Re:That's why I like the basic Kindle
on
The eBook Backlash
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This is really something to consider - lighting. When I read in bed a bit of backlight would be good, but when I'm sitting in my car (only place I can find peace and quiet) during lunch, no backlighting is required, but ability to read in full, partial sunlight or shade would be desireable.
You don't want backlight. You think you want backlight because for decades there was no way to make a decent display unit that wasn't either emissive (like CRTs, VFDs and LEDs) or transmissive (like LCDs), so you grew used to having the display throw light at you. What you actually want is a reflective display (like electronic paper) and sufficient ambient light to read by. Amazon sells covers with integrated reading lights for 3rd and 4th generation Kindles; they work beautifully, and don't require separate batteries, as they draw power from the Kindle itself through the latches that attach it to the cover. They do shorten battery life somewhat, but not enough to be a problem—you just have to charge your Kindle once a week instead of once a month.
I'm pretty sure that it's only a matter of years before we have full-color 600 DPI electronic paper with no noticeable refresh delay, although I don't know if we'll ever be entirely comfortable watching video on reflective displays, and there will probably always be applications (such as cell phones, or their future equivalent) where emissive or backlit transmissive displays are preferrable to reflective displays.
Re:That's why I like the basic Kindle
on
The eBook Backlash
·
· Score: 2
One thing that sold me on the Kindle was the "Free Sample" you can get with most books.
All books, actually; it's auto-generated. You get the first 10% of the book, up to a certain number of pages. The problem is that with large works (such as collections or compilations) with detailed ToCs, the auto-generated sample might turn out to contain only the cover, the title page, the ToC and (if you're lucky) the first few paragraphs of the foreword.
In any case, noone is going to have a clue what the truth is till Assange turns himself in for questioning. Fleeing to another country tends to make one look more guilty rather than less, but answering questions with a lawyer present (which is the key here - don't talk to police or prosecutor without your lawyer present, guilty or innocent) won't do much to make you look more guilty unless, well, you're guilty....
Have you been paying any attention at all? The prosecutor repeatedly declined to interview Assange while he was in Sweden and approved his request to leave the country. I suggest you read some of the +5 comments, which include statements by Assange's Swedish and British attorneys.
Umm, jurors are randomly selected members of the public, not political appointees... and there are no juries in Sweden anyway (at least not for this kind of trial)
Well, you can start with the fact that the Swedish police informed the press of the charges against him, and identified him by name, before they had even spoken to him - which they still haven't. That may be business as usual in the US, but it's not the way we do things in the civilized world. They've violated due process six ways to Sunday.
I think you both missed the part where the prosecutor has repeatedly refused to interview Assange or to inform his attorney in writing of the exact charges, and the multiple violations of Swedish law and legal precedent and of the European Convention on Human Rights by both the police and the prosecution. TL;DNR perhaps?
Actually, I really like COM for what it is (I use XPCOM at work, since we use xulrunner to implement TomTom Home) So, when can we expect a Linux version of TomTom Home? I love my ONE, but I hate having to run Windows to keep it up-to-date (+ run engine diagnostics and access my electronic repair manual)
I'm not looking for any moderation here, so please don't think I'm doing so. I saw one part of your argument, and I don't know if you meant it as hyperbole or believe it fully -- in other words, I'm saying it isn't black and white. I think we probably agree more than you realize.
I meant what I wrote, but you probably understood it a little differently than I meant it. My point is that people sometimes seem to be more interested in finding someone to blame than on fixing the problem. If, as you say, you shoot my child, my first priority will be to get my child to hospital, not to sue you (not to mention the people who sold you your gun, and the people who sold you the ammo, and the people who made the gun in the first place, and...) You'd have a hard enough time in criminal court anyway, I see no reason to waste my time filing a civil suit on top of it (as many people seem to do these days).
I don't think it was wrong to look for a Thimerosal connection in the first place, but when you've looked and come up blank, you need to move on, spend your time and your effort in another direction, such as looking for a genetic factor, or developing better ways to mitigate autism and teach autistics to function in society.
Do not conflate the MMR theory with that of thimerosal as a cause of autism. The two are totally different [...] Actually, there is absolutely no way to separate them. They are being promoted by the exact same people (Wakefield went from attacking MMR in the UK to attacking Thimerosal in the US without batting an eyelid - of course, he's facing severe charges of scientific fraud if he ever shows his face in the UK again), and one of the arguments is that Thimerosal is used in the production of MMR and other multi-vaccines to help combine the individual component vaccines into one. Of course, once Thimerosal was conclusively ruled out, some of them fell back to arguing that it was the shock to the immune system from the triple vaccine, or from the combined schedule of vaccines administered to infants (up to seven different vaccines with the first few months, if my count is correct), while others just dug themselves in and insisted that Thimerosal is still there, but it's being covered up.
As for the reason why adults aren't increasingly diagnosed with autism the way children are, there is a very simple explanation for that: they've had sufficient time to learn how to function fairly well, and they're no longer under the watchful eyes of increasingly better-educated teachers and school nurses, and they're used to being the way they are. That doesn't necessarily mean they're all right; they may for instance be suffering from (and diagnosed with) depression resulting from the strain of never quite being in synch with the world and of the ever-so-slight sense of isolation or alienation that comes from not consistently getting social clues.
It's still a documented fact that US infants exposure to thimerosal increased starting around 1990, and that correlates with a huge spike in autism rates. There is no such thing as correlation between two individual events, only coincidence. To show correlation you must have statistically significant samples, such as (purely hypothetically) "in M out of N countries that we studied, the introduction of Thimerasol in vaccines (at a different points in time in each country) coincided with spikes in autism rates" where M and N are sufficiently large numbers. Showing causation, of course, is much, much harder, which is why vaccination opponents prefer to fake it.
I read these summaries of studies which claim to demonstrate that there is no link, and I can't help but think bullshit. These are researchers looking to make a huge splash, and their premise is faulty. They aren't looking to make a huge splash. There is no news value in confirming the established consensus of the scientific community, which is that there is no link between Thimerosal and autism. Claims to the contrary are pure fabrication; Ben Goldacre has extensive documentation of the way MMR opponents lie and cheat to sell their story to the public.
And to be honest, your attitude is sickening. If you had a child who was suffering from autism, you'd do anything you could to try and help them. Indeed. If I had children who were suffering from autism, I would do anything I could to try to help them. But running around trying to find someone to pin the blame on would not help them at all; in fact, it would rob them of what they, like any other children, need most, which is their parents' time and attention and tender love and care.
Western society (and, it seems, the US in particular) has developed into a culture of blame. In some ways, it is understandable, as it is much easier to find someone to blame and from whom to demand retribution than to face up to the harsh realities of life, but it is not very productive. People need to understand that life is hard and often unfair, that they need to take responsibility for themselves and their kin, and that sometimes things get broken that you just can't fix - you have to cope and move on.
Autism is a very complex subject. Autism-spectrum disorders are actually much more common than one would think, and statistics seem to show they are on the rise. Part of the reason is that it was previously (and may still be) underdiagnosed due to social stigma and a poor understanding of the milder forms. Another part of it is that there seems to be a correlation between autism-spectrum disorders and other characteristics which are favorable to success and survival in an industrial society, which basically means that natural selection is currently working in favor of autism (just like natural selection works in favor of sickle-cell anemia in parts of Africa because it is linked with improved resistance to malaria). The most blatant evidence in favor of the latter interpretation is that autism-spectrum disorders seem to occur more often in children whose parents both work in IT or engineering.
Personally, I suspect that once we come to realize and accept that far more people thank we think suffer from varying degrees of autism, it will become clear that autism is in fact hereditary and that neither Thimerosal nor any other chemicals really have anything to do with it.
By the way, autism is far more survivable / treatable than was previously believed (or than many people still seem to think). Forget Rain Man; many autistic children who even thirty years ago would have been doomed to a life in an institution can actually be taught to function in normal life if you take the time to try to understand them (something medical professionals used to think was below their dignity). Elizabeth Moon (author of the Paksenarrion series) was told some twenty-odd years ago that her son was congenitally incapable of processing language, yet she taught him to speak, and to interact socially, and in the process developed a different idea of what autism is than what was prevalent at the time (in particular, she considers autism a developmental problem rather than a cognitive one). She has also written both fiction and non-fiction on the subject, which you may find worth your time to look up.
PS3 sales in Europe increased only slightly compared to the previous week (~25%), because there's no Turkey Day-related shopping bonanza on that side of the pond. There is no Turkey Day-related shopping bonanza on your side of the pond either. It's a myth.
Sierra's Space Quest I, for instance, was rereleased in 1991 with upgraded graphics and sound and a point-and-click interface instead of the original text interface.
Id Software's Doom was remade (or "reimagined" as they put it) as Doom 3.
Several Valve classics were converted to the Source engine. There is also a project underway to completely reimplement Half-Life on the Source engine with new models and textures (Valve's own Half-Life: Source uses the models, textures and sounds from the original game)
I currently have a first-gen PS2 (the big clunky one without built-in Ethernet), and am holding off to buy the PS3 until MGS4 comes out - partly because of the price, and partly because I'm not really that interested in any of the existing PS3 games. The lack of vibration in the SIXAXIS controller is actually a much bigger deal for me than the lack of PS2 emulation in the PS3 I will eventually buy; if my PS2 kicks the bucket, I'll just buy a new one (or a used one in good condition if they stop selling the PS2 before I lose interest in it)
Apparently, both the Seagate and Samsung drives are not integrated, since they require Windows Vista to actually used the flash. Seems really stupid to me. Actually, it's really smart, because the OS knows a lot more about the data it writes to disk than the disk does, and especially about ordering and integrity concerns, and can therefore make more efficient use of the cache than the disk can. For instance, you could build a ZFS pool out of these drives and use the flash to store the intent log.
This is not vaporware. The company has been around for a long time (since 1991) and produced over a thousand units of their previous model. It was at acquired by Ford some years ago in anticipation of stricter emission requirements in the US; then their lobbyists managed to derail that legislation, and Ford destroyed the remaining stock and dumped the company.
There is nothing unusual about that. Limited companies in Norway and Sweden are required to file substantial amounts of paperwork and are subject to annual financial audits. Many of these requirements are waived for local subsidiaries of foreign corporations. Therefore, startups commonly register a parent company in the UK (where almost no paperwork is required); this has become so common that there are several companies in the UK that specialize in setting up and running shell companies for a low annual fee.
It may still be fraud, but don't read too much into the "many companies at the same address" aspect.
Micrososft are merely playing the same game OpenBSD have been playing for all these years... Apply the loosest standard to yourself, and the strictest to your competitors, and you're bound to come out smelling of roses.
Slashdot Mirror
This is really something to consider - lighting. When I read in bed a bit of backlight would be good, but when I'm sitting in my car (only place I can find peace and quiet) during lunch, no backlighting is required, but ability to read in full, partial sunlight or shade would be desireable.
You don't want backlight. You think you want backlight because for decades there was no way to make a decent display unit that wasn't either emissive (like CRTs, VFDs and LEDs) or transmissive (like LCDs), so you grew used to having the display throw light at you. What you actually want is a reflective display (like electronic paper) and sufficient ambient light to read by. Amazon sells covers with integrated reading lights for 3rd and 4th generation Kindles; they work beautifully, and don't require separate batteries, as they draw power from the Kindle itself through the latches that attach it to the cover. They do shorten battery life somewhat, but not enough to be a problem—you just have to charge your Kindle once a week instead of once a month.
I'm pretty sure that it's only a matter of years before we have full-color 600 DPI electronic paper with no noticeable refresh delay, although I don't know if we'll ever be entirely comfortable watching video on reflective displays, and there will probably always be applications (such as cell phones, or their future equivalent) where emissive or backlit transmissive displays are preferrable to reflective displays.
One thing that sold me on the Kindle was the "Free Sample" you can get with most books.
All books, actually; it's auto-generated. You get the first 10% of the book, up to a certain number of pages. The problem is that with large works (such as collections or compilations) with detailed ToCs, the auto-generated sample might turn out to contain only the cover, the title page, the ToC and (if you're lucky) the first few paragraphs of the foreword.
...the 2012 Jeep Compass practically flunked the EuroNCAP, while the 2012 Honda Civic passed with flying colors.
Have you been paying any attention at all? The prosecutor repeatedly declined to interview Assange while he was in Sweden and approved his request to leave the country. I suggest you read some of the +5 comments, which include statements by Assange's Swedish and British attorneys.
/. needs a "like" button.
Umm, jurors are randomly selected members of the public, not political appointees... and there are no juries in Sweden anyway (at least not for this kind of trial)
Well, you can start with the fact that the Swedish police informed the press of the charges against him, and identified him by name, before they had even spoken to him - which they still haven't. That may be business as usual in the US, but it's not the way we do things in the civilized world. They've violated due process six ways to Sunday.
DA's are often elected political creatures.
In the US perhaps, not in the civilized world.
I think you both missed the part where the prosecutor has repeatedly refused to interview Assange or to inform his attorney in writing of the exact charges, and the multiple violations of Swedish law and legal precedent and of the European Convention on Human Rights by both the police and the prosecution. TL;DNR perhaps?
JFGI
No, based on context ("how do you find a programmer..."), the correct solution is "find you".
I meant what I wrote, but you probably understood it a little differently than I meant it. My point is that people sometimes seem to be more interested in finding someone to blame than on fixing the problem. If, as you say, you shoot my child, my first priority will be to get my child to hospital, not to sue you (not to mention the people who sold you your gun, and the people who sold you the ammo, and the people who made the gun in the first place, and...) You'd have a hard enough time in criminal court anyway, I see no reason to waste my time filing a civil suit on top of it (as many people seem to do these days).
I don't think it was wrong to look for a Thimerosal connection in the first place, but when you've looked and come up blank, you need to move on, spend your time and your effort in another direction, such as looking for a genetic factor, or developing better ways to mitigate autism and teach autistics to function in society.
As for the reason why adults aren't increasingly diagnosed with autism the way children are, there is a very simple explanation for that: they've had sufficient time to learn how to function fairly well, and they're no longer under the watchful eyes of increasingly better-educated teachers and school nurses, and they're used to being the way they are. That doesn't necessarily mean they're all right; they may for instance be suffering from (and diagnosed with) depression resulting from the strain of never quite being in synch with the world and of the ever-so-slight sense of isolation or alienation that comes from not consistently getting social clues.
Western society (and, it seems, the US in particular) has developed into a culture of blame. In some ways, it is understandable, as it is much easier to find someone to blame and from whom to demand retribution than to face up to the harsh realities of life, but it is not very productive. People need to understand that life is hard and often unfair, that they need to take responsibility for themselves and their kin, and that sometimes things get broken that you just can't fix - you have to cope and move on.
Autism is a very complex subject. Autism-spectrum disorders are actually much more common than one would think, and statistics seem to show they are on the rise. Part of the reason is that it was previously (and may still be) underdiagnosed due to social stigma and a poor understanding of the milder forms. Another part of it is that there seems to be a correlation between autism-spectrum disorders and other characteristics which are favorable to success and survival in an industrial society, which basically means that natural selection is currently working in favor of autism (just like natural selection works in favor of sickle-cell anemia in parts of Africa because it is linked with improved resistance to malaria). The most blatant evidence in favor of the latter interpretation is that autism-spectrum disorders seem to occur more often in children whose parents both work in IT or engineering.
Personally, I suspect that once we come to realize and accept that far more people thank we think suffer from varying degrees of autism, it will become clear that autism is in fact hereditary and that neither Thimerosal nor any other chemicals really have anything to do with it.
By the way, autism is far more survivable / treatable than was previously believed (or than many people still seem to think). Forget Rain Man; many autistic children who even thirty years ago would have been doomed to a life in an institution can actually be taught to function in normal life if you take the time to try to understand them (something medical professionals used to think was below their dignity). Elizabeth Moon (author of the Paksenarrion series) was told some twenty-odd years ago that her son was congenitally incapable of processing language, yet she taught him to speak, and to interact socially, and in the process developed a different idea of what autism is than what was prevalent at the time (in particular, she considers autism a developmental problem rather than a cognitive one). She has also written both fiction and non-fiction on the subject, which you may find worth your time to look up.
Bullfrog's Syndicate.
Sierra's Space Quest I, for instance, was rereleased in 1991 with upgraded graphics and sound and a point-and-click interface instead of the original text interface.
Id Software's Doom was remade (or "reimagined" as they put it) as Doom 3.
Several Valve classics were converted to the Source engine. There is also a project underway to completely reimplement Half-Life on the Source engine with new models and textures (Valve's own Half-Life: Source uses the models, textures and sounds from the original game)
I currently have a first-gen PS2 (the big clunky one without built-in Ethernet), and am holding off to buy the PS3 until MGS4 comes out - partly because of the price, and partly because I'm not really that interested in any of the existing PS3 games. The lack of vibration in the SIXAXIS controller is actually a much bigger deal for me than the lack of PS2 emulation in the PS3 I will eventually buy; if my PS2 kicks the bucket, I'll just buy a new one (or a used one in good condition if they stop selling the PS2 before I lose interest in it)
This is not vaporware. The company has been around for a long time (since 1991) and produced over a thousand units of their previous model. It was at acquired by Ford some years ago in anticipation of stricter emission requirements in the US; then their lobbyists managed to derail that legislation, and Ford destroyed the remaining stock and dumped the company.
There is nothing unusual about that. Limited companies in Norway and Sweden are required to file substantial amounts of paperwork and are subject to annual financial audits. Many of these requirements are waived for local subsidiaries of foreign corporations. Therefore, startups commonly register a parent company in the UK (where almost no paperwork is required); this has become so common that there are several companies in the UK that specialize in setting up and running shell companies for a low annual fee.
It may still be fraud, but don't read too much into the "many companies at the same address" aspect.
Micrososft are merely playing the same game OpenBSD have been playing for all these years... Apply the loosest standard to yourself, and the strictest to your competitors, and you're bound to come out smelling of roses.
Was that a whiff of manure in the background?