Yeah, I agree with you actually... I should have made my disgust with the current system much more evident.
I look at Gravel - during the last debate he was allowed to participate in, he basically said something along the lines of "if you believe in this, quite campaigning, go stand up in the Senate, and stop this nonsense from continuing". That's exactly what you're talking about when you mention shutting things down, and it's exactly what should be done! Unfortunately nobody in the government has the balls to do it.
I actually wish Gravel was running for a seat in Congress instead of President - where he could do just that. I know there are lots of places that would elect him for congress, even if his presidential run is pretty much over.
In any case, I couldn't agree more. The Democrats could do that, but instead they've been the biggest pussies this nation has ever seen. It's no wonder they have such a poor approval rating.
They may not have the balls they should have, and that's a damn shame. They should be standing up and fighting, and they're not. That said, the few times they have tried to make things happen, they've gone up against a veto or partisan bullshit. Should that be an issue? Of course not. But unfortunately it is.
I didn't explain myself well enough in my first post, and I don't blame you at all looking at the quote and saying it was "horseshit". Looking at what you quoted, that only addresses the way things are right now, with the politicians in place at the moment. And I agree with you, that is horseshit! What's more important isn't the way things are today though, what's important is the way things will be tomorrow.
Unfortunately, with veto threats being thrown around, and partisan nonsense leading to the lack of a supermajority in the senate (I'm not blaming either party, I'm blaming partisanship and the perceived requirement to vote along party lines - not to mention the completely unrelated ammendments that get tacked on to every single bill in an effort to sway/discourage/encourage votes), there's not much that can be done.
That's not to say that either party would do much if they were in control anyway... Democrats and Republicans have largely been competing in a race to the center, and there isn't nearly enough of a difference between the two parties now. So many people view elections as a choice between the lesser of two evils. That's really, really fucking sad.
I'd give anything to see Dennis Kucinich vs. Ron Paul as the primary canidates in this race. Not only would that show what way America sways, it would give third party canidates a platform. More importantly, it would have two people who aren't afraid to back away from how they really feel running for office. No more pandering to the polls, just two people who have beliefs that they wouldn't compromise. That's what this country really needs.
That plus a Condorcet voting method and I think America just might turn the corner... But there's no way that those who are in power now would support it:(
I wish I could remember where I read this, but I do remember a news story a while back about how Colbert had retained a lawyer who is an expert in election law. It was a quote from a party official in South Carolina I believe, who had been contacted by his election lawyer weeks before he announced his canidancy.
So it's not just Viacom lawyers he has looking out for him. I'm pretty sure he knows how far he can push things.
You know, I actually agree with you. My "impress, infiltrate, overthrow" thing wasn't meant to be a quick, easy fix. I never meant it to be taken that way. It's a much more long term plan. I'm looking at a decade, not a year.
#1 - Impress. Get the established software vendors to recognize the work done by those who are behind open source.
#2 - Infiltrate. Once the value of open source is seen, have people who are dedicated to it, and who have contributed to it be seen as valuable. Get them into influential positions.
#3 - Once in positions of influence, start flexing that muscle!
The points you make are very valid... But, since I can't mod you up, I might as well inject my opinion while I'm at it. The people who are interested in what he has to say aren't the ones in suits. The people he can speak to most directly, and who he'll have the biggest sway with, are people who most likely would show up to work in the same attire.
I don't mean that to be pejorative, of course. I think MBA-having, suit wearing asskissers are just slightly more evolved than lawyers, and slightly below pond scum...
Unfortunately, until we reach the point where intelligence is more important in business than how you look and who you know (not to mention the lack of morality or compassion, which I think is assumed), those suits are exactly the people we need to be impressing.
Let's say you have access to a video file that people won't think twice about. Some random video you host, along with hundreds or thousands of others.
People who know what to look for keep the first version of that video as the reference, and you make very subtle changes to it every once in a while. Let's say every frame of that video contains 1 character worth of text. That wouldn't be noticeable to the casual observer - far from it. At 30 FPS, a 5 minute video comes out to 9,000 characters. As long as you know how to extract the information, and you have the original reference version, that should be trivial.
I'm all for steganography, encryption, and obfuscation... But it's important to realize that some of the most cunning uses here are truly security through obscurity.
Here in San Francisco I don't even need a car. I have a 10-minute commute to work on natural gas and electric powered buses. I couldn't agree more. I lived in Portland, OR for quite some time, and while I had a car, the only time it was used was when I needed to travel long distances. With the neighborhood I lived in, I got by just fine walking practically everywhere I needed to go. To get to work, I took a bus - and if I'm not mistaken, they've moved a large portion of those to using biodiesel. Every once in a while I'd get on a hydrogen powered bus, and if I had a long distance to travel, I'd hop on the Max - light rail.
The only time I needed a car living there was when I was heading far from home, or when I got calls from friends at 2:30 in the morning asking me to come pick them up from a bar in the suburbs (yeah, I could bitch about that, but it got me laid so....)
So yeah, it pisses me off that for the past 60 years government policy has heavily tilted toward suburbs. It's an article of religious fait: Suburbs are just morally superior. Far too many people believe that. Give me the choice to live in a $500,000 house in the suburbs, or a studio apartment in the city, and I'll pick the studio - no questions asked. The only way I would change my mind is if I could take the $500,000 house, sell it, and then move back to the city;) I've dealt with suburban monoculture before, and I felt like my soul was being raped.
Damn it. I just had to go and use my last mod point marking something funny while I was drunk last night.
If any mods see this and have done something similar, go ahead and hook this guy up with an insightful vote for me. I'll do my best to repay the favor if I get a chance;)
I gave in and donated to Ron Paul. I don't make a practice of replying to signatures, but since it's somewhat related to this story, I figured I might as well.
I'm very liberal on social issues and an economic moderate, and have never supported a Republican in my life... Until Ron Paul. He's still not my favorite - but he's a much better choice than almost everyone else.
It's sad, but knowing that the winner is going to be either Democrat or Republican (oh, how I wish this wasn't the case...), I gave equal funding to the two best options in my opinion - in this case one from each party. Kucinich and Paul. Realistically, neither of them stand much of a chance, largely in my opinion due to the fact that the media largely ignores them.
Not only do I think those are the best two candidates, but I think that would make for one hell of a race. The debates would be fantastic - and by that, I mean that questions may get answered instead of blatently ignored and twisted into mostly unrelated talking points. The media would no longer be able to ignore the real issues. And most importantly, voters would be given a real option instead of choosing between two people who are rushing towards the center to appeal to the broadest cross-section of voters.
That's not to say there aren't very real differences between your average Democrat and your average Republican, but I'm willing to bet that after the primaries that gap will close. It almost always does, and that's a damn shame.
It has to do with the time frame of the break you get. A holiday is usually a single day off. A vacation lasts much longer and, in many cases, involves travelling somewhere to "get away from it all".
Okay, so the state thinks it will cost them $3 million. That's all well and good, but the real damages from this security breach will likely be much, much greater.
We're talking about personal information for 131,100 people here. ID theft being all the rage these days, and assuming that all these people are screwed, $3,000,000 comes out to just over $22 a person.
I doubt that every last person getting targetted will be the case... And I have no idea what the average ID theft victim ends up losing (I imagine that's hard to quantify - with direct losses, the time and money spent repairing the damage, and the impact on your credit history). Even so, I think a lowball estimate would be 25% of these people getting cheated out of an average of $3,000 or so. That right there is a little over $98 million.
Now then, I'm the first to admit that I could very well be grossly overestimating things... But really, come on now - a weeks vacation for what could potentially cost the state and it's citizens over a hundred million dollars? Hell, if I could get away with that kind of misconduct with penalties like that, I might just "steal" that tape from myself.
That's why kids can do the old deodorant/aftershave on the hand trick. I always found aerosol furniture polish to be the best when I was a kid... Get a nice ball of it foamed up in your hand, light it, and with a little practice you can throw pretty impressive fireballs. You just have to be careful not to let it spread out too much from the throw, or let it set anything on fire.
All things considered, I'm amazed I only burnt the house down once considering some of the stupid stuff I did when I was young. At least the fire chief who investigated was pretty amused that it came down to a one-in-a-million accident (a staple gun, of all things, started the fire... long story). Yeah, after he found the the little fireworks factory, squib boards, and electric ignitors in what was left of my room, I figured I was pretty screwed regardless of the real cause. Thankfully he didn't write it off at that, insurance paid up, and I didn't get busted for manufacturing explosive devices or whatever the charge would be.
Hell, if my family was as litigious as most people in America seem to be, we probably could have sued the manufacturer of the staple gun for millions as well;)
We are that behind. 8 million users already have it Japan, whereas 3.9 million have it "available" from Verizon. The fastest rate Verizon offers is 50Mbs in only a very select number of locations as opposed to 100Mbs which is common in Japan. In Japan, they are making this a priority. In the US, it's mainly up to the telcos and the cable companies and the only large one employing the network on anything but a small or test scale is Verizon. I couldn't agree more. I know a couple who moved to Japan to teach English. They're in a fairly large city, but not huge. They get phone, TV, and net over a fiber connection, for about the price of they got cable internet in the US. The speeds they get on their net connection are insane compared to what they got in the US.
I forget where I got the numbers - I really wish I could... But I remember seeing statistics that said that every US gas station could be retrofitted to have a hydrogen pump for less than a month of what we're spending on the Iraq war, and could have fiber to every home for something like 3-4 months of what we've been spending. I don't think that took into account reinforcing the net backbone to handle all the extra traffic though.
In any case, if the money that has been spent on the Iraq war was spent on research, development, and subsidies into new technology - the US could be at the point where every gas station in the country sold hydrogen, every new car sold would use it, and every net connection would be fiber.
English is not my first (or my second;-)) language And yet you speak it better than many native English speakers... Grammar nazis be damned - you make perfect sense to me. I wish the US education system taught me enough to be able to speak a second language as well as you speak English. And English isn't even your second?
*sigh* I feel cheated. Most of what I know is self taught, but damn, it would be wonderful to have an education system that did as good of a job as the one you obviously have (yeah, that's making an assumption, but I assume it's true).
I hope to learn either Swedish (bork bork bork!), Dutch, or Norwegian at some point soon... I haven't decided which yet. In any case, you have no reason to apologize for your English:)
Damn, I wish I hadn't just used the last of my mod points a little while ago, I'd happily help remove that little troll thing for you...
At the same time, I'd love to see +5 troll rating for once, and I'm glad I can post instead of moderate. Mods, get to work!
As someone with an Apadravyapiercing (second link certainly not safe for work), a thin, strong as steel condom actually would be a great thing for me. Right now, I'm stuck using normal condoms and having a much higher risk of them breaking, or using hard to find and very expensive ones that are very loose for the first few inches. The special ones for people with genital piercings are generally thicker, more expensive, and the loose tip doesn't give you nearly as many good sensations.
Congrats to your sister! Ig Noble prizes are almost always good for a laugh - but they are also almost all cases that are good for either a "why hasn't anyone thought of that before?", or a "you have to be batshit insane, but also a genius, for finding things where most people wouldn't ever think to look" award;) At least in the context surrounding that research.
I get the feeling your sister might fall into both of those categories - and that's certainly not anything to be ashamed of. Indeed, historically it's often people who fall into both of those categories who have the largest influence on science.
Now then, working on indexing "the"? Yeah, not as big a deal as many other discoveries that could be described in that way... But her work could very well lead to better search algorithms in the future, which could help countless researchers. Is it groundbreaking? A monumental shift? A change in the current paradigm? No, probably not... But it could certainly lead to incremental improvements in research, and for that, I salute her!
With enough money, one could conceivably have silver, gold, or platinum wires, incredibly thick insulation (going a step further, having insulation that is essentially a Faraday cage going to ground via copper spikes put into earth far apart to prevent any possible crosstalk), and have something that actually does make a difference in sound quality.
Does that mean you'd be able to tell the difference with your own ears? I can't say. I have good ears in general, and I can tell the difference between a high quality home system, one of moderate quality, and a poor one. I can tell the difference between a concert system in the hands of good engineers versus amateurs. Properly filtered power going into an amp versus one that's on the same circuit as a lot of other things? If I can listen to it on both, sure, most likely. But as far as something like your run-of-the-mill properly gauged oxygen-free copper wire versus something exotic? I have a feeling that's the kind of difference you'd need an oscilloscope to measure. Certainly not something that 99.999% of people would be able to pick up by ear.
There not complete idiots, they can quite easly buy a mobile phone or web cam that they want and expect it to work on Windows, how am I supposed to even check if they will work under Linux without buying one first and trying it out? I've always found the "google $product_name linux" method to work pretty damn well, whether it be for old obscure hardware, or more recent stuff. The only things it hasn't worked are bleeding-edge products. Wait a couple weeks after launch, and chances are you'll turn up some info.
I know that hasn't always been the case... It wasn't until fairly recently that I started using Linux nearly full time because of random issues with hardware (I'll still boot into XP to use Photoshop or play WoW... I can, and sometimes do use Wine for the task, but only if I'm not doing anything intensive). Not that I hadn't installed it and Free/OpenBSD and played around with them several times over many years - but the progress really has been wonderful, and I've had no trouble finding information on compatibility with 99% of the hardware I've looked at over the past year or so.
I have a feeling I'll be burning some karma once people see the "I Like to Watch" video, but damn, it's worth it (very not safe for work, just as a warning).
Yeah it's not like coal and oil have been releasing pollution into the air for everyone to inhale and get cancer instead of safely containing the radioactive waste to be stored somewhere away from humans... Absolutely. Because Hanford has done such a great job, and Yucca Mountain has no problems with being on a fault line...
Surely we can count on places like Hanford to contain nuclear waist. I mean, only 40 billion gallons of toxic waste were dumped into the ground there, only a third of the containment structures are leaking, and only 270 billion gallons of water have been contaminated because of it.
Surely, that's nothing to worry about! We'll (supposedly - but not likely) have it taken care of by 2030 - it's not like anyone could have problems from high levels of radiation in the next 23 years, right? And certainly not during the 58 years since it opened, given the perfect track record they've had so far?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I agree with you actually... I should have made my disgust with the current system much more evident. I look at Gravel - during the last debate he was allowed to participate in, he basically said something along the lines of "if you believe in this, quite campaigning, go stand up in the Senate, and stop this nonsense from continuing". That's exactly what you're talking about when you mention shutting things down, and it's exactly what should be done! Unfortunately nobody in the government has the balls to do it. I actually wish Gravel was running for a seat in Congress instead of President - where he could do just that. I know there are lots of places that would elect him for congress, even if his presidential run is pretty much over. In any case, I couldn't agree more. The Democrats could do that, but instead they've been the biggest pussies this nation has ever seen. It's no wonder they have such a poor approval rating. They may not have the balls they should have, and that's a damn shame. They should be standing up and fighting, and they're not. That said, the few times they have tried to make things happen, they've gone up against a veto or partisan bullshit. Should that be an issue? Of course not. But unfortunately it is. I didn't explain myself well enough in my first post, and I don't blame you at all looking at the quote and saying it was "horseshit". Looking at what you quoted, that only addresses the way things are right now, with the politicians in place at the moment. And I agree with you, that is horseshit! What's more important isn't the way things are today though, what's important is the way things will be tomorrow.
Unfortunately, with veto threats being thrown around, and partisan nonsense leading to the lack of a supermajority in the senate (I'm not blaming either party, I'm blaming partisanship and the perceived requirement to vote along party lines - not to mention the completely unrelated ammendments that get tacked on to every single bill in an effort to sway/discourage/encourage votes), there's not much that can be done.
:(
That's not to say that either party would do much if they were in control anyway... Democrats and Republicans have largely been competing in a race to the center, and there isn't nearly enough of a difference between the two parties now. So many people view elections as a choice between the lesser of two evils. That's really, really fucking sad.
I'd give anything to see Dennis Kucinich vs. Ron Paul as the primary canidates in this race. Not only would that show what way America sways, it would give third party canidates a platform. More importantly, it would have two people who aren't afraid to back away from how they really feel running for office. No more pandering to the polls, just two people who have beliefs that they wouldn't compromise. That's what this country really needs.
That plus a Condorcet voting method and I think America just might turn the corner... But there's no way that those who are in power now would support it
I wish I could remember where I read this, but I do remember a news story a while back about how Colbert had retained a lawyer who is an expert in election law. It was a quote from a party official in South Carolina I believe, who had been contacted by his election lawyer weeks before he announced his canidancy.
So it's not just Viacom lawyers he has looking out for him. I'm pretty sure he knows how far he can push things.
The +1 informative, interesting, and funny trifecta is complete!
Now we just need to get out brightest minds working on "#4 - ???" and "#5 - profit!" and we're set!
You know, I actually agree with you. My "impress, infiltrate, overthrow" thing wasn't meant to be a quick, easy fix. I never meant it to be taken that way. It's a much more long term plan. I'm looking at a decade, not a year.
#1 - Impress. Get the established software vendors to recognize the work done by those who are behind open source.
#2 - Infiltrate. Once the value of open source is seen, have people who are dedicated to it, and who have contributed to it be seen as valuable. Get them into influential positions.
#3 - Once in positions of influence, start flexing that muscle!
#4 - ???
#5 - Profit!
*sigh*
Where are my mod points when I need them?
The points you make are very valid... But, since I can't mod you up, I might as well inject my opinion while I'm at it. The people who are interested in what he has to say aren't the ones in suits. The people he can speak to most directly, and who he'll have the biggest sway with, are people who most likely would show up to work in the same attire.
I don't mean that to be pejorative, of course. I think MBA-having, suit wearing asskissers are just slightly more evolved than lawyers, and slightly below pond scum...
Unfortunately, until we reach the point where intelligence is more important in business than how you look and who you know (not to mention the lack of morality or compassion, which I think is assumed), those suits are exactly the people we need to be impressing.
Impress, infiltrate, overthrow.
Let's say you have access to a video file that people won't think twice about. Some random video you host, along with hundreds or thousands of others. People who know what to look for keep the first version of that video as the reference, and you make very subtle changes to it every once in a while. Let's say every frame of that video contains 1 character worth of text. That wouldn't be noticeable to the casual observer - far from it. At 30 FPS, a 5 minute video comes out to 9,000 characters. As long as you know how to extract the information, and you have the original reference version, that should be trivial. I'm all for steganography, encryption, and obfuscation... But it's important to realize that some of the most cunning uses here are truly security through obscurity.
The only time I needed a car living there was when I was heading far from home, or when I got calls from friends at 2:30 in the morning asking me to come pick them up from a bar in the suburbs (yeah, I could bitch about that, but it got me laid so....) So yeah, it pisses me off that for the past 60 years government policy has heavily tilted toward suburbs. It's an article of religious fait: Suburbs are just morally superior. Far too many people believe that. Give me the choice to live in a $500,000 house in the suburbs, or a studio apartment in the city, and I'll pick the studio - no questions asked. The only way I would change my mind is if I could take the $500,000 house, sell it, and then move back to the city
Damn it. I just had to go and use my last mod point marking something funny while I was drunk last night.
;)
If any mods see this and have done something similar, go ahead and hook this guy up with an insightful vote for me. I'll do my best to repay the favor if I get a chance
I'm very liberal on social issues and an economic moderate, and have never supported a Republican in my life... Until Ron Paul. He's still not my favorite - but he's a much better choice than almost everyone else.
It's sad, but knowing that the winner is going to be either Democrat or Republican (oh, how I wish this wasn't the case...), I gave equal funding to the two best options in my opinion - in this case one from each party. Kucinich and Paul. Realistically, neither of them stand much of a chance, largely in my opinion due to the fact that the media largely ignores them.
Not only do I think those are the best two candidates, but I think that would make for one hell of a race. The debates would be fantastic - and by that, I mean that questions may get answered instead of blatently ignored and twisted into mostly unrelated talking points. The media would no longer be able to ignore the real issues. And most importantly, voters would be given a real option instead of choosing between two people who are rushing towards the center to appeal to the broadest cross-section of voters.
That's not to say there aren't very real differences between your average Democrat and your average Republican, but I'm willing to bet that after the primaries that gap will close. It almost always does, and that's a damn shame.
30-40%, eh? How does 42.8% sound?
I hate replying to myself, but I think this is worthy of it... I really should have looked this up when I made my first post I suppose.
The average loss from identity theft was $6,383 per person in 2006 (according to a reference found on Wikipedia).
Going with the 25% value I used before, that comes to $209,202,825.
Yes, the US is really that backwards.
;)
That said, given the way I've seen "sick days" used, they should probably be renamed "hangover days"
It has to do with the time frame of the break you get. A holiday is usually a single day off. A vacation lasts much longer and, in many cases, involves travelling somewhere to "get away from it all".
Okay, so the state thinks it will cost them $3 million. That's all well and good, but the real damages from this security breach will likely be much, much greater.
We're talking about personal information for 131,100 people here. ID theft being all the rage these days, and assuming that all these people are screwed, $3,000,000 comes out to just over $22 a person.
I doubt that every last person getting targetted will be the case... And I have no idea what the average ID theft victim ends up losing (I imagine that's hard to quantify - with direct losses, the time and money spent repairing the damage, and the impact on your credit history). Even so, I think a lowball estimate would be 25% of these people getting cheated out of an average of $3,000 or so. That right there is a little over $98 million.
Now then, I'm the first to admit that I could very well be grossly overestimating things... But really, come on now - a weeks vacation for what could potentially cost the state and it's citizens over a hundred million dollars? Hell, if I could get away with that kind of misconduct with penalties like that, I might just "steal" that tape from myself.
All things considered, I'm amazed I only burnt the house down once considering some of the stupid stuff I did when I was young. At least the fire chief who investigated was pretty amused that it came down to a one-in-a-million accident (a staple gun, of all things, started the fire... long story). Yeah, after he found the the little fireworks factory, squib boards, and electric ignitors in what was left of my room, I figured I was pretty screwed regardless of the real cause. Thankfully he didn't write it off at that, insurance paid up, and I didn't get busted for manufacturing explosive devices or whatever the charge would be.
Hell, if my family was as litigious as most people in America seem to be, we probably could have sued the manufacturer of the staple gun for millions as well
I forget where I got the numbers - I really wish I could... But I remember seeing statistics that said that every US gas station could be retrofitted to have a hydrogen pump for less than a month of what we're spending on the Iraq war, and could have fiber to every home for something like 3-4 months of what we've been spending. I don't think that took into account reinforcing the net backbone to handle all the extra traffic though.
In any case, if the money that has been spent on the Iraq war was spent on research, development, and subsidies into new technology - the US could be at the point where every gas station in the country sold hydrogen, every new car sold would use it, and every net connection would be fiber.
Maybe then the USD wouldn't be floundering...
*sigh* I feel cheated. Most of what I know is self taught, but damn, it would be wonderful to have an education system that did as good of a job as the one you obviously have (yeah, that's making an assumption, but I assume it's true).
I hope to learn either Swedish (bork bork bork!), Dutch, or Norwegian at some point soon... I haven't decided which yet. In any case, you have no reason to apologize for your English
Damn, I wish I hadn't just used the last of my mod points a little while ago, I'd happily help remove that little troll thing for you...
At the same time, I'd love to see +5 troll rating for once, and I'm glad I can post instead of moderate. Mods, get to work!
As someone with an Apadravya piercing (second link certainly not safe for work), a thin, strong as steel condom actually would be a great thing for me. Right now, I'm stuck using normal condoms and having a much higher risk of them breaking, or using hard to find and very expensive ones that are very loose for the first few inches. The special ones for people with genital piercings are generally thicker, more expensive, and the loose tip doesn't give you nearly as many good sensations.
Anything that helps out with that is fine by me!
Congrats to your sister! Ig Noble prizes are almost always good for a laugh - but they are also almost all cases that are good for either a "why hasn't anyone thought of that before?", or a "you have to be batshit insane, but also a genius, for finding things where most people wouldn't ever think to look" award ;) At least in the context surrounding that research.
I get the feeling your sister might fall into both of those categories - and that's certainly not anything to be ashamed of. Indeed, historically it's often people who fall into both of those categories who have the largest influence on science.
Now then, working on indexing "the"? Yeah, not as big a deal as many other discoveries that could be described in that way... But her work could very well lead to better search algorithms in the future, which could help countless researchers. Is it groundbreaking? A monumental shift? A change in the current paradigm? No, probably not... But it could certainly lead to incremental improvements in research, and for that, I salute her!
With enough money, one could conceivably have silver, gold, or platinum wires, incredibly thick insulation (going a step further, having insulation that is essentially a Faraday cage going to ground via copper spikes put into earth far apart to prevent any possible crosstalk), and have something that actually does make a difference in sound quality.
Does that mean you'd be able to tell the difference with your own ears? I can't say. I have good ears in general, and I can tell the difference between a high quality home system, one of moderate quality, and a poor one. I can tell the difference between a concert system in the hands of good engineers versus amateurs. Properly filtered power going into an amp versus one that's on the same circuit as a lot of other things? If I can listen to it on both, sure, most likely. But as far as something like your run-of-the-mill properly gauged oxygen-free copper wire versus something exotic? I have a feeling that's the kind of difference you'd need an oscilloscope to measure. Certainly not something that 99.999% of people would be able to pick up by ear.
I know that hasn't always been the case... It wasn't until fairly recently that I started using Linux nearly full time because of random issues with hardware (I'll still boot into XP to use Photoshop or play WoW... I can, and sometimes do use Wine for the task, but only if I'm not doing anything intensive). Not that I hadn't installed it and Free/OpenBSD and played around with them several times over many years - but the progress really has been wonderful, and I've had no trouble finding information on compatibility with 99% of the hardware I've looked at over the past year or so.
Church of Euthanasia
I have a feeling I'll be burning some karma once people see the "I Like to Watch" video, but damn, it's worth it (very not safe for work, just as a warning).
Surely we can count on places like Hanford to contain nuclear waist. I mean, only 40 billion gallons of toxic waste were dumped into the ground there, only a third of the containment structures are leaking, and only 270 billion gallons of water have been contaminated because of it.
Surely, that's nothing to worry about! We'll (supposedly - but not likely) have it taken care of by 2030 - it's not like anyone could have problems from high levels of radiation in the next 23 years, right? And certainly not during the 58 years since it opened, given the perfect track record they've had so far?
A quick google code search later, and it looks like it's from Sig2Dat. The code in questions starts around line 393 of sig2dat.c
I've just briefly looked around, but so far I haven't had any luck finding any kind of license for it.