Yay, no sales tax! If there's one thing America needs, it's more of an incentive to go buy more things, because there certainly isn't enough consumption already - it's not like millions are owing on credit card debt or anything
The U.S. consumes so much shit it's not even funny (like 25% of of the world's stuff despite having 5% of the population). If anything, we need more taxes on the sale of non-essential things.
I think the low financial incentive for teachers has more to do with the supply / demand for teacher jobs. If you compare the ratio of teaching jobs / education degrees to some of the higher paying jobs, you'll find there are a lot more people with education degrees not actually teaching. There's always going to be more people willing to teach than there are available teaching jobs, hence the lower pay scale
Also, shouldn't it be something visual, not relegated to a computer screen? Something that covers a large space that gives you a tingly feeling of awe when you see it in person? I don't quite get that feeling from wikipedia.
I'm very grateful for wikipedia and all the useful stuff I've learned over the years, but this is simply doesn't fall under the classification of a "world heritage site"
Well they won't be giving people any sort of physical or tangible deals, or anything with an associated production cost, that's for sure. (i.e. physical copies of games, discount on next console). It'll be some sort of credit, i.e. 3 months of free online play.
I've played trumpet for about 20 years or so (play in a few bands as well), so this was kind of a neat to see. I can see that it has some implications for learning the notes and technique but that's about it. Most new trumpet players (6 months or less experience) have a lot of difficultly making clear sounds or hitting the notes properly - so this device might be handy for learning scales and notes and whatnot. But at the same time, the person learning this isn't really learning how to make a proper sound on the mouthpiece - that seems to negate any sort of technical benefit you might get from this
As for a band application, I really doubt we'll ever any sort of practical use from this. Listening to the audio sample here really made me squirm (yes, I know it's a prototype in the early stages, but I can't stand a synthesized horn sound on a keyboard either). Wind and string instruments really have no business being synthesized, because it's going to be impossible (or very difficult) to reproduce all the sounds that make them awesome. Stuff like a half-valve muffled sound, slight pitch variations, vibrato, trills, tongue rolling etc - i doubt any of this is possible on a synthesized instrument this like one, or ever will be.
Just to be clear, i'm not dissing synthesized instruments in general - a synth keyboard or drums is quite useful and you make a variety of neat sounds and effects with those (I have a keyboard myself with all sort of effects). I just doubt there would ever be a useful application for any sort of synthesized wind instruments (i.e. saxophone, trombone, violin, guitar)
Actually, parents will love this. You can control the volume on this thing. A real trumpet is LOUD, and the learning curve is very slow on making a good sound, so your kid will play a lot of rusty notes for that first year.
I didn't think that was possible either, but he must have some sort of sensor built in already, because he is able to make at least two tones with none of the valves down in the demonstration video (a C, and a G). He actually appears to be blowing, so perhaps there's some sort of sensor there that bases the pitch on the speed of the air or something
Oh great, here we go with the "Ironic" or "Hypocritical" comments again, another poster fails to realize the difference here.
I'll try to explain secrecy within wikileaks once more, hopefully before a hundred other comments spout the same nonsense. Wikileaks gets information from people within the organizations. These documents or memos they receive may have the submitters information on there. Maybe they have an IP, or email address, or mailing address or something that the submitter didn't hide. So wikileaks goes to the trouble of redacting this information from these documents so the submitter doesn't get identified.
Lets say Company A offers to bribe Country B's corrupt government to allow some dumping of chemical waste near some poor neighborhood in that country, but someone gets wind of this information floating around and submits it to wikileaks.
Now when these two entities find out their plan was leaked, they're going to be very pissed off. There may not be that many suspects for this leak, so they might start investigating to see who sent this information. Well guess who has this information? The wikileaks staff! Company A and Country B probably have deep deep pockets and wouldn't mind getting to the bottom of this, and who knows what the hell they'll do to the guy if they ever found out who it is (see : Bradley Manning detainment conditions).
Well the wikileaks staff are still human, and despite whatever moral integrity they have, maybe one of them can be tempted by large sums of money (as my dad used to say, Everyone has their price). So the best solution for the wikileaks organization at this point is to enforce a confidentiality agreement with an astronomical sum of money, as to potentially discourage any of their staff from leaking sensitive information that governments and organizations would love to get their hands on. Make it so whatever they might receive clearly isn't worth the 20M they'd have to pay back (assuming it was enforceable). This agreement isn't there to prevent the staff from disclosing the wikileaks budget, or to hide the fact that Julian assange uses Rogaine, or stays in 5 star hotels for conference visits. This is prevent the leakers from "mysteriously disappearing" because someone at their organization found out what they leaked.
A postal service that serves all Americans equally, even if they live at the end of a dirt road a few hundred miles from civilization, is a founding value of our republic.
This is one of the key services necessary for our country to properly function. You should have all learned that from that Kevin Costner documentary that came out a few years ago.
So uh, why did it take so long to plan an attack if they had a lead for more than 2 years? That's only the age of the document as well, the guy in question here (Libi) was captured way back in 2005.
For every 1000 documents of embarrassing diplomatic relations, corporate malevolence, and government secrets, perhaps one or two get out that should have been kept secret. What's that official death count from all those leaked afghan cables? Zero? One?
Does that mean Tennessee teachers can teach the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster, as they can "explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal" ? If so, then I welcome this bill, and hope some of the teachers can teach the ways of his noodliness without getting into trouble.
Or a variety of other reasons why these types of movies aren't being made. I hardly see how The Watchmen could have a significant impact on the future of these movies given some other reasons. How about:
- Family values? This isn't the free-loving 70's any more, the original target demographic for these types of movies (according to the article). People just might not be that into these types of movies, much to the dismay of the author. People get all uppity now if they see a nip slip on daytime TV in america (not so much in europe) so they're probably not going to dig this type of movie.
- Portrayal of women? Look at the pictures in TFA - do you women want to go see this movie if the main actress is basically a sex doll? Look at the comic book portrayal of the aeon flux main character, then the movie adaptation. If the movie character had the comic book outfit, I really doubt I could have convinced my girlfriend to see it. Studio's aren't going to spend millions on a movie if no women will see it
- MPAA - these movies would all get an R rating at the minimum, and possibly an X rating from the MPAA. An NC-17 rating is basically a death sentence for the movie, because most theaters won't show it. Major retailers like walmart won't carry the DVDs.
- Availability of porn? Ok, this one's a long shot - but a 14 year old doesn't need to see a movie like this to get their dose of virtual titties. I know that when I was younger I'd watch Heavy Metal or something on the late night TV if it happened to come on. Not so sure about now, the internet and easy access to porn & tantalizing web comics might have ruined that for this generation
Meh, not so sure if I agree with "sociopathic tendencies". Sociopaths generally do whatever they want for their personal gain, and have no regard for anyone's feeling. I think the anonymous members see themselves more as vigilantes and upholding justice when no one else comes to their claim (maybe pranking others is a form of justice to them). The things they do generally aren't for their own personal gain, it's for retribution
If Anon had a D & D Alignment I'd categorize them as Chaotic Good. "Chaotic Good is known as the "Beatific," "Rebel," or "Cynic" alignment. A Chaotic Good character favors change for a greater good, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well. They always intend to do the right thing, but their methods are generally disorganized and often out of alignment with the rest of society..."
I don't always agree with their methods, but I really liked this story. Also, note that there was only the claim of a death threat. Cancelling the seminar because of a death threat sounds better than "We're going to a computer security conference / seminar (or whatever it is), but we just got hacked and would rather not answer any embarassing questions about getting pwned"
If I am to understand your logic correctly, then any suppression of information is technically bad (and no better than the governments of the world). I'd have to respectfully disagree - the information that anonymous is trying to "suppress" is their own personal information. It isn't of any value, and really isn't of any concern to the majority of the world. Really, the only people that would care would be the ones with some malicious intent among those people. The information wikileaks releases DOES indeed concern and affect most of the world. I wanna know if some company is secretly dumping toxic waste in my back yard, or if my tax dollars are going to an unjust war, or if that last election was rigged - because all that actually DOES concern me. Generally, if a corporation or government or collection of rich wealthy folks has some secrets they don't want people to know, then I'm probably getting fucked somehow without my knowledge.
I don't always agree with the things that anonymous does, but hey it's a group of rag-tag individuals with no organization. It's essentially mob justice - not the ideal enforcement agency around, but once in a while you'll see what they do to their victims and go "boy, did they ever deserve that".
Reminds me of a quote I've heard a few times before, "If you're under 30 and a conservative, you don't have a heart. If you're over 30 and a liberal, you don't have a brain."
The astrologists just didn't account for that missing zodiac sign (Ophiuchus) for oh, a few hundred centuries. Now that they've got things all sorted out again with the alignment of the stars with the right zodiac sign, and the lunar eclipses with the precession of the equinoxes when the age of Aquarius starts, it should all make sense real soon. I'm sure that in no time we'll see some legitimate scientific explanations for astrology and personal behavior, like uh... the earth's position to the nearest supernova when you were born and the relative amount of positronic gravitrinos from dark matter emanating from Pisces during the last meteor shower means that tomorrow a Sagittarius will be kind and prosperous, but should be cautious of a close friend and their motives. But only if they live north of the tropic of cancer, since the gravitational pull of the moon for those in the southern hemisphere won't be enough to counter balance the red energy shift from Mars.
And in yet another related study, patients who ended up playing dante's inferno and Diablo 2 reported much MUCH higher levels of pain...
Kidding aside, I wonder how much theme of the game (considering the patients illness) has to do with it, as opposed to any other type of game. Does the snowball / penguin thing help more because they're burn victims - or would any game provide the same kind of relief (a distraction is all that's necessary). If there's a correlation, maybe we can 'prescribe' some Dr Mario to hypochondriacs, or 'prescribe' The Sims 3 to those with social anxiety disorder.
Lisa : Sorry Dad..
Homer (from hospital bed) : It's ok honey... we just could have really used that $12,000
Lisa : Um.. dad, 10 percent of 12 Million isn't 12 thousand... its....
Is anyone else shocked that mcafee is worth this much, or somehow got 7.7 billion dollars? Wow.. As a company they're only focused on one product (anti-virus software) that's bloated, not free (like many equally useful alternatives, i.e. windows essential, avg, avast, malwarebytes, many more..). How could they be valued so high?
Slashdot Mirror
Yay, no sales tax! If there's one thing America needs, it's more of an incentive to go buy more things, because there certainly isn't enough consumption already - it's not like millions are owing on credit card debt or anything
The U.S. consumes so much shit it's not even funny (like 25% of of the world's stuff despite having 5% of the population). If anything, we need more taxes on the sale of non-essential things.
I think the low financial incentive for teachers has more to do with the supply / demand for teacher jobs. If you compare the ratio of teaching jobs / education degrees to some of the higher paying jobs, you'll find there are a lot more people with education degrees not actually teaching. There's always going to be more people willing to teach than there are available teaching jobs, hence the lower pay scale
Also, shouldn't it be something visual, not relegated to a computer screen? Something that covers a large space that gives you a tingly feeling of awe when you see it in person? I don't quite get that feeling from wikipedia.
I'm very grateful for wikipedia and all the useful stuff I've learned over the years, but this is simply doesn't fall under the classification of a "world heritage site"
Well they won't be giving people any sort of physical or tangible deals, or anything with an associated production cost, that's for sure. (i.e. physical copies of games, discount on next console). It'll be some sort of credit, i.e. 3 months of free online play.
I've played trumpet for about 20 years or so (play in a few bands as well), so this was kind of a neat to see. I can see that it has some implications for learning the notes and technique but that's about it. Most new trumpet players (6 months or less experience) have a lot of difficultly making clear sounds or hitting the notes properly - so this device might be handy for learning scales and notes and whatnot. But at the same time, the person learning this isn't really learning how to make a proper sound on the mouthpiece - that seems to negate any sort of technical benefit you might get from this
As for a band application, I really doubt we'll ever any sort of practical use from this. Listening to the audio sample here really made me squirm (yes, I know it's a prototype in the early stages, but I can't stand a synthesized horn sound on a keyboard either). Wind and string instruments really have no business being synthesized, because it's going to be impossible (or very difficult) to reproduce all the sounds that make them awesome. Stuff like a half-valve muffled sound, slight pitch variations, vibrato, trills, tongue rolling etc - i doubt any of this is possible on a synthesized instrument this like one, or ever will be.
Just to be clear, i'm not dissing synthesized instruments in general - a synth keyboard or drums is quite useful and you make a variety of neat sounds and effects with those (I have a keyboard myself with all sort of effects). I just doubt there would ever be a useful application for any sort of synthesized wind instruments (i.e. saxophone, trombone, violin, guitar)
Actually, parents will love this. You can control the volume on this thing. A real trumpet is LOUD, and the learning curve is very slow on making a good sound, so your kid will play a lot of rusty notes for that first year.
I didn't think that was possible either, but he must have some sort of sensor built in already, because he is able to make at least two tones with none of the valves down in the demonstration video (a C, and a G). He actually appears to be blowing, so perhaps there's some sort of sensor there that bases the pitch on the speed of the air or something
Touche, good point
Oh great, here we go with the "Ironic" or "Hypocritical" comments again, another poster fails to realize the difference here.
I'll try to explain secrecy within wikileaks once more, hopefully before a hundred other comments spout the same nonsense. Wikileaks gets information from people within the organizations. These documents or memos they receive may have the submitters information on there. Maybe they have an IP, or email address, or mailing address or something that the submitter didn't hide. So wikileaks goes to the trouble of redacting this information from these documents so the submitter doesn't get identified.
Lets say Company A offers to bribe Country B's corrupt government to allow some dumping of chemical waste near some poor neighborhood in that country, but someone gets wind of this information floating around and submits it to wikileaks.
Now when these two entities find out their plan was leaked, they're going to be very pissed off. There may not be that many suspects for this leak, so they might start investigating to see who sent this information. Well guess who has this information? The wikileaks staff! Company A and Country B probably have deep deep pockets and wouldn't mind getting to the bottom of this, and who knows what the hell they'll do to the guy if they ever found out who it is (see : Bradley Manning detainment conditions).
Well the wikileaks staff are still human, and despite whatever moral integrity they have, maybe one of them can be tempted by large sums of money (as my dad used to say, Everyone has their price). So the best solution for the wikileaks organization at this point is to enforce a confidentiality agreement with an astronomical sum of money, as to potentially discourage any of their staff from leaking sensitive information that governments and organizations would love to get their hands on. Make it so whatever they might receive clearly isn't worth the 20M they'd have to pay back (assuming it was enforceable). This agreement isn't there to prevent the staff from disclosing the wikileaks budget, or to hide the fact that Julian assange uses Rogaine, or stays in 5 star hotels for conference visits. This is prevent the leakers from "mysteriously disappearing" because someone at their organization found out what they leaked.
A postal service that serves all Americans equally, even if they live at the end of a dirt road a few hundred miles from civilization, is a founding value of our republic.
This is one of the key services necessary for our country to properly function. You should have all learned that from that Kevin Costner documentary that came out a few years ago.
So uh, why did it take so long to plan an attack if they had a lead for more than 2 years? That's only the age of the document as well, the guy in question here (Libi) was captured way back in 2005.
Perhaps you mean something more on the lines of :
For every 1000 documents of embarrassing diplomatic relations, corporate malevolence, and government secrets, perhaps one or two get out that should have been kept secret. What's that official death count from all those leaked afghan cables? Zero? One?
Does that mean Tennessee teachers can teach the gospel of the flying spaghetti monster, as they can "explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal" ? If so, then I welcome this bill, and hope some of the teachers can teach the ways of his noodliness without getting into trouble.
Really, that's what they meant by "Thou hath lost an eighth"? Shit, I always assumed that meant I had somehow misplaced one of my reagents...
Meh, they don't need to vote themselves. They can already buy all the votes they need, now with unlimited contributions.
Not to nitpick on your joke, but eBay actually owns 25% of craigslist - maybe you meant proudly presented to you by Amazon :)
Also, 330 crimes - 12 murders and 105 robberies, out of how many nation-wide crimes, murders and robberies is that exactly..?
(Rhetorical question, not sure what the answer is, but i'll bet that's not even 0.1% of all crimes)
Or a variety of other reasons why these types of movies aren't being made. I hardly see how The Watchmen could have a significant impact on the future of these movies given some other reasons. How about :
- Family values? This isn't the free-loving 70's any more, the original target demographic for these types of movies (according to the article). People just might not be that into these types of movies, much to the dismay of the author. People get all uppity now if they see a nip slip on daytime TV in america (not so much in europe) so they're probably not going to dig this type of movie.
- Portrayal of women? Look at the pictures in TFA - do you women want to go see this movie if the main actress is basically a sex doll? Look at the comic book portrayal of the aeon flux main character, then the movie adaptation. If the movie character had the comic book outfit, I really doubt I could have convinced my girlfriend to see it. Studio's aren't going to spend millions on a movie if no women will see it
- MPAA - these movies would all get an R rating at the minimum, and possibly an X rating from the MPAA. An NC-17 rating is basically a death sentence for the movie, because most theaters won't show it. Major retailers like walmart won't carry the DVDs.
- Availability of porn? Ok, this one's a long shot - but a 14 year old doesn't need to see a movie like this to get their dose of virtual titties. I know that when I was younger I'd watch Heavy Metal or something on the late night TV if it happened to come on. Not so sure about now, the internet and easy access to porn & tantalizing web comics might have ruined that for this generation
Meh, not so sure if I agree with "sociopathic tendencies". Sociopaths generally do whatever they want for their personal gain, and have no regard for anyone's feeling. I think the anonymous members see themselves more as vigilantes and upholding justice when no one else comes to their claim (maybe pranking others is a form of justice to them). The things they do generally aren't for their own personal gain, it's for retribution
If Anon had a D & D Alignment I'd categorize them as Chaotic Good. "Chaotic Good is known as the "Beatific," "Rebel," or "Cynic" alignment. A Chaotic Good character favors change for a greater good, disdains bureaucratic organizations that get in the way of social improvement, and places a high value on personal freedom, not only for oneself, but for others as well. They always intend to do the right thing, but their methods are generally disorganized and often out of alignment with the rest of society..."
I don't always agree with their methods, but I really liked this story. Also, note that there was only the claim of a death threat. Cancelling the seminar because of a death threat sounds better than "We're going to a computer security conference / seminar (or whatever it is), but we just got hacked and would rather not answer any embarassing questions about getting pwned"
If I am to understand your logic correctly, then any suppression of information is technically bad (and no better than the governments of the world). I'd have to respectfully disagree - the information that anonymous is trying to "suppress" is their own personal information. It isn't of any value, and really isn't of any concern to the majority of the world. Really, the only people that would care would be the ones with some malicious intent among those people. The information wikileaks releases DOES indeed concern and affect most of the world. I wanna know if some company is secretly dumping toxic waste in my back yard, or if my tax dollars are going to an unjust war, or if that last election was rigged - because all that actually DOES concern me. Generally, if a corporation or government or collection of rich wealthy folks has some secrets they don't want people to know, then I'm probably getting fucked somehow without my knowledge.
I don't always agree with the things that anonymous does, but hey it's a group of rag-tag individuals with no organization. It's essentially mob justice - not the ideal enforcement agency around, but once in a while you'll see what they do to their victims and go "boy, did they ever deserve that".
Reminds me of a quote I've heard a few times before, "If you're under 30 and a conservative, you don't have a heart. If you're over 30 and a liberal, you don't have a brain."
The astrologists just didn't account for that missing zodiac sign (Ophiuchus) for oh, a few hundred centuries. Now that they've got things all sorted out again with the alignment of the stars with the right zodiac sign, and the lunar eclipses with the precession of the equinoxes when the age of Aquarius starts, it should all make sense real soon. I'm sure that in no time we'll see some legitimate scientific explanations for astrology and personal behavior, like uh... the earth's position to the nearest supernova when you were born and the relative amount of positronic gravitrinos from dark matter emanating from Pisces during the last meteor shower means that tomorrow a Sagittarius will be kind and prosperous, but should be cautious of a close friend and their motives. But only if they live north of the tropic of cancer, since the gravitational pull of the moon for those in the southern hemisphere won't be enough to counter balance the red energy shift from Mars.
And in yet another related study, patients who ended up playing dante's inferno and Diablo 2 reported much MUCH higher levels of pain...
Kidding aside, I wonder how much theme of the game (considering the patients illness) has to do with it, as opposed to any other type of game. Does the snowball / penguin thing help more because they're burn victims - or would any game provide the same kind of relief (a distraction is all that's necessary). If there's a correlation, maybe we can 'prescribe' some Dr Mario to hypochondriacs, or 'prescribe' The Sims 3 to those with social anxiety disorder.
That's 360 MILLION not thousand...
Lisa : Sorry Dad..
Homer (from hospital bed) : It's ok honey... we just could have really used that $12,000
Lisa : Um.. dad, 10 percent of 12 Million isn't 12 thousand... its....
Is anyone else shocked that mcafee is worth this much, or somehow got 7.7 billion dollars? Wow.. As a company they're only focused on one product (anti-virus software) that's bloated, not free (like many equally useful alternatives, i.e. windows essential, avg, avast, malwarebytes, many more..). How could they be valued so high?