There is a huge difference between copying and emulating. The musicians of the 60's and 70's were emulating. The crap you hear today is copying direct sounds from people. Listen to Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" album. The whole thing was written and recorded on the road. The musicians in the late 60's and early 70's all played together and collaborated together. When they went down to actually write music and record, you can tell they actually put time and effort into it and found new sounds. Bands like the Grateful Dead, Phish, The Band, The Beatles... they all used sounds they heard from each other and were able to play a multitude of genres well. Bands today just don't seem to be able to do that. They call themselves a pop punk band and never try introducing other elements into their music because "country sucks" or "hip hop sucks" or "folk sucks" or "jazz is boring" or "classical is for old people". Those bands will never make it because they don't understand music. The vast majority of modern bands are exactly this way.
while the internet might be destroying the music industry (thank god), it's also, in a way, doing exactly what elton said. it's killing creativity. the music of the past was created through collaboration, through jam sessions, through actual instruments. the vast majority of the music on the internet is people copying bands they like and never getting better at what they do. getting out and performing in front of people, getting out and meeting others who also play music drives creativity. sitting at home writing songs that emulate what someone else did keeps the status quo.
i have gotten bored with music because since the beginning of the decade, it has gotten boring. very few bands have vision. sure, elton john wrote the music for his songs and didn't write all the lyrics (though he did write some of them), but he had vision. the collaboration that occurred in the 60's and 70's when the bands all knew each other is gone, with the exception of what's left of the jam band scene (one of the more creative scenes at the moment, in large part because of the collaboration).
in my opinion, schools shouldn't give a crap because students should be handing in paper assignments. i'm actually in favor of having schools, at least through 8th grade, require mostly hand written papers. if you've seen the hand writing of students today, it's horrible. not that mine is a whole lot better, but when you're forced to write papers, you can get marks for writing illegibly. that's something that should be fixed at an early age. the other thing about writing papers in a word processor is the spell check and grammar check. writing by hand requires you proofread your paper to check for spelling errors and other grammatical issues. using a word processor defeats the purpose of really ever learning to spell.
and for all of you who are arguing the UI change from office 2003 to office 2007, while it's different and takes some getting used to, it's a lot easier to use once you are used to it.
Re:$10/month from the cable company and you're don
on
The Trouble With TiVo
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· Score: 2, Interesting
because i don't give a crap about HD content or digital cable and i don't have satellite cable.
for the record, my series2DT tivo has 2 tuners, so i can watch and record different channels at the same time, or record 2 channels and watch a third on the cable setting on my tv, having it split to both my tivo and my tv's coax input.
i had a tuner break on my tivo. only one of them had the issue (it was black and white), but the other tuner worked fine. even though i'm out of the original warranty, they replaced it for free (well, they charged me for the new box until they received the old one).
i don't get a guide with my extended basic cable, so i get that with my tivo subscription.
my tivo remote integrated perfectly with my tv and is able to change channels (though i usually change them with the tivo), turn the power on and off, adjust the volume, and switch between the various inputs.
i also happen to like the little sound it makes.
i bought the tivo wireless adapter on sale at amazon and it connected flawlessly to my WPA2 protected, MAC filtered, hidden SSID wireless network without a hitch and has never lost connection. it connects smoothly to my computer to grab music, movie, and image files. my computer easily grabs tivo recordings without issue as well.
since i don't care about having digital cable or HD content, i see no reason to switch.
the only file the compatibility pack has not worked 100% flawlessly for me with is an access 2007 DB. other than that, it worked flawlessly. that being said, every upgrade of office has caused compatibility issues with access.
this article is ridiculous. i installed office 2007 as an upgrade to 2003. if what this guy is saying is true, you'd think that it automatically went through and converted all my.doc files to.docx. WRONG. in fact, even after opening those files, it doesn't even make me save it as.docx. they still save as the original.doc. and saving something in the old.doc format is as simply as choosing file -> save as -> word 2000-2003 compatible. give me a break. this is just stupid.
for the asshats on this site who think it's becoming overrun by microsofties, i am not one of them. i am just a realist, something that most FOSS zealots and apple fanbois are not.
your arrogance proves nothing. but apple doesn't change anything by architecture. they show versions by operating system type (mac and windows). the only hardware mentioned is USB 2.0.
next time read the links posted before making stupid comments like that.
they require a data plan because they don't use regular wifi. they connect to the providers service. the iphone was supposed to have wifi, meaning that it should be able to connect to any AP. apparently, that is not the case and you have to have a data plan to use teh wifi, making it cost more for those who were going to buy it and just use it off wifi as a pda.
Simply accepting a license to attend a sporting event does not strip you of all rights. As an example, there is a line of 4th Amendment cases regarding the propriety of, and limits to, searching sporting event attendees. he didn't just have a license to attend the event (which i would call a "ticket"), he had a license to perform a certain type of press coverage (which is called press credentials). the NCAA has obviously granted live coverage to certain entities (ESPN probably being one of them). they probably don't want to lose whatever deal they might have with those entities, and therefore restrict what standard press credentials allow you to do.
of course i suppose that reason couldn't have been to make it so that people had a choice in media players, giving third parties more of a chance rather than let MS bundle a FREE program into windows that most people who just didn't care used exclusively.
prove to me that WMP is running whenever my computer is on, and i'll believe you. now i can believe this with IE since IE basically runs explorer, which is always running... but media player is separate as far as i can tell. why else would they have only been forced to unbundle WMP and not IE? IE would seem the logical choice of the 2.
i can list several players that are better than quicktime. one is windows media player, which doesn't run in the background all the time after installing it. winamp, mplayer, vlc also all come to mind. quicktime for windows is the 2nd worse media player, second only to realone or whatever it's called now. they used to both be pretty decent pieces of software, but now they just plain suck and are bloated beyond belief.
not only does itunes suck as software (it does a nice job at being a media library, but nothing else), it installs at least 2 services (bonjour and ipod service). i don't have an ipod, yet the ipod service was setup to run on my computer anyways. and i don't use any other bonjour apps. what's the point?
then there's the fact that it forces quicktime on you, which is even worse than itunes. while you can use the prefs to disable the tray icon, it still runs in the background (why, i don't know, but it's a waste of resources). apple wrote a nice OS, but they need to stop writing windows software. it just plain sucks.
good luck showing that backbone when the cops take your computers (which they will likely do anyways).
i have a feeling the cops see a difference in the local starbucks vs the guy who believes in full freedom to do whatever you want on the internet, even though there may not be a difference. i'm no neo-con, in fact, i'm quite liberal myself. however, i'm not stupid and survival of the fittest is something i took to heart when studying evolution (being my major) in college. so i've learned to protect myself from shit like that happening. i don't know about you, but i don't have the resources to pay a lawyer and deal with the cops taking my computers and bringing me in for questioning. i'd rather not have that on my back.
so while i'm all for free open AP's, i'm also smart enough to know that it comes down on me. starbucks is a big corporation. they have the resources on hand to deal with stuff like that. i'm just one guy trying to live my life. i don't. i'll let starbucks fight the government.
yeah, don't give up that freedom to allow some dude driving by your house to upload the latest shots of his 12 year old "girlfriend" to his website completely anonymously. or that freedom to allow some other dude to upload the special "pre-release" of the newest metallica album that "they" decided to give away for free.
while you have balls, the government has bigger balls. i'd be willing to bet you'll roll pretty easily when faced with serious jail time for a crime you didn't commit, but allowed some dude to do completely anonymously on your open AP.
But at least for me, higher quality + DRM-free + 1.30$/track beats going to the CD store and buying the whole album with filler (CD singles? You see those anymore?) and I no longer have a good reason NOT to. you're forgetting one very important point. those drm-free tracks that apple is selling contain personal information.
until they sell DRM-free flac files, i'm buying CD's.
they put in their anti-spyware program. i'm wondering if the anti-spyware companies that charge for their products will bitch and moan, even though the best anti-spyware programs are all free (even if they don't do real-time protection).
i still put most of the blame on the user who clicks every popup even if it says "don't click this, your computer will be immediate infected with viruses". i haven't had a virus or spyware infection when running XP, 2000, 98, and for the past several months since i installed vista. i did get a virus in win95, but that was before anti-virus really picked up speed, and it came from an infected floppy that got infected in a computer lab at my college.
i love the PGS at my mother's house. that was one problem the TEC's had... the flareups and other issues related to drippings (liek cleaning). one time this guy brought a grill to us that had maggots growing in it becuase he covered the drip tray with aluminum foil and never changed it. so we quickly cleaned it out and then let everything cook off. it was nasty.
but yeah, i don't think they're anything special for what you pay for them.
actually, i'd be willing to bet that nissan will have to fix these and possibly recall the keys. cell phones are all over. if this happens as easily as it sounds, nissan should be changing their technology and replacing the keys and/or ignition system.
i used to work for an outdoor furniture, grill, wood stove store that sold higher end grills (TEC, ducane, PGS, and some vermont castings). the TEC grill i mentioned was not made by char-broil, it was made by the same company that invented the infrared paint dryer thingy. they were the most expensive grills we sold and had the problem the article describes with the ceramic parts.
i was never a fan of these grills, (1) because they were expensive (cheapest being like $900), (2) because they cooked so damn fast (these didn't have the regular gas burner on one side, it was all infrared), and (3) because they go so damn hot that if you left it on long enough and closed, the top could weld itself shut (we've seen this). this was 7-11 years ago that i worked for this place (summer job in high school and college). so no, they did not wait for it to expire. if you re-read the article, you will see that the other grill manufacturers waited for it to expire, but there was one company who was making these grills... the same TEC (Thermal Electric of Columbia) that made the paint drying stuff (and it's described in the about section of the website i linked above).
while with the expiration of the patent, the price might come down a bit, i don't think it'll come down a whole lot. the grills are generally made with stainless steel to deal with the high heat. so all the nuts and bolts and screws and everything are stainless, driving the price up a bit.
I have seen seizures, both severe (grand mal) and not so severe, similar to the one you described with the co-worker. In the severe ones, the body went limp. If he had a severe one while he was driving, he surely would have slowed down pretty fast. In the minor ones, they did generally just zone out, but their bodies still went into a more relaxed state and did not tense up where they would have stepped harder on the gas. Again, this would have caused the car to slow down.
In the video, it is pretty obvious that the car is going a fairly constant speed. Granted, we can't see if he accelerated at all up to the toll booth because of the distance the camera shows, but he certainly did not slow down as if his foot came off the pedal.
Now the cop makes it seem even less likely to be that he had a seizure. Even if the cop had been parked by the toll booth, which they do on occasion, he came from outside the view of the camera, meaning he was not at the toll booth. My guess is that this guy was just speeding down the highway and the cop saw him. Maybe he was trying to avoid the cop, maybe he was checking his cell phone or playing with the radio, but somehow he got distracted upon entering the toll booth and missed the lane (which he only swerved out of when he was very close to the toll booth).
If you watch the video, the guy was obviously speeding the entire time. If he was having a seizure, what is the likelihood that his foot kept him going at 65 MPH? He also didn't swerve very far, so I'm guessing he was driving too fast and didn't have enough time to think twice. When you're coming upon a toll plaza, there's plenty of warning to slow down. I find it unlikely that he had a seizure. Had he had a seizure right around the time he swerved out of his lane and into the barrier (which was the one right next to his lane, so he didn't swerve far), he should have been driving a whole lot slower to get through the toll booth anyways. Last I checked, the toll booths around there on the turnpike don't have the EZ Pass Express lanes that allow you to stay at speed.
As someone else already said, the cop showed up behind him less than a minute after it happened with lights flashing. Either it was all just dumb luck that he had a seizure at the exact moment he came to the toll booth and a cop happened to be right nearby or something else happened. I tend not to believe in coincidental occurrences, especially in situations like this one.
part of the reason i like the wii so much is the simpler game play and lack of buttons and sticks and whatever else. i started with an atari 2600, which had 1 button. moved to an NES, which had 2. then a sega genesis, which had more. then playstation and PS2, which had the 4 buttons, the 2 analog sticks, and the 2 buttons for the pointer and middle fingers on both hands. too many buttons made gameplay more confusing for me. i find the simple gameplay much more enjoyable.
i never owned a PS or PS2 (though i had a PS2 in my possession for a while), mainly because i didn't play video games enough. the only reason i bought the wii was because i like nintendo games (i had wanted a game cube, but never got one) and the wii remote was so novel. i have been playing wii sports every night for the past few weeks, and i own 4 other games (got really bored with zelda, i think i might sell it before i ever beat it). so for me, just for wii sports, the price was worth it (along with waiting an hour in 14 degree weather outside target at 6 in the morning).
Slashdot Mirror
There is a huge difference between copying and emulating. The musicians of the 60's and 70's were emulating. The crap you hear today is copying direct sounds from people. Listen to Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty" album. The whole thing was written and recorded on the road. The musicians in the late 60's and early 70's all played together and collaborated together. When they went down to actually write music and record, you can tell they actually put time and effort into it and found new sounds. Bands like the Grateful Dead, Phish, The Band, The Beatles... they all used sounds they heard from each other and were able to play a multitude of genres well. Bands today just don't seem to be able to do that. They call themselves a pop punk band and never try introducing other elements into their music because "country sucks" or "hip hop sucks" or "folk sucks" or "jazz is boring" or "classical is for old people". Those bands will never make it because they don't understand music. The vast majority of modern bands are exactly this way.
while the internet might be destroying the music industry (thank god), it's also, in a way, doing exactly what elton said. it's killing creativity. the music of the past was created through collaboration, through jam sessions, through actual instruments. the vast majority of the music on the internet is people copying bands they like and never getting better at what they do. getting out and performing in front of people, getting out and meeting others who also play music drives creativity. sitting at home writing songs that emulate what someone else did keeps the status quo.
i have gotten bored with music because since the beginning of the decade, it has gotten boring. very few bands have vision. sure, elton john wrote the music for his songs and didn't write all the lyrics (though he did write some of them), but he had vision. the collaboration that occurred in the 60's and 70's when the bands all knew each other is gone, with the exception of what's left of the jam band scene (one of the more creative scenes at the moment, in large part because of the collaboration).
because a lawsuit would be just plain ridiculous.
in my opinion, schools shouldn't give a crap because students should be handing in paper assignments. i'm actually in favor of having schools, at least through 8th grade, require mostly hand written papers. if you've seen the hand writing of students today, it's horrible. not that mine is a whole lot better, but when you're forced to write papers, you can get marks for writing illegibly. that's something that should be fixed at an early age. the other thing about writing papers in a word processor is the spell check and grammar check. writing by hand requires you proofread your paper to check for spelling errors and other grammatical issues. using a word processor defeats the purpose of really ever learning to spell.
and for all of you who are arguing the UI change from office 2003 to office 2007, while it's different and takes some getting used to, it's a lot easier to use once you are used to it.
because i don't give a crap about HD content or digital cable and i don't have satellite cable.
for the record, my series2DT tivo has 2 tuners, so i can watch and record different channels at the same time, or record 2 channels and watch a third on the cable setting on my tv, having it split to both my tivo and my tv's coax input.
i had a tuner break on my tivo. only one of them had the issue (it was black and white), but the other tuner worked fine. even though i'm out of the original warranty, they replaced it for free (well, they charged me for the new box until they received the old one).
i don't get a guide with my extended basic cable, so i get that with my tivo subscription.
my tivo remote integrated perfectly with my tv and is able to change channels (though i usually change them with the tivo), turn the power on and off, adjust the volume, and switch between the various inputs.
i also happen to like the little sound it makes.
i bought the tivo wireless adapter on sale at amazon and it connected flawlessly to my WPA2 protected, MAC filtered, hidden SSID wireless network without a hitch and has never lost connection. it connects smoothly to my computer to grab music, movie, and image files. my computer easily grabs tivo recordings without issue as well.
since i don't care about having digital cable or HD content, i see no reason to switch.
the keyword is "europe". the current american gov't doesn't like europe.
the only file the compatibility pack has not worked 100% flawlessly for me with is an access 2007 DB. other than that, it worked flawlessly. that being said, every upgrade of office has caused compatibility issues with access.
.doc files to .docx. WRONG. in fact, even after opening those files, it doesn't even make me save it as .docx. they still save as the original .doc. and saving something in the old .doc format is as simply as choosing file -> save as -> word 2000-2003 compatible. give me a break. this is just stupid.
this article is ridiculous. i installed office 2007 as an upgrade to 2003. if what this guy is saying is true, you'd think that it automatically went through and converted all my
for the asshats on this site who think it's becoming overrun by microsofties, i am not one of them. i am just a realist, something that most FOSS zealots and apple fanbois are not.
no, idiot. click this!
your arrogance proves nothing. but apple doesn't change anything by architecture. they show versions by operating system type (mac and windows). the only hardware mentioned is USB 2.0.
next time read the links posted before making stupid comments like that.
they require a data plan because they don't use regular wifi. they connect to the providers service. the iphone was supposed to have wifi, meaning that it should be able to connect to any AP. apparently, that is not the case and you have to have a data plan to use teh wifi, making it cost more for those who were going to buy it and just use it off wifi as a pda.
of course i suppose that reason couldn't have been to make it so that people had a choice in media players, giving third parties more of a chance rather than let MS bundle a FREE program into windows that most people who just didn't care used exclusively.
prove to me that WMP is running whenever my computer is on, and i'll believe you. now i can believe this with IE since IE basically runs explorer, which is always running... but media player is separate as far as i can tell. why else would they have only been forced to unbundle WMP and not IE? IE would seem the logical choice of the 2.
i can list several players that are better than quicktime. one is windows media player, which doesn't run in the background all the time after installing it. winamp, mplayer, vlc also all come to mind. quicktime for windows is the 2nd worse media player, second only to realone or whatever it's called now. they used to both be pretty decent pieces of software, but now they just plain suck and are bloated beyond belief.
not only does itunes suck as software (it does a nice job at being a media library, but nothing else), it installs at least 2 services (bonjour and ipod service). i don't have an ipod, yet the ipod service was setup to run on my computer anyways. and i don't use any other bonjour apps. what's the point?
then there's the fact that it forces quicktime on you, which is even worse than itunes. while you can use the prefs to disable the tray icon, it still runs in the background (why, i don't know, but it's a waste of resources). apple wrote a nice OS, but they need to stop writing windows software. it just plain sucks.
good luck showing that backbone when the cops take your computers (which they will likely do anyways).
i have a feeling the cops see a difference in the local starbucks vs the guy who believes in full freedom to do whatever you want on the internet, even though there may not be a difference. i'm no neo-con, in fact, i'm quite liberal myself. however, i'm not stupid and survival of the fittest is something i took to heart when studying evolution (being my major) in college. so i've learned to protect myself from shit like that happening. i don't know about you, but i don't have the resources to pay a lawyer and deal with the cops taking my computers and bringing me in for questioning. i'd rather not have that on my back.
so while i'm all for free open AP's, i'm also smart enough to know that it comes down on me. starbucks is a big corporation. they have the resources on hand to deal with stuff like that. i'm just one guy trying to live my life. i don't. i'll let starbucks fight the government.
yeah, don't give up that freedom to allow some dude driving by your house to upload the latest shots of his 12 year old "girlfriend" to his website completely anonymously. or that freedom to allow some other dude to upload the special "pre-release" of the newest metallica album that "they" decided to give away for free.
while you have balls, the government has bigger balls. i'd be willing to bet you'll roll pretty easily when faced with serious jail time for a crime you didn't commit, but allowed some dude to do completely anonymously on your open AP.
until they sell DRM-free flac files, i'm buying CD's.
they put in their anti-spyware program. i'm wondering if the anti-spyware companies that charge for their products will bitch and moan, even though the best anti-spyware programs are all free (even if they don't do real-time protection).
i still put most of the blame on the user who clicks every popup even if it says "don't click this, your computer will be immediate infected with viruses". i haven't had a virus or spyware infection when running XP, 2000, 98, and for the past several months since i installed vista. i did get a virus in win95, but that was before anti-virus really picked up speed, and it came from an infected floppy that got infected in a computer lab at my college.
i love the PGS at my mother's house. that was one problem the TEC's had... the flareups and other issues related to drippings (liek cleaning). one time this guy brought a grill to us that had maggots growing in it becuase he covered the drip tray with aluminum foil and never changed it. so we quickly cleaned it out and then let everything cook off. it was nasty.
but yeah, i don't think they're anything special for what you pay for them.
actually, i'd be willing to bet that nissan will have to fix these and possibly recall the keys. cell phones are all over. if this happens as easily as it sounds, nissan should be changing their technology and replacing the keys and/or ignition system.
wrong.
i used to work for an outdoor furniture, grill, wood stove store that sold higher end grills (TEC, ducane, PGS, and some vermont castings). the TEC grill i mentioned was not made by char-broil, it was made by the same company that invented the infrared paint dryer thingy. they were the most expensive grills we sold and had the problem the article describes with the ceramic parts.
i was never a fan of these grills, (1) because they were expensive (cheapest being like $900), (2) because they cooked so damn fast (these didn't have the regular gas burner on one side, it was all infrared), and (3) because they go so damn hot that if you left it on long enough and closed, the top could weld itself shut (we've seen this). this was 7-11 years ago that i worked for this place (summer job in high school and college). so no, they did not wait for it to expire. if you re-read the article, you will see that the other grill manufacturers waited for it to expire, but there was one company who was making these grills... the same TEC (Thermal Electric of Columbia) that made the paint drying stuff (and it's described in the about section of the website i linked above).
while with the expiration of the patent, the price might come down a bit, i don't think it'll come down a whole lot. the grills are generally made with stainless steel to deal with the high heat. so all the nuts and bolts and screws and everything are stainless, driving the price up a bit.
I have seen seizures, both severe (grand mal) and not so severe, similar to the one you described with the co-worker. In the severe ones, the body went limp. If he had a severe one while he was driving, he surely would have slowed down pretty fast. In the minor ones, they did generally just zone out, but their bodies still went into a more relaxed state and did not tense up where they would have stepped harder on the gas. Again, this would have caused the car to slow down.
In the video, it is pretty obvious that the car is going a fairly constant speed. Granted, we can't see if he accelerated at all up to the toll booth because of the distance the camera shows, but he certainly did not slow down as if his foot came off the pedal.
Now the cop makes it seem even less likely to be that he had a seizure. Even if the cop had been parked by the toll booth, which they do on occasion, he came from outside the view of the camera, meaning he was not at the toll booth. My guess is that this guy was just speeding down the highway and the cop saw him. Maybe he was trying to avoid the cop, maybe he was checking his cell phone or playing with the radio, but somehow he got distracted upon entering the toll booth and missed the lane (which he only swerved out of when he was very close to the toll booth).
If you watch the video, the guy was obviously speeding the entire time. If he was having a seizure, what is the likelihood that his foot kept him going at 65 MPH? He also didn't swerve very far, so I'm guessing he was driving too fast and didn't have enough time to think twice. When you're coming upon a toll plaza, there's plenty of warning to slow down. I find it unlikely that he had a seizure. Had he had a seizure right around the time he swerved out of his lane and into the barrier (which was the one right next to his lane, so he didn't swerve far), he should have been driving a whole lot slower to get through the toll booth anyways. Last I checked, the toll booths around there on the turnpike don't have the EZ Pass Express lanes that allow you to stay at speed.
As someone else already said, the cop showed up behind him less than a minute after it happened with lights flashing. Either it was all just dumb luck that he had a seizure at the exact moment he came to the toll booth and a cop happened to be right nearby or something else happened. I tend not to believe in coincidental occurrences, especially in situations like this one.
who said he was talking about hillary?
part of the reason i like the wii so much is the simpler game play and lack of buttons and sticks and whatever else. i started with an atari 2600, which had 1 button. moved to an NES, which had 2. then a sega genesis, which had more. then playstation and PS2, which had the 4 buttons, the 2 analog sticks, and the 2 buttons for the pointer and middle fingers on both hands. too many buttons made gameplay more confusing for me. i find the simple gameplay much more enjoyable.
i never owned a PS or PS2 (though i had a PS2 in my possession for a while), mainly because i didn't play video games enough. the only reason i bought the wii was because i like nintendo games (i had wanted a game cube, but never got one) and the wii remote was so novel. i have been playing wii sports every night for the past few weeks, and i own 4 other games (got really bored with zelda, i think i might sell it before i ever beat it). so for me, just for wii sports, the price was worth it (along with waiting an hour in 14 degree weather outside target at 6 in the morning).
of all those, MS and USPTO are the least evil... go figure...
in order of removal:
RIAA/MPAA
Spammers
jack thompson
MS (although i am not a hater)
USPTO
cowboy neal (sorry neal, you gotta go)