Addressing #3: In the fucked-up minds of these paper-pushing bean-counting corporate types, they probably think that they can steer the mainstream away from general-purpose computers and into mere computing appliances (like Xbox, PS3, and whatever comes after them), and then stigmatize PC owners as 'dangerous hackers and criminal scum' or somesuch. Luckily for us, they are, as usual, completely wrong.
I'm sure that these so-called 'experts' think that they can clamp down on every single person on the planet with a compiler who can write transcoding software, too, or they can force Microsoft, Apple, and every other company, organization, or collective of programmers who produce OS's, to ensure that it's not possible to circumvent their draconic new DRM scheme. As always, they're wrong; as you say, this will change nothing. The mantra holds as true as it always has: You can't stop the signal, Mal. If they released this today, by Friday at the latest there'd be a way to strip it off of every frame of every video, making them ready to transcode into whatever format you bloody well want to use. As you and others have said, all they're doing is hurting the legitimate customers and their own interests in the process, and creativity in general.
According to caloriecount.com, 3 pieces of Jolly Rancher candy (18.0g) contain 17.0g of carbohydrates, 11.0g of which is sugar, a total of 70 calories. This child had one piece, so that's about 23 calories and about 3.7g of sugar. So what the hell is the big deal? We're talking about maybe 1.5% of her total daily caloric intake here. If her mom or the school is feeding her some fruit juice she's getting more sugar than is in that candy, and when it comes right down to it fruit juice isn't much better than drinking a soda! Doesn't anybody know how to think for themselves anymore?
I don't necessarily believe any of this talk about the so-called death of the PC; I do not want my data or computing done in "the cloud" any more than I want my personal information splattered all over the internet, which is to say not at all. I'll just keep building myself nice, high-powered desktop systems, like I've been doing for the last 20 years or so. The rest of you can do whatever you like.
Why Mars and not the Moon?
on
Gardening On Mars
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't quite understand why it is we're (ostensibly) pushing for Mars now, when we should be working to get back to the Moon first? Wouldn't we gain all sorts of experience and understanding of living on a non-terrestrial world living on the Moon, as well as possibly building infrastructure there to make future missions to Mars and elsewhere easier, amongst a myriad of other things the Moon would be useful for? Or is this just Obama paying lip-service to the idea, knowing that future administrations will likely vote the whole thing down anyway so it doesn't matter?
I work for a company that produces a specific type of medical equipment, and since I do all the support and service for units sold in the USA, I still have to support units with floppy drives, which are still as new as 5 years old. Even on units less than a year old, I still need to use a floppy drive to run some diagnostics on them because the single-board computer won't boot from USB. Also, memo to USB flash drive manufacturers: please make more of them with write-protect switches on them!
Nice video. Especially liked the Pirates of the Carribbean music they chose, very appropriate. Nice concept, too. Aside from the obvious fear-mongering about how terrorists could acquire these, how about such a thing blurring the line between military targets and civilian targets? By design, these can hide amongst otherwise innocuous-looking non-combatives -- if your leadership doesn't really care much for putting non-combatants at risk -- and the general public wouldn't even know they were standing right next to a mobile missile-launching platform. Could be nasty.
helping parents keep violent material away from children
Maybe if they could be bothered to pay attention to what their kids are doing and paid more attention to what games they're buying for them, then we wouldn't need laws like this in the first place!?
Maybe we should require people to get a parenting license before procreating.
Thanks for the link. As it turns out I was able to get it to work reliably using the IR link, but I've printed out the page you linked in case I start having problems in the future.
in 3, 2, 1.. Seriously, I'm not a PETA-type person at all, and even I think this is kind of a cruel thing to do to animals, even if it's cows we're talking about. Granted, they're not in the least bit bright, but we already use them for milk and eventually kill them for their meat and hide, it seems rather heartless to make them generate power as well.
Enough said. Nobody is going to "mandate" any such software on any computer I own. If it comes to that, then that's the beginning of the end for many things people have taken for granted in this country (USA) for so many decades. No way in hell I'd stand for it, and anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together had better wise up now!
doublefacepalm.jpg I don't know what the entertainment industry has been smoking, but it must be some powerful shit if they think crap like this is going to fly. Read my lips: Over my dead body.
I was just considering two things they could do if they wanted to improve safety, as opposed to just using safety to increase revenue from traffic tickets. Both things would provide a visual indication of the imminence of the light turning red. First, they could reprogram the signals so that the green and yellow are on at the same time, and then when half of the yellow light time passes, it goes to yellow light only, then the light turns red. Second, they could provide a numeric display, similar to what they have for pedestrian crosswalk indicators, showing a countdown of yellow light time, and perhaps even remaining green light time. Either way if you know how much time you have to work with, you could make a more intelligent decision as to whether to enter the intersection or not.
I've got TiVo, and when the FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!". Then a month or so ago I get an email from TiVo -- TiVo, not even Comcast! -- telling me Comcast is changing everything over to digital and that I'd have to get a freakin' cable box again. To add insult to injury, I've been reading reports all over the place of the DTA Comcast gives you not being 100% compatible or reliable with TiVo's IR blaster, so I had to get one of each cable box and see which one works: the DTA with no superfluous onscreen displays I don't need, or the full-blown cable box with all the useless bells and whistles. That and they keep raising the rates. I am NOT a happy Comcast customer, and if there were ANY other choices where I'm situated I'd go with them!
There are currently over 400 comments in this thread so it's unlikely mine will be read by anyone, but I have to weigh in based on my own experiences growing up.
I was one of the "bright" kids -- apparently, anyways. What they either didn't know, or didn't deem necessary to tell me, was that I had ADD. Consequently I was unmedicated (parents didn't believe in that sort of thing, but that's another story) and struggled in the chaotic large class-sizes of a public school, and ended up in a private school 4th through 8th grades. Private schools tend to have the polar extremes of kids -- both the exceptionally bright (which I could be, when kept focused and interested) and the ones with learning disabilities and behavioural problems. I can but assume that this did and still does exist in public schools, perhaps to a greater extent because of the larger number of students overall. IN my experience, doing well in class, testing well, and getting good grades would actually attract the ire of the ones who don't/won't/can't learn well, who use it as an excuse to hate -- and subsequently harass -- students who do well for themselves. In my case there was no system of rewards from the school or teachers beyond their praise for a job well done. I can but assume that if this system of monetary rewards was instituted as a policy in a school system that it would sooner or later drive a wedge between the students who do well and the students who don't do well no matter what carrot you dangle in front of them -- and that it would likely lead to more harassment and violence between students. I have no doubt that in the short term it would have a positive effect, but in the long run it would just make a bad situation worse; it's putting yet another band-aid on an infected, festering wound. If the current "reforms", such as they are, are not working, then by all means try something else, but I don't think bribing them is the ultimate answer.
This is a sad little product, developed by sad little people for a sad little world that's just getting sadder. Go out, meet people, talk to them, listen to them, get real hugs! Everybody talks about how the internet connects people, but all I see is it making it easier to stay disconnected from actual people!
I've filed for a patent on "using a handheld device to selectively transfer contrasting material onto any flat surface or material for the purpose of creating symbols in combinations for the purpose of communication of thoughts or ideas in a non-verbal form". Everyone on the planet should get a jump on it being granted and send me money now -- unless you've never used a pen or pencil to write anything anywhere your entire life. Don't worry, I'm not too greedy: I only expect $1US for a lifetime license to use the technology.:-)
Since all cellphones are now digital, why can't their firmware be written to accept an emergency broadcast call from the carrier's network? Granted it would creep the hell out of most people to have everyone's cellphones ringing simultaneously, but it sure would get everyone's attention. There are enough people will cellphones that people without them (or had them turned off at the time) would hear from everyone else about the impending emergency.
Is that some sort of typo or something? That's just crazy-talk, that's what that is! Who ever heard of such a thing! Who would need something like that, anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Addressing #3: In the fucked-up minds of these paper-pushing bean-counting corporate types, they probably think that they can steer the mainstream away from general-purpose computers and into mere computing appliances (like Xbox, PS3, and whatever comes after them), and then stigmatize PC owners as 'dangerous hackers and criminal scum' or somesuch. Luckily for us, they are, as usual, completely wrong.
I'm sure that these so-called 'experts' think that they can clamp down on every single person on the planet with a compiler who can write transcoding software, too, or they can force Microsoft, Apple, and every other company, organization, or collective of programmers who produce OS's, to ensure that it's not possible to circumvent their draconic new DRM scheme. As always, they're wrong; as you say, this will change nothing. The mantra holds as true as it always has: You can't stop the signal, Mal. If they released this today, by Friday at the latest there'd be a way to strip it off of every frame of every video, making them ready to transcode into whatever format you bloody well want to use. As you and others have said, all they're doing is hurting the legitimate customers and their own interests in the process, and creativity in general.
According to caloriecount.com, 3 pieces of Jolly Rancher candy (18.0g) contain 17.0g of carbohydrates, 11.0g of which is sugar, a total of 70 calories. This child had one piece, so that's about 23 calories and about 3.7g of sugar. So what the hell is the big deal? We're talking about maybe 1.5% of her total daily caloric intake here. If her mom or the school is feeding her some fruit juice she's getting more sugar than is in that candy, and when it comes right down to it fruit juice isn't much better than drinking a soda! Doesn't anybody know how to think for themselves anymore?
I don't necessarily believe any of this talk about the so-called death of the PC; I do not want my data or computing done in "the cloud" any more than I want my personal information splattered all over the internet, which is to say not at all. I'll just keep building myself nice, high-powered desktop systems, like I've been doing for the last 20 years or so. The rest of you can do whatever you like.
I don't quite understand why it is we're (ostensibly) pushing for Mars now, when we should be working to get back to the Moon first? Wouldn't we gain all sorts of experience and understanding of living on a non-terrestrial world living on the Moon, as well as possibly building infrastructure there to make future missions to Mars and elsewhere easier, amongst a myriad of other things the Moon would be useful for? Or is this just Obama paying lip-service to the idea, knowing that future administrations will likely vote the whole thing down anyway so it doesn't matter?
I work for a company that produces a specific type of medical equipment, and since I do all the support and service for units sold in the USA, I still have to support units with floppy drives, which are still as new as 5 years old. Even on units less than a year old, I still need to use a floppy drive to run some diagnostics on them because the single-board computer won't boot from USB. Also, memo to USB flash drive manufacturers: please make more of them with write-protect switches on them!
If ISPs can do whatever they want, then so far as I'm concerned, I'll do whatever the hell I please as well!
Nice video. Especially liked the Pirates of the Carribbean music they chose, very appropriate.
Nice concept, too. Aside from the obvious fear-mongering about how terrorists could acquire these, how about such a thing blurring the line between military targets and civilian targets? By design, these can hide amongst otherwise innocuous-looking non-combatives -- if your leadership doesn't really care much for putting non-combatants at risk -- and the general public wouldn't even know they were standing right next to a mobile missile-launching platform. Could be nasty.
helping parents keep violent material away from children
Maybe if they could be bothered to pay attention to what their kids are doing and paid more attention to what games they're buying for them, then we wouldn't need laws like this in the first place!?
Maybe we should require people to get a parenting license before procreating.
Perhaps so!
toss him out on the raft thingie
Sounds like something Jet Blue would do.
I have no interest in bloated, overpriced satellite TV, Anon.
Thanks for the link. As it turns out I was able to get it to work reliably using the IR link, but I've printed out the page you linked in case I start having problems in the future.
in 3, 2, 1..
Seriously, I'm not a PETA-type person at all, and even I think this is kind of a cruel thing to do to animals, even if it's cows we're talking about. Granted, they're not in the least bit bright, but we already use them for milk and eventually kill them for their meat and hide, it seems rather heartless to make them generate power as well.
Enough said. Nobody is going to "mandate" any such software on any computer I own. If it comes to that, then that's the beginning of the end for many things people have taken for granted in this country (USA) for so many decades. No way in hell I'd stand for it, and anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together had better wise up now!
I specifically object to practices like this, and I don't think I need to explain to anybody why.
doublefacepalm.jpg
I don't know what the entertainment industry has been smoking, but it must be some powerful shit if they think crap like this is going to fly. Read my lips: Over my dead body.
I was just considering two things they could do if they wanted to improve safety, as opposed to just using safety to increase revenue from traffic tickets. Both things would provide a visual indication of the imminence of the light turning red. First, they could reprogram the signals so that the green and yellow are on at the same time, and then when half of the yellow light time passes, it goes to yellow light only, then the light turns red. Second, they could provide a numeric display, similar to what they have for pedestrian crosswalk indicators, showing a countdown of yellow light time, and perhaps even remaining green light time. Either way if you know how much time you have to work with, you could make a more intelligent decision as to whether to enter the intersection or not.
I've got TiVo, and when the FCC mandated digital changeover was about to happen, Comcast made a big point of assuring everyone "if you're on Comcast and have an analog receiver, no worries, we're not changing anything!". Then a month or so ago I get an email from TiVo -- TiVo, not even Comcast! -- telling me Comcast is changing everything over to digital and that I'd have to get a freakin' cable box again. To add insult to injury, I've been reading reports all over the place of the DTA Comcast gives you not being 100% compatible or reliable with TiVo's IR blaster, so I had to get one of each cable box and see which one works: the DTA with no superfluous onscreen displays I don't need, or the full-blown cable box with all the useless bells and whistles. That and they keep raising the rates. I am NOT a happy Comcast customer, and if there were ANY other choices where I'm situated I'd go with them!
I was one of the "bright" kids -- apparently, anyways. What they either didn't know, or didn't deem necessary to tell me, was that I had ADD. Consequently I was unmedicated (parents didn't believe in that sort of thing, but that's another story) and struggled in the chaotic large class-sizes of a public school, and ended up in a private school 4th through 8th grades. Private schools tend to have the polar extremes of kids -- both the exceptionally bright (which I could be, when kept focused and interested) and the ones with learning disabilities and behavioural problems. I can but assume that this did and still does exist in public schools, perhaps to a greater extent because of the larger number of students overall. IN my experience, doing well in class, testing well, and getting good grades would actually attract the ire of the ones who don't/won't/can't learn well, who use it as an excuse to hate -- and subsequently harass -- students who do well for themselves. In my case there was no system of rewards from the school or teachers beyond their praise for a job well done. I can but assume that if this system of monetary rewards was instituted as a policy in a school system that it would sooner or later drive a wedge between the students who do well and the students who don't do well no matter what carrot you dangle in front of them -- and that it would likely lead to more harassment and violence between students. I have no doubt that in the short term it would have a positive effect, but in the long run it would just make a bad situation worse; it's putting yet another band-aid on an infected, festering wound. If the current "reforms", such as they are, are not working, then by all means try something else, but I don't think bribing them is the ultimate answer.
I am and introvert, you insensitive clod!
Seriously, I used to be, but I'm better now. People isolating themselves isn't healthy!
This is a sad little product, developed by sad little people for a sad little world that's just getting sadder. Go out, meet people, talk to them, listen to them, get real hugs! Everybody talks about how the internet connects people, but all I see is it making it easier to stay disconnected from actual people!
..Astronaut pays YOU!
I've filed for a patent on "using a handheld device to selectively transfer contrasting material onto any flat surface or material for the purpose of creating symbols in combinations for the purpose of communication of thoughts or ideas in a non-verbal form". Everyone on the planet should get a jump on it being granted and send me money now -- unless you've never used a pen or pencil to write anything anywhere your entire life. Don't worry, I'm not too greedy: I only expect $1US for a lifetime license to use the technology. :-)
Since all cellphones are now digital, why can't their firmware be written to accept an emergency broadcast call from the carrier's network? Granted it would creep the hell out of most people to have everyone's cellphones ringing simultaneously, but it sure would get everyone's attention. There are enough people will cellphones that people without them (or had them turned off at the time) would hear from everyone else about the impending emergency.
Is that some sort of typo or something? That's just crazy-talk, that's what that is! Who ever heard of such a thing! Who would need something like that, anyway?