Why don't advertisers go with static ads? That is, still jpegs or something that just sit unobtrusively on the side of the page and tell you they're sponsoring the page? I mean, Kuro5hin has this sort of thing, and it works well. The logos aren't annoying, and they attract just as much attention as animated gifs -- possibly more, since the eye doesn't automatically flinch away from the pictures thinking "oh, no, ads!"
Besides, they do this at sports events and stuff -- still pictures stuck on the boards of the hockey rink or whatever -- and it seems to work well enough to pay top dollar for...
And with creative use of frames [shudder] you could periodically load a new static picture -- once a minute, say. They're small enough that it wouldn't suck nearly as much bandwidth as animated banners (to say nothing of in-your-face javascript).
I have a TV-tuner card, because my computer monitor is much nicer than the
little TV I own. Until recently I had a cheap mono VCR, but I wanted
something a little nicer to hook up to my stereo to go with the nicer
picture. So I bought a (fairly cheap) stereo VCR. Problem is, when I
hook it up to my TV tuner card, the VCR thinks it's another VCR and that
I'm pirating video tapes, and engages Macrovision, destroying the picture.
(Well, inserting stupid little wavy lines.) Now, I understand I can go to
an electronics store and get a "gain stabilizer" or something to defeat the Macrovision for this (perfectly legal) use. However, under DMCA gain
stabilizers become illegal, even though all I want to do is watch a movie
(or even TV!).
The biggest problem with the MB test is that the results are presentes as a set of four letters, with no indication of your score. I took the test twice, a few years apart, and three of the letters completely reversed. (These were two different tests, but I think I might have changed a bit in the interim as well, hard to say.) The thing is, on those three indices I scored pretty much in the middle of the scale. On one I was exactly even -- I forget which one, but it's as if I was as much I as E or something -- and it just labelled me as the default. And on many questions whether I picked A or B was a arbitrary -- either would apply (or neither, at times). This is completely hidden in the way the scores are presented.
If the test is going to be used for anything serious, I hope (a) the test is a long one (many questions, better stats), and (b) the *scores* are presented for each scale, not just the final set of four numbers.
There's an enourmous amount of philosophy involved in Physics. Philosophy is just an attempt at trying to understand what you're looking at; without that, it's all just meaningless math. Interpreting the math requires imagination and philosophy, and the resulting insights are what allow a physicist to understand what's going on and produce more math, which leads to more interpretation, etc etc. In other words, it's often that "metaphysical claptrap" that guides the experiments and theories.
Besides, physicists are looking for the meaning, nature, and source of life. Physics is what governs how things behave and interact, and that is what governs life, after all. (And it doesn't always take a lot of hand-waving to get there, either; there's a lot of physics involved in biology and chemistry, for example. Then there are things like astronomy and geology and oceanography, which explore how the Earth came to have conditions to support life, etc.)
There's a database called Spires that maintains an enormous database of particle physics papers. Some of these are even scanned (not OCR) versions of papers from the 30's and 40's. You can download many of the papers (although for some only the abstracts are available online) in.ps or other formats.
I'm not sure who holds the copyrights on this stuff, though; the ability to publish on line might be a part of the agreement when you have one of these journals publish your stuff, or they might just do it anyway and nobody complains because it's so useful.
As many here have pointed out, using these stats to say "look, fictional violence decreases real violence!" has no basis. There may be a correlation (increased fictional, decreased real) but that doesn't imply a causal relationship. (An equally "valid" conclusion would be to say that the decrease in real-world violence is driving kids to play games and watch movies!)
One thing that can be said about this is that the stats do not support the thought that fictional violence leads to real violence. This is a useful thing to point out to the Fearless Leaders and other anti-violent-media advocates. But be careful not to get carried away and make the same mistake they're making -- drawing conclusions where none exist.
I don't see this as FUD, or derogatory, and I don't see how politics should be involved. As is pointed out, the fix is easy (either update the package, or turn off the daemon, or both), so we don't have to wait for a service pack or anything.
And I'm very glad to know about the bug and the fix; it's something of a showstopper, and I didn't know the update manager was active by default, so this is valuable information -- not RedHat bashing.
It doesn't seem the article itself is online. The references are all that are linked from the Science News homepage. A subscription is probably required to get the actual story.
As one of my profs once said, "There are two problems with the mercury telescope. It can only point straight up. And the fumes make you go maaaaad."
-Erf C.
What's going on in Canada?
on
Lawsuits Suck
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· Score: 1
I'm Canadian./. is obviously quite American-dominated, which makes sense since it's based in the US. What this means is that I don't know a whole lot about the state of electronic rights here in Canada. So a couple of questions:
Is there a Canada-oriented analog of slashdot?
Is there a Canadian branch or analog of the EFF?
Where can I look to find what draconian IP laws have been passed here in Canada, or are about to pass, without wading through law books (IANAL)? Are we in imminent danger of having our own version of DMCA?
How applicable are things like the DMCA to Canadians, both in technical and practical terms? (My impression: technically the DMCA can't touch us, but practically if they can arrest someone in Norway over it...)
I realize that, in the happy circumstance that Canadian law is more "enlightened" and we don't have these nasty, nasty laws in place already, we should still mention them to our government reps to warn them to keep things that way. Things like the DMCA seemed (from an external point of view) to blindside a lot of people in the US (and for all I know, they've already blindsided us in Canada, too).
Actually, accellerators/colliders are really just in particle physics -- oceanography, solid state, and other branches of physics don't usually use accellerators (well, sometimes they're useful in solid state).
Why accellerators in particle physics? That's pretty much the entire field. We can't exactly cut open a proton with a scalpel, or look at it under a microscope, so we do the next best thing -- break it open. See what happens when we hit particle A against particle B really, really hard.
"Accellerators" and "colliders" are really the same thing, in practise. The only reason to accellerate these particles is to smash them into other particles.
And of course, my favourite reason for using gigantic accellerators is that we get to use the biggest toys in the entire scientific industry, possibly the world. (Granted, some radio telescopes are pretty big, but they're just not as cool.)
I'm sure games will sell just as well (accounting for numbers of users) on Linux as on Windows or Mac. People are willing to pay for those, for a number of reasons. I expect other types of commercial software will have trouble, though, if only because so many free (both meanings) alternatives exist.
Another question: Are there many truly new programs coming out these days? By that I mean programs that serve a function no program has served before. It seems to me that a lot of non-game commercial software is office stuff or communication stuff, and there's already a vast array of those. And if anything really new does come out, it's rarely (ever?) available on Linux right away, and by the time someone does get around to porting it twelve OS projects are already underway to clone it.
i.e. Giving warranties is a good thing, except when I have to do it.
Not quite. If I pay $200 for some program, it would be nice if the company I bought it from would stand behind it -- that is, make some promise that I'm actually going to get what I'm paying for, which is what a warrenty is supposed to do. If I'm using free software, I'm not paying for anything, so any functionality at all is a bonus.
I don't know if warrenties should be legally required -- though I would suggest not -- but what I am saying is that it's ludicrous to expect warrenties on free software.
I was actually surprised the Government Database wasn't better than it is. I mean, every time I want to do anything through the government, I have to fill out a form with my Social Insurance Number and myriad other details -- basically rewrite my own database entry every time, all tied to the same ID number. It always surprised me that I had to fill all this out again, and that the various agencies don't talk to each other.
Of course, this is made stranger by the fact that (until now) they apparently did talk to each other, they just didn't want us to know it... or something...
It seems to me that, ski mask or no, being able to walk into a grocery store or drug store or whatever and buy stuff without telling anyone who I am... that's a Good Thing, isn't it? I mean, if I buy stuff, and I'm not anonymous, how can my purchase be private?
I thought the mailbox format was quite standard across mail programs -- they all use a single text file with standard headers separating the messages. They all read the same inbox, anyway.
-Erf C.
Hardware DVD decoding on Linux?
on
DVD Recap
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· Score: 1
Forgive my ignorance, but what about video cards that handle DVD? Can't they (or the DVD drives themselves) decode the DVD's without the legal issues surrounding cracking the encryption?
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, they do this at sports events and stuff -- still pictures stuck on the boards of the hockey rink or whatever -- and it seems to work well enough to pay top dollar for...
And with creative use of frames [shudder] you could periodically load a new static picture -- once a minute, say. They're small enough that it wouldn't suck nearly as much bandwidth as animated banners (to say nothing of in-your-face javascript).
-Erf C.
I have a TV-tuner card, because my computer monitor is much nicer than the little TV I own. Until recently I had a cheap mono VCR, but I wanted something a little nicer to hook up to my stereo to go with the nicer picture. So I bought a (fairly cheap) stereo VCR. Problem is, when I hook it up to my TV tuner card, the VCR thinks it's another VCR and that I'm pirating video tapes, and engages Macrovision, destroying the picture. (Well, inserting stupid little wavy lines.) Now, I understand I can go to an electronics store and get a "gain stabilizer" or something to defeat the Macrovision for this (perfectly legal) use. However, under DMCA gain stabilizers become illegal, even though all I want to do is watch a movie (or even TV!).
-Erf C.
If the test is going to be used for anything serious, I hope (a) the test is a long one (many questions, better stats), and (b) the *scores* are presented for each scale, not just the final set of four numbers.
-Erf C.
Besides, physicists are looking for the meaning, nature, and source of life. Physics is what governs how things behave and interact, and that is what governs life, after all. (And it doesn't always take a lot of hand-waving to get there, either; there's a lot of physics involved in biology and chemistry, for example. Then there are things like astronomy and geology and oceanography, which explore how the Earth came to have conditions to support life, etc.)
-Erf C.
I'm not sure who holds the copyrights on this stuff, though; the ability to publish on line might be a part of the agreement when you have one of these journals publish your stuff, or they might just do it anyway and nobody complains because it's so useful.
-Erf C.
One thing that can be said about this is that the stats do not support the thought that fictional violence leads to real violence. This is a useful thing to point out to the Fearless Leaders and other anti-violent-media advocates. But be careful not to get carried away and make the same mistake they're making -- drawing conclusions where none exist.
-Erf C.
And I'm very glad to know about the bug and the fix; it's something of a showstopper, and I didn't know the update manager was active by default, so this is valuable information -- not RedHat bashing.
-Erf C.
It doesn't seem the article itself is online. The references are all that are linked from the Science News homepage. A subscription is probably required to get the actual story.
-Erf C.
As one of my profs once said, "There are two problems with the mercury telescope. It can only point straight up. And the fumes make you go maaaaad."
-Erf C.
I realize that, in the happy circumstance that Canadian law is more "enlightened" and we don't have these nasty, nasty laws in place already, we should still mention them to our government reps to warn them to keep things that way. Things like the DMCA seemed (from an external point of view) to blindside a lot of people in the US (and for all I know, they've already blindsided us in Canada, too).
Thanks.
-Erf C.
Why accellerators in particle physics? That's pretty much the entire field. We can't exactly cut open a proton with a scalpel, or look at it under a microscope, so we do the next best thing -- break it open. See what happens when we hit particle A against particle B really, really hard.
"Accellerators" and "colliders" are really the same thing, in practise. The only reason to accellerate these particles is to smash them into other particles.
And of course, my favourite reason for using gigantic accellerators is that we get to use the biggest toys in the entire scientific industry, possibly the world. (Granted, some radio telescopes are pretty big, but they're just not as cool.)
Oh, and IAAPP. :)
-Erf C.
Well, if Americans can have someone arrested in Norway, I don't imagine they'd have a lot of trouble going after Canadians. But we should try...
-Erf C.
Another question: Are there many truly new programs coming out these days? By that I mean programs that serve a function no program has served before. It seems to me that a lot of non-game commercial software is office stuff or communication stuff, and there's already a vast array of those. And if anything really new does come out, it's rarely (ever?) available on Linux right away, and by the time someone does get around to porting it twelve OS projects are already underway to clone it.
-Erf C.
Not quite. If I pay $200 for some program, it would be nice if the company I bought it from would stand behind it -- that is, make some promise that I'm actually going to get what I'm paying for, which is what a warrenty is supposed to do. If I'm using free software, I'm not paying for anything, so any functionality at all is a bonus.
I don't know if warrenties should be legally required -- though I would suggest not -- but what I am saying is that it's ludicrous to expect warrenties on free software.
-Erf C.
Of course, this is made stranger by the fact that (until now) they apparently did talk to each other, they just didn't want us to know it... or something...
-Erf C.
It seems to me that, ski mask or no, being able to walk into a grocery store or drug store or whatever and buy stuff without telling anyone who I am... that's a Good Thing, isn't it? I mean, if I buy stuff, and I'm not anonymous, how can my purchase be private?
-Erf C.
I don't know that it proves that Napster hurts sales, but it certainly shows that the study is inconclusive...
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Forgive my ignorance, but what about video cards that handle DVD? Can't they (or the DVD drives themselves) decode the DVD's without the legal issues surrounding cracking the encryption?