You can start up fake wars which starve, burn and shred thousands of little kids, you can steal entire elections, and you can poison everybody with bad medicine and bad food, and the populace will take it all without much more than a whimper. But if you try to take away their picture shows. . ? Man, watch out!
None of those things affect very many people here. We're mostly well educated, comfortably well off people far from any front lines, eating reasonably good food, taking reasonably good medicine on those few ocassions we need it.
Entertainment though, now that we *do* need. Not as in "we can't survive without it", but as in "life would be that bit less rich, that bit less worthwhile without it".
Heck, if you try to turn them off, the most surprising people will expend great effort in trying to sign you up again for free
That's not "but you must have your entertainment drip feed!", that's "you don't have cable? Please, spend your money with us! Please!". I have Sky satellite TV. I get one or two mailshots each week from NTL, trying to convince me to switch to their service. They don't want to make sure I get my TV, they just want my money.
The time it takes to move between cameras can tell exactly how fast you're going. (Emphasis mine)
You said:
If your average speed is above the speed limit (Emphasis mine)
In what way is your average speed your exact speed?
So the idea of a "point" measure of speed is silly _and_ technically violates quantum theory.
I wasn't entirely clear perhaps, but I didn't say anything about a point measure of speed - when I said "point", I didn't mean in the mathematical sense, I meant it in the general sense, ie in this case a short stretch of road. (You know, how people talk of "a point in time" meaning a general time, anything from a few minutes to a few years, not something precise down to the nanosecond)
As for violating quantum theory, now you're being silly. We have yet to extend QM to macroscopic objects, so the uncertainty principle doesn't really apply when talking about cars. Yes, every particle that makes up the car is governed by QM, but no-one would seriously start talking about its wavefunction.
People who want to know how to use their new, very expensive piece technology properly.
No, I don't generally read the manual unless I have to - but if I later discover that things would have been easier for me if I had, I don't blame the manufacturer, I blame myself for being too impatient and arrogant.
A side note: The article uses "There are only half as many keys to learn" as an advantage.
Actually, I think it makes it harder, if anything. On a standard keyboard, I just have to know where the keys are - and if I'm not touch-typing I only really have to know roughly where they are, my eyes will do the rest.
Conversely, with this keyboard I not only have to know where a given symbol is, I have to know which modifier key(s) to hold down in order to "activate" it. Now I need to know three (or even four?) keys to press to obtain a symbol, rather than just one or two. How is that easier?
They're on the real keyboard - the colour-coding is one of the selling points. It helps new users identify the alphabetical keys more easily, apparently.
You can jam a mechanical typewriter simply by hitting the correct keys at the same time to make two adjacent "hammers" strike the paper at the same time. You can do it by typing at essentially zero speed.
The faster you type the more likely this is for a given keyboard/hammer layout, it's true, but QWERTY most definitely was not designed to slow typists down; quite the reverse.
No, I think IE's architecture is unsafe therefore lines of attack were developed to target it...
Or it may just be that it's the most widely-used browser and absolutely 100% guaranteed to be available (if not used) on a (half-way modern) Windows PC. I don't remember there being (m)any exploits back in the days of the browser wars, although admittedly, the internet was pretty new (in the public's mind at least).
Embedded into the O/S and activeX are a good starting point for things for MS to fix.
I'm not convinced that the embedding is necessarily a bad thing, to be honest. KHTML is as embedded in KDE as MSHTML is in the Windows shell; it remains to be seen how that pans out if and when the use of KDE-based distros becomes widespread.
Rubbish. There are many different ways to build a bridge, from the purely utilitarian (eg this one or these ones) to the wonderous (such as this harp bridge or this one).
Any of the standard bridges in the second link would have done just as well in place of the ones in my second pair of links; are you sure that engineering and design are the same thing when it comes to bridges?
Without knowing the details of Slovenian copyright law, I'd guess that it was dropped because he didn't actually do anything wrong.
Or possibly, they were sure that the guy *had* done something wrong, but their lawyer/legal team or equivalent convinced them that they didn't have enough evidence to make a success likely enough to be worth it. The site was shut down, there was little or nothing else they could realistically gain; why bother?
vcrs (famous betamax decision) helped people carry out an illegal act.. but it was legal. just providing the means does NOT equate into illegal actions.
Conversely, just because the Betamax case went our way, doesn't mean that any other instance under consideration would.
New technologies have made people realise that information is cheap
No, information of the type you mean (eg films, music, etc) is very expensive to produce, both in terms of time and money. Duplication and distribution of that information has vanishingly small costs, yes, but initial production isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
Speeding is both a serious and criminal offence... If no response is received [to a speeding ticket], a police officer will call at the registered keeper's address to serve the papers personally. If matters get to this stage a court trial will be the only option where, if found guilty the penalty points and fines can be considerably more severe. Any attempt to give false information will result in criminal proceedings.
So, perhaps the actual speeding isn't criminal, but you can certainly end in court because of it. Similarly, the last time my girlfriend was ticketed for a parking violation, it was a police officer who did it. (The site is some kind of industry/corporate site for (a) speed camera manufacturer(s), so may be biased, but shouldn't be outright lying - they're going to sell the cameras whatever the public think of the penalties)
Enforcement of road traffic law including speeding offences is a matter for the police of the country where the offence is committed but the Government do not believe that those who commit offences in this country should evade justice simply by returning home. The Government have agreed with our EU partners a framework decision on the mutual recognition of financial penalties. This will allow the UK to ask another EU member state to enforce any fine imposed here totalling 70 euros or more, and for the UK to enforce fines imposed abroad.
Again, that doesn't necessarily make it a criminal offence, but it appears that there's an EU-wide agreement between member states to allow states to request each other to impose penalties for offences commited within the EU.
Besides, as I understand it if something is illegal, it's either a criminal offence or a civil matter. You're not suggesting that traffic violations are civil matters (that have to be sued for), are you?
What I fear is just that the definition of "criminal" will change to include normal citizens pretty fast.
What do you mean, "will"? Show me someone who doesn't indulge in at least petty crime (speeding, parking violations, copyright infringement, the odd soft drug use, etc) and I'll show you an exceptional person.
Enough things are illegal that enough people do that pretty-much everyone breaks the law from time to time.
whining about obvious cases of mental illness where society is unwilling to find and treat the people who are sick.
Finding and treating people takes time, effort and money. It's much easier to suggest a (useless) quick "fix" - someone who goes on a kill crazy rampage turns out to like violent films? Ban them! They liked violent computer games? Ban them! A serial rapist likes (possibly violent) porn? Ban it! Thousands of people each year are involved in alcohol-fueled fights and other crimes? Ba- well, we all like a drink every now and again, and the vast majority of people drink responsibly, and besides, we need the tax money, and we can't just go banning everything...
"Content" publishers want control over everything.
That's not the case in this situation. Here, what they want is a recurring monthly income. Trust me, it's much preferable to get a steady flow of money than the occasional big bang (which then peters out as time progresses) when you release a new game. Not only is it really better (as you have a much better idea of how well you're doing both now and in the near future, financially), but it looks better on paper (so investors get the warm fuzzies).
Most people are the same - they'd rather get a regular salary, than a lump sum (maybe a year's worth, maybe more, but maybe less) once a year, on a date that they can't quite predict.
Also, I recollect (fondly) an issue of MSX Magazine which had a flexi disc record (you know, like one of them vinyl records your grandaddy used to have, but the flexi disc was a superthin version of this) which you also copied onto cassette to load onto your machine.
A UK Spectrum magazine did that, with a game featuring the Thompson Twins (iirc); there was a song by them, then a demo of a game they featured in.
They're deprecating the OpenGL driver that ships with Windows. No-one with a modern graphics card uses it - every single card manufacturer ships their own GL driver as part of their driver set, just as they ship DX ones.
Seriously, the only people this will really affect is people whose GPU manufacturer doesn't support GL, but as Intel, Ati, NVidia and (afaik) Matrox all do, that's almost no-one.
Slashdot Mirror
Europe is much more heavily dependent on windows than the US
Do you have any figures to back that up?
Built into the X server? In God's name why?
You can start up fake wars which starve, burn and shred thousands of little kids, you can steal entire elections, and you can poison everybody with bad medicine and bad food, and the populace will take it all without much more than a whimper. But if you try to take away their picture shows. . ? Man, watch out!
None of those things affect very many people here. We're mostly well educated, comfortably well off people far from any front lines, eating reasonably good food, taking reasonably good medicine on those few ocassions we need it.
Entertainment though, now that we *do* need. Not as in "we can't survive without it", but as in "life would be that bit less rich, that bit less worthwhile without it".
Heck, if you try to turn them off, the most surprising people will expend great effort in trying to sign you up again for free
That's not "but you must have your entertainment drip feed!", that's "you don't have cable? Please, spend your money with us! Please!". I have Sky satellite TV. I get one or two mailshots each week from NTL, trying to convince me to switch to their service. They don't want to make sure I get my TV, they just want my money.
Hhhmmmm.
The OP said:
The time it takes to move between cameras can tell exactly how fast you're going. (Emphasis mine)
You said:
If your average speed is above the speed limit (Emphasis mine)
In what way is your average speed your exact speed?
So the idea of a "point" measure of speed is silly _and_ technically violates quantum theory.
I wasn't entirely clear perhaps, but I didn't say anything about a point measure of speed - when I said "point", I didn't mean in the mathematical sense, I meant it in the general sense, ie in this case a short stretch of road. (You know, how people talk of "a point in time" meaning a general time, anything from a few minutes to a few years, not something precise down to the nanosecond)
As for violating quantum theory, now you're being silly. We have yet to extend QM to macroscopic objects, so the uncertainty principle doesn't really apply when talking about cars. Yes, every particle that makes up the car is governed by QM, but no-one would seriously start talking about its wavefunction.
'm pretty sure I'll get confused too if a cloned me standing in front of me.
That's a joke, right? You do realise that you can see mirrors, not to mention the things behind you if you look at one?
No they can't, they can measure your average speed. They have no idea what speed you were actually travelling at at any point between the two cameras.
I know I'm being pedantic, but it's my nature - I'm an ex-physicist programmer, I've been trained and am paid (in part) to be pedantic...
People who want to know how to use their new, very expensive piece technology properly.
No, I don't generally read the manual unless I have to - but if I later discover that things would have been easier for me if I had, I don't blame the manufacturer, I blame myself for being too impatient and arrogant.
A side note: The article uses "There are only half as many keys to learn" as an advantage.
Actually, I think it makes it harder, if anything. On a standard keyboard, I just have to know where the keys are - and if I'm not touch-typing I only really have to know roughly where they are, my eyes will do the rest.
Conversely, with this keyboard I not only have to know where a given symbol is, I have to know which modifier key(s) to hold down in order to "activate" it. Now I need to know three (or even four?) keys to press to obtain a symbol, rather than just one or two. How is that easier?
Or perhaps commonly-used keys were spaced so as to allow more rapid-fire use without jamming, thus speeding typing, not slowing it...
They're on the real keyboard - the colour-coding is one of the selling points. It helps new users identify the alphabetical keys more easily, apparently.
You can jam a mechanical typewriter simply by hitting the correct keys at the same time to make two adjacent "hammers" strike the paper at the same time. You can do it by typing at essentially zero speed.
The faster you type the more likely this is for a given keyboard/hammer layout, it's true, but QWERTY most definitely was not designed to slow typists down; quite the reverse.
No, I think IE's architecture is unsafe therefore lines of attack were developed to target it...
Or it may just be that it's the most widely-used browser and absolutely 100% guaranteed to be available (if not used) on a (half-way modern) Windows PC. I don't remember there being (m)any exploits back in the days of the browser wars, although admittedly, the internet was pretty new (in the public's mind at least).
Embedded into the O/S and activeX are a good starting point for things for MS to fix.
I'm not convinced that the embedding is necessarily a bad thing, to be honest. KHTML is as embedded in KDE as MSHTML is in the Windows shell; it remains to be seen how that pans out if and when the use of KDE-based distros becomes widespread.
It is synonymous to design or engineer a bridge.
Rubbish. There are many different ways to build a bridge, from the purely utilitarian (eg this one or these ones) to the wonderous (such as this harp bridge or this one).
Any of the standard bridges in the second link would have done just as well in place of the ones in my second pair of links; are you sure that engineering and design are the same thing when it comes to bridges?
Without knowing the details of Slovenian copyright law, I'd guess that it was dropped because he didn't actually do anything wrong.
Or possibly, they were sure that the guy *had* done something wrong, but their lawyer/legal team or equivalent convinced them that they didn't have enough evidence to make a success likely enough to be worth it. The site was shut down, there was little or nothing else they could realistically gain; why bother?
vcrs (famous betamax decision) helped people carry out an illegal act.. but it was legal.
just providing the means does NOT equate into illegal actions.
Conversely, just because the Betamax case went our way, doesn't mean that any other instance under consideration would.
New technologies have made people realise that information is cheap
No, information of the type you mean (eg films, music, etc) is very expensive to produce, both in terms of time and money. Duplication and distribution of that information has vanishingly small costs, yes, but initial production isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, IANAL so I'm a little fuzzy on what is and isn't a criminal offence, so I did a quick google.
/ ldhansrd/pdvn/lds04/text/41116w03.htm:
From http://www.speedcheck.co.uk/FAQs02.htm:
Speeding is both a serious and criminal offence... If no response is received [to a speeding ticket], a police officer will call at the registered keeper's address to serve the papers personally. If matters get to this stage a court trial will be the only option where, if found guilty the penalty points and fines can be considerably more severe. Any attempt to give false information will result in criminal proceedings.
So, perhaps the actual speeding isn't criminal, but you can certainly end in court because of it. Similarly, the last time my girlfriend was ticketed for a parking violation, it was a police officer who did it. (The site is some kind of industry/corporate site for (a) speed camera manufacturer(s), so may be biased, but shouldn't be outright lying - they're going to sell the cameras whatever the public think of the penalties)
Also, from http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900
Enforcement of road traffic law including speeding offences is a matter for the police of the country where the offence is committed but the Government do not believe that those who commit offences in this country should evade justice simply by returning home. The Government have agreed with our EU partners a framework decision on the mutual recognition of financial penalties. This will allow the UK to ask another EU member state to enforce any fine imposed here totalling 70 euros or more, and for the UK to enforce fines imposed abroad.
Again, that doesn't necessarily make it a criminal offence, but it appears that there's an EU-wide agreement between member states to allow states to request each other to impose penalties for offences commited within the EU.
Besides, as I understand it if something is illegal, it's either a criminal offence or a civil matter. You're not suggesting that traffic violations are civil matters (that have to be sued for), are you?
What I fear is just that the definition of "criminal" will change to include normal citizens pretty fast.
What do you mean, "will"? Show me someone who doesn't indulge in at least petty crime (speeding, parking violations, copyright infringement, the odd soft drug use, etc) and I'll show you an exceptional person.
Enough things are illegal that enough people do that pretty-much everyone breaks the law from time to time.
Sorry they got caught. Sorry people reacted the way they did.
What makes me think that if no-one had noticed, they'd have taken this thing right through to the bitter end, even if it meant ruining the poor guy?
Slashdot. News for nerds. Stuff that's provably false.
whining about obvious cases of mental illness where society is unwilling to find and treat the people who are sick.
Finding and treating people takes time, effort and money. It's much easier to suggest a (useless) quick "fix" - someone who goes on a kill crazy rampage turns out to like violent films? Ban them! They liked violent computer games? Ban them! A serial rapist likes (possibly violent) porn? Ban it! Thousands of people each year are involved in alcohol-fueled fights and other crimes? Ba- well, we all like a drink every now and again, and the vast majority of people drink responsibly, and besides, we need the tax money, and we can't just go banning everything...
The hypocrisy makes me sick sometimes.
"Content" publishers want control over everything.
That's not the case in this situation. Here, what they want is a recurring monthly income. Trust me, it's much preferable to get a steady flow of money than the occasional big bang (which then peters out as time progresses) when you release a new game. Not only is it really better (as you have a much better idea of how well you're doing both now and in the near future, financially), but it looks better on paper (so investors get the warm fuzzies).
Most people are the same - they'd rather get a regular salary, than a lump sum (maybe a year's worth, maybe more, but maybe less) once a year, on a date that they can't quite predict.
(Incidentally, why the quotes?)
Also, I recollect (fondly) an issue of MSX Magazine which had a flexi disc record (you know, like one of them vinyl records your grandaddy used to have, but the flexi disc was a superthin version of this) which you also copied onto cassette to load onto your machine.
A UK Spectrum magazine did that, with a game featuring the Thompson Twins (iirc); there was a song by them, then a demo of a game they featured in.
I never did get the damn thing to work...
Sounds great - now can I have a physical office to put/do it all in so I don't look like a complete tit in front of all my coworkers?
(Not to mention the money for all those cameras)
They're deprecating the OpenGL driver that ships with Windows. No-one with a modern graphics card uses it - every single card manufacturer ships their own GL driver as part of their driver set, just as they ship DX ones.
Seriously, the only people this will really affect is people whose GPU manufacturer doesn't support GL, but as Intel, Ati, NVidia and (afaik) Matrox all do, that's almost no-one.