace EVERYTHING you just bought.
AM stereo?... It's like FM stereo but all staticy
I'm not saying I *want* AM stereo, I'm saying that there were four or so proposals, and the FCC, after extensive research, decided not to decide, and to let the market choose the best system. So no system was ever adopted. Some of those, I believe, included some basic noise reduction that would have made them at least partial competitors to FM. The point being, the FCC had a chance to push the market towards a unified standard, and the market just gave up.
the free market should decide this kind of thing, NOT the government which more likely than not will force a single inferior standard rather than the best thing possible.
That's Exactly my point. The government shouldn't decide which is best, but the free market isn't doing any better, either. Left to its own devices, the free market will choose what's best for stockholders. Sure, it's great if you're a significant stocholder in one of these companies, but if you're a consumer wanting choice and service, it sucks.
so you're saying that the government doesn't regulate tv? *coughFCCcough* or the airlines? *coughFAAcough*
Right. How many networks are there, really? How many of them own the entire production chain (from actors on up to stations)? The FCC has been relaxing all the ownership rules for years, so that networks own more TV stations outright, produce more of their own shows, etc. Very little real competition going on there, and so the quality sucks.
But I wasn't talking, originally, about broadcast TV, but about Cable TV. Yes, there is still some regulation for broadcast TV (like some frequency allocation), but that's about it.
Airlines? Please. No regulation at all. The FAA makes sure that some basic safety standards are met, but any airline can oversell a plane, leave 3 hours late, and not even give you peanuts. The fact is, "unrestricted" fares (the really expensive ones that you can cancel whenever you need to) used to be the only fares you could get, before deregulation, and they weren't any more expensive (adjusted for inflation) than today's "discount" fares, where the consumer has no rights whatsoever.
In America, it always seems to boil down to either the government regulating it, a private entity regulating it, or a private entity hired by the government to regulate it.
Actually, more often than not, it seems to boil down to "let's not let anyone regulate it, and let the consumers make their choice." And as a result, we have crappy airline service, super-expensive cable TV, balkanized cell phone service, and no AM stereo.
This may be a bit of an off-topic, but there's a great article in the latest Consumer Reports that talks about how all kinds of industries (CATV, Long Distance, Airlines, etc.) were ALREADY on a downward cost trend (services going up, costs going down) before government deregulation, and that since deregulation, the trend has either slowed down or reversed (and quality / service gone down).
Since "It'll be cheaper for the consumer!" seems to be the standard battlecry for people advocating deregulation, this was very interesting.
Anyway, I do agree that we need better regulation of certain technological fields -- be it frequency allocation or technology standards (like selecting a single cell phone spec for everyone to use so we're not 20 years behind the Finns). For some reason, though, we as a culture seem to think that's verboten. That it's an affront to the capitalistic ideal. But, in the end, the capitalist system doesn't "select" what's "best" for the consumer, it selects who was "best" at competing.
So, how do we make these decisions, then? I certainly don't want a bunch of bureaucrats deciding the specs for the next ethernet standard, do I? And I don't want industry to do it, either (at least I don't want the entertainment industry to do it). And it's difficult to get too many people together without someone crying "antitrust." Maybe a standardized process of academics and industry proposing and peer reviewing, with government oversight and approval? I dunno.
Either way, it sucks. There's no technical reason (as I've said over and over) why we can't all have fiber to our doorstep with a unified, standard data and hardware spec that enables me to switch, for example, from one CATV provider to another with a simple phone call.
And it's not getting any better, as the different specs for XM and Sirius prove -- I'd be less reluctant to buy into satellite radio if I could switch to the other provider if I don't like their programming.
Has anyone actually been able to prove that this works? I'm not talking about anecdotal evidence, I mean, has any geek with/.'s general communal respect actually taken a stack of CDs, tried to rip them, gotten errors, marked the CDs up, and then got them to rip with no errors?
And then documented the crap out of it?
This all smells too much like the audiophile tricks of the 80's where coloring the outside rim of a CD was supposed to "trap stray laser radiation and improve the [clarity | transparency | imaging | other-nonsense-claptrap] of the music." (see the snopes entry on this one).
I ask because I'm really curious what the scientific explanation for this would be. It was my understanding that they (the infamous "they") did something to the actual track of the CD, with bad physical spacing, introduced errors, or something like that, but did it *throughout* the CD. How on earth would marking the inside of the CD fix that?
[okay, I just actually *read* the article.:) But I'd swear that an earlier posting talked about marking the inside, not outside, of the CD. Anyway, my question still holds -- any geek-written report on this, or do we only have the mainstream press to trust as to whether this actually works, and for which CDs?]
As an aside, whatever happened to the multicast backbone? I seem to recall that "they" were working on some kind of an IP-level packet redistribution service (my words) that would enable an application to tell its closest router "hey, I wanna listen to 244.123.45.6", and it'd then ask it's upstream router the same thing, etc., until it was able to get a copy of the stream routed to the requesting client.
Or something remotely like that.
Anyway, it seemed like a terrific idea, 'cause the content provider wouldn't have to server a thousand different, unique streams, all with the same content -- it'd just send a single stream to an MBone address, and anyone who wanted to receive it could ask for it.
I just did a quick check on it, and only found 6-year-old FAQs and such. Has it died? Has it been overcome by events with IPv6?
I ask 'cause it occurred to me that any webcaster broadcasting on mbone wouldn't be *able* to tell how many people were listening. A sort of end-run around some of CARP, as it were...
The bottom line is that you will get used to the new law. I haven't heard anybody in VA complaining about it *ever*.
You're about to hear a complaint.
I grew up in MD, and have now lived in VA for 10 years, and both states have the same "stop for school bus" law -- including the provision that if there's a median between you and the bus, you don't need to stop. I grew up with the law, I understand its need, and I can live with it.
What I don't understand is why we don't seem to have well-defined bus stops. First, let me explain the architecture of western Fairfax County -- lots of newish (5-15 years old) developments, off a main (4+ lane) highway, with no interconnections between the different builders' neighborhoods. So the buses don't go into the neighborhoods, they simply stop on a major commuter road and pick kids up. Then they drive on a block, and pick up 3 more kids. Two more blocks, and another 5 kids. It's crazy.
Now, I don't mean to start an old fart whining battle, but when I grew up in Bethesda, we had TWO stops on our bus, about 10 blocks apart, and each serving something like 20-30 kids. Why on earth Fairfax can't at least make these kids all walk the extra three blocks to a central stop, and thus stop traffic only once instead of 5 times in less than a mile, is way beyond me.
End of rant.
Now, what were we discussing before? I honestly don't remember.....sometimes the off-topic digressions really are more interesting.:)
How about hydrogen powered jets? The exhaust would be water vapor.
It's my understanding that contrails aren't smoke from the jets, but are ice crystals formed in the chaotic vorticies of air spinning off wings.
That is, the high-speed wing creates even higher-speed whirlwinds, and the moisture in the air, when caught in these whirlwinds, freezes, leaving an opaque white trail.
I'm guessing that these "expand" into large cloud banks less by spreading and thinning than by catalyzing the creation of more clouds in adjoining air -- the frozen moisture cools the air around the contrails, and can cool it just enough to allow more clouds to form, etc., etc.
Of course, I'm just pulling all this out of my butt -- will a real meterologist please stand up?
Luke refers to the Lars as "Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru"? His uncle would be his father's brother.
Couldn't Beru be his mother's sister? Of course, why then would she have left Naboo for Tatooine? (except maybe to get to the fringe of the republic and, thus, hide from the Emperor. Hm.)
And, actually, I thought I'd read that Shimi(?) married someone after she was freed, and that this someone was Owen Lars' brother. So Owen and Beru would be Luke's great-uncle, on his step-grandfather's side. Or something like that.
On the other hand, I could be remembering the scriptment completely wrong. Guess I'll find out next thursday.
Much of what they did in Enemy of the State seemed to be quite within the realm of possibility.
Well, I remember being most annoyed with things like: * A radio antenna being used for image collection * Seamless interconnectivity of private security cameras (though, post PATRIOT act, this seems less crazy now) * Super-hip government workers, talking on cell phones all the time (that computer jockey ending calls with "it's already done.") Trust me. I've worked for the DOD. It's simply not that cool. * image extrapolation (as you said) * and even the uber-evil government agents.
Technologically, it was crap, and politically, even worse.
<rant> One of the reasons I hate movies that portray the government as "big brother" with super-incredible capabilities is that it gets the public used to the idea that, well, they spy on us already (which, no, they don't. It's illegal, and they actually take that pretty seriously). The problem with that is, that when the government actually starts to make inroads into excessive domestic surveilance, information aggregation, etc., nobody will care cause they saw it in a movie 5 years ago and accept it!
Movies like Enemy of the State, or that Bruce Willis movie where he's a general and takes over NYC, to the point of establishing a concentration camp (was it The Seige?), simpy make my blood boil. If you want to make a movie like this, fine, set it in a PARALLEL world (like comics do -- Gotham City instead of NYC does wonders for allowing unbelievable plot twists to be more acceptable).
Slashdot Mirror
"Days as opposed to weeks", as he said.
Yeah, well, if he went by the book, hours would seem like days.
The first one we'll see will be the sort that is more or less permanently installed, and can therefore be plugged into the wall all or some of the time.
That's what I want. I mean, ActiveDesktop is cool, and all, and I've got webcams and wether reports and traffic cameras and the like on my desktop, but at any given moment maybe 90% of my screen is covered with windows. And if I were to hook up a third monitor, I'd want to use it as more desktop space, not as a permanent "information poster."
But, if I could have a 3x2 foot "poster" hanging on the wall of my office, plugged into the USB port on the computer, and feed data to it, then that'd be great. I could put up webcams, stock tickers, anything that'd be interesting to see but not important enough to keep in a foreground window.
It'd be great to be able to simply glance up and say "ugh, traffic's getting bad, I'd better head home soon."
So, where do I sign up?
Sure, I'm all about tracking stuff visually, so you can actually *see* what it is you're tracking, but what's the resolving power of the facility? If I recall correctly, the US already tracks thousands (if not hundreds of thousands or millions) bits of space junk, down to the size of small bolts. If the Russians have an optical facility that can resolve those, then I'll be truly impressed.
The best optical imaging of orbiting objects I've ever seen came from a Boston museum (I think), which managed to use the GOTO[1] functionality on a 12-inch telescope to track the Shuttle while docked with ISS. If you squinted, you could just recognize it. And they fly in a (relatively) low orbit. [here's a site with some nice shots]
So, again, if they can manage to optically track very small objet d'junk, I'll be very impressed. If they're only visually tracking larger objects (like, say, US spy satellites), then I'd say they've probably got a different purpose in mind.
[1] See? Not all GOTO's are bad!
> Good god. Are you all 12???? Try The Who!!
Well, give some of us credit, remembering Neil Young, okay?
And, for the life of me, I can't place the Who song you're referring to. I've still got "Pink Moon" stuck in my head.
Does anyone know whether this will support collaborative multiplayer modes? I just got through with Baldur's Gate on the PS2, and my wife and I are just about finished with Halo, so we're really looking for video games which we can both play together. Sure, things like Spyro or Tomb Raider are great, but when one person has to watch for a half hour while the other finishes off a challenging level, then it gets kind of old, pretty fast.
Anyway, I thought I'd read that KotOR would support two or three simultaneous players, like Baldur's Gate, but the review sort of half-implies otherwise. Does anyone know for sure?
(better yet, can anyone recommend a good collaborative multi-player Xbox adventure / exploration game? Or even a *good* gaming site (there are so many out there, and they're all pretty horrid))
Okay, I just checked Starbucks, and either I'm entirely mistaken and they've always had an alternative, or they recently added their own "starbucks account" option. Either way, you can now use something other than Passport, if you like.
:)
my apologies.
They won't require passport because it's just one more thing that MIGHT cause a consumer to go elsewhere.
Try buying something online from Starbucks. Passport required. (unless it's changed recently).
Very annoying. So, I signed up for passport, gave them only the barest minimum of information (and NOT my CC number -- I gave that only for the one transaction. Granted, I'm trusting they don't store it w/out my consent, but what can I do?).
At this point, I think I've done this two or three different times. Each time, a few months later, my passport's expired, or I forgot the password, so I just create a new one.
By and large, though, I'd like to agree with you, but the point is, it's already happening....
Huh? Isn't that exactly what jabber do? There are several jabber servers on the net and you can run your own if you like. It works very much like email and your address looks like an emailaddress.
:) ), but it only works for people using *jabber*. The "big four" IM systems don't support this, and until they do, we'll never see the united IM system that I thought we were talking about.
True, the approach is very like what I described (and is probably where I channeled my post from
Plus, one downside to Jabber is that, if your server happens to go down, it doesn't "route around" it in any way. Granted, neither does AOL (except in terms of local-to-AOL round-robin or hot-spare servers), but when you've got a bunch of lesser-funded servers with less reliable performance, having some way to temporarily "move" your profile to another server (and have people be able to find you transparently) becomes critical. This may have changed, I haven't used Jabber in a while, 'cause everyone I talked to uses AIM and AOL hates Jabber servers, it seems...
Before more people post "Just use Jabber!" or "Trillian already does this!" keep this in mind:
:)
With these clients, you still need an account (and a software interface) for multiple IM services.
That is, you may have a single client, but you've still got multiple AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! accounts. Maybe even a jabber account (and that one isn't even universal -- it's based on wherever your account's server).
What is needed is, essentially, SMTP for IM. A way to embed a service name/address into the message traffic. So that, for example, a user "harry.truman" on MSN could send, using MSN, an IM to "aim:dcooper", and have it go through. A little quiet reflection should convince you that this is a server-side problem, and one the current services haven't addressed. (I'll leave the question of why, be it technical, political, or economic reasons, to others).
Anyway, I've already seen a couple "just use trillian" sort of responses and wanted to head 'em off.
There is a EULA on the OUTSIDE of the xbox package.
You know, I bought an Xbox about two weeks ago, and I never saw any EULA on the box. Certainly, I didn't see it before I bought it, and completed the transaction.
I'm guessing it's in small print somewhere -- I didn't look too closely at the box 'cause it looked like it was all marketing crap (pictures of cool games, accessories you can buy, etc.), and because I wanted to get it home and plugged in. There was also no sticker on the box keeping me from opening it without agreeing to anything, there was nothing on the unit itself, and I certainly didn't need to open the manual to get it running.
So, unproven philosophical discussions on the enforceability of a non-negotiated EULA aside, they certainly didn't go out of their way to make me see the agreement. I know I was specifically surprised by this, and went looking for such a EULA after I had it running (but, apparently, I didn't look close enough).
HOWEVER, that doesn't change the fact that anyone should be able to develop their own software for the box and have it run on NON-modded systems. I don't buy the crap (which I've never seen proven) about MS or Sony losing money on each console sold. And, if that's the case, then they need to sell consoles for their actual cost, tough luck, bad business model. The Xbox is a computer. People are allowed to write software for computers. They don't need permission from anyone to do it, and never have before now. Remember the "trouble" Activision got into when they started producing their own Atari 2600 cartridges? I seem to recall that Atari lost big-time on that.
So, has anyone started trying to crack the signature scheme used by Xboxes, so that people could distribute their own software w/out needing to pay an MS fee for a signed disk (or however it works)?
Looking through my roomate's things, I find:
* Anti-bacterial deoderant
* Anti-bacterial shower soap bar
* Anti-bacterial toothpaste
* Anti-bacterial mouthwash
* Anti-bacterial liquid hand soap
* Anti-bacterial hand lotion (why?!)
Of course, what exactly is the anti-bacterial agent in these products? Is it a true antibiotic, or simply some kind of cell-killing agent like bleach?
I doubt that the super-expensive "magic bullet" antibiotics that we're afraid of germs getting immune to aren't in these products, so they're really contributing to adapted bacteria. Or so I'd guess.
there's ExtractStream [9thtee.com] to pull the MPEG data off the hard drive
I thought (and I may be wrong here) that you needed to set some kind of system flag ahead of time to disable local encryption of the stream. So that anything you've already got on the box was non-extractable? (I'm unsure because I haven't had the time, lately, to watch these developments too closely...)
A related question: Has anyone managed to modify the myworld program on TiVo to allow it to, basically, function as a TV tuner with MPEG-2 output? I'm specifically considering trying to hook an ethernet port to my DirecTV tivo unit and use it as a streaming source for my home network...
In order to notice that our planet is generating signals, [aliens] would still have to notice and intercept our broadcast trasmissions, which have only been travelling at the speed of light.
...
Anyone can come up with all sorts of a sci-fi explanations to dispute this
I assume, basically, that if FTL travel is possible, then at least one of these advanced civilizations will eventually wander by us, sometime, somehow. Maybe an annual (for some interplanetary definition of the word) survey of systems with life-supporting planets. Remember, I'm assuming very low cost for the travel on that survey.
So, I suppose there's a third possibility -- FTL travel is possible, but nobody's invaded us because nobody's noticed us yet. So, hopefully, by the time we *get* noticed, we'll have developed sufficient shielding to withstand the Romulan onslaught. But if they're nearby, we'll be wiped out and/or enslaved, which is also really depressing.
So, then, my modified conjecture points to a 67% requirement for depression when thinking about FTL travel and aliens visiting us.
Dang. I gotta stop posting from work.
...is that, either:
1) Faster-than-light (FTL, warp, whatever) travel is possible, and nobody's invaded us because there's some overarching federation of planets that's keeping us protected from outside influence until we're ready, and that's way cool.
or
2) FTL travel is not possible, and so nobody's coming here 'cause it's just not worth the trip. And that's depressing as hell.
Am I missing anything?
For pete's sake!
/. mention of Real Genius on DVD isn't about advertising an MPAA product, it's about a great movie. One with more quotable lines than just about any other movie, other than the Grail.
Sure, we "hate" the MPAA. But do we hate the movie producers? The directors, actors, and writers? Do we stop being entertained simply because we don't like a single trade organization operating "on behalf" of those moviemakers?
Come on. A
Don't like the MPAA? Fight *them*, not the movie industry they purport to represent.
This "don't we hate the MPAA?" crap is getting old.
They should stay clear of the Ralph Nader-like economic fascism and stick to product reviews.
Okay, I'll grant you that they can be a little, er, leaning.
But it's hard to argue with the facts that, since deregulation for the industries cited in the article, service has gone down, prices haven't changed appreciably (or, in the case of Cable, have gone up significantly), and choice has evaporated.
Buy the issue, read the article, and then tell me you think it's crap. But at least point out specific problems with the article, rather than dismissing it as nader-esque fringe politics.
Cell phones? A lot of the cost is government license fees
... It's like FM stereo but all staticy
Yeah, there are a lot of government taxes. But that's not what I was getting at -- there are too many "standards," none of them interoperate worth a damn, most of the cell phone companies restrict you from moving your phone from one provider to another, and NONE of the phone hardware interoperates with others. So, you buy a phone, and everything that goes with it, and if you decide your provider sucks, you're out a lot of bucks to replace EVERYTHING you just bought.
AM stereo?
I'm not saying I *want* AM stereo, I'm saying that there were four or so proposals, and the FCC, after extensive research, decided not to decide, and to let the market choose the best system. So no system was ever adopted. Some of those, I believe, included some basic noise reduction that would have made them at least partial competitors to FM. The point being, the FCC had a chance to push the market towards a unified standard, and the market just gave up.
the free market should decide this kind of thing, NOT the government which more likely than not will force a single inferior standard rather than the best thing possible.
That's Exactly my point. The government shouldn't decide which is best, but the free market isn't doing any better, either. Left to its own devices, the free market will choose what's best for stockholders. Sure, it's great if you're a significant stocholder in one of these companies, but if you're a consumer wanting choice and service, it sucks.
so you're saying that the government doesn't regulate tv? *coughFCCcough* or the airlines? *coughFAAcough*
Right. How many networks are there, really? How many of them own the entire production chain (from actors on up to stations)? The FCC has been relaxing all the ownership rules for years, so that networks own more TV stations outright, produce more of their own shows, etc. Very little real competition going on there, and so the quality sucks.
But I wasn't talking, originally, about broadcast TV, but about Cable TV. Yes, there is still some regulation for broadcast TV (like some frequency allocation), but that's about it.
Airlines? Please. No regulation at all. The FAA makes sure that some basic safety standards are met, but any airline can oversell a plane, leave 3 hours late, and not even give you peanuts. The fact is, "unrestricted" fares (the really expensive ones that you can cancel whenever you need to) used to be the only fares you could get, before deregulation, and they weren't any more expensive (adjusted for inflation) than today's "discount" fares, where the consumer has no rights whatsoever.
In America, it always seems to boil down to either the government regulating it, a private entity regulating it, or a private entity hired by the government to regulate it.
Actually, more often than not, it seems to boil down to "let's not let anyone regulate it, and let the consumers make their choice." And as a result, we have crappy airline service, super-expensive cable TV, balkanized cell phone service, and no AM stereo.
This may be a bit of an off-topic, but there's a great article in the latest Consumer Reports that talks about how all kinds of industries (CATV, Long Distance, Airlines, etc.) were ALREADY on a downward cost trend (services going up, costs going down) before government deregulation, and that since deregulation, the trend has either slowed down or reversed (and quality / service gone down).
Since "It'll be cheaper for the consumer!" seems to be the standard battlecry for people advocating deregulation, this was very interesting.
Anyway, I do agree that we need better regulation of certain technological fields -- be it frequency allocation or technology standards (like selecting a single cell phone spec for everyone to use so we're not 20 years behind the Finns). For some reason, though, we as a culture seem to think that's verboten. That it's an affront to the capitalistic ideal. But, in the end, the capitalist system doesn't "select" what's "best" for the consumer, it selects who was "best" at competing.
So, how do we make these decisions, then? I certainly don't want a bunch of bureaucrats deciding the specs for the next ethernet standard, do I? And I don't want industry to do it, either (at least I don't want the entertainment industry to do it). And it's difficult to get too many people together without someone crying "antitrust." Maybe a standardized process of academics and industry proposing and peer reviewing, with government oversight and approval? I dunno.
Either way, it sucks. There's no technical reason (as I've said over and over) why we can't all have fiber to our doorstep with a unified, standard data and hardware spec that enables me to switch, for example, from one CATV provider to another with a simple phone call.
And it's not getting any better, as the different specs for XM and Sirius prove -- I'd be less reluctant to buy into satellite radio if I could switch to the other provider if I don't like their programming.
Okay, I'm done with the tangent.
Has anyone actually been able to prove that this works? I'm not talking about anecdotal evidence, I mean, has any geek with /.'s general communal respect actually taken a stack of CDs, tried to rip them, gotten errors, marked the CDs up, and then got them to rip with no errors?
:) But I'd swear that an earlier posting talked about marking the inside, not outside, of the CD. Anyway, my question still holds -- any geek-written report on this, or do we only have the mainstream press to trust as to whether this actually works, and for which CDs?]
And then documented the crap out of it?
This all smells too much like the audiophile tricks of the 80's where coloring the outside rim of a CD was supposed to "trap stray laser radiation and improve the [clarity | transparency | imaging | other-nonsense-claptrap] of the music." (see the snopes entry on this one).
I ask because I'm really curious what the scientific explanation for this would be. It was my understanding that they (the infamous "they") did something to the actual track of the CD, with bad physical spacing, introduced errors, or something like that, but did it *throughout* the CD. How on earth would marking the inside of the CD fix that?
[okay, I just actually *read* the article.
As an aside, whatever happened to the multicast backbone? I seem to recall that "they" were working on some kind of an IP-level packet redistribution service (my words) that would enable an application to tell its closest router "hey, I wanna listen to 244.123.45.6", and it'd then ask it's upstream router the same thing, etc., until it was able to get a copy of the stream routed to the requesting client.
Or something remotely like that.
Anyway, it seemed like a terrific idea, 'cause the content provider wouldn't have to server a thousand different, unique streams, all with the same content -- it'd just send a single stream to an MBone address, and anyone who wanted to receive it could ask for it.
I just did a quick check on it, and only found 6-year-old FAQs and such. Has it died? Has it been overcome by events with IPv6?
I ask 'cause it occurred to me that any webcaster broadcasting on mbone wouldn't be *able* to tell how many people were listening. A sort of end-run around some of CARP, as it were...
The bottom line is that you will get used to the new law. I haven't heard anybody in VA complaining about it *ever*.
..sometimes the off-topic digressions really are more interesting. :)
You're about to hear a complaint.
I grew up in MD, and have now lived in VA for 10 years, and both states have the same "stop for school bus" law -- including the provision that if there's a median between you and the bus, you don't need to stop. I grew up with the law, I understand its need, and I can live with it.
What I don't understand is why we don't seem to have well-defined bus stops. First, let me explain the architecture of western Fairfax County -- lots of newish (5-15 years old) developments, off a main (4+ lane) highway, with no interconnections between the different builders' neighborhoods. So the buses don't go into the neighborhoods, they simply stop on a major commuter road and pick kids up. Then they drive on a block, and pick up 3 more kids. Two more blocks, and another 5 kids. It's crazy.
Now, I don't mean to start an old fart whining battle, but when I grew up in Bethesda, we had TWO stops on our bus, about 10 blocks apart, and each serving something like 20-30 kids. Why on earth Fairfax can't at least make these kids all walk the extra three blocks to a central stop, and thus stop traffic only once instead of 5 times in less than a mile, is way beyond me.
End of rant.
Now, what were we discussing before? I honestly don't remember...
How about hydrogen powered jets? The exhaust would be water vapor.
It's my understanding that contrails aren't smoke from the jets, but are ice crystals formed in the chaotic vorticies of air spinning off wings.
That is, the high-speed wing creates even higher-speed whirlwinds, and the moisture in the air, when caught in these whirlwinds, freezes, leaving an opaque white trail.
I'm guessing that these "expand" into large cloud banks less by spreading and thinning than by catalyzing the creation of more clouds in adjoining air -- the frozen moisture cools the air around the contrails, and can cool it just enough to allow more clouds to form, etc., etc.
Of course, I'm just pulling all this out of my butt -- will a real meterologist please stand up?
Luke refers to the Lars as "Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru"? His uncle would be his father's brother.
Couldn't Beru be his mother's sister? Of course, why then would she have left Naboo for Tatooine? (except maybe to get to the fringe of the republic and, thus, hide from the Emperor. Hm.)
And, actually, I thought I'd read that Shimi(?) married someone after she was freed, and that this someone was Owen Lars' brother. So Owen and Beru would be Luke's great-uncle, on his step-grandfather's side. Or something like that.
On the other hand, I could be remembering the scriptment completely wrong. Guess I'll find out next thursday.
Much of what they did in Enemy of the State seemed to be quite within the realm of possibility.
Well, I remember being most annoyed with things like:
* A radio antenna being used for image collection
* Seamless interconnectivity of private security cameras (though, post PATRIOT act, this seems less crazy now)
* Super-hip government workers, talking on cell phones all the time (that computer jockey ending calls with "it's already done.") Trust me. I've worked for the DOD. It's simply not that cool.
* image extrapolation (as you said)
* and even the uber-evil government agents.
Technologically, it was crap, and politically, even worse.
<rant>
One of the reasons I hate movies that portray the government as "big brother" with super-incredible capabilities is that it gets the public used to the idea that, well, they spy on us already (which, no, they don't. It's illegal, and they actually take that pretty seriously). The problem with that is, that when the government actually starts to make inroads into excessive domestic surveilance, information aggregation, etc., nobody will care cause they saw it in a movie 5 years ago and accept it!
Movies like Enemy of the State, or that Bruce Willis movie where he's a general and takes over NYC, to the point of establishing a concentration camp (was it The Seige?), simpy make my blood boil. If you want to make a movie like this, fine, set it in a PARALLEL world (like comics do -- Gotham City instead of NYC does wonders for allowing unbelievable plot twists to be more acceptable).
Or something like that.
</rant>