Meizu M6 8GB player, cause it supports FLAC, and it sounds AMAZING. I haven't touched my ipod since (at least after I figured out how to convert all my audible files to mp3..) and it's half the price of an 8GB nano, and it plays videos too. I didn't think there would be that much of a difference, but if you've got the right headphones it is clearly superior. Never going back to my ipod and itunes again.
but what kind of infrastructure does it take to monitor 12.5 million people? Even with cameras and RFID chips, I can't imagine how many people it would take to operate a system like that.
Now fast forward to America, if something like this did happen, and we had to implement a new cabinet position for the Head of the Department of Homeland Surveillance, how many people and what kind of infrastructure would it take to monitor 200+ million Americans? I don't think Americans would stand for it. Or at least I hope we wouldn't, but then again NSA and Homeland Security have been breaching this topic for months and haven't received that many obstacles...
I haven't purchased Vista and I don't believe I ever will. In my view, Vista is the new Millenium Edition. One reason among about 75 reasons I don't want it is because of how Microsoft is trying to get people to play games through their Live subscriptions, just like for the xbox 360. I believe I'm in the minority when I say that online gaming is a stupid feature for me. I prefer to play my games on a laptop at LAN parties with people I know, so I can see their dismay when I blow their heads apart. So, AFAIK there are only 2 Vista games now, and both have been cracked to work on XP, so from the hardware perspective it is irrelevant. Thinking back, when DirectX when from 9.0a-> 9.0b ->9.0c, yes there were changes, but it didn't affect any of the games I wanted because the games were backwards compatible, so nothing lost. All this is really going to do is piss off early adopters as well as nVidia and ATI/AMD because M$ has locked them into a rut where they have to make cards with new specifications for windows since M$ said OpenGL would not be supported under Vista.
It's a personal Protective device. I, for one, plan on keeping this handy or even making it find a home in a smaller case that can run on button cells (if only for a few seconds) purely as a protective device.
Pepper spray? My balls! Nothing to teach an assailant a lesson like losing vision in one eye.
actually the one thing I am VERY interested in is if can produce enough pinpoint heat to start a flammable liquid on fire from a distance...oh.. I think I just came.
that one episode of south park, 1104, The Snuke. While a hilarious episode, what was so funny was how everybody was able to do a background check on the terrorists by 'crosschecking' their myspace/youtube/jdate/personal blog/ebay/craigslist/google searches/realtor.com/etc etc accounts with each other. While it was a funny play on Web 2.0 it also shows just how much of our personal information is out there, and can be easily tracked down by just about anyone with a brain, some spare time, and an internet connection.
I sure as hell don't want ALL of my searches available to anyone...
Just as the new HTML 5 standard was finished and announced, Microsoft announced a new "open-source" (wink, wink) version called OO-HTML that they say is just as good* and we should all use.
font size 3> *Microsoft reserves the right to only allow this HTML standard to be running on copies of the latest and most expensive version of Windows, with WGA activated./font size 3
Thank you. I'm not one for conspiracy theory- I don't believe M$ wants to take over the world or anything stupid like that, but Microsoft is a corporation that DOES NOT HAVE responsibilities to the consumer. They have a responsibility to shareholders, and to make money (Insert Sean Penn quote from Team America). If you or me are unsatisfied with Vista, they don't give a flying fuck. It only makes a difference if you don't end up purchasing their software, but everyone always does, because most people are stuck in a comfortability rut.
Microsoft isn't stupid. They know that Vista is the equivalent of Millennium Edition and people only buy it cause they are limited in options. They know very well that there are FINALLY becoming more viable options for a choice of OS in the desktop market. The SMARTEST thing you could do from a business sense is to lock down every format they everyone is entrenched into and make it too difficult for them to switch to the other OS's.
this standard is going to come with a way to put DRM in photos that can only be viewed with licenses, just like some WMV files? The porn industry would be all over that, and I'd bet they are financially backing them. It would be so easy to implement, especially with all the DRM-friendly coding that has gone into the Vista kernel.
Mark my words, M$ is looking for a way to put DRM in EVERY conceivable form of media. I've read articles about HARDWARE implementations that make moving of certain file types (mp3's, avi's) and other files that are not locked by DRM, to become locked. They have their own Audio and Video DRM, they are working on photo's, and soon the version of office will include DRM for all documents, spreadsheets and the like.
I am seriously so glad they are bringing this show back. I remember when I completely stopped watching the Simpsons after I found out about this show in the second season, then I watched it nonstop. The character are just classic, and it's a lot grittier than the simpsons by far.
Favorite quotes:
Zapp: "Congratulations Leela. Now you're officially my woman. Kudos! I can't say I don't envy you."
Zapp: "Kiff, have the boy lay out my formal shorts."
Kiff: "The Boy sir?"
Zapp: "YOU Kiff, YOU lay out my formal shorts."
Dr. Zoidberg: "Love? Love is not known here. I am simply looking for a female swollen with eggs to accept my genetic material" Fry: "You and me both brother!"
Fry: "Oh! Why couldn't she be the OTHER type of Mermaid, which the fish part on top, and the lady part on the bottom!"
that people like this have continued to ruin this market.
Somehow, somewhere, patent trolls have lost their way. They seem to have forgotten what trolling means, what stifling innovation meant, what shitting-on-the-little guy was all about. It's not just about making a patent that you can sue and make money offer, and about sticking it to every one else who found a way to actually make that profitable...
Boy, I remember the good ole' days when the Old Fashioned American Lottery used to be as simple as being a lawyer and waiting in the emergency room to find people that were hurt in accidents.
We have become so much more complicated these days, where now we take simple ideas that are difficult to work around like using the letter "i" or the "click" and suing people that use them for large amounts of money.
Well, I was hesitant to admit to installing it, but I do feel better saying that it wasn't a copy that..as they say..was legally purchased. I'm a firm believer in try-it-before-you-buy-it. I tried installing versions of Vista before just to give it a try. I did 64-bit and 32-bit, and I uninstalled both of them after 2 days. However, there was ONE feature of ME that I thought was notable, and that was they finally kept an image of the ME install disc installed on the Hard drive so I wouldn't have to hunt down the disc to install anything (like in 98SE, although most of the files were already located in c:\windows\system(32) and I had to redirect it, but when it wasn't getting the disc out was annoying.)
I've always found it funny that every time you install a new version of Windows, during the blue install screen it keeps popping up features that are new about this version of the operating system. I specifically recall going from 98SE to ME (which was a nightmare, I might add) and laughing audibly at the "We have made keeping your photos and music organized easier than ever!" and "Now ME makes it simpler to use your computer to do..." Basically, these were all vaporware statements.
With that said, aside from it being "easier than ever to do..." can someone give me a REAL example of how office has changed from 2000 to 2007? I'm serious, I want to know what features have been added (and I don't mean changed to the GUI that make it prettier) that actually ADD FUNCTIONALITY. This is the real reason that this story makes me mad. I don't believe that it has really changed at all, let alone enough to charge me a $100+ to upgrade.
All I know is that 2007 is looking to be the first step for Microsoft to begin its DRM document implementation where it can lock down it's DOC format that will require people to stay with a certain level of Office or higher if they don't want to lose their documents.
I think we should keep voting as a solid paper trail until we fix something far more important that just HOW we vote: who votes.
I find it odd that our country spends the GDP of some small countries in campaign spending, and yet there is one small change that I think would revolutionize the way people vote: make Voting Day a holiday. Yes, just like the 4th of July, all companies close, school is out at all levels (elementary, middle/high school, and college.) Make kids realize that this is something important. I think anybody would be hard pressed to argue that celebrating the 4th of July is more important historically or iconically than voting.
Well, that's good to hear. However, given that 25 years plus the age of a kid (6-8?) you're in your mid thirties, so you are still pretty young (as am I). The spleen is responsible for b-cell differentiation: i.e. it's what forms a custom response to new foreign invaders. Our body protects itself by 2 approaches: The "Let's devise a strategic way to take out the enemy" (B-Cell) way, or the "Let's kick everyone's ass unless they can show us ID that they are on our side" (T-cell) way. Because you are young, you probably have a good immune system so it probably hasn't been noticeable, but when you get in your 50's and 60's, infections and colds will hit you much harder than they hit others, and will take longer to recover from.
I know this isn't as serious as a threat as say losing a lung or having damaged heart tissue, but as someone with an already weakened immune system, it can escalate to a serious problem rather quickly.
I work at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital, a division of the University of Utah hospital. I draw blood on dozens of patients every day and see the same pattern of treatment as we see similar cancer patients come in. I can only see this as a good thing to help diversify and specialize treatments.
As someone who won the lottery and was treated in a cancer hospital myself, I found my doctor seemed to put me on a fast track to treatment, straight out of the books, which involved removing an important part of my anatomy (not THAT part). With much resistance on my part, I got him to investigate other options and I actually got to keep my spleen.
From a doctors POV, I know it can be difficult as well as uneconomical to see every patient as a super-special-individual-with-their-own-needs-and- feelings, but with the type of stigma surrounding the C-word (notTHAT C-word) it is pretty much a necessity, at least from my experience. If this new system requires doctors to spend a little more time with a patient and yield a higher success rate, then it is an all-around win.
actually, I am proud to say when I was 14, I made that declaration on the "BBN" a once-popular BBS in Salt Lake City, that I was going to leave forever and I did. I never logged onto another BBS again. Unfortunately, the benefits of it weren't as I intended (hoping for myself to go out and get a "real" life), as I made-out with WAY more girls I met online than I did offline in the immediate future after I left. Oh well.
Now I have slashdot and I'm right back where I started, except there aren't a lot of easy slashdot girls... hmmm...
what a great way to destroy all the good will they created by the price cut! But then again they say it's better to have loved and lost... or something like that.
Garden-variety ignorance SHOULDN'T be funny, but if you watch the the quiz show line up on prime-time TV, America apparently feels that it is. BUT, I'm not saying it's a good thing.
and the exaggeration was supposed to be referring to how ridiculous of a notion you can patent, something so simple you would think a judge would shoot that down, but no. I know you can't patent the alphabet or a number, because Sesame Street would have cornered the market on that 40 years ago.
I am fully aware of this. It was an example of HYPERBOLE for the simple purpose of being funny. Don't be so serious,or else I might expect you to tell me that in Soviet Russia, software doesnt really patent you!
Slashdot Mirror
Meizu M6 8GB player, cause it supports FLAC, and it sounds AMAZING. I haven't touched my ipod since (at least after I figured out how to convert all my audible files to mp3..) and it's half the price of an 8GB nano, and it plays videos too. I didn't think there would be that much of a difference, but if you've got the right headphones it is clearly superior. Never going back to my ipod and itunes again.
Now fast forward to America, if something like this did happen, and we had to implement a new cabinet position for the Head of the Department of Homeland Surveillance, how many people and what kind of infrastructure would it take to monitor 200+ million Americans? I don't think Americans would stand for it. Or at least I hope we wouldn't, but then again NSA and Homeland Security have been breaching this topic for months and haven't received that many obstacles...
I haven't purchased Vista and I don't believe I ever will. In my view, Vista is the new Millenium Edition. One reason among about 75 reasons I don't want it is because of how Microsoft is trying to get people to play games through their Live subscriptions, just like for the xbox 360. I believe I'm in the minority when I say that online gaming is a stupid feature for me. I prefer to play my games on a laptop at LAN parties with people I know, so I can see their dismay when I blow their heads apart. So, AFAIK there are only 2 Vista games now, and both have been cracked to work on XP, so from the hardware perspective it is irrelevant. Thinking back, when DirectX when from 9.0a-> 9.0b ->9.0c, yes there were changes, but it didn't affect any of the games I wanted because the games were backwards compatible, so nothing lost. All this is really going to do is piss off early adopters as well as nVidia and ATI/AMD because M$ has locked them into a rut where they have to make cards with new specifications for windows since M$ said OpenGL would not be supported under Vista.
Even with all that money paid, they still have to get stuck on a 3 hour layover on the MIR! What a ripoff!
Pepper spray? My balls! Nothing to teach an assailant a lesson like losing vision in one eye.
actually the one thing I am VERY interested in is if can produce enough pinpoint heat to start a flammable liquid on fire from a distance...oh.. I think I just came.
from the creationism museum that they lived with Velociraptors.
I sure as hell don't want ALL of my searches available to anyone...
font size 3> *Microsoft reserves the right to only allow this HTML standard to be running on copies of the latest and most expensive version of Windows, with WGA activated. /font size 3
You are warned!
Microsoft isn't stupid. They know that Vista is the equivalent of Millennium Edition and people only buy it cause they are limited in options. They know very well that there are FINALLY becoming more viable options for a choice of OS in the desktop market. The SMARTEST thing you could do from a business sense is to lock down every format they everyone is entrenched into and make it too difficult for them to switch to the other OS's.
Mark my words, M$ is looking for a way to put DRM in EVERY conceivable form of media. I've read articles about HARDWARE implementations that make moving of certain file types (mp3's, avi's) and other files that are not locked by DRM, to become locked. They have their own Audio and Video DRM, they are working on photo's, and soon the version of office will include DRM for all documents, spreadsheets and the like.
You'll see..
Favorite quotes:
Zapp: "Congratulations Leela. Now you're officially my woman. Kudos! I can't say I don't envy you."
Zapp: "Kiff, have the boy lay out my formal shorts." Kiff: "The Boy sir?" Zapp: "YOU Kiff, YOU lay out my formal shorts."
Dr. Zoidberg: "Love? Love is not known here. I am simply looking for a female swollen with eggs to accept my genetic material" Fry: "You and me both brother!"
Fry: "Oh! Why couldn't she be the OTHER type of Mermaid, which the fish part on top, and the lady part on the bottom!"
Somehow, somewhere, patent trolls have lost their way. They seem to have forgotten what trolling means, what stifling innovation meant, what shitting-on-the-little guy was all about. It's not just about making a patent that you can sue and make money offer, and about sticking it to every one else who found a way to actually make that profitable...
I swear, it's really a damn shame...
We have become so much more complicated these days, where now we take simple ideas that are difficult to work around like using the letter "i" or the "click" and suing people that use them for large amounts of money.
Well then, I stand corrected. These features are definitely worth paying money for. The real shame is that I have put off updating this long! :)
I've always found it funny that every time you install a new version of Windows, during the blue install screen it keeps popping up features that are new about this version of the operating system. I specifically recall going from 98SE to ME (which was a nightmare, I might add) and laughing audibly at the "We have made keeping your photos and music organized easier than ever!" and "Now ME makes it simpler to use your computer to do..." Basically, these were all vaporware statements.
With that said, aside from it being "easier than ever to do..." can someone give me a REAL example of how office has changed from 2000 to 2007? I'm serious, I want to know what features have been added (and I don't mean changed to the GUI that make it prettier) that actually ADD FUNCTIONALITY. This is the real reason that this story makes me mad. I don't believe that it has really changed at all, let alone enough to charge me a $100+ to upgrade.
All I know is that 2007 is looking to be the first step for Microsoft to begin its DRM document implementation where it can lock down it's DOC format that will require people to stay with a certain level of Office or higher if they don't want to lose their documents.I find it odd that our country spends the GDP of some small countries in campaign spending, and yet there is one small change that I think would revolutionize the way people vote: make Voting Day a holiday. Yes, just like the 4th of July, all companies close, school is out at all levels (elementary, middle/high school, and college.) Make kids realize that this is something important. I think anybody would be hard pressed to argue that celebrating the 4th of July is more important historically or iconically than voting.
I know this isn't as serious as a threat as say losing a lung or having damaged heart tissue, but as someone with an already weakened immune system, it can escalate to a serious problem rather quickly.
I work at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital, a division of the University of Utah hospital. I draw blood on dozens of patients every day and see the same pattern of treatment as we see similar cancer patients come in. I can only see this as a good thing to help diversify and specialize treatments.
As someone who won the lottery and was treated in a cancer hospital myself, I found my doctor seemed to put me on a fast track to treatment, straight out of the books, which involved removing an important part of my anatomy (not THAT part). With much resistance on my part, I got him to investigate other options and I actually got to keep my spleen.
From a doctors POV, I know it can be difficult as well as uneconomical to see every patient as a super-special-individual-with-their-own-needs-and- feelings, but with the type of stigma surrounding the C-word (not THAT C-word) it is pretty much a necessity, at least from my experience. If this new system requires doctors to spend a little more time with a patient and yield a higher success rate, then it is an all-around win.
Now I have slashdot and I'm right back where I started, except there aren't a lot of easy slashdot girls... hmmm...
what a great way to destroy all the good will they created by the price cut! But then again they say it's better to have loved and lost... or something like that.
and the exaggeration was supposed to be referring to how ridiculous of a notion you can patent, something so simple you would think a judge would shoot that down, but no. I know you can't patent the alphabet or a number, because Sesame Street would have cornered the market on that 40 years ago.
I am fully aware of this. It was an example of HYPERBOLE for the simple purpose of being funny. Don't be so serious,or else I might expect you to tell me that in Soviet Russia, software doesnt really patent you!
You can patent the click (Amazon)
You can patent the letter i (Apple)
You can patent a number (AACS)
You can patent software written by someone else, and then sue them for it. (Microsoft, Linux)
Awesome... awesome..