"You can get the same or better sound quality on an mp3, as well"
Are you saying that MP3s can have better sound than the original source material? In other words, you can IMPROVE THE SOUND BY THROWING PARTS OF THE SIGNAL AWAY! Wow! Now that's a complete revolution in audio--something even the creators of MP3 and other lossy(!) formats wouldn't have imagined.
LPs are popular for three reasons: 1) Mistaken nostalgia by those too young to have grown up with them 2) DJs 3) Irrational audiophiles who hate not being able to tweak CDs and CD players.
Good records definitely sound better than bad CDs; but good CDs far surpass the finest vinyl ever made. Years ago, a number of experiments were done which showed you can take a good CD and make it sound like "glorious vinyl" by adding low-level out-of-phase noise to the signal. There's your fantastic clarity.
Understand here that I've got a $1500 turntable and a few hundred records that get played routinely. I also agree that the CD is a dying format--however, neither LPs or quality (or limitations thereof) have anything to do with it. Streaming and downloadable music is what's killing it, and the recording companies are hastening its demise by their idiotic attempts at copy regulation.
Hmm. Exactly the opposite of what I find, in general.
Out of the last hundred albums I've bought or planned to buy, only one of them (Ben Harper, "Both Sides of the Gun") had DRM. EMI has given up on DRM on "CDs" (not really CDs, as you know). Maybe I'm listening to the wrong music, but I just don't see anything that isn't CDDA anymore at all.
The point was this: "Never in the history of photography has a small, cheap, "consumer" grade point-and-shoot camera been so capable."
Now take a good modern P&S camera, with average indoor lighting, set to ISO400, and snap some 'hotel lobby espionage' shots with the on-camera flash. Now do the same thing with a handheld dSLR. Blow the results of both up to 8x10. There isn't going to be much if any significant difference in the actionable information (i.e. ability to recognise faces, find security cameras, the usual things that people are irrationally scared of).
Is an SLR better? Hell yeah! I've been shooting with my trusty Nikon FE2 for over 20 years, and will be replacing it with a full-frame dSLR sooner or later. Better optics, better sensors, more options, off-camera flash, etc. etc., will all lead to better pictures. But for MOST pictures MOST of the time for MOST people, the difference is (a) small, and (b) not relevant to 'security reasons.'
RBN operates across several countries. They're an organised crime gang, with the emphasis on organised. Theye guys have set up a massive system for DOSing targets, and are operating on a by-hire basis. If they have a chunk of botnet space that's not leased at a given moment, they'll use it to extort money from victims themselves. I'm sure that if the Russian government were involved, they would be paying the RBN. It just seems unlikely that the Russian government is the sole source behind the biggest botnet generator in the world.
OK, freedom vs. (perceived) security, photography, etc. are all good things to discuss. However, Thomas Hawk is a complete asshole. By his own admission:
For years San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has maintained a "no photographs" policy for their permanent collection, according to Hawk's popular blog -- but he's been taking photographs there anyways.
Also, him cheerfully getting a guard fired in 2006 adds to his dossier. Someone should shove Hawk's cameras up his ass, and let him take all the pictures he wants of blood vessels being ruptured.
It's not too-well publicized, but the Russian Business Network (AKA spammer filth) have been using (renting?) a large chunk of their botnet space to attack Georgia. Here's a bit of detail.
Maybe they just didn't have enough bandwidth to spam the planet AND take down Georgia's systems through a DOS.
Never in the history of photography has a small, cheap, "consumer" grade point-and-shoot camera been so capable.
A good P&S can approach the quality of an SLR for the majority of cases, and can be just as effective as a terrorist tool (i.e. not at all). In decent lighting, a camera with 10x optical zoom is going to get fairly similar results to an SLR for normal sized pictures. Alternatively, there are some serious pro cameras that _look_ like consumer stuff, if you don't know your cameras (Leica M series anyone?)
So basically it boils down to rent-a-cops who don't feel comfortable around certain cameras, for no good reason.
Gee, thanks for that sneering, condescending enlightenment. I'm sure everyone is feeling better at having Go explained by someone so vastly superior to the rest of us.
Slightly different, I think. Rather than laying blocks, it appears that they're adding the TiO2 as part of the paving process for continuous concrete roads.
"Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon twirling thing"
Everyone seems to be suggesting THEIR answer, which is OK but might not be YOUR answer.
For instance, a few people have said that going to the gym is the perfect solution. I *HATE* gyms, and if I relied on one for my fitness, I'd be dead by now (either from bad health or suicide). Ditto for elliptical trainers and treadmills, and really anything that is exercise for the sake of exercise.
Personally, I cycle and fence. The key is that I _enjoy_ the activities, which makes it far easier to get motivated to do them. If you hate what you're doing, you won't do it. Never schedule misery into your day.
So find something that you like doing, and stick to it.
Don't know about the DS, but the xbox360 is going to have...The Incredible Machine! (http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/851/851737.html) Also, there's a German company that has revived the genre with a game called Crazy Machine: http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/851/851737.html
The 7th Guest was a lot of frustrating fun at the time, but the puzzles were insane! Totally arbitrary and unrelated, except for the voice of Stauf drifting in saying, "I've set up this puzzle for you..."
Never got around to The 11th Hour--I'd found better games by that point. I have tried to get through Myst about five times, and it still stands as the single most annoying "adventure" game I've ever played. Boring and painful describes it perfectly, although it was pretty.
The old Tex Murphy games (Pandora Directive, Under a Killing Moon) were great. The Gabriel Knight games were pretty good (particularly the second one--with the werewolves). The LucasArts adventure games were tons of fun, though. Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango were brilliant.
Someone else here posted about the difference between good and bad puzzles. Good puzzles aren't arbitrary, and are core to the storyline.
As for railroading, well...yeah. Mostly. There have been a number of attempts at getting puzzle games (specifically adventures) off of the rails by having multiple endings, and playing different characters. Sometimes it worked passably, but was never all that great. The thing is that as adventure games evolved, they turned into interactive fiction. These days, that's what it is--a story that you play and puzzle through. A mystery where you're the detective, and you can't turn the page until you've figured out what's going on on this page.
Some people like that sort of thing. I like that sort of thing. Games like Grim Fandango succeeded amazingly well at telling a good yarn while giving the player puzzles that were challenging but logical and relevant. Yeah, you got railroaded throughout. That's OK. It was fun.
"In less than 120 years, we went from Orville and Co, to the moon."
Actually, less than 70 years, which just strengthens your point.
Now if we declare that advanced life needs earth-like conditions to form, and decide that earth-like planets are exceedingly rare in the universe, we still have an almost limitless number of planets which could potentially form sentient life, given enough time--and as you've pointed out, we've had enough time!
The odds are pretty good that there is or has been life out there. However, the question of contact is another thing altogether. We've got theories on why they haven't contacted earth in a way which would circumvent the conspiracy-keeping governments, but it's at least possible (and even likely) that we don't have any contact with aliens. Is the distance too great, are we being quarantined, does life burn itself out at a certain point, are we the first, are we alone, or is it just bad luck?
I'm pretty sure there is (or was) life out there, but I'm rather doubtful about claims of contact with them so far. Also, Mitchell is hardly a reliable source for such claims--take a look at his post-NASA background.
I'm sorry, but What Terry Childs did was the exact opposite of integrity. In trying to defend his special little toy, he has thrown away any claims to professionalism, integrity, or maturity.
If he's right--and he may well be; if his managers are ALL massively incompetent, then he has a number actions to choose from. He can try to reason with his managers, go above their heads, or eventually walk away from the job. That's right, if you can't do your job properly in any given environment, and you can't change the environment legitimately, then your responsibility is to leave, not secretly change the locks.
Hey, my manager is incompetent too!* Why don't I hack into the security system and disable his card access? After all, it'll make things better!
There are so many assumptions required here; 1) Terry Childs is telling the truth about his situation 2) He is correct in his assessment of it 3) He has pursued all possible options 4) He is skilled at communication (a surprisingly large number of 'incompetents' come around when things are explained to them properly) 5)
*Disclaimer: My manager is actually very competent, and a good guy to work for. This example for illustrative purposes only. Offer void where prohibited.
e-gold has tried spam as a marketing tool. When they stopped that, other spammers started following suit, phishing for account info--and e-gold's response was always "it's not our problem."
They've been actively aiding money laundering, and claiming they can't control what their customers do. Even now, Douglas Jackson is talking about fixing the flaws in an otherwise good system--despite the fact that he's likely going to jail for a few years.
e-gold is a dirty operation run by dirty crooks. It should be buried deep underground, and the gold reserves (if they really exist) used for something constructive.
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
"It seems to make perfect sense to me that Facebook would give affiliates a simple JavaScript that reports the information back to Facebook, and then the decision whether or not to retain the information happens on the Facebook server..."
This makes sense to you? If I go to (say) Amazon.com and buy a book, it makes perfect sense that they give your purchase information to someone else to publish without your explicit agreement?
Wow! Colour me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure I want some third-party publishing the details of my life and interactions with a growing series of second-parties.
Regardless, this is seven-month-old news. I'm sure it's changed by now, although it may actually be worse than it was.
Slashdot Mirror
"...no digital format, due to its nature, can create a continuous sound wave like a record."
Blah blah blah. Go tell it to Nyquist, Shannon, and half a century of physicists who apparently don't know as much as your golden ears.
"You can get the same or better sound quality on an mp3, as well"
Are you saying that MP3s can have better sound than the original source material? In other words, you can IMPROVE THE SOUND BY THROWING PARTS OF THE SIGNAL AWAY! Wow! Now that's a complete revolution in audio--something even the creators of MP3 and other lossy(!) formats wouldn't have imagined.
LPs are popular for three reasons:
1) Mistaken nostalgia by those too young to have grown up with them
2) DJs
3) Irrational audiophiles who hate not being able to tweak CDs and CD players.
Good records definitely sound better than bad CDs; but good CDs far surpass the finest vinyl ever made. Years ago, a number of experiments were done which showed you can take a good CD and make it sound like "glorious vinyl" by adding low-level out-of-phase noise to the signal. There's your fantastic clarity.
Understand here that I've got a $1500 turntable and a few hundred records that get played routinely. I also agree that the CD is a dying format--however, neither LPs or quality (or limitations thereof) have anything to do with it. Streaming and downloadable music is what's killing it, and the recording companies are hastening its demise by their idiotic attempts at copy regulation.
Hmm. Exactly the opposite of what I find, in general.
Out of the last hundred albums I've bought or planned to buy, only one of them (Ben Harper, "Both Sides of the Gun") had DRM. EMI has given up on DRM on "CDs" (not really CDs, as you know). Maybe I'm listening to the wrong music, but I just don't see anything that isn't CDDA anymore at all.
Useful in two cases: Development, and internal sites.
Strange. You say:
"1) It looks like a broken website "
But that's just it if a certificate has expired--it IS a broken website!
Self-signed certificates are a different matter, and I'll agree with your complaint for that. The "one-time exception" was a good idea.
"Is there an app that is truly essential to the everyday net user and/or developer that is written in Flash?"
Yep, there is. Homestar Runner.
Yes, really!
Wow, talk about missing the forest for the trees!
The point was this: "Never in the history of photography has a small, cheap, "consumer" grade point-and-shoot camera been so capable."
Now take a good modern P&S camera, with average indoor lighting, set to ISO400, and snap some 'hotel lobby espionage' shots with the on-camera flash. Now do the same thing with a handheld dSLR. Blow the results of both up to 8x10. There isn't going to be much if any significant difference in the actionable information (i.e. ability to recognise faces, find security cameras, the usual things that people are irrationally scared of).
Is an SLR better? Hell yeah! I've been shooting with my trusty Nikon FE2 for over 20 years, and will be replacing it with a full-frame dSLR sooner or later. Better optics, better sensors, more options, off-camera flash, etc. etc., will all lead to better pictures. But for MOST pictures MOST of the time for MOST people, the difference is (a) small, and (b) not relevant to 'security reasons.'
It's an interesting idea, but no. Not likely.
RBN operates across several countries. They're an organised crime gang, with the emphasis on organised. Theye guys have set up a massive system for DOSing targets, and are operating on a by-hire basis. If they have a chunk of botnet space that's not leased at a given moment, they'll use it to extort money from victims themselves. I'm sure that if the Russian government were involved, they would be paying the RBN. It just seems unlikely that the Russian government is the sole source behind the biggest botnet generator in the world.
OK, freedom vs. (perceived) security, photography, etc. are all good things to discuss. However, Thomas Hawk is a complete asshole. By his own admission:
For years San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art has maintained a "no photographs" policy for their permanent collection, according to Hawk's popular blog -- but he's been taking photographs there anyways.
Also, him cheerfully getting a guard fired in 2006 adds to his dossier. Someone should shove Hawk's cameras up his ass, and let him take all the pictures he wants of blood vessels being ruptured.
It's not too-well publicized, but the Russian Business Network (AKA spammer filth) have been using (renting?) a large chunk of their botnet space to attack Georgia. Here's a bit of detail.
Maybe they just didn't have enough bandwidth to spam the planet AND take down Georgia's systems through a DOS.
Never in the history of photography has a small, cheap, "consumer" grade point-and-shoot camera been so capable.
A good P&S can approach the quality of an SLR for the majority of cases, and can be just as effective as a terrorist tool (i.e. not at all). In decent lighting, a camera with 10x optical zoom is going to get fairly similar results to an SLR for normal sized pictures. Alternatively, there are some serious pro cameras that _look_ like consumer stuff, if you don't know your cameras (Leica M series anyone?)
So basically it boils down to rent-a-cops who don't feel comfortable around certain cameras, for no good reason.
Easy. Apple gets 30% of the sales.
Gee, thanks for that sneering, condescending enlightenment. I'm sure everyone is feeling better at having Go explained by someone so vastly superior to the rest of us.
Slightly different, I think. Rather than laying blocks, it appears that they're adding the TiO2 as part of the paving process for continuous concrete roads.
"Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon twirling thing"
Just...shut up. Really.
Sure. Want to tell me where I can get MP3s of the dozen or so local bands that sold maybe 200 copies of a CD?
Everyone seems to be suggesting THEIR answer, which is OK but might not be YOUR answer.
For instance, a few people have said that going to the gym is the perfect solution. I *HATE* gyms, and if I relied on one for my fitness, I'd be dead by now (either from bad health or suicide). Ditto for elliptical trainers and treadmills, and really anything that is exercise for the sake of exercise.
Personally, I cycle and fence. The key is that I _enjoy_ the activities, which makes it far easier to get motivated to do them. If you hate what you're doing, you won't do it. Never schedule misery into your day.
So find something that you like doing, and stick to it.
Oops. The second link wasn't supposed to be the same as the first!
http://www.crazy-machines.com/
Don't know about the DS, but the xbox360 is going to have...The Incredible Machine! (http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/851/851737.html)
Also, there's a German company that has revived the genre with a game called Crazy Machine: http://xbox360.ign.com/objects/851/851737.html
The 7th Guest was a lot of frustrating fun at the time, but the puzzles were insane! Totally arbitrary and unrelated, except for the voice of Stauf drifting in saying, "I've set up this puzzle for you..."
Never got around to The 11th Hour--I'd found better games by that point. I have tried to get through Myst about five times, and it still stands as the single most annoying "adventure" game I've ever played. Boring and painful describes it perfectly, although it was pretty.
The old Tex Murphy games (Pandora Directive, Under a Killing Moon) were great. The Gabriel Knight games were pretty good (particularly the second one--with the werewolves). The LucasArts adventure games were tons of fun, though. Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, and Grim Fandango were brilliant.
Someone else here posted about the difference between good and bad puzzles. Good puzzles aren't arbitrary, and are core to the storyline.
As for railroading, well...yeah. Mostly. There have been a number of attempts at getting puzzle games (specifically adventures) off of the rails by having multiple endings, and playing different characters. Sometimes it worked passably, but was never all that great. The thing is that as adventure games evolved, they turned into interactive fiction. These days, that's what it is--a story that you play and puzzle through. A mystery where you're the detective, and you can't turn the page until you've figured out what's going on on this page.
Some people like that sort of thing. I like that sort of thing. Games like Grim Fandango succeeded amazingly well at telling a good yarn while giving the player puzzles that were challenging but logical and relevant. Yeah, you got railroaded throughout. That's OK. It was fun.
"In less than 120 years, we went from Orville and Co, to the moon."
Actually, less than 70 years, which just strengthens your point.
Now if we declare that advanced life needs earth-like conditions to form, and decide that earth-like planets are exceedingly rare in the universe, we still have an almost limitless number of planets which could potentially form sentient life, given enough time--and as you've pointed out, we've had enough time!
The odds are pretty good that there is or has been life out there. However, the question of contact is another thing altogether. We've got theories on why they haven't contacted earth in a way which would circumvent the conspiracy-keeping governments, but it's at least possible (and even likely) that we don't have any contact with aliens. Is the distance too great, are we being quarantined, does life burn itself out at a certain point, are we the first, are we alone, or is it just bad luck?
I'm pretty sure there is (or was) life out there, but I'm rather doubtful about claims of contact with them so far. Also, Mitchell is hardly a reliable source for such claims--take a look at his post-NASA background.
I'm sorry, but What Terry Childs did was the exact opposite of integrity. In trying to defend his special little toy, he has thrown away any claims to professionalism, integrity, or maturity.
If he's right--and he may well be; if his managers are ALL massively incompetent, then he has a number actions to choose from. He can try to reason with his managers, go above their heads, or eventually walk away from the job. That's right, if you can't do your job properly in any given environment, and you can't change the environment legitimately, then your responsibility is to leave, not secretly change the locks.
Hey, my manager is incompetent too!* Why don't I hack into the security system and disable his card access? After all, it'll make things better!
There are so many assumptions required here;
1) Terry Childs is telling the truth about his situation
2) He is correct in his assessment of it
3) He has pursued all possible options
4) He is skilled at communication (a surprisingly large number of 'incompetents' come around when things are explained to them properly)
5)
*Disclaimer: My manager is actually very competent, and a good guy to work for. This example for illustrative purposes only. Offer void where prohibited.
"Don't be evil. Just host it."
e-gold has tried spam as a marketing tool. When they stopped that, other spammers started following suit, phishing for account info--and e-gold's response was always "it's not our problem."
They've been actively aiding money laundering, and claiming they can't control what their customers do. Even now, Douglas Jackson is talking about fixing the flaws in an otherwise good system--despite the fact that he's likely going to jail for a few years.
e-gold is a dirty operation run by dirty crooks. It should be buried deep underground, and the gold reserves (if they really exist) used for something constructive.
First of all, allow me to quote Ambrose Bierce:
CYNIC, n.
A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
"It seems to make perfect sense to me that Facebook would give affiliates a simple JavaScript that reports the information back to Facebook, and then the decision whether or not to retain the information happens on the Facebook server..."
This makes sense to you? If I go to (say) Amazon.com and buy a book, it makes perfect sense that they give your purchase information to someone else to publish without your explicit agreement?
Wow! Colour me old-fashioned, but I'm not sure I want some third-party publishing the details of my life and interactions with a growing series of second-parties.
Regardless, this is seven-month-old news. I'm sure it's changed by now, although it may actually be worse than it was.