I'm unhappy that you could care less about either the topic at hand or that your drugs are ending up in my drinking water. If something that someone is pissing out and flushing down a toilet ends up in your drinking water, I hardly think that the parent is at fault.
That is a good point. However, I personally feel that the whole 'population density' argument is overused and often provided as a cop-out. That is just my opinion though, and not a terribly well supported one since I have nothing to back it up (there might be supporting data out there, I just haven't done my homework).
Your point would make sense except (at least in the United States) we pay the most and get the least in comparison with most other countries. This includes tech areas like broadband and cellular service, but extends even to health care. It's not a matter of a willingness to pay for a service, it's that superior service is simply unavailable at any price.
Interesting idea. Unfortunately, any savings would be offset by the addition of a Necromancer Division tasked with resurrecting those marked alive who are, in fact, dead.
Not trying to sound mean or cruel, but honestly that is a lot of time and money loss just to say, you can't patent it because others need to be able to copy it. That is what copyright is for, not patents. You don't seem to understand the difference between the two.
Why does someone in a low skill job deserve $30+ hour, full benefits, and a pension plan?
What is with the superiority complex of Slashdotters? Who are you to say that labor jobs are low skill? Can you assemble an automobile? Can you construct a high rise, or even something "easy" like a house? Can you repair mass transit vehicles, weld steel dangling a few hundred feet in the air, or ensure that a jet engine will operate safely?
Just because you can operate a computer doesn't mean you're any better than "low-skilled" people.
...and use it to blacklist you and your family, prohibit you from moving freely about your own country (not to mention the world) without excessive interrogations and searches, and use all violations of your civil liberties as an excuse to keep everyone else safe.
I've actually specifically observed Comcast throttling bittorrent traffic. As you've likely read, they do this by sending RST packets to people on the other end of a bittorrent connection. Anytime an upload or download jumps high (generally over 700 kB/s for downloads, ballpark 100-150 kB/s upload) every torrent connection will simultaneously drop, only to gradually work back up as everything reconnects. The last few days I've noticed my upload cap has been held to around 30 kB/s which is a completely new development, but apparently they've been doing some upgrading in this area so I can't say exactly what the cause of that might be.
Luckily Verizon has been running FiOS all around this area in the last couple months, so actual competition may heat up a little. I know a couple of people with FiOS and they've had nothing but good things to say (and you might call these people "power users"). Anecdotal, of course, but worth mentioning.
Sometimes the system manages to work. I live in Pennsylvania and we were successful in getting Rick Santorum out of the Senate. He was considered one of the more powerful Republicans as I'm sure you remember. Of course, he was also a total douche and the voters simply got fed up with him. There are still Republicans in Congress from PA (Arlen Specter for one), but as a Democrat myself I find that Specter is generally quite reasonable even if I didn't vote for him. Maybe if we had more people willing to find common ground rather than bickering over red state/blue state we could actually get some shit done in this country.
This is a little OT, but powerpoint was the key to passing graduation projects that were conveniently implemented for the first time the year I graduated high school (2003). It was hilarious, they would reject your project (you got a few chances), and quite literally if you came back with the same thing plus a powerpoint presentation they ate it up. Bonus points if you made a video to go along with it.
Although I do agree with you, voice recognition of a song is significantly different than voice recognition of regular speech. For an anecdotal example, I had 2 years of a Spanish in high school (not that long ago, but I guess it's getting there) and although I don't claim to be fluent, I can recognize certain things even now and I was much better at it then. One day the teacher had a copy of a Disney song in English and in Spanish. Just about everyone had heard the song and knew at least part of it. First we heard the English version, then the Spanish, and our assignment was to write down as many words that we could recognize from the Spanish version. Most people had a list numbering in the single digits.
Granted this shouldn't be much of a surprise whenever you consider that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize words sung in your native language, but it was far more difficult than I thought it would be to recognize foreign lyrics (especially when I was aware of the English ones).
I'm completely unfamiliar with the inner workings of speech recognition software but I have a feeling its much more difficult that it sounds (pardon the pun).
Who's to say whether China would pretend to abide by the rules like the rest of the world does? Wait, by "rest of the world" you mean the United States? I'm pretty sure calling your enemy an "enemy combatant" (what the hell else could they be?) and shoving the off to gitmo is at least on par with what China would do.
Perhaps Europe respects such laws, but the USA consistently makes up "loopholes" to excuse themselves from abiding by the treaties they sign.
Speaking of albums disappearing, the author quite literally contradicts himself here:
Worse yet, if you sign up for a subscription, you're saying that it's okay for the music service to wipe out your music collection if you cancel. Imagine walking into your living room as all your books disappear because you changed libraries, or your DVD collection disappears because you switched from Blockbuster to Netflix. It's funny because that is exactly what DRM is supposed to do!
Slashdot Mirror
Do you drive a car? Do you own a home with a controlled temperature? Do you use electricity? Do you utilize a public sewage system?
You're a hypocrite if you think people who pee while taking prescription drugs are the source of contamination of anything.
Let me be the first one to welcome our free-drug distributing overlords!
If we're going to ban software used in identity theft I guess we can kiss the browser and e-mail client goodbye.
Of course, I can't produce evidence since it's proprietary.
In other news, OOXML will be in compliance with ODF.
If they hadn't been saying that very same thing for the past decade it might actually be believable.
That is a good point. However, I personally feel that the whole 'population density' argument is overused and often provided as a cop-out. That is just my opinion though, and not a terribly well supported one since I have nothing to back it up (there might be supporting data out there, I just haven't done my homework).
How so? I'm not really aware that my tax dollars are being used to fund Comcast or Verizon, although I really don't know, ergo I might be wrong.
Your point would make sense except (at least in the United States) we pay the most and get the least in comparison with most other countries. This includes tech areas like broadband and cellular service, but extends even to health care. It's not a matter of a willingness to pay for a service, it's that superior service is simply unavailable at any price.
Interesting idea. Unfortunately, any savings would be offset by the addition of a Necromancer Division tasked with resurrecting those marked alive who are, in fact, dead.
You're absolutely right! Steve Jobs is finally taking a page out of Bill Gates' book!
I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't realize mentos weren't involved until I read your post :-\
What is with the superiority complex of Slashdotters? Who are you to say that labor jobs are low skill? Can you assemble an automobile? Can you construct a high rise, or even something "easy" like a house? Can you repair mass transit vehicles, weld steel dangling a few hundred feet in the air, or ensure that a jet engine will operate safely?
Just because you can operate a computer doesn't mean you're any better than "low-skilled" people.
...and use it to blacklist you and your family, prohibit you from moving freely about your own country (not to mention the world) without excessive interrogations and searches, and use all violations of your civil liberties as an excuse to keep everyone else safe.
And my dumb American ass thought you were talking about cocaine!
I've actually specifically observed Comcast throttling bittorrent traffic. As you've likely read, they do this by sending RST packets to people on the other end of a bittorrent connection. Anytime an upload or download jumps high (generally over 700 kB/s for downloads, ballpark 100-150 kB/s upload) every torrent connection will simultaneously drop, only to gradually work back up as everything reconnects. The last few days I've noticed my upload cap has been held to around 30 kB/s which is a completely new development, but apparently they've been doing some upgrading in this area so I can't say exactly what the cause of that might be.
Luckily Verizon has been running FiOS all around this area in the last couple months, so actual competition may heat up a little. I know a couple of people with FiOS and they've had nothing but good things to say (and you might call these people "power users"). Anecdotal, of course, but worth mentioning.
Sometimes the system manages to work. I live in Pennsylvania and we were successful in getting Rick Santorum out of the Senate. He was considered one of the more powerful Republicans as I'm sure you remember. Of course, he was also a total douche and the voters simply got fed up with him. There are still Republicans in Congress from PA (Arlen Specter for one), but as a Democrat myself I find that Specter is generally quite reasonable even if I didn't vote for him. Maybe if we had more people willing to find common ground rather than bickering over red state/blue state we could actually get some shit done in this country.
This is a little OT, but powerpoint was the key to passing graduation projects that were conveniently implemented for the first time the year I graduated high school (2003). It was hilarious, they would reject your project (you got a few chances), and quite literally if you came back with the same thing plus a powerpoint presentation they ate it up. Bonus points if you made a video to go along with it.
Although I do agree with you, voice recognition of a song is significantly different than voice recognition of regular speech. For an anecdotal example, I had 2 years of a Spanish in high school (not that long ago, but I guess it's getting there) and although I don't claim to be fluent, I can recognize certain things even now and I was much better at it then. One day the teacher had a copy of a Disney song in English and in Spanish. Just about everyone had heard the song and knew at least part of it. First we heard the English version, then the Spanish, and our assignment was to write down as many words that we could recognize from the Spanish version. Most people had a list numbering in the single digits.
Granted this shouldn't be much of a surprise whenever you consider that it can sometimes be difficult to recognize words sung in your native language, but it was far more difficult than I thought it would be to recognize foreign lyrics (especially when I was aware of the English ones).
I'm completely unfamiliar with the inner workings of speech recognition software but I have a feeling its much more difficult that it sounds (pardon the pun).
Perhaps Europe respects such laws, but the USA consistently makes up "loopholes" to excuse themselves from abiding by the treaties they sign.
Come on, no need to be a dick about it. Throw me a few bands and I'd be glad to.