Last I checked on those numbers, the laptop and phone have been found and stolen four separate times in the last few hours by various h4ck3r5 0f 7h3 w0r|d hoping to score a piece of that 500-euro reward.
I think the fourth steal was actually the second h4ck3r stealing it back from whomever took it from him. I'd put it in an iron lockbox and wait on the reward to go up!
Oh, wait, he wants the car! Hmm... A license plate and/or VIN would be good.
FDR was a great and well-meaning man, but he was the most socialist president we've ever had. Nothing like sound-good promises to a believe-anything public to earn four consecutive elections!
Don't get me wrong, I like FDR, but thank God there hasn't been anyone like him since. If I wanted to live in a country like [anything in] Europe, I'd cross the Atlantic. (Europe is a wonderful place, but its nations' laws and customs are not what I want to live under.)
Screw POTS. Telephone lines are the past. If they don't have 'em by now, they don't need 'em. Set up broadband and they'll be happy to have more than they started with.
Don't even bother with the phone lines... It's a waste of resources on old technology.
That's a very insightful point (hint hint, moderators), but how many of us are upgrading directly from 1.0 to 1.7? We're commenting on Slashdot, for crying out loud. We've downloaded every alpha and beta release since long before the Mozilla project even had version numbers.:-)
In only a matter of seconds, I'm not going to notice less than a 10% improvement on an application's speed. With something like Photoshop, maybe that would matter.
Of course, I'll download it anyway, because I always update my browsers upon full (non-beta) releases. Just waiting on the full 1.7 release...
The technology editor from Guiness made the comment that "Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago".
"Just a few years ago", a new computer came standard with a 20 megabyte hard drive. The only thing worse than only having 20 megabytes of space is trying to craft a text document in Enable (version 2.15!).
Just trying to be funny, and trying to encourage people to date their references, since "just a few years" in computer technology is vastly different than "just a few years" in the studies of life, the universe and everything.
I'm sorry, but regardless of the merits of the arguments on any side of this case, the use of the word "hijack" in the introduction of the issue simply invokes a bias that destroys any hope for an objective reception of the point at hand. If you want a serious debate, start with a serious question.
This is offtopic, but I believe it deserves attention. Moderation of a comment for being "insightful" should be reserved for comments that are, well, insightful. The quality of being insightful is characterized by perceptiveness, or seeing below the surface to a deeper meaning or truth.
Simply having a good idea is not seeing below the surface of the idea at hand. At best, it should be "interesting" or "underrated". My personal opinion is that this comment is definitely worth modding up, but it is "interesting" rather than "insightful".
I doubt highly that there's one clear "winner". It's really not that simple.
Which is essentially what they said in the article. Here are two key selections:
We'll assign a 1-10 rating for each of them to give you an idea of our general impression of relative quality, but bear in mind that this isn't quite the same as our normal product ratings. We've tested these codecs under a limited set of variables and, while it's a useful examination, there are several aspects that this article didn't attempt to cover, such as streaming server load, variable bitrate and 2-pass encoding, and professional licensing fees.
Though we have certainly examined these four video codecs extensively, this article can by no means be considered the be-all, end-all on their relative merits. There are dozens of parameters and options when it comes to encoding video and, as thorough as we have been, there is much left unexplored.
That being the case, I don't quite see this article as "insightful". It was certainly very interesting, perhaps informative, and even funny for a line or two. But insightful? Well, to each moderator his own moderating...:-)
At the bottom, where the topic is "Encoding Speed", I am pretty sure the red-lettered, bold-faced time for the WMV9 transcoding of the Matrix Reloaded scene (in the second table for the 500 Mbit transcode) should be 4:28, not 2:28 as is shown in the table.
After all, the red is supposed to indicate the slowest encoder, and the green is supposed to indicate the fastest encoder. And if the following text is true...
Windows Media Video 9 is definitely the slowest of the bunch by a wide margin, taking four times as long as the actual clip length to encode the full-resolution video, and not even achieving real-time performance on the 360x240 clips.
...it occurs to me that they should have tested something like South Park the movie or a Family Guy episode too, because solid blocks of color (such as in cartoon animation) are handled in different ways by different codecs. Monsters Inc was a good idea, but they need toons!
Patents do not hide the idea, though; they merely identify it as your idea and allow you to decide how it is duplicated, exploited, etc. People may still use and expand upon a patented procedure, process, etc.
I try to keep my blog's content balanced among legitimate news, personal stories, and random shit. I always link to source material when I quote directly. When there are no direct quotes but I'm just spreading information, I only cite a source if (a) I know who said it first and (b) there aren't so many sources so as to make it common knowledge. Also, I tend to cite my sources just because I wish people would link the cool stuff they find back to the sources.
But there are ups and downs to the good work of the plagiarism police. Imagine if everything anyone ever said on the internet was linked back to where it was found first. Sure, we could find anything and everything we ever wanted to find, but we would have an ungodly sea of links to sift through, not to mention links to a helluva lot of trash that we usually don't link to for very good reasons. So pick your poison.
Personally, I think the balance is about where it needs to be. Fight to protect copyrights just enough to give people credit and an incentive to keep producing more, but not so much that no one else will dare try to expand on their work.
According to copyright law in America -- and this makes sense -- you don't own the idea, because the idea is not your creation.
You own the "fixed creative expression" of the idea. And by extention, it is that expression that is copyrighted to you. Not the idea itself.
"Hey, it seems the search engine wars have begun!"
I love my Google Toolbar and Deskbar. In the last two years, Google's search capabilities have expanded to Google Groups, Google News, Google Image Search, and then some... The Google Services & Tools page lists more than a dozen top-quality, um, services and tools that perform equally as well as or better than most similar entities available elsewhere on the web.
That said, I don't know if there's much to this "search engine war" of which you speak. Then again, bigger wars have started over smaller matters, and competition tends to bring out the best in things (until something completely takes over).
But I didn't post that one. Then again, I made my post in hopes that others would post relevant links as replies to mine, so people could find useful Simpsons links in one thread. But, err, what does it matter... I'm still a karma whore.
The Simpsons Archive -- "the Internet's clearinghouse of Simpsons guides, news, and information" Last Exit to Springfield -- "For All Your Simpsons Needs" (Well, it looks very well done.) nohomers.net -- "the center of all that is simpson"
Slashdot Mirror
It was their April Fool's joke. It was over by the time Europe hit April 2, a good third of a day before April 2 in the U.S.
SuprNova, the best torrent web site ever, is going Japanese.
:-P
I swear, this has nothing to do with today's date.
As of 12:15 EST, 121 people worldwide had died from overdoses of caffeine. Not bad, considering the millions who read the site every minute...
Last I checked on those numbers, the laptop and phone have been found and stolen four separate times in the last few hours by various h4ck3r5 0f 7h3 w0r|d hoping to score a piece of that 500-euro reward.
I think the fourth steal was actually the second h4ck3r stealing it back from whomever took it from him. I'd put it in an iron lockbox and wait on the reward to go up!
Oh, wait, he wants the car! Hmm... A license plate and/or VIN would be good.
No way. This guy is making sense, and he knows exactly which authorities he's dealing with.
You give license plate numbers to police authorities, and you give MAC addresses and IMEI codes to h4ck3r5 0f 7h3 w0r|d.
FDR was a great and well-meaning man, but he was the most socialist president we've ever had. Nothing like sound-good promises to a believe-anything public to earn four consecutive elections!
Don't get me wrong, I like FDR, but thank God there hasn't been anyone like him since. If I wanted to live in a country like [anything in] Europe, I'd cross the Atlantic. (Europe is a wonderful place, but its nations' laws and customs are not what I want to live under.)
Screw POTS. Telephone lines are the past. If they don't have 'em by now, they don't need 'em. Set up broadband and they'll be happy to have more than they started with.
Don't even bother with the phone lines... It's a waste of resources on old technology.
That's a very insightful point (hint hint, moderators), but how many of us are upgrading directly from 1.0 to 1.7? We're commenting on Slashdot, for crying out loud. We've downloaded every alpha and beta release since long before the Mozilla project even had version numbers. :-)
In only a matter of seconds, I'm not going to notice less than a 10% improvement on an application's speed. With something like Photoshop, maybe that would matter.
Of course, I'll download it anyway, because I always update my browsers upon full (non-beta) releases. Just waiting on the full 1.7 release...
"Just a few years ago", a new computer came standard with a 20 megabyte hard drive. The only thing worse than only having 20 megabytes of space is trying to craft a text document in Enable (version 2.15!).
Just trying to be funny, and trying to encourage people to date their references, since "just a few years" in computer technology is vastly different than "just a few years" in the studies of life, the universe and everything.
I'm sorry, but regardless of the merits of the arguments on any side of this case, the use of the word "hijack" in the introduction of the issue simply invokes a bias that destroys any hope for an objective reception of the point at hand. If you want a serious debate, start with a serious question.
This is offtopic, but I believe it deserves attention. Moderation of a comment for being "insightful" should be reserved for comments that are, well, insightful. The quality of being insightful is characterized by perceptiveness, or seeing below the surface to a deeper meaning or truth.
Simply having a good idea is not seeing below the surface of the idea at hand. At best, it should be "interesting" or "underrated". My personal opinion is that this comment is definitely worth modding up, but it is "interesting" rather than "insightful".
Which is essentially what they said in the article. Here are two key selections: That being the case, I don't quite see this article as "insightful". It was certainly very interesting, perhaps informative, and even funny for a line or two. But insightful? Well, to each moderator his own moderating...
After all, the red is supposed to indicate the slowest encoder, and the green is supposed to indicate the fastest encoder. And if the following text is true...
...it occurs to me that they should have tested something like South Park the movie or a Family Guy episode too, because solid blocks of color (such as in cartoon animation) are handled in different ways by different codecs. Monsters Inc was a good idea, but they need toons!
Patents do not hide the idea, though; they merely identify it as your idea and allow you to decide how it is duplicated, exploited, etc. People may still use and expand upon a patented procedure, process, etc.
I try to keep my blog's content balanced among legitimate news, personal stories, and random shit. I always link to source material when I quote directly. When there are no direct quotes but I'm just spreading information, I only cite a source if (a) I know who said it first and (b) there aren't so many sources so as to make it common knowledge. Also, I tend to cite my sources just because I wish people would link the cool stuff they find back to the sources.
But there are ups and downs to the good work of the plagiarism police. Imagine if everything anyone ever said on the internet was linked back to where it was found first. Sure, we could find anything and everything we ever wanted to find, but we would have an ungodly sea of links to sift through, not to mention links to a helluva lot of trash that we usually don't link to for very good reasons. So pick your poison.
Personally, I think the balance is about where it needs to be. Fight to protect copyrights just enough to give people credit and an incentive to keep producing more, but not so much that no one else will dare try to expand on their work.
According to copyright law in America -- and this makes sense -- you don't own the idea, because the idea is not your creation. You own the "fixed creative expression" of the idea. And by extention, it is that expression that is copyrighted to you. Not the idea itself.
I think the subject line says it all.
Actually, no... you can't. Spammer. (Oh, the irony.) ...
(Double irony, even, since you can't first post on your self-proclamation of your ability to first post in response to an anti-spam article.)
I get as much SPAM as ever, and it's not even fried with cheese between two pieces of bread.
I love my Google Toolbar and Deskbar. In the last two years, Google's search capabilities have expanded to Google Groups, Google News, Google Image Search, and then some... The Google Services & Tools page lists more than a dozen top-quality, um, services and tools that perform equally as well as or better than most similar entities available elsewhere on the web.
That said, I don't know if there's much to this "search engine war" of which you speak. Then again, bigger wars have started over smaller matters, and competition tends to bring out the best in things (until something completely takes over).
But I didn't post that one. Then again, I made my post in hopes that others would post relevant links as replies to mine, so people could find useful Simpsons links in one thread. But, err, what does it matter... I'm still a karma whore.
"The Simpsons" Semi-Official Web Site in the UK -- Brought to you by the BBC!
Fan Sites:
Last Exit to Springfield -- "For All Your Simpsons Needs" (Well, it looks very well done.)
nohomers.net -- "the center of all that is simpson"
Fun Site:
There are countless others. These are among the best I've found. Please link to others... I'm sure I haven't seen them all.