There is still no way for me to buy something with cash on the internet. Cash is cash. It's money, in and of itself, divorced from my identity. No identity is necessary. I can buy something at the corner store, or the liquor store, or the gas station with cash; the cashier doesn't need to verify my identity to see if my money is "good". It doesn't matter; my cash spends the same as anyone else's. When I meet someone to buy something off craigslist, I don't NEED to check anyone's identity; only to see that they are holding a wad of cash. The cash will spend regardless of who they are. There is nothing like this on the internet. I have to pay via credit card, paypal, or something else. How about getting around to inventing digital cash?
And since cash is "just money", and the property of whoever is holding it at a particular time, why not invent identities which are themselves "just identities" in the same way? In one of the Terry Pratchett books, there were ID cards that were, inherently, identities of themselves. Nobody had to prove you were the "owner" of the identity. It didn't matter; it was a non-issue, just like nobody has to verify if you are the owner of a wad of cash. The card WAS the identity.
I still long for a True Names anonymous internet of pseudoannonymity, multiple online identities, digital cash and annonymising remailers.
Right now lots of people type "teh" instead of "the" because the letters are in some kind of unfavorable sequence (at least on qwerty...on dvorak I type "cmo" instead of "com" a lot). I wonder what kind of neuro-misspellings brain-typing would cause.
Large-resolution image taken with an 8x10 camear. A large format film camera (100+ year-old technology) can squeak out very high resolutions. Arguments abound as to the megapixel equivalent of film, but if a 35mm camera is about 20 megapixels then by my calculations a 8x10 camera is about one regular old fashioned gigapixel of resolution.
His confusion is not surprising considering the annoying tendency to keep calling all motion pictures 'films' even if a piece of celluloid was never incorporated in the production, distribution, or showing. We even have skateboarders calling their videos "films". At the same time some people actually still make films. Please, can we call things what they are?
Motion picture/picture/movie--a series of pictures that appear to move when viewed in quick sequence.
Video--an analog or digital electronic encoding of motion pictures.
Film--a piece of thin cellulose or plastic, that may contain pictures. Once upon a time, all motion pictures were films, because that's all there was.
Cigarette lighters have been allowed for some time. I know because I've checked before I carried my expensive lighter with me. I still believe your confiscations of course.
When i bought my Aspire One, I couldn't get the big battery with linux. I'm typing this on an XP-sold machine, with Hardy Heron installed. Another stealth user.
If you clean your records well, use a good stylus and aren't a hack about everything, you will not have noise problems and your records will not wear out. I have listened to some of my records hundreds of times. I have two copies of Tubular Bells and in college I used the slightly worse duplicate on my turntable on REPEAT for 24+ hours days to break in my new cartridge. The only audible effect on the record was that it sounded cleaner. I have since muddled my two copies and can't detect which is the "abused" one. In practical terms, records do not wear out, and unlike tapes they can sit on a shelf for a hundred years and not slowly erase themselves. I will be a very lucky person if I live long enough to see my records wear out. I wish I had time to listen to music enough to wear them out! You are right that every listening experience is slightly different, and every play slightly wears out your record. Maybe this, along with having to get up to flip the thing, makes us listen harder.
You are correct of course--brickwall mixes are not suitable for vinyl pressing--but you assume logic, reason and fairness will be implemented. In reality, there are many vinyl versions which are no better than their CD counterparts or in fact worse due to being completely unplayable. This doesn't stop companies from pressing them and selling them as if they were usable. I have bought many records direct from record labels, usually from small artists, hoping--'knowing'--that the vinyl version couldn't possibly be as bad as the digital version. I was wrong and have a handful of useless disks now. I assume many people simply buy them to put on their wall, and listen to the included MP3 download instead. I think some of the time, a remaster is impossible, because the album was recorded and mixed with pro tools or whatever digital recording suite the cool kids are using nowadays, with levels cranked every step of the way, and there is simply no way to remaster it--the only option would be a complete re-recording.
Don't forget that in the United States, some 60% of male babies undergo brutal genital mutilation, and nobody gives 2 shits. Female genital mutilation is thoroughly illegal, regardless of any and all cultural, religious, or imagined justifications (as it should be). Slicing off bits of babies is allowed and even encouraged as long as they are male babies.
If only because it's so easy to 'plant' nearly anything, whether it's the police doing the planting, someone who does not like you, a trojan/malware, or accident...possession laws are basically "you are guilty because you are".
Mod up for both points...Moar examples plz...I could look a simple example for most tools and not have to read the page. And the mplayer man page is so big, full of so many options (flip screen upside down?) that I simply have to google to figure out what it is I'm trying to do. I can't read the whole thing until I come across the one thing that it was I wanted to do.
I don't see any reason for e-books to be in any other format, so I refuse to buy an e-reader until it does what I want it to do--digitally store books--in the technically obvious way, instead of the marketing obvious way.
I grew up in farm country, and cows are pretty easy....you like, turn them out in a field and eat grass for a long time, and then you kill them and eat them. Or, you put them in stalls and feed them until they get fat and then you kill them and eat them. Sure, vat-grown meat is pure meat and not bones, skin, and eyeballs, but you might be surprised at how little of that extra material is wasted...much of it is seperated at the slaughterhouse and sold. Is tending and maintaining a factory of muscle-growing vats going to easier, cheaper, and more environmental than a herd of animals? Really? It sounds to me like we already have these meat vats that like maintain themselves, reproduce themselves, and
A broadcasting alien civilization would only use a reflector if it knew where you were. I was speaking to the situation where said civilization is blindly broadcasting in all directions in the hope of the signal reaching someone else.
The idea that we can send radio signals to alien civilizations, or receive them, is unfortunately wishful thinking. "Contact" notwithstanding, it's not possible. We could never pick up a radio signal from an alien civilization because the power of a signal from a point source drops off exponentially. And it's not a matter of having a better amplifier either, because radio waves are actually quantized....eventually your signal has degraded to individual photons, and it doesn't take very long. My friend and I calculated that even with a MW-level transmitter, an alien civilazation on Alpha Centauri would need an impractically large dish to intercept even a trickle of photons.
Plus, it's not a drastic difference. 4-some percent versus 5-some percent. Personally, I think 4 and 5 percent is high failure rates for an flavor of laptop...so we're talking netbooks have a very very high failure rate compared to the 'merely' very high failure rate of normal laptops.
I do not watch TV at all, and I watch maybe 2 hours of movies per week. Why should I not be able to have a giant, inefficient TV, when with my viewing habits, I'm still using less power than many people who leave there 2* inch HD sets on 24-7? What about people that have 3 TVs in their house? Why can't I have one giant one?
I drive a Corolla with a stick shift. In Dallas traffic, I push the clutch pedal in to disengage the engine from the wheels probably 100+ times per hour. It's not some special function that you would have to, in your panic, "remember" to do. If for some reason the throttle on my car ever got stuck or raced, the clutch pedal would be pushed in, quite seriously, before I had a chance to even think about it. It's not necessary to think Gee, my car is going faster than I want it to, what should I do????? In this case the correct thing to do is what you would in fact do without thinking about it, that is, the same thing you would normally do every time you drive, which which for people who drive stick shifts is simply called "driving the fucking car".
Slashdot Mirror
There is still no way for me to buy something with cash on the internet. Cash is cash. It's money, in and of itself, divorced from my identity. No identity is necessary. I can buy something at the corner store, or the liquor store, or the gas station with cash; the cashier doesn't need to verify my identity to see if my money is "good". It doesn't matter; my cash spends the same as anyone else's. When I meet someone to buy something off craigslist, I don't NEED to check anyone's identity; only to see that they are holding a wad of cash. The cash will spend regardless of who they are. There is nothing like this on the internet. I have to pay via credit card, paypal, or something else. How about getting around to inventing digital cash?
And since cash is "just money", and the property of whoever is holding it at a particular time, why not invent identities which are themselves "just identities" in the same way? In one of the Terry Pratchett books, there were ID cards that were, inherently, identities of themselves. Nobody had to prove you were the "owner" of the identity. It didn't matter; it was a non-issue, just like nobody has to verify if you are the owner of a wad of cash. The card WAS the identity.
I still long for a True Names anonymous internet of pseudoannonymity, multiple online identities, digital cash and annonymising remailers.
Right now lots of people type "teh" instead of "the" because the letters are in some kind of unfavorable sequence (at least on qwerty...on dvorak I type "cmo" instead of "com" a lot). I wonder what kind of neuro-misspellings brain-typing would cause.
http://www.echonyc.com/~goldfarb/photo/imviaduct.htm
Large-resolution image taken with an 8x10 camear. A large format film camera (100+ year-old technology) can squeak out very high resolutions. Arguments abound as to the megapixel equivalent of film, but if a 35mm camera is about 20 megapixels then by my calculations a 8x10 camera is about one regular old fashioned gigapixel of resolution.
His confusion is not surprising considering the annoying tendency to keep calling all motion pictures 'films' even if a piece of celluloid was never incorporated in the production, distribution, or showing. We even have skateboarders calling their videos "films". At the same time some people actually still make films. Please, can we call things what they are?
Motion picture/picture/movie--a series of pictures that appear to move when viewed in quick sequence.
Video--an analog or digital electronic encoding of motion pictures.
Film--a piece of thin cellulose or plastic, that may contain pictures. Once upon a time, all motion pictures were films, because that's all there was.
I thought Mozilla got tons of money from Google for having it be the default browser. Am I wrong?
http://bleen.ro/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/us-air-force-aircraft-identification-chart1.jpg
Cigarette lighters have been allowed for some time. I know because I've checked before I carried my expensive lighter with me. I still believe your confiscations of course.
When i bought my Aspire One, I couldn't get the big battery with linux. I'm typing this on an XP-sold machine, with Hardy Heron installed. Another stealth user.
Brothers in Arms sounds amazing on vinyl as well.
If you clean your records well, use a good stylus and aren't a hack about everything, you will not have noise problems and your records will not wear out. I have listened to some of my records hundreds of times. I have two copies of Tubular Bells and in college I used the slightly worse duplicate on my turntable on REPEAT for 24+ hours days to break in my new cartridge. The only audible effect on the record was that it sounded cleaner. I have since muddled my two copies and can't detect which is the "abused" one. In practical terms, records do not wear out, and unlike tapes they can sit on a shelf for a hundred years and not slowly erase themselves. I will be a very lucky person if I live long enough to see my records wear out. I wish I had time to listen to music enough to wear them out! You are right that every listening experience is slightly different, and every play slightly wears out your record. Maybe this, along with having to get up to flip the thing, makes us listen harder.
In other words, it's not a bug, it's a feature.
You are correct of course--brickwall mixes are not suitable for vinyl pressing--but you assume logic, reason and fairness will be implemented. In reality, there are many vinyl versions which are no better than their CD counterparts or in fact worse due to being completely unplayable. This doesn't stop companies from pressing them and selling them as if they were usable. I have bought many records direct from record labels, usually from small artists, hoping--'knowing'--that the vinyl version couldn't possibly be as bad as the digital version. I was wrong and have a handful of useless disks now. I assume many people simply buy them to put on their wall, and listen to the included MP3 download instead. I think some of the time, a remaster is impossible, because the album was recorded and mixed with pro tools or whatever digital recording suite the cool kids are using nowadays, with levels cranked every step of the way, and there is simply no way to remaster it--the only option would be a complete re-recording.
Don't forget that in the United States, some 60% of male babies undergo brutal genital mutilation, and nobody gives 2 shits. Female genital mutilation is thoroughly illegal, regardless of any and all cultural, religious, or imagined justifications (as it should be). Slicing off bits of babies is allowed and even encouraged as long as they are male babies.
If only because it's so easy to 'plant' nearly anything, whether it's the police doing the planting, someone who does not like you, a trojan/malware, or accident...possession laws are basically "you are guilty because you are".
Talking to the police is a great way to get yourself considered non-innocent.
I don't think it's ever going to catch on.
I always seem to type c.om, but maybe it's because I type dvorak. My mistakes are different.
Mod up for both points...Moar examples plz...I could look a simple example for most tools and not have to read the page. And the mplayer man page is so big, full of so many options (flip screen upside down?) that I simply have to google to figure out what it is I'm trying to do. I can't read the whole thing until I come across the one thing that it was I wanted to do.
There's another format that is ubiquitous.
ASCII
I don't see any reason for e-books to be in any other format, so I refuse to buy an e-reader until it does what I want it to do--digitally store books--in the technically obvious way, instead of the marketing obvious way.
so on. It's currently existing technology, and the code is open source and public domain! Until Monsanto starts making cows...
I grew up in farm country, and cows are pretty easy....you like, turn them out in a field and eat grass for a long time, and then you kill them and eat them. Or, you put them in stalls and feed them until they get fat and then you kill them and eat them. Sure, vat-grown meat is pure meat and not bones, skin, and eyeballs, but you might be surprised at how little of that extra material is wasted...much of it is seperated at the slaughterhouse and sold. Is tending and maintaining a factory of muscle-growing vats going to easier, cheaper, and more environmental than a herd of animals? Really? It sounds to me like we already have these meat vats that like maintain themselves, reproduce themselves, and
A broadcasting alien civilization would only use a reflector if it knew where you were. I was speaking to the situation where said civilization is blindly broadcasting in all directions in the hope of the signal reaching someone else.
Ok, geometrically.
The idea that we can send radio signals to alien civilizations, or receive them, is unfortunately wishful thinking. "Contact" notwithstanding, it's not possible. We could never pick up a radio signal from an alien civilization because the power of a signal from a point source drops off exponentially. And it's not a matter of having a better amplifier either, because radio waves are actually quantized....eventually your signal has degraded to individual photons, and it doesn't take very long. My friend and I calculated that even with a MW-level transmitter, an alien civilazation on Alpha Centauri would need an impractically large dish to intercept even a trickle of photons.
Plus, it's not a drastic difference. 4-some percent versus 5-some percent. Personally, I think 4 and 5 percent is high failure rates for an flavor of laptop...so we're talking netbooks have a very very high failure rate compared to the 'merely' very high failure rate of normal laptops.
I do not watch TV at all, and I watch maybe 2 hours of movies per week. Why should I not be able to have a giant, inefficient TV, when with my viewing habits, I'm still using less power than many people who leave there 2* inch HD sets on 24-7? What about people that have 3 TVs in their house? Why can't I have one giant one?
In Soviet Russia, game ban you!
I drive a Corolla with a stick shift. In Dallas traffic, I push the clutch pedal in to disengage the engine from the wheels probably 100+ times per hour. It's not some special function that you would have to, in your panic, "remember" to do. If for some reason the throttle on my car ever got stuck or raced, the clutch pedal would be pushed in, quite seriously, before I had a chance to even think about it. It's not necessary to think Gee, my car is going faster than I want it to, what should I do????? In this case the correct thing to do is what you would in fact do without thinking about it, that is, the same thing you would normally do every time you drive, which which for people who drive stick shifts is simply called "driving the fucking car".