It's not a question of real estate, it's a question of resources.
EXACTLY my point! However, nowhere in the US do so many dismiss the entire notion of "overpopulation" (largely because their religious leaders tell them to) as in the "wide open west," despite mountains of evidence that we are in fact overfarming the planet beyond its ability to recouperate and maintain.
One of the things that allows people in the west to be in such denial is the vast empty land they see everytime they look out their window...forgetting, as we've both pointed out, that it is all about resources, not real estate.
America certainly has no monopoly on empty spaces (or on people living in denial of the basic facts of overpopulation), but it is one area I, as an American who has lived here much of my life, can speak of with some insight and personal experience. Europe would be the other area, whereas Africa and Asia are places I've only visited a short time, so I can offer no hard opinion beyond what anyone might glean from all-too-short vacations and whatever info they dig up on the web or have spoon fed them by the media.
I don't see why NOT having children is selfish. There are plenty of children in the world who don't get the love and attention they deserve right now.
Agreed. In fact, one could very well argue that those who have more children than that which is required to replace the parents is profoundly selfish. Having five, seven, ten children in a world of limited resources guarantees either (a) all said children will live at a lower standard of living than the generation that selfishly produced them, (b) those immediate kids will do fine, by even further impoverishing five, seven, or ten other children, or (c) both of the above.
There are those (mostly the religious right) who would argue the world is not overpopulated. This is particularly true in America, where vast swaths of empty wasteland in the west provide the illusion that there's plenty of room in the world, while neglecting the fact that the resources of 100 square miles of arid desert is doing well to support a single family, and in many cases can't even support a single human being without importing resources from elsewhere.
Finally, I find labelling the GP poster a "bigot" disingenuous and unfair. Do I agree that evolution is selecting for those with poor family planning and low congnative skills. No. I think the United States has set up an artifical situation that selects for that, but other nations have not: Europe has social welfare that puts America to shame, yet still clearly selects for intelligence and responsible family management (their immigration issues notwithstanding). Japan does the same. The United States is getting demonstrably dumber, but that has more to do with our own political correctness, and an educational system designed to not only not teach critical thinking skills to the majority of Americans, but to actively discourage critical thinking along more and more politically sensitive lines, often by labelling critical thinkers "bigots" if their conclusions don't mesh with popular groupthink.
Bullying an unpopular view into oblivion with labels of "bigot" because you don't like what the poster is saying doesn't serve to promote intelligent discourse, particularly when discussing evolution and natural selection in the context of human beings, where such cheap shots are made easy by an ugly history of right-wing abuse of such concepts (for Godwin fans, cf. Nazi Germany as the quintessential example).
As I said, I think the GP poster is wrong. He has confused a local phenomenon resulting from local political pressures with global human evolution, the latter of which shows no sign of dumbing down the broader species, and he has identified a couple of symptoms (bad family planning, religous hysteria) and assumed them to be the underlying cause, while almost certainly neglecting other factors that run both deeper and broader. This does not make him a bigot, it merely means he hasn't studied the problem and thought it through sufficiently.
As a final aside, if I were to personally hazard a guess on what has gone wrong in the United States (and it is only a guess), I'd say the problem stems from a lack of critical thinking skills in the broader population, skills that should have been taught at a young age, to be applied to everything, be it family planning, religion, or politics and popular groupthink de jour. In short, it is a massive, systemic, ongoing, and apparently perpetual failur of basic education that goes back a long time and shows no sign of letting up. Family planning, relgious hysteria, labelling people with unpopular opinions bigots, "love it or leave it" refusals to accept criticisms of one's country's imperfections, etc. are merely symptoms of this much deeper problem.
I don't know, every time I tune into Air America (Progressive Radio - "The left just got louder") I hear a lot of agitated liberals
The rest of your ad hominim bashing aside, any influence Air American might have has been severely restricted, in part by the FCC's deliberate machinations in getting broadcasts shut down (or licensing delayed) in various large markets, and in part by their own meager funding (relative to the Right Wing Talk radio stations) and inability to stations with a strong signal.
Case in point: Chicago. Air America barely reaches Schaumburg before fading out due to weak signal strength. WLS Radio (a bastion of Bush-loving extreme rightism) can be heard in Denver on a good night. Guess which one has a bigger impact on people's views and opinions, regardless of the merit of their message.
Why would anyone become "multi-continental" when there's no reason to do so? Other continents are harsh, inhospitable places. What's the incentive to spend the huge quantity of gold it'd take to develop the technology for a colony? "Coolness?" Not to mention the unknown health costs of living in on the other side of the Atlantic for years.
It's all about economics, and if the economics aren't their the lowest launch costs imaginable aren't going to matter. The closest economic benefit we've got is a short cut to Asia, and even that's a pipe dream. I'm sure there will be a manned mission to Asia via the Atlantic someday, but that's not anything like being "multi-continental"
Enter Columbus, and the multiplying of Europe's economy (and that of the rest of the world) to a level never seen before, that has continued to grow for 5 centuries.
Still think you're so wise to turn your back on any vision bigger than your pocketbook?
No, that's not what happens. Laws say what happens, theories say why and/or how it happens. Laws don't try to explain behaviour, they just state it. Hence the laws of thermodynamics are laws, while the theory of relativity is a theory and always will be.
And the law of gravity? Observations say what happens. Theories say why and/or how it happense. Laws are what we call theories we think will never be falsified, and it's probably a word that should be dropped from any kind of scientific discussion, since we all should have learned by now that even the most basic assumptions and most obvious conclusions drawn from the most irrefutable of observations have a way of requiring revision from time to time, as better observations are made (Newton couldn't look at gravitational motion, and we cannot yet see into the higher folded dimensions of string theory, assuming such in fact exist).
The "laws" of thermodynamics are as theoretical as relativity. Both have been observed, both are mathematically modelled to great precision, both make useful predictions, both are falsifiable, and no one outside of a few religious wackos expects either to be falsified. That doesn't mean they won't be.
Someday we might find conditions in which entropy in a closed system decreases (candidates for something like this include the time leading up to the big bang--if such is found to have existed--and certain theories of the internal workings of black holes, etc.). Not that I or anyone else realistically expects this (but then, who expected the anomalies that would lead to the dark matter/energy vs. non-newtonian gravity debate, either), but the "laws" of thermodynamics are as falsifiable as the theory of relativity and, as it turns out, the "law" of gravity.
Theories do have a habit of becoming "laws" when they are basically considered irrefutable. They shouldn't--we should probably refer to gravity as the theory of gravity, and the laws of thermodynamics as the theories of thermodynamics. It might stop the "big bang theory" and "theory of evolution" rhetorical nonsense we've all been subjected to by communications majors coasting through college with a "C" average only to become network anchors...and help all of us to think clearer. That having been said, I imagine my calls to refer to the laws of thermodynamics as the "theories of thermodynamics" would fall on my old physics professor's deaf ears. Most of us like keeping our language the way it is, no matter how cumbersome or confusing it becomes--but that's a rant for another day.:-)
Yup, I called it. Apparently speaking the truth is "trolling" to some who would bury uncomfortable information.
Yeah, we had a crackpot like that at work for about 2 weeks... she just seemed to lie constantly, for no reason. She also seemed to really believe it.
Was she a Mormon?
I would be absolutely fascinated to see this technique tried out on a sample of the Mormon population.
As one who has had family and friends in that particular cult, I can tell you the ability of those in that subculture to lie to themselves and others, and work themselves into a position of believing it, is something I've not seen anywhere else (except perhaps in Washington, and I believe Washington would come in second place). Examples include but are not limited to: outright fabrications about other people and things they supposedly did/did not do (all of which were trivially disprovable, yet the proof was ignored and the lie spoken even more resolutely), dismissial of emperical proof as to the falseness of the religion itself (examples include DNA, ear-wax, facial-feature, and other studies disproving the core tenat of the Mormon faith and the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans are decendents of an Israelite named Lehi who was led by the Lord to bring his family to America, whereupon the bad sons Lamen and Lemual were cursed by God and given dark skin--I kid you not. Other examples include Egyptologists looking at the Paparyi the Mormon "Book of Abraham" is supposed to be a translation of, which has subsequently been shown to be a common burial document having nothing to do with Abraham, or any other Biblical figure, and the list goes on).
The deceitfulness of this subculture, both to themselves and to others, is quite well documented on the Recovery from Mormonism [exmormon.org] site, and surpasses even my (low) expectations based on my personal experience.
Alas, any such study would likely suffer the same fate this post is likely to suffer, and indeed the fate that most articles and literature critical of that religion suffer (despite mountains of factual evidence and well documented research): getting spiked (or moderated) into oblivion by those supportive of such groups.
Yeah, we had a crackpot like that at work for about 2 weeks... she just seemed to lie constantly, for no reason. She also seemed to really believe it.
Was she a Mormon?
I would be absolutely fascinated to see this technique tried out on a sample of the Mormon population.
As one who has had family and friends in that particular cult, I can tell you the ability of those in that subculture to lie to themselves and others, and work themselves into a position of believing it, is something I've not seen anywhere else (except perhaps in Washington, and I believe Washington would come in second place). Examples include but are not limited to: outright fabrications about other people and things they supposedly did/did not do (all of which were trivially disprovable, yet the proof was ignored and the lie spoken even more resolutely), dismissial of emperical proof as to the falseness of the religion itself (examples include DNA, ear-wax, facial-feature, and other studies disproving the core tenat of the Mormon faith and the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans are decendents of an Israelite named Lehi who was led by the Lord to bring his family to America, whereupon the bad sons Lamen and Lemual were cursed by God and given dark skin--I kid you not. Other examples include Egyptologists looking at the Paparyi the Mormon "Book of Abraham" is supposed to be a translation of, which has subsequently been shown to be a common burial document having nothing to do with Abraham, or any other Biblical figure, and the list goes on).
The deceitfulness of this subculture, both to themselves and to others, is quite well documented on the Recovery from Mormonism site, and surpasses even my (low) expectations based on my personal experience.
Alas, any such study would likely suffer the same fate this post is likely to suffer, and indeed the fate that most articles and literature critical of that religion suffer (despite mountains of factual evidence and well documented research): getting spiked (or moderated) into oblivion by those supportive of such groups.
But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.
First, 3-4 billion is chump change when it comes to government spending, and particularly so when it comes to international consortia spending. The economic value far outweighs the cost, by orders of magnitude.
Second, while you may find it merely inconvinient to have your GPS stop working, try telling that to a pilot (or 300 passengers) on a plane that is landing on a GPS precisions approch with weather at minimums and terrain all around, when the government decides to get into a tizzy and "disable" their approach. WAAS is intended to counteract that, but the point remains: they are having to deploy another multi-billion dollar system to offset the deliberate design issues and unreliability of the first multi-billion dollar system.
The Europeans are spending the money once, and getting a better, more reliable system they, instead of we, control. It makes all the sense in the world, and will probably allow their planes to land in near zero-zero conditions (unlike GPS+WAAS), and certainly with more precision than GPS (1 cm accuracy!).
Finally, fuck the US if we don't like it. We have no business, and no right, to dictate to the rest of the world what technology they may, or may not, deploy. As for our "reserving the right" to shoot down their satelites, I'm sure they (and the Russians, and the Chinese) reserve the "right" to nuke us back into the stoneage if they feel sufficiently threatened. That so-called "right" (talk about orwellian doublespeak!) to destroy something or someone suddenly becomes a lot less appealing when one is on the receiving end, doesn't it?
Time for a little lesson. A Libertarian is someone who believes in maximizing personal freedom. It is a, and this is important, POLITICAL party esposing a particular political belief. You seem to be confusing it with Capitolism, which, once again important, is an ECONOMIC theory.
Time for a little reality check. Libertarians ignore all power centers other than governmental, from the local bully threatening your wife in a restaurant to the private "security forces" cults like the Mormons employ, to the powerful multinational corporations that can (and do) create and destroy entire communities.
Libertarians are usually the first to point out, on this site and elsewhere, that businesses, churches, private clubs, etc. aren't restrained by the U.S. constitution, and do not have to respect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, or any of the other basic freedoms enshrined therein (notice a word repeating frequently?).
Individual FREEDOM is lost when you replace a democratically elected government with any of the above, which is exactly what happens when you persue the libertarian lassaiz-faire approach to regulation. Those policies were followed in the 19th century, with such wonderful results like child labor, employer massacres of disgruntled workers by private armies such as the Pinkertons for no other reason than that said workers had the audacity to attempt to organize into unions, and of course everyone's favorite, and the logical extreme when government imposes no restrictions at all on the treatment of people by other people, religions, or business entities: slavery.
Libertarianism isn't a recipe for more freedom, its a recipe for vastly less freedom beneath the heal of an unrestrained coporate and/or religious dictatorship (depending on where you live, and which unrestrained bully gets ahold of the reigns of power). In short, it is a recipe for disaster that would make the current appalling situation in this country look like a picnic by comparison.
So please accept the fact that the rest of us are going to laugh at and openly mock your reactionary, ignorant inability to parse even the most basic facts of reality, probably while rolling our eyes and shaking our heads.
But don't let that keep you from pulling your head out of the sand.
That's interesting - in the UK liberal means "centre", with a slight lean to the left. While conservative is "right". So in the US I thought the republicans are "right" (the equivalent of our conservatives) and the democrats are "left" (the equivalent of our old labour party, although they're pretty much "right" now). Is that correct?
No. Republicans are extreme right, Democrats are right. Your Tory party is about as far left as our Democrats, while our replubicans can best be described as ranging from far to the right of your Tories to even further right, up to and including to the right of, well, if I say his name, someone will invoke Godwin's Joke.
The Democrats are pro-business, about 40% pro-war, mostly but not entirely against institutions basic to the rest of the developed world (such as national, comprehensive healthcare, subsidized access to university for every intellectually qualified prospective student, etc.) and pro-corporate welfare (subsidies, tax breaks, business incentives, etc.). The democrats do believe in a secular separation of church and state, due process, and other quaint constitutional notions no longer in vogue in the United States, and they do by and large support women's rights, including their right to reproductive choice.
The Republicans are pro-business, about 95% pro-war, almost entirely against institutions basic to the rest of the developed world (national heathcare, etc.), and are pro-corporate welfare. The republicans by and large do not believe in a secular separation of church and state, play it very fast and loose with due process, and are seemingly unconcerned with other quaint notions of constitutionality such as the right to be secure in one's person (privacy). They almost entirely do not support womens rights, and believe a woman's body becomes chattel of the church and state upon conception and remains so until the feotus matures into a human being and is born, whether the woman likes it or not.
As you can see, the political menu de jour in America is: would you like your leadership to the right, or to the extreme right? It is interesting that more and more companies are following Daimler-Chryslers lead, and moving their operations to Europe, where the national heathcare systems have remained affordable while American healthcare costs have gone through the roof. The Darwinistic system Republicans and many Democrats have lead us to erroneously believe to be more economically sustainable than "those damn European socialists" is in fact much less scalable, and much less maintainable, than their systems. Myths of Canadians standing in line to come to American hospitals notwithstanding (sorry, having the Canadian equivelent of Bill Gates decide to jump to the front of the queue for heart bypass surgery by buying a place in an American hospital doesn't count--and it's surprising that, all this while we're lauding our system for being so great, no one asks about the person who got bumped out of the queue by our wonderful system to accomodate the wealthy Canadians who can't be bothered to wait their turn in their own system, nor does anyone seem to notice that the truly wealthiest-of-the-wealthy are all going to Paris and London for treatment, not the US, but I digress), we have the most expensive, and least bang-for-buck medical system in the developed world, so much so that companies are finding it more affordable to operate in Europe than in the US, long vacations and better benefits notwithstanding.
It confuses me as to why Congress should have any say in companies creating additional networks. Interstate commerce clause? What a joke.
Oh Good Lord, another uninformed, Libertarian knee-jerk response.
The reason(s) Congress has a say over how the telcos behave include the fact that
1) The telcos wire runs across public lands 2) The telcos are local monopolies (at least in terms of last-mile copper, and in many places, in terms of telecom services in general) 3) The telcos received subsidies to build their network from public money, then were given (read:bribed the government) ownership of infrastructure built in no small part with public funds.
When the telcos give up that portion of their network built with the help of government subsidies and incentives, remove every last inch of wire from public lands and access ways, and have real, level-playing-field, true competative-free-market-style competitors, then maybe congressional oversight can be revisited. Until then, please accept the fact that most of the rest of us are going to laugh at and openly mock your reactionary Corporate Interests ueber Alles rhetoric, probably while rolling our eyes and shaking our heads.
Offsetting moderation abuse by religious fanatics and others easily offended by facts...
Marquette is a Catholic school. Free speech has never been a priority in the Catholic Church. They've silenced Galileo, Oscar Romero, whistleblowers of sexual abuse,...
Not only did the Catholic church silenced many visionaries in the past, they have within the last year appointed the man Pope John Paul II assigned to oversee the suffling of pedophile priests one-step-ahead of the law as the new (no doubt child-friendly) pope! One complicit man who willfully looked the other way as pedophiles were shipped to new parishes for a little "fresh meat" (and a stay-out-of-jail-free card) is now on the fast track to being sainted, while the man who actually did the shuffling is now pope (and no doubt soon to be promoted to the Right Hand of God Himself).
The sad thing is, mothers the world over are redoubling their efforts to be sure their children attend mass. Isn't that just precious?
Marquette is a Catholic school. Free speech has never been a priority in the Catholic Church. They've silenced Galileo, Oscar Romero, whistleblowers of sexual abuse,...
Not only did the Catholic church silenced many visionaries in the past, they have within the last year appointed the man Pope John Paul II assigned to oversee the suffling of pedophile priests one-step-ahead of the law as the new (no doubt child-friendly) pope! One complicit man who willfully looked the other way as pedophiles were shipped to new parishes for a little "fresh meat" (and a stay-out-of-jail-free card) is now on the fast track to being sainted, while the man who actually did the shuffling is now pope (and no doubt soon to be promoted to the Right Hand of God Himself).
The sad thing is, mothers the world over are redoubling their efforts to be sure their children attend mass. Isn't that just precious?
The ATI binary driver does not support dual-head. You get a corrupted image of the main head on the second screen (although the cursor renders ok).
That is utterly false (you need to reexamine your config...the imperfection is yours). We make extensive use of ATI cards on multi-headed system, includung dual-headed boxes using both the proprietary and xorg drivers (depending on model and whether or not the user wants 3d acceleration), as well as a couple of quad-headed systems (dual dual-head cards xineramaed together--no 3d acceleration in the 4-head configuration, of course).
The Nvidia driver supports both Xinerama and Twin View.
Yes, it does. As does the ATI driver. I had no idea this thread would attract so many Nvidia astroturfers. I use both products, both work fine, both support 3d on x86 and amd64, both support dual-head just fine.
Doesn't change the fact that their religious beliefs are fucking nuts.
That they are, and as with any mentally ill person, the "niceness" is often feigned and certainly not stable.
But, once you get past that, they're wonderful people. And I'm completely serious. Aside from the whacko religious rantings, society would be very much enhanced if we all acted slightly more like your average morman.
No, we wouldn't be better off. At all.
I am related to mormons (a parent, a sibling, various and sundry extended family), and I can tell you that they are "great people" only superficially, and only so long as they believe they can attract you to their way of thinking "by example."
I can tell you from personal experience that, if they don't get what they want from you, be it financial support of otherwise unsustainable lifestyles (they are told to have as many kids as possible, while still in college, then to hit up family first, friends second, and the church last when the money inevitably falls short, all the while still paying 10% of their gross income to the church), or "respect and acknowledgement" of the "superiority" of their beliefs, they turn into some of the most vindictive, nasty people you'll ever know.
To the point of taking it upon themselves to do everything in their power to break up marriages they don't approve of, as has happened to me personally, my parent leading the charge. (They failed, and now I thankfully have no contact whatsoever with them).
You really should check out exmormon.org, particularly the bullitin board where people are posting their personal experiences in recovering from the depredations of that partiuclar religious cult. As with most groups recovering from abuse, there is a lot of anger there, but read past that to what people there are going through, and what their Mormon family and friends are doing to them for their "crime" of doubting or rejecting the Mormon faith, and you begin to get an inkling of the ugliness that underlies the benign Mormon PR ficade. My experience, which my wife and I believed to be unbelievably extreme, is in fact almost laughably common among Mormons who begin to doubt the provably (and proven) false claims of their religion, and those of us non-Mormons unfortunate enough to have had close ties to the more devout (a number of people recovering from the abusiveness of Mormonism have themselves never been Mormons, but that has proven to be little protection when their spouse converts and then divorces them on instruction from their Bishop, in order to marry a "good, upstanding" Mormon, as happened in at least one case).
Back on topic, for "contributing" so much to genetics with their genealogoy fetish, the Mormon leadership sure is eager to rejectgeneticproof that the premise of the Book of Mormon (that native Americans are descendents of an Isrealite named Lehi) if false, and to excommunicate or disfellowship those who have done the science. Mormonism is anything but a bastion of science or intellectualism (in fact, their current leadership has stated openly that--and I'm paraphrasing--"intellectuals are an enemy of the church")
Disclaimer: I make extensive use of both nvidia and ati hardware under GNU/Linux.
Nvidia is really the only way to go for 3D in linux. If you really only need 2D, I've heard good things about the old Matrox cards, but good luck finding one.
Not true. The proprietary ATI drivers (currently version 8.18.8) work as well as the nvidia drivers on both my amd64 and x86 boxes. Nvidia works fine (except for incessent flickering at 1920x1200 on one machine), as does ATI (but no flicker on that one machine). ATI works better ati 1920x1200@60Hz, but nvidia draws specular hilights on a celestia-rendered hi-res Earth better that ATI. In short, its a wash, with each manufacturer/driver having strengths and weaknesses the other does not.
The choice these days is one of personal preference. Your comment is at least a year behind the current state of the art, at least in the GNU/Linux world.
FREEUSER: FreeUser thinks he's the smartest cooking in the cookie jar, so he plans a flawless crime where both he, his wife, and their friends get everything they want. He forgets noothing, being perfect, and his plan works flawlessly.
Of course, while good for me, the story is probably less intersting to others, and lacks the "drama" of people who actually have to suffer, but it works for me, and it is an 8th story type (now patent pending).:-)
You're right, there are more than 7 basic categories... but there are probably not more than a hundred storylines that can be fitted around just about every story ever told, if not precisely, then close enough to facilitate patent litigation. This development is beyond appalling. If this application is approved, and the courts uphold the patent as legitimate, it will spell the end of huge areas of creativity: novel and short story writing, film, stageplay, and any song lyric that tells a story.
I share your digust with Daylight Savings Time, but the disgust shouldn't be aimed at those who invented it (Ben Franklin) or those who implimented it, it should be aimed at the whole morass of humanity that is so fucking inflexible we refuse to change our schedules (or, as another poster pointed out, our rediculous driving habits in 12mpg SUVs) and instead leave those who would like to increase energy savings no other choice but to change time itself.
For all Ben Franklin contributed to the world, this one was not only pointless and arbitrary, but couterproductive.
I don't agree. I think it is quite productive. It results in energy savings, despite peoples' inflexibility in their habits and their schedules. Now, we could institute a "you waste energy, you die" policy and breed for humans with a more flexible sense of schedule and better driving habits, but those of us who even dare suggest such methods of, ah, eugenics, tend to be labelled nazi-sympathisers, damn liberals, or somesuch. [/humor]
We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.
When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.
As an author, I couldn't agree more.
Most people want to curl up with a good book and read in comfort, lying in bed, on their couch, in their recliner (cracking fire and comfortable cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate optional). A few folks don't mind sitting in front of a computer to read, but the rest of us like good old fashioned, physical books in our hands, and what Google is doing is not only NOT a threat to the sale of traditional bound books, it is a boon.
What it isn't a boon for is old guard publishers having a stranglehold on exposure anymore, meaning that self-published, POD, and other less traditional forms of publishing gain more leverage in attracting interested eyes, without having to somehow get ahold of that coveted shelf space in a brick-and-mortor store.
Not that I don't covet that for my novel (I do), but the more accessible the information is to those looking for it, the more people will buy the physical version of the book.
The AAR has its head up its ass, and win-or-lose on this particular lawsuit, they and their constituents are going to lose bigtime if they don't update their mentality to fit with the technological reality of today, and begin exploiting the opportunities it offers.
This is only "sort of" a hoax. Yes, self-destructing DVDs a lá DivX are a hoax, but note carefully how Microsoft phrased their response.
MPEG2 streams cannot self-destruct in this way, but the option has been available for quite some time for material encoded in windows media, which just so happens to be the format for HD-DVD. So, while self-destructing DVDs are a hoax, self-destructing HD-DVDs are part of the design specification, whether it is marketed that way or not.
The problem with this? Now that we've had one asinine hoax (which, truth be told, was not all that implausible, given the history of DivX and the past behavior of Microsoft vis-á-vis "trusted computing" and DRM), Microsoft's spin machine will have a much easier time downplaying very legitimate fears when their HD-DVDs ship with exactly this capability designed in.
ObSovietRussiaStandy: In Fascist America they spread false rumor of something horrific, get reaction, debunk it, then quietly do something equally horrific and allow the outrage from the same group of people duped before to fall on deaf ears, getting away with it completely. When the consiquences come home to root, they turn around, blame the victim, and have their numbers go up in the polls. Welcome to the New World Order, shopper.
That staccato sound you hear are a series of chairs striking the wall of Balmer's office. Apparently he isn't handling the decline (and inevitable fall) of his and Bill's little empire so well--rumor has it they've even taken to suing any former employees who go to work for their most potent competitor, a company named for 10100 that actually innovates rather than obliterates.
I know schadenfreude isn't the most positive emotion to nurture, but it's going to be an absolute pleasure watching this play out.:-)
OK, I've been a long time slashdot reader (note my userid), and while editorial standards have been slipping noticably over the last year or two, this advertisiement posing as a review really takes the cake.
Is your employer getting paid outright for these, or are they a result of personal kickbacks under the table?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a question of real estate, it's a question of resources.
EXACTLY my point! However, nowhere in the US do so many dismiss the entire notion of "overpopulation" (largely because their religious leaders tell them to) as in the "wide open west," despite mountains of evidence that we are in fact overfarming the planet beyond its ability to recouperate and maintain.
One of the things that allows people in the west to be in such denial is the vast empty land they see everytime they look out their window...forgetting, as we've both pointed out, that it is all about resources, not real estate.
America certainly has no monopoly on empty spaces (or on people living in denial of the basic facts of overpopulation), but it is one area I, as an American who has lived here much of my life, can speak of with some insight and personal experience. Europe would be the other area, whereas Africa and Asia are places I've only visited a short time, so I can offer no hard opinion beyond what anyone might glean from all-too-short vacations and whatever info they dig up on the web or have spoon fed them by the media.
I don't see why NOT having children is selfish. There are plenty of children in the world who don't get the love and attention they deserve right now.
Agreed. In fact, one could very well argue that those who have more children than that which is required to replace the parents is profoundly selfish. Having five, seven, ten children in a world of limited resources guarantees either (a) all said children will live at a lower standard of living than the generation that selfishly produced them, (b) those immediate kids will do fine, by even further impoverishing five, seven, or ten other children, or (c) both of the above.
There are those (mostly the religious right) who would argue the world is not overpopulated. This is particularly true in America, where vast swaths of empty wasteland in the west provide the illusion that there's plenty of room in the world, while neglecting the fact that the resources of 100 square miles of arid desert is doing well to support a single family, and in many cases can't even support a single human being without importing resources from elsewhere.
Finally, I find labelling the GP poster a "bigot" disingenuous and unfair. Do I agree that evolution is selecting for those with poor family planning and low congnative skills. No. I think the United States has set up an artifical situation that selects for that, but other nations have not: Europe has social welfare that puts America to shame, yet still clearly selects for intelligence and responsible family management (their immigration issues notwithstanding). Japan does the same. The United States is getting demonstrably dumber, but that has more to do with our own political correctness, and an educational system designed to not only not teach critical thinking skills to the majority of Americans, but to actively discourage critical thinking along more and more politically sensitive lines, often by labelling critical thinkers "bigots" if their conclusions don't mesh with popular groupthink.
Bullying an unpopular view into oblivion with labels of "bigot" because you don't like what the poster is saying doesn't serve to promote intelligent discourse, particularly when discussing evolution and natural selection in the context of human beings, where such cheap shots are made easy by an ugly history of right-wing abuse of such concepts (for Godwin fans, cf. Nazi Germany as the quintessential example).
As I said, I think the GP poster is wrong. He has confused a local phenomenon resulting from local political pressures with global human evolution, the latter of which shows no sign of dumbing down the broader species, and he has identified a couple of symptoms (bad family planning, religous hysteria) and assumed them to be the underlying cause, while almost certainly neglecting other factors that run both deeper and broader. This does not make him a bigot, it merely means he hasn't studied the problem and thought it through sufficiently.
As a final aside, if I were to personally hazard a guess on what has gone wrong in the United States (and it is only a guess), I'd say the problem stems from a lack of critical thinking skills in the broader population, skills that should have been taught at a young age, to be applied to everything, be it family planning, religion, or politics and popular groupthink de jour. In short, it is a massive, systemic, ongoing, and apparently perpetual failur of basic education that goes back a long time and shows no sign of letting up. Family planning, relgious hysteria, labelling people with unpopular opinions bigots, "love it or leave it" refusals to accept criticisms of one's country's imperfections, etc. are merely symptoms of this much deeper problem.
I don't know, every time I tune into Air America (Progressive Radio - "The left just got louder") I hear a lot of agitated liberals
The rest of your ad hominim bashing aside, any influence Air American might have has been severely restricted, in part by the FCC's deliberate machinations in getting broadcasts shut down (or licensing delayed) in various large markets, and in part by their own meager funding (relative to the Right Wing Talk radio stations) and inability to stations with a strong signal.
Case in point: Chicago. Air America barely reaches Schaumburg before fading out due to weak signal strength. WLS Radio (a bastion of Bush-loving extreme rightism) can be heard in Denver on a good night. Guess which one has a bigger impact on people's views and opinions, regardless of the merit of their message.
Why would anyone become "multi-continental" when there's no reason to do so? Other continents are harsh, inhospitable places. What's the incentive to spend the huge quantity of gold it'd take to develop the technology for a colony? "Coolness?" Not to mention the unknown health costs of living in on the other side of the Atlantic for years.
It's all about economics, and if the economics aren't their the lowest launch costs imaginable aren't going to matter. The closest economic benefit we've got is a short cut to Asia, and even that's a pipe dream. I'm sure there will be a manned mission to Asia via the Atlantic someday, but that's not anything like being "multi-continental"
Enter Columbus, and the multiplying of Europe's economy (and that of the rest of the world) to a level never seen before, that has continued to grow for 5 centuries.
Still think you're so wise to turn your back on any vision bigger than your pocketbook?
gah
Newton couldn't look at gravitational motion
should read
Newton couldn't look at galactic motion
No, that's not what happens. Laws say what happens, theories say why and/or how it happens. Laws don't try to explain behaviour, they just state it. Hence the laws of thermodynamics are laws, while the theory of relativity is a theory and always will be.
:-)
And the law of gravity? Observations say what happens. Theories say why and/or how it happense. Laws are what we call theories we think will never be falsified, and it's probably a word that should be dropped from any kind of scientific discussion, since we all should have learned by now that even the most basic assumptions and most obvious conclusions drawn from the most irrefutable of observations have a way of requiring revision from time to time, as better observations are made (Newton couldn't look at gravitational motion, and we cannot yet see into the higher folded dimensions of string theory, assuming such in fact exist).
The "laws" of thermodynamics are as theoretical as relativity. Both have been observed, both are mathematically modelled to great precision, both make useful predictions, both are falsifiable, and no one outside of a few religious wackos expects either to be falsified. That doesn't mean they won't be.
Someday we might find conditions in which entropy in a closed system decreases (candidates for something like this include the time leading up to the big bang--if such is found to have existed--and certain theories of the internal workings of black holes, etc.). Not that I or anyone else realistically expects this (but then, who expected the anomalies that would lead to the dark matter/energy vs. non-newtonian gravity debate, either), but the "laws" of thermodynamics are as falsifiable as the theory of relativity and, as it turns out, the "law" of gravity.
Theories do have a habit of becoming "laws" when they are basically considered irrefutable. They shouldn't--we should probably refer to gravity as the theory of gravity, and the laws of thermodynamics as the theories of thermodynamics. It might stop the "big bang theory" and "theory of evolution" rhetorical nonsense we've all been subjected to by communications majors coasting through college with a "C" average only to become network anchors...and help all of us to think clearer. That having been said, I imagine my calls to refer to the laws of thermodynamics as the "theories of thermodynamics" would fall on my old physics professor's deaf ears. Most of us like keeping our language the way it is, no matter how cumbersome or confusing it becomes--but that's a rant for another day.
Yup, I called it. Apparently speaking the truth is "trolling" to some who would bury uncomfortable information.
Yeah, we had a crackpot like that at work for about 2 weeks... she just seemed to lie constantly, for no reason. She also seemed to really believe it.
Was she a Mormon?
I would be absolutely fascinated to see this technique tried out on a sample of the Mormon population.
As one who has had family and friends in that particular cult, I can tell you the ability of those in that subculture to lie to themselves and others, and work themselves into a position of believing it, is something I've not seen anywhere else (except perhaps in Washington, and I believe Washington would come in second place). Examples include but are not limited to: outright fabrications about other people and things they supposedly did/did not do (all of which were trivially disprovable, yet the proof was ignored and the lie spoken even more resolutely), dismissial of emperical proof as to the falseness of the religion itself (examples include DNA, ear-wax, facial-feature, and other studies disproving the core tenat of the Mormon faith and the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans are decendents of an Israelite named Lehi who was led by the Lord to bring his family to America, whereupon the bad sons Lamen and Lemual were cursed by God and given dark skin--I kid you not. Other examples include Egyptologists looking at the Paparyi the Mormon "Book of Abraham" is supposed to be a translation of, which has subsequently been shown to be a common burial document having nothing to do with Abraham, or any other Biblical figure, and the list goes on).
The deceitfulness of this subculture, both to themselves and to others, is quite well documented on the Recovery from Mormonism [exmormon.org] site, and surpasses even my (low) expectations based on my personal experience.
Alas, any such study would likely suffer the same fate this post is likely to suffer, and indeed the fate that most articles and literature critical of that religion suffer (despite mountains of factual evidence and well documented research): getting spiked (or moderated) into oblivion by those supportive of such groups.
Yeah, we had a crackpot like that at work for about 2 weeks... she just seemed to lie constantly, for no reason. She also seemed to really believe it.
Was she a Mormon?
I would be absolutely fascinated to see this technique tried out on a sample of the Mormon population.
As one who has had family and friends in that particular cult, I can tell you the ability of those in that subculture to lie to themselves and others, and work themselves into a position of believing it, is something I've not seen anywhere else (except perhaps in Washington, and I believe Washington would come in second place). Examples include but are not limited to: outright fabrications about other people and things they supposedly did/did not do (all of which were trivially disprovable, yet the proof was ignored and the lie spoken even more resolutely), dismissial of emperical proof as to the falseness of the religion itself (examples include DNA, ear-wax, facial-feature, and other studies disproving the core tenat of the Mormon faith and the Book of Mormon, that Native Americans are decendents of an Israelite named Lehi who was led by the Lord to bring his family to America, whereupon the bad sons Lamen and Lemual were cursed by God and given dark skin--I kid you not. Other examples include Egyptologists looking at the Paparyi the Mormon "Book of Abraham" is supposed to be a translation of, which has subsequently been shown to be a common burial document having nothing to do with Abraham, or any other Biblical figure, and the list goes on).
The deceitfulness of this subculture, both to themselves and to others, is quite well documented on the Recovery from Mormonism site, and surpasses even my (low) expectations based on my personal experience.
Alas, any such study would likely suffer the same fate this post is likely to suffer, and indeed the fate that most articles and literature critical of that religion suffer (despite mountains of factual evidence and well documented research): getting spiked (or moderated) into oblivion by those supportive of such groups.
MythTV works great with my HDPC3000 card for HDTV, and my Hauppauge 350 for old-school low-res cable.
But how much are we willing to pay for said alternative system? I believe the article said that it was going to cost $3-4bn. That's a lot of money. For my money, I would rather accept that when the US gets all flustered about a possible terrorist attack (or G-d forbid, another happens), my GPS gets bad accuracy or is turned off for a little while.
First, 3-4 billion is chump change when it comes to government spending, and particularly so when it comes to international consortia spending. The economic value far outweighs the cost, by orders of magnitude.
Second, while you may find it merely inconvinient to have your GPS stop working, try telling that to a pilot (or 300 passengers) on a plane that is landing on a GPS precisions approch with weather at minimums and terrain all around, when the government decides to get into a tizzy and "disable" their approach. WAAS is intended to counteract that, but the point remains: they are having to deploy another multi-billion dollar system to offset the deliberate design issues and unreliability of the first multi-billion dollar system.
The Europeans are spending the money once, and getting a better, more reliable system they, instead of we, control. It makes all the sense in the world, and will probably allow their planes to land in near zero-zero conditions (unlike GPS+WAAS), and certainly with more precision than GPS (1 cm accuracy!).
Finally, fuck the US if we don't like it. We have no business, and no right, to dictate to the rest of the world what technology they may, or may not, deploy. As for our "reserving the right" to shoot down their satelites, I'm sure they (and the Russians, and the Chinese) reserve the "right" to nuke us back into the stoneage if they feel sufficiently threatened. That so-called "right" (talk about orwellian doublespeak!) to destroy something or someone suddenly becomes a lot less appealing when one is on the receiving end, doesn't it?
Time for a little lesson. A Libertarian is someone who believes in maximizing personal freedom. It is a, and this is important, POLITICAL party esposing a particular political belief. You seem to be confusing it with Capitolism, which, once again important, is an ECONOMIC theory.
Time for a little reality check. Libertarians ignore all power centers other than governmental, from the local bully threatening your wife in a restaurant to the private "security forces" cults like the Mormons employ, to the powerful multinational corporations that can (and do) create and destroy entire communities.
Libertarians are usually the first to point out, on this site and elsewhere, that businesses, churches, private clubs, etc. aren't restrained by the U.S. constitution, and do not have to respect freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, or any of the other basic freedoms enshrined therein (notice a word repeating frequently?).
Individual FREEDOM is lost when you replace a democratically elected government with any of the above, which is exactly what happens when you persue the libertarian lassaiz-faire approach to regulation. Those policies were followed in the 19th century, with such wonderful results like child labor, employer massacres of disgruntled workers by private armies such as the Pinkertons for no other reason than that said workers had the audacity to attempt to organize into unions, and of course everyone's favorite, and the logical extreme when government imposes no restrictions at all on the treatment of people by other people, religions, or business entities: slavery.
Libertarianism isn't a recipe for more freedom, its a recipe for vastly less freedom beneath the heal of an unrestrained coporate and/or religious dictatorship (depending on where you live, and which unrestrained bully gets ahold of the reigns of power). In short, it is a recipe for disaster that would make the current appalling situation in this country look like a picnic by comparison.
So please accept the fact that the rest of us are going to laugh at and openly mock your reactionary, ignorant inability to parse even the most basic facts of reality, probably while rolling our eyes and shaking our heads.
But don't let that keep you from pulling your head out of the sand.
That's interesting - in the UK liberal means "centre", with a slight lean to the left. While conservative is "right". So in the US I thought the republicans are "right" (the equivalent of our conservatives) and the democrats are "left" (the equivalent of our old labour party, although they're pretty much "right" now). Is that correct?
No. Republicans are extreme right, Democrats are right. Your Tory party is about as far left as our Democrats, while our replubicans can best be described as ranging from far to the right of your Tories to even further right, up to and including to the right of, well, if I say his name, someone will invoke Godwin's Joke.
The Democrats are pro-business, about 40% pro-war, mostly but not entirely against institutions basic to the rest of the developed world (such as national, comprehensive healthcare, subsidized access to university for every intellectually qualified prospective student, etc.) and pro-corporate welfare (subsidies, tax breaks, business incentives, etc.). The democrats do believe in a secular separation of church and state, due process, and other quaint constitutional notions no longer in vogue in the United States, and they do by and large support women's rights, including their right to reproductive choice.
The Republicans are pro-business, about 95% pro-war, almost entirely against institutions basic to the rest of the developed world (national heathcare, etc.), and are pro-corporate welfare. The republicans by and large do not believe in a secular separation of church and state, play it very fast and loose with due process, and are seemingly unconcerned with other quaint notions of constitutionality such as the right to be secure in one's person (privacy). They almost entirely do not support womens rights, and believe a woman's body becomes chattel of the church and state upon conception and remains so until the feotus matures into a human being and is born, whether the woman likes it or not.
As you can see, the political menu de jour in America is: would you like your leadership to the right, or to the extreme right? It is interesting that more and more companies are following Daimler-Chryslers lead, and moving their operations to Europe, where the national heathcare systems have remained affordable while American healthcare costs have gone through the roof. The Darwinistic system Republicans and many Democrats have lead us to erroneously believe to be more economically sustainable than "those damn European socialists" is in fact much less scalable, and much less maintainable, than their systems. Myths of Canadians standing in line to come to American hospitals notwithstanding (sorry, having the Canadian equivelent of Bill Gates decide to jump to the front of the queue for heart bypass surgery by buying a place in an American hospital doesn't count--and it's surprising that, all this while we're lauding our system for being so great, no one asks about the person who got bumped out of the queue by our wonderful system to accomodate the wealthy Canadians who can't be bothered to wait their turn in their own system, nor does anyone seem to notice that the truly wealthiest-of-the-wealthy are all going to Paris and London for treatment, not the US, but I digress), we have the most expensive, and least bang-for-buck medical system in the developed world, so much so that companies are finding it more affordable to operate in Europe than in the US, long vacations and better benefits notwithstanding.
It confuses me as to why Congress should have any say in companies creating additional networks. Interstate commerce clause? What a joke.
Oh Good Lord, another uninformed, Libertarian knee-jerk response.
The reason(s) Congress has a say over how the telcos behave include the fact that
1) The telcos wire runs across public lands
2) The telcos are local monopolies (at least in terms of last-mile copper, and in many places, in terms of telecom services in general)
3) The telcos received subsidies to build their network from public money, then were given (read:bribed the government) ownership of infrastructure built in no small part with public funds.
When the telcos give up that portion of their network built with the help of government subsidies and incentives, remove every last inch of wire from public lands and access ways, and have real, level-playing-field, true competative-free-market-style competitors, then maybe congressional oversight can be revisited. Until then, please accept the fact that most of the rest of us are going to laugh at and openly mock your reactionary Corporate Interests ueber Alles rhetoric, probably while rolling our eyes and shaking our heads.
Offsetting moderation abuse by religious fanatics and others easily offended by facts...
...
Marquette is a Catholic school. Free speech has never been a priority in the Catholic Church. They've silenced Galileo, Oscar Romero, whistleblowers of sexual abuse,
Not only did the Catholic church silenced many visionaries in the past, they have within the last year appointed the man Pope John Paul II assigned to oversee the suffling of pedophile priests one-step-ahead of the law as the new (no doubt child-friendly) pope! One complicit man who willfully looked the other way as pedophiles were shipped to new parishes for a little "fresh meat" (and a stay-out-of-jail-free card) is now on the fast track to being sainted, while the man who actually did the shuffling is now pope (and no doubt soon to be promoted to the Right Hand of God Himself).
The sad thing is, mothers the world over are redoubling their efforts to be sure their children attend mass. Isn't that just precious?
Marquette is a Catholic school. Free speech has never been a priority in the Catholic Church. They've silenced Galileo, Oscar Romero, whistleblowers of sexual abuse, ...
Not only did the Catholic church silenced many visionaries in the past, they have within the last year appointed the man Pope John Paul II assigned to oversee the suffling of pedophile priests one-step-ahead of the law as the new (no doubt child-friendly) pope! One complicit man who willfully looked the other way as pedophiles were shipped to new parishes for a little "fresh meat" (and a stay-out-of-jail-free card) is now on the fast track to being sainted, while the man who actually did the shuffling is now pope (and no doubt soon to be promoted to the Right Hand of God Himself).
The sad thing is, mothers the world over are redoubling their efforts to be sure their children attend mass. Isn't that just precious?
The ATI binary driver does not support dual-head. You get a corrupted image of the main head on the second screen (although the cursor renders ok).
That is utterly false (you need to reexamine your config...the imperfection is yours). We make extensive use of ATI cards on multi-headed system, includung dual-headed boxes using both the proprietary and xorg drivers (depending on model and whether or not the user wants 3d acceleration), as well as a couple of quad-headed systems (dual dual-head cards xineramaed together--no 3d acceleration in the 4-head configuration, of course).
The Nvidia driver supports both Xinerama and Twin View.
Yes, it does. As does the ATI driver. I had no idea this thread would attract so many Nvidia astroturfers. I use both products, both work fine, both support 3d on x86 and amd64, both support dual-head just fine.
Doesn't change the fact that their religious beliefs are fucking nuts.
That they are, and as with any mentally ill person, the "niceness" is often feigned and certainly not stable.
But, once you get past that, they're wonderful people. And I'm completely serious. Aside from the whacko religious rantings, society would be very much enhanced if we all acted slightly more like your average morman.
No, we wouldn't be better off. At all.
I am related to mormons (a parent, a sibling, various and sundry extended family), and I can tell you that they are "great people" only superficially, and only so long as they believe they can attract you to their way of thinking "by example."
I can tell you from personal experience that, if they don't get what they want from you, be it financial support of otherwise unsustainable lifestyles (they are told to have as many kids as possible, while still in college, then to hit up family first, friends second, and the church last when the money inevitably falls short, all the while still paying 10% of their gross income to the church), or "respect and acknowledgement" of the "superiority" of their beliefs, they turn into some of the most vindictive, nasty people you'll ever know.
To the point of taking it upon themselves to do everything in their power to break up marriages they don't approve of, as has happened to me personally, my parent leading the charge. (They failed, and now I thankfully have no contact whatsoever with them).
You really should check out exmormon.org, particularly the bullitin board where people are posting their personal experiences in recovering from the depredations of that partiuclar religious cult. As with most groups recovering from abuse, there is a lot of anger there, but read past that to what people there are going through, and what their Mormon family and friends are doing to them for their "crime" of doubting or rejecting the Mormon faith, and you begin to get an inkling of the ugliness that underlies the benign Mormon PR ficade. My experience, which my wife and I believed to be unbelievably extreme, is in fact almost laughably common among Mormons who begin to doubt the provably (and proven) false claims of their religion, and those of us non-Mormons unfortunate enough to have had close ties to the more devout (a number of people recovering from the abusiveness of Mormonism have themselves never been Mormons, but that has proven to be little protection when their spouse converts and then divorces them on instruction from their Bishop, in order to marry a "good, upstanding" Mormon, as happened in at least one case).
Back on topic, for "contributing" so much to genetics with their genealogoy fetish, the Mormon leadership sure is eager to reject genetic proof that the premise of the Book of Mormon (that native Americans are descendents of an Isrealite named Lehi) if false, and to excommunicate or disfellowship those who have done the science. Mormonism is anything but a bastion of science or intellectualism (in fact, their current leadership has stated openly that--and I'm paraphrasing--"intellectuals are an enemy of the church")
Disclaimer: I make extensive use of both nvidia and ati hardware under GNU/Linux.
Nvidia is really the only way to go for 3D in linux. If you really only need 2D, I've heard good things about the old Matrox cards, but good luck finding one.
Not true. The proprietary ATI drivers (currently version 8.18.8) work as well as the nvidia drivers on both my amd64 and x86 boxes. Nvidia works fine (except for incessent flickering at 1920x1200 on one machine), as does ATI (but no flicker on that one machine). ATI works better ati 1920x1200@60Hz, but nvidia draws specular hilights on a celestia-rendered hi-res Earth better that ATI. In short, its a wash, with each manufacturer/driver having strengths and weaknesses the other does not.
The choice these days is one of personal preference. Your comment is at least a year behind the current state of the art, at least in the GNU/Linux world.
FREEUSER: FreeUser thinks he's the smartest cooking in the cookie jar, so he plans a flawless crime where both he, his wife, and their friends get everything they want. He forgets noothing, being perfect, and his plan works flawlessly.
:-)
... but there are probably not more than a hundred storylines that can be fitted around just about every story ever told, if not precisely, then close enough to facilitate patent litigation. This development is beyond appalling. If this application is approved, and the courts uphold the patent as legitimate, it will spell the end of huge areas of creativity: novel and short story writing, film, stageplay, and any song lyric that tells a story.
Of course, while good for me, the story is probably less intersting to others, and lacks the "drama" of people who actually have to suffer, but it works for me, and it is an 8th story type (now patent pending).
You're right, there are more than 7 basic categories
I share your digust with Daylight Savings Time, but the disgust shouldn't be aimed at those who invented it (Ben Franklin) or those who implimented it, it should be aimed at the whole morass of humanity that is so fucking inflexible we refuse to change our schedules (or, as another poster pointed out, our rediculous driving habits in 12mpg SUVs) and instead leave those who would like to increase energy savings no other choice but to change time itself.
For all Ben Franklin contributed to the world, this one was not only pointless and arbitrary, but couterproductive.
I don't agree. I think it is quite productive. It results in energy savings, despite peoples' inflexibility in their habits and their schedules. Now, we could institute a "you waste energy, you die" policy and breed for humans with a more flexible sense of schedule and better driving habits, but those of us who even dare suggest such methods of, ah, eugenics, tend to be labelled nazi-sympathisers, damn liberals, or somesuch. [/humor]
We are mere months (maybe a year) away from the ability to completely scan any book and convert it accurately to text based PDF in under an hour. It will likely be F/OSS software that does it, released ostensibly to save old books in the public domain.
When this happens, books will end up on P2P just like movies, music, porn, and images. Just as P2P helps people find interesting musicians and performers, it will help people find interesting writers and authors.
As an author, I couldn't agree more.
Most people want to curl up with a good book and read in comfort, lying in bed, on their couch, in their recliner (cracking fire and comfortable cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate optional). A few folks don't mind sitting in front of a computer to read, but the rest of us like good old fashioned, physical books in our hands, and what Google is doing is not only NOT a threat to the sale of traditional bound books, it is a boon.
What it isn't a boon for is old guard publishers having a stranglehold on exposure anymore, meaning that self-published, POD, and other less traditional forms of publishing gain more leverage in attracting interested eyes, without having to somehow get ahold of that coveted shelf space in a brick-and-mortor store.
Not that I don't covet that for my novel (I do), but the more accessible the information is to those looking for it, the more people will buy the physical version of the book.
The AAR has its head up its ass, and win-or-lose on this particular lawsuit, they and their constituents are going to lose bigtime if they don't update their mentality to fit with the technological reality of today, and begin exploiting the opportunities it offers.
Nigeria is a nice country. Be a shame if anything happened to it.
Fox, meet henhouse. Keep an eye on it, will ya?
- Bill
This is only "sort of" a hoax. Yes, self-destructing DVDs a lá DivX are a hoax, but note carefully how Microsoft phrased their response.
MPEG2 streams cannot self-destruct in this way, but the option has been available for quite some time for material encoded in windows media, which just so happens to be the format for HD-DVD. So, while self-destructing DVDs are a hoax, self-destructing HD-DVDs are part of the design specification, whether it is marketed that way or not.
The problem with this? Now that we've had one asinine hoax (which, truth be told, was not all that implausible, given the history of DivX and the past behavior of Microsoft vis-á-vis "trusted computing" and DRM), Microsoft's spin machine will have a much easier time downplaying very legitimate fears when their HD-DVDs ship with exactly this capability designed in.
ObSovietRussiaStandy: In Fascist America they spread false rumor of something horrific, get reaction, debunk it, then quietly do something equally horrific and allow the outrage from the same group of people duped before to fall on deaf ears, getting away with it completely. When the consiquences come home to root, they turn around, blame the victim, and have their numbers go up in the polls. Welcome to the New World Order, shopper.
That staccato sound you hear are a series of chairs striking the wall of Balmer's office. Apparently he isn't handling the decline (and inevitable fall) of his and Bill's little empire so well--rumor has it they've even taken to suing any former employees who go to work for their most potent competitor, a company named for 10100 that actually innovates rather than obliterates.
:-)
I know schadenfreude isn't the most positive emotion to nurture, but it's going to be an absolute pleasure watching this play out.
OK, I've been a long time slashdot reader (note my userid), and while editorial standards have been slipping noticably over the last year or two, this advertisiement posing as a review really takes the cake.
Is your employer getting paid outright for these, or are they a result of personal kickbacks under the table?
Ugh. I'm just about through with this site.