www.google.com is a DNS CNAME record, a record which does not point to an IP address, but to another name. Windows tracert (and ping) utilities report the IP and the name returned by the server. CNAME records are useful if you want to have multiple (sub)domains that all point to a single IP address. You can, for example, create DNS A record that points realserver.google.com to the actual IP(s) of the server(s) and a bunch of other domains that point to realserver.google.com. Now, if the IP of the server changes, you only need to update one record.
Tracert and Linux traceroute also do reverse DNS lookup, they ask the server for a name for that IP address. This depends primarily on the ISP, without their assistance I cannot change my reverse lookup entry, for example. While multiple domain names can point to a single IP, the IP only points to one domain name.
So, with google it's like this:
www.google.com is a CNAME record that points to www.l.google.com www.l.google.com is a A record that points to 74.125.77.147, 74.125.77.104 and 74.125.77.99 74.125.77.147 points to ew-in-f147.1e100.net 74.125.77.104 pints to ew-in-f104.1e100.net
1e100.net is probably the ISP of that server. It looks like the reverse record is made using the last octet of the IP, what does ew-in-f mean you woud have to ask that IPS.
In any case, that's why tracert reports: Tracing route to www.l.google.com [74.125.77.104] over a maximum of 30 hops:...
11 80 ms 80 ms 79 ms ew-in-f104.1e100.net [74.125.77.104]
people who don't realize they need to update the firmware in their...radio...
I know that some day I'll need to update the firmwares in my radio, but for now they are all working OK. And they also glow:) But I think I should download new versions just so I can update when I need to because the download usually takes more than a week...
CRTs also have the advantage of being able to display a lot of resolutions equally good, while LCDs can only display one resolution well and all others with scale artifacts.
Also, CRTs have good black levels, but LCDs are catching up here.
The only problem now is that CRTs are hard to find locally and are very expensive to buy on ebay because they are big and heavy.
Yes, it's really useful. For example, I am reading a text file, which has an URL in it. I select that URL and it is automatically copied. I now switch to Firefox, select the current URL there and want to paste over it, except I can't - the URL was copied too. So I select it, delete it, then switch back to the text file, select the URL in it, switch to Firefox and now I can paste the URL in the address bar. Really useful.
longer lives for PCs
In what way? I mean the hardware does not become more reliable because of an OS. You can make the PC crash less often if you use a more stable OS, but a hard drive failure does not depend on the OS.
That's nice... I don't have a lot of stuff (for some values of "a lot"), but all of my friends know that before they (or someone they know) throw out an old device (especially old audio equipment - tape recorders etc) they should call me and most of the time I take it.
The oldest working computer device that I have is a dot matrix printer made in ~1985 (Robotron CM 6329.01M), I use it as a backup if my primary printer (also old, but not that old HP PSC 2500CM) stops working. I also have an old MFM hard drive, but somebody took out a chip before giving it to me, so I think that some day I'll buy a Microscience HH725 hard drive, connect the electronics card to the one I have and try to pull out the data.
And my saying is "empty space is wasted space", for now there is enough air outside, so I do not need to stash it inside my house...
Lead is toxic, I agree. Any chemical compound can be fatal in sufficient doses. However, what I was writing about was the claim that an average person has 600 times lead in his system now as opposed to before lead was used in gasoline. What effect does this amount have?
For example, mercury is toxic too, but there is a difference between inhaling the mercury vapor present in one CFL and spilling a few liters of mercury in a room, not cleaning it up and living there.
Well, maybe if he hadn't invented Freon, the refrigerators could have continued to use SO2, so, maybe more people would have died because of leaking fridges, but hey, the precious ozone layer would be saved.
It's great when you already know that Freon causes damage to Ozone or the danger of tetra-ethyl lead, but at the time they were the best solutions to the problems.
Do you also wish that coal powered steam engine was never invented, so we could just use nuclear power instead of pumping so much CO2 to the atmosphere in all those years when coal was the primary or even the only fuel for trains, factories etc.
Also...
Humans living today have some 600 or so times more lead in their systems than those who lived before the use of tetra-ethyl lead as an additive in gasoline.
And... what problems does the higher lead concentration do? At least it does not seem to be fatal...
The relevance is that if the medium stays intact longer then I do not need to worry about it. For example - vinyl or shellac records. You need to clean them before playing, keep them in suitable temperature, humidity etc. However, other than that, you do not need to do anything, until you want to play a record and it does not matter if the last time you played it was a week or 10 years ago. No need to buy disks, make backups etc. just put them somewhere not very dusty (or use protective sleeves), humid or hot.
The same can be said about analog video tapes, but video tapes do not last as long as records (a 60 year old record still plays ok).
The same with audio tapes and cassettes. I can find a 15 year old cassette somewhere in the attic or wherever and it will most likely play.
DVDs and other recordable digital media (except magneto optical disks, but they are too expensive) cannot be stored like records. Even if you want to play the disk once every 10 years, you will still probably need to access it more frequently just to keep it readable.
Books, records, audio tapes and video tapes do not need that kind of maintenance.
And if you think that copying a bunch of DVDs is nothing, try copying 200 of them. If I did not start using LTO tape to archive digital video/audio I would have more than 500 DVD-Rs by now, which I would need to copy every few years. I hope LTO tape lasts longer than DVD0-R and I'll have to swap less tapes when I'll need to copy them to LTO7 or whatever.
One Maxtor drive I have developed a lot of bad sectors, but all Seagate drive I have are without problems. Including one drive made in ~1992, but that most likely was made by Imprimis before it was bought by Seagate (the drive has a sticker that says Seagate ST41200N, but identifies itself as Imprimis 94601-15 to the controller).
Could be, the problem is that the DVDs developed the read errors after some time, which means I had no way of knowing that the drive was bad (if it was the drive).
If I buy a new drive and resume recording DVDs I again won't know about the quality until after 6 years.
However, LTO tapes are more convenient, 100 or 200GB in one tape, takes up less space and I need to swap less tapes to record or copy them.
I have ~200 DVD-Rs that I started recording 7 years ago. Oldest discs are already full of read errors. I am now copying them to LTO2 tape which I hope will last longer. I will probably have to copy my LTO2 tapes some time in the future too, but at least there won't be 200 tapes.
However, for the magnetic tape, I do not need to continuously copy it every few years.
Yes, I know that my issues are not because all digital systems behave the same. However, a VCR is so much simpler. Also, if I built a dedicated PC to record video, I could buy a lot of blank tapes for that price, and with tapes I would not need to buy separate storage, that is, even a big hard drive fill up, so I would need somewhere to put the recordings (I would probably just use LTO2) to free some space. With VHS I just store the tape, so for the price of a dedicated PC for video recording I could buy a lot of blanks.
I also have a camcorder that records digitally (to miniDV tapes). It works OK.
The difference between the camcorder and a PC is that a camcorder is a purpose built device (like a VCR), it does its function better than a multipurpose device (like a PC), that is independent of what technology is used to record. I am sure that a DV VCR or a HDD video recorder would work just as well as my VHS VCR does, but DV tapes are expensive and I already stated my problem with factory made HDD video recorders (DRM).
Keeping a PC running can sometimes be more difficult than with a VCR. Now, while my computers are quite stable, my main PC crashed when I was recording a TV show. I was recording with a VCR and just using the PC to watch the video (since I don't have a separate TV or a Composite/S-Video->VGA converter). If I set a timer, I have to keep the PC running until it finishes recording. If I set a timer a week from now and go somewhere, if the PC crashes while I am away, the recording will not be made. A VCR only needs power, I can connect it to a UPS (it also helps that the VCR uses much less power than a PC) if I really want the recording.
There are more things to video than quality. Ease of use is one of them. Reliability is another.
With digital you need backups, you also need to actively copy the information from old media to newer. A DVD can be damaged beyond repair much easier. Compared to that, I can just store the tape for a long time and it will work. If it gets badly eaten, I can cut out the bad parts and splice the tape, usually though it works just with some lines on the screen. If the tape gets stepped on, I can transfer it to another shell (and clean the tape).
My tape collection is like my record collection - I do not need to do anything until I want to play a tape/record.
In any case, I have a video capture card, SD, but it is enough for me. I actually had that card before I had a VCR, however, I always had some problems with the video recording using a PC, that's why I said that VCR is more reliable: 1.Sometimes the recorded file was without audio. 2.Sometimes the file was without video. 3.Sometimes the recorded file was with video and audio, but had dropouts, as if someone cut out random portions of the recording. 4.Sometimes the recording would not start because the PC though that it would be a great time to change to/from DST, an app that I used to watch TV before setting the timer did not close properly and the capture card was still in use or some other problem.
All in all, I had a success rate of about 40%, where the recording would start as set, be with sound and video, without dropouts and other problems. Oh, and I could not do anything with the PC while it was set to record. So, I finally fed up and just bought a VCR. Now my success rate is ~99%, I can use my PC while the timer is set and/or the VCR is recording. I can also use my VCR to record how I play games, since my VGA has a tv-out connector. I still use my video capture card, but I now use it to copy from VHS to DVD for other people, but I consider a PC to be unusable in doing things, that if they fail, there is no second try (like recording TV or radio shows, I use my VCR to record both) or each attempt takes a long time (for example: copying records - I use a cassette or r2r deck for that).
I use a VCR to record TV shows: 1.It is more convenient and more reliable than using a computer. 2.If I don't like the show I can tape over it, DVD-R cannot be overwritten. 3.On the other hand, If I want to store the show, I can just store the tape, unlike with hard drive based video recorders. 4.No DRM. My tape will play in any VHS VCR that supports PAL video, so if this one breaks beyond repair, I can just get another one. 5.If I am available at the time when the show airs and want to record it, I can pause the tape during commercials and have a tape of the show without commercials. 6.If I had to set the timer to record the show, I can connect another VCR and then edit out the commercials (if I want to store the show, anyway). 7.A 20 year old VHS tape still plays OK, a 6 year old DVD-R usually doesn't.
I now have over 100 tapes that I recorded in the last 3 years.
In any case, my cable company provides analog as well as DVB-C signals, I can record from analog or use a digital tuner, which can be programmed to turn on at the specified time. However, I rarely record more than one show per day, so I just leave the digital tuner on and program my VCR. I am using the digital tuner because I bought my current VCR from abroad and it does not support PAL D/K, so I don't get audio. I tried to add a converter, but while it gave the audio, it also caused some interference with video for some reason.
My next VCR will be a pro model, without tuner, but with more functions and higher quality mechanical parts (also, all functions accessible from the front panel). I also read in the manuals of some of the models that they have a function to start recording immediately after getting a video signal, which would mean that I would just need to set the timer on the digital tuner to record a show.
Also, what you missed from the summary was that Comcast now expects everyone to pay a monthly fee to use their video recorders (be it VHS, DVD or HDD), that is, to be able to set a timer a day or more in advance.
However, the internet is international, so, you either make it play by everybody's rules or let it be free.
Americans are offended by a lot of things, Germans are also offended by a lot of things, but not all the same things as Americans (for example the swastika is banned in Germany, therefore it should not be on the internet, ever), Iranians are offended by a lot of things, and some of those things are not offensive to Americans or Germans. Now make a list of what is offensive in each country, or better - what is offensive to each group of people. Your list will most likely be a complete index of what is on the internet.
If you allow only the information that does not offend anyone on the internet, the internet will be empty.
As for the child porn - how about catching those who make it? Or is it that only watching it harms the child and making it doesn't?
Anyway, this is an intelligent and very interesting post (I actually read all of it). And I have to agree with you, on most parts. Yes, "Religious" and "Intelligent" are not mutually exclusive. However, the loudest are the religious+stupid people whom I described, and you mention. They hang on whatever they read or a priest told them and won't budge even if you show that the earth is older than 6k years.
I too, do not state that there is no possibility for a god to exist, however, as of now, there is no proof and as such, I choose to believe that there is no god, but this can be changed some time in the future).
An average Cristian believes that: 1.A very powerful being created the universe and personally designed humans. 2.Said powerful being has access to this universe and can influence it even after creation. 3.He can see hear everything that happens in this universe, including what people are thinking (so, maybe he can measure the speed and position of every particle). 4.He cares about what people think and has devised a reward/punishment system for them. Said system usually activates only when a person dies and in rare cases when the person still lives. 5.He wants people to behave like it is written in the bible.
And I can't say that I can disprove any of these claims, however: 1.The universe could just happen to come to being without any intervention. 1a.A powerful being could have created a universe, but this could have been an accident. 1b.This could be a computer simulation or something where the creator just set our universal constants and let it roll. Humans evolved without any intervention at all.
2.The creator could not have access to this universe. It was created, took some other dimension and now the creator cannot come here. 2a.The creator has access to this universe, but is bound by its laws of physics, so he can influence it, but not all of it at the same time. 2b.This is a computer simulation and the creator could change the parameters on the fly, but has to refrain from doing so, otherwise his results will not be valid. 2c.The creator has an equivalent of the prime directive in Star Trek just because.
3.If this is a computer simulation, then the creator could measure every particle of our universe, but it may be a lot of work to him, so he does it only for debugging purposes. 3a.The creator can access this universe, but is bound by its laws of physics, so he cannot be everywhere at one for example.
4.The creator might simply not care what we think and have no reward/punishment system after we die. 4a.He might care, but may not be able to do anything about it. 4b.He might care, but just passively (hmm, universe 3341 came out like this... I wonder if I increase the gravitational constant by a few %, maybe the humans will evolve to be less violent. create-universe -config./universe.3341 -set G = G * 1.03 )
5.The Christians may be right up until this point. But the god may have created out universe for entertainment and he wants to watch humans fighting and killing each other. He might even reward people after death based of how many they killed.
All these alternative theories are no more and no less valid than what is written in the bible.
As for my definition of soul... I think that what people call soul is just the software running in out brains. Our brains being like the old style computers where you needed to rewire it to make another program, so can the neuron connections in the brain be software that is inseparable from the hardware and when the hardware fails, the connections break down irreparably.
Yes, because kids are supposed to really understand that sitting in class for 12 years and learning will be really useful when they finish school and go to university or search for work. Yes, a 7 year old is supposed to understand that doing this boring stuff for an eternity (12 years by 7year olds standards) will be somehow useful.
Or maybe he just needs to do well enough so that the teachers don't yell at him and/or parents don't beat him up when he gets a bad mark. That could also make kids get good marks.
On my PC there are 10 svchost processes. Anyway, if firefox made a new process for each tab, I would have 100 firefox processes. There are 100 processes running in my computer now, with that it would be 200.
Firefox is stable enough as it is for me, it does not crash.
Slashdot Mirror
It would also work if you replaced "Mac" with "PC with Linux", except that Linux OS and OpenOffice cost $0.
You mean something like volcano ash, but higher?
Hmm... maybe we need a bigger volcano...
I don't get what you are saying...
www.google.com is a DNS CNAME record, a record which does not point to an IP address, but to another name. Windows tracert (and ping) utilities report the IP and the name returned by the server. CNAME records are useful if you want to have multiple (sub)domains that all point to a single IP address. You can, for example, create DNS A record that points realserver.google.com to the actual IP(s) of the server(s) and a bunch of other domains that point to realserver.google.com. Now, if the IP of the server changes, you only need to update one record.
Tracert and Linux traceroute also do reverse DNS lookup, they ask the server for a name for that IP address. This depends primarily on the ISP, without their assistance I cannot change my reverse lookup entry, for example. While multiple domain names can point to a single IP, the IP only points to one domain name.
So, with google it's like this:
www.google.com is a CNAME record that points to www.l.google.com
www.l.google.com is a A record that points to 74.125.77.147, 74.125.77.104 and 74.125.77.99
74.125.77.147 points to ew-in-f147.1e100.net
74.125.77.104 pints to ew-in-f104.1e100.net
1e100.net is probably the ISP of that server. It looks like the reverse record is made using the last octet of the IP, what does ew-in-f mean you woud have to ask that IPS.
In any case, that's why tracert reports: ...
Tracing route to www.l.google.com [74.125.77.104]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
11 80 ms 80 ms 79 ms ew-in-f104.1e100.net [74.125.77.104]
people who don't realize they need to update the firmware in their ...radio...
I know that some day I'll need to update the firmwares in my radio, but for now they are all working OK. And they also glow :) But I think I should download new versions just so I can update when I need to because the download usually takes more than a week...
Except in most environments you have two clipboards
I was probably using an environment that had a single clipboard, because I remember ^C ^V not working also.
If they fixed it by now, then I take back my comment.
CRTs also have the advantage of being able to display a lot of resolutions equally good, while LCDs can only display one resolution well and all others with scale artifacts.
Also, CRTs have good black levels, but LCDs are catching up here.
The only problem now is that CRTs are hard to find locally and are very expensive to buy on ebay because they are big and heavy.
copy-on-select
Yes, it's really useful. For example, I am reading a text file, which has an URL in it. I select that URL and it is automatically copied. I now switch to Firefox, select the current URL there and want to paste over it, except I can't - the URL was copied too. So I select it, delete it, then switch back to the text file, select the URL in it, switch to Firefox and now I can paste the URL in the address bar. Really useful.
longer lives for PCs
In what way? I mean the hardware does not become more reliable because of an OS. You can make the PC crash less often if you use a more stable OS, but a hard drive failure does not depend on the OS.
That's nice... I don't have a lot of stuff (for some values of "a lot"), but all of my friends know that before they (or someone they know) throw out an old device (especially old audio equipment - tape recorders etc) they should call me and most of the time I take it.
The oldest working computer device that I have is a dot matrix printer made in ~1985 (Robotron CM 6329.01M), I use it as a backup if my primary printer (also old, but not that old HP PSC 2500CM) stops working. I also have an old MFM hard drive, but somebody took out a chip before giving it to me, so I think that some day I'll buy a Microscience HH725 hard drive, connect the electronics card to the one I have and try to pull out the data.
And my saying is "empty space is wasted space", for now there is enough air outside, so I do not need to stash it inside my house...
What if you cut off the plug? Surely you can buy a compatible plug later...
Lead is toxic, I agree. Any chemical compound can be fatal in sufficient doses. However, what I was writing about was the claim that an average person has 600 times lead in his system now as opposed to before lead was used in gasoline. What effect does this amount have?
For example, mercury is toxic too, but there is a difference between inhaling the mercury vapor present in one CFL and spilling a few liters of mercury in a room, not cleaning it up and living there.
Well, maybe if he hadn't invented Freon, the refrigerators could have continued to use SO2, so, maybe more people would have died because of leaking fridges, but hey, the precious ozone layer would be saved.
It's great when you already know that Freon causes damage to Ozone or the danger of tetra-ethyl lead, but at the time they were the best solutions to the problems.
Do you also wish that coal powered steam engine was never invented, so we could just use nuclear power instead of pumping so much CO2 to the atmosphere in all those years when coal was the primary or even the only fuel for trains, factories etc.
Also...
Humans living today have some 600 or so times more lead in their systems than those who lived before the use of tetra-ethyl lead as an additive in gasoline.
And... what problems does the higher lead concentration do? At least it does not seem to be fatal...
The relevance is that if the medium stays intact longer then I do not need to worry about it. For example - vinyl or shellac records. You need to clean them before playing, keep them in suitable temperature, humidity etc. However, other than that, you do not need to do anything, until you want to play a record and it does not matter if the last time you played it was a week or 10 years ago. No need to buy disks, make backups etc. just put them somewhere not very dusty (or use protective sleeves), humid or hot.
The same can be said about analog video tapes, but video tapes do not last as long as records (a 60 year old record still plays ok).
The same with audio tapes and cassettes. I can find a 15 year old cassette somewhere in the attic or wherever and it will most likely play.
DVDs and other recordable digital media (except magneto optical disks, but they are too expensive) cannot be stored like records. Even if you want to play the disk once every 10 years, you will still probably need to access it more frequently just to keep it readable.
Books, records, audio tapes and video tapes do not need that kind of maintenance.
And if you think that copying a bunch of DVDs is nothing, try copying 200 of them. If I did not start using LTO tape to archive digital video/audio I would have more than 500 DVD-Rs by now, which I would need to copy every few years. I hope LTO tape lasts longer than DVD0-R and I'll have to swap less tapes when I'll need to copy them to LTO7 or whatever.
One Maxtor drive I have developed a lot of bad sectors, but all Seagate drive I have are without problems. Including one drive made in ~1992, but that most likely was made by Imprimis before it was bought by Seagate (the drive has a sticker that says Seagate ST41200N, but identifies itself as Imprimis 94601-15 to the controller).
Could be, the problem is that the DVDs developed the read errors after some time, which means I had no way of knowing that the drive was bad (if it was the drive).
If I buy a new drive and resume recording DVDs I again won't know about the quality until after 6 years.
However, LTO tapes are more convenient, 100 or 200GB in one tape, takes up less space and I need to swap less tapes to record or copy them.
So, why do you need to raise the voltage of a computer CPU if you want to overclock it past a certain point?
Have you tried copying 200 DVDs?
I have ~200 DVD-Rs that I started recording 7 years ago. Oldest discs are already full of read errors.
I am now copying them to LTO2 tape which I hope will last longer. I will probably have to copy my LTO2 tapes some time in the future too, but at least there won't be 200 tapes.
However, for the magnetic tape, I do not need to continuously copy it every few years.
Yes, I know that my issues are not because all digital systems behave the same. However, a VCR is so much simpler. Also, if I built a dedicated PC to record video, I could buy a lot of blank tapes for that price, and with tapes I would not need to buy separate storage, that is, even a big hard drive fill up, so I would need somewhere to put the recordings (I would probably just use LTO2) to free some space. With VHS I just store the tape, so for the price of a dedicated PC for video recording I could buy a lot of blanks.
I also have a camcorder that records digitally (to miniDV tapes). It works OK.
The difference between the camcorder and a PC is that a camcorder is a purpose built device (like a VCR), it does its function better than a multipurpose device (like a PC), that is independent of what technology is used to record. I am sure that a DV VCR or a HDD video recorder would work just as well as my VHS VCR does, but DV tapes are expensive and I already stated my problem with factory made HDD video recorders (DRM).
Keeping a PC running can sometimes be more difficult than with a VCR. Now, while my computers are quite stable, my main PC crashed when I was recording a TV show. I was recording with a VCR and just using the PC to watch the video (since I don't have a separate TV or a Composite/S-Video->VGA converter). If I set a timer, I have to keep the PC running until it finishes recording. If I set a timer a week from now and go somewhere, if the PC crashes while I am away, the recording will not be made. A VCR only needs power, I can connect it to a UPS (it also helps that the VCR uses much less power than a PC) if I really want the recording.
There are more things to video than quality. Ease of use is one of them. Reliability is another.
With digital you need backups, you also need to actively copy the information from old media to newer. A DVD can be damaged beyond repair much easier. Compared to that, I can just store the tape for a long time and it will work. If it gets badly eaten, I can cut out the bad parts and splice the tape, usually though it works just with some lines on the screen. If the tape gets stepped on, I can transfer it to another shell (and clean the tape).
My tape collection is like my record collection - I do not need to do anything until I want to play a tape/record.
and 20 year old DVD-R's will retain zero quality.
In any case, I have a video capture card, SD, but it is enough for me. I actually had that card before I had a VCR, however, I always had some problems with the video recording using a PC, that's why I said that VCR is more reliable:
1.Sometimes the recorded file was without audio.
2.Sometimes the file was without video.
3.Sometimes the recorded file was with video and audio, but had dropouts, as if someone cut out random portions of the recording.
4.Sometimes the recording would not start because the PC though that it would be a great time to change to/from DST, an app that I used to watch TV before setting the timer did not close properly and the capture card was still in use or some other problem.
All in all, I had a success rate of about 40%, where the recording would start as set, be with sound and video, without dropouts and other problems. Oh, and I could not do anything with the PC while it was set to record. So, I finally fed up and just bought a VCR. Now my success rate is ~99%, I can use my PC while the timer is set and/or the VCR is recording. I can also use my VCR to record how I play games, since my VGA has a tv-out connector.
I still use my video capture card, but I now use it to copy from VHS to DVD for other people, but I consider a PC to be unusable in doing things, that if they fail, there is no second try (like recording TV or radio shows, I use my VCR to record both) or each attempt takes a long time (for example: copying records - I use a cassette or r2r deck for that).
I use a VCR to record TV shows:
1.It is more convenient and more reliable than using a computer.
2.If I don't like the show I can tape over it, DVD-R cannot be overwritten.
3.On the other hand, If I want to store the show, I can just store the tape, unlike with hard drive based video recorders.
4.No DRM. My tape will play in any VHS VCR that supports PAL video, so if this one breaks beyond repair, I can just get another one.
5.If I am available at the time when the show airs and want to record it, I can pause the tape during commercials and have a tape of the show without commercials.
6.If I had to set the timer to record the show, I can connect another VCR and then edit out the commercials (if I want to store the show, anyway).
7.A 20 year old VHS tape still plays OK, a 6 year old DVD-R usually doesn't.
I now have over 100 tapes that I recorded in the last 3 years.
In any case, my cable company provides analog as well as DVB-C signals, I can record from analog or use a digital tuner, which can be programmed to turn on at the specified time. However, I rarely record more than one show per day, so I just leave the digital tuner on and program my VCR.
I am using the digital tuner because I bought my current VCR from abroad and it does not support PAL D/K, so I don't get audio. I tried to add a converter, but while it gave the audio, it also caused some interference with video for some reason.
My next VCR will be a pro model, without tuner, but with more functions and higher quality mechanical parts (also, all functions accessible from the front panel). I also read in the manuals of some of the models that they have a function to start recording immediately after getting a video signal, which would mean that I would just need to set the timer on the digital tuner to record a show.
Also, what you missed from the summary was that Comcast now expects everyone to pay a monthly fee to use their video recorders (be it VHS, DVD or HDD), that is, to be able to set a timer a day or more in advance.
However, the internet is international, so, you either make it play by everybody's rules or let it be free.
Americans are offended by a lot of things, Germans are also offended by a lot of things, but not all the same things as Americans (for example the swastika is banned in Germany, therefore it should not be on the internet, ever), Iranians are offended by a lot of things, and some of those things are not offensive to Americans or Germans. Now make a list of what is offensive in each country, or better - what is offensive to each group of people. Your list will most likely be a complete index of what is on the internet.
If you allow only the information that does not offend anyone on the internet, the internet will be empty.
As for the child porn - how about catching those who make it? Or is it that only watching it harms the child and making it doesn't?
Somebody should mod you up.
Anyway, this is an intelligent and very interesting post (I actually read all of it). And I have to agree with you, on most parts. Yes, "Religious" and "Intelligent" are not mutually exclusive. However, the loudest are the religious+stupid people whom I described, and you mention. They hang on whatever they read or a priest told them and won't budge even if you show that the earth is older than 6k years.
I too, do not state that there is no possibility for a god to exist, however, as of now, there is no proof and as such, I choose to believe that there is no god, but this can be changed some time in the future).
An average Cristian believes that:
1.A very powerful being created the universe and personally designed humans.
2.Said powerful being has access to this universe and can influence it even after creation.
3.He can see hear everything that happens in this universe, including what people are thinking (so, maybe he can measure the speed and position of every particle).
4.He cares about what people think and has devised a reward/punishment system for them. Said system usually activates only when a person dies and in rare cases when the person still lives.
5.He wants people to behave like it is written in the bible.
And I can't say that I can disprove any of these claims, however:
1.The universe could just happen to come to being without any intervention.
1a.A powerful being could have created a universe, but this could have been an accident.
1b.This could be a computer simulation or something where the creator just set our universal constants and let it roll. Humans evolved without any intervention at all.
2.The creator could not have access to this universe. It was created, took some other dimension and now the creator cannot come here.
2a.The creator has access to this universe, but is bound by its laws of physics, so he can influence it, but not all of it at the same time.
2b.This is a computer simulation and the creator could change the parameters on the fly, but has to refrain from doing so, otherwise his results will not be valid.
2c.The creator has an equivalent of the prime directive in Star Trek just because.
3.If this is a computer simulation, then the creator could measure every particle of our universe, but it may be a lot of work to him, so he does it only for debugging purposes.
3a.The creator can access this universe, but is bound by its laws of physics, so he cannot be everywhere at one for example.
4.The creator might simply not care what we think and have no reward/punishment system after we die. ./universe.3341 -set G = G * 1.03 )
4a.He might care, but may not be able to do anything about it.
4b.He might care, but just passively (hmm, universe 3341 came out like this... I wonder if I increase the gravitational constant by a few %, maybe the humans will evolve to be less violent. create-universe -config
5.The Christians may be right up until this point. But the god may have created out universe for entertainment and he wants to watch humans fighting and killing each other. He might even reward people after death based of how many they killed.
All these alternative theories are no more and no less valid than what is written in the bible.
As for my definition of soul... I think that what people call soul is just the software running in out brains. Our brains being like the old style computers where you needed to rewire it to make another program, so can the neuron connections in the brain be software that is inseparable from the hardware and when the hardware fails, the connections break down irreparably.
Yes, because kids are supposed to really understand that sitting in class for 12 years and learning will be really useful when they finish school and go to university or search for work. Yes, a 7 year old is supposed to understand that doing this boring stuff for an eternity (12 years by 7year olds standards) will be somehow useful.
Or maybe he just needs to do well enough so that the teachers don't yell at him and/or parents don't beat him up when he gets a bad mark. That could also make kids get good marks.
On my PC there are 10 svchost processes. Anyway, if firefox made a new process for each tab, I would have 100 firefox processes. There are 100 processes running in my computer now, with that it would be 200.
Firefox is stable enough as it is for me, it does not crash.
Of course, since the OS must fit around the browser, not the other way around, right?
Ok if it's just firefox, but what if two different programs that I use start demanding different OSs?
Doesn't creating a new process use more memory than a thread?
I mean, there has to be a reason why chrome uses so much memory...
I think the "tab=process" thing should be an option.