The problem with smartphones as video cameras: -wastes battery you probably, at some point will need for a phone call -you have to consider video recording space when deciding how many movies, mp3s you might be putting on there. -the camera itself is of inferior quality *most* of the time. I have not yet tried the newest HD smartphones but with any SD one from last year, high motion video (or even stills) and you will notice a few microseconds of lag between when the top of the frame is captured versus the bottom.
Flip was designed to be a small, useful video camera and performed that function admirably. I should probably buy one or two because like the Creative Zen Nano/Micro, I can't see anyone making a quality substitute in the forseeable future.
Google Desktop was nice in the way it integrated all of your stuff into their main google search. Being able to look at relevant info from your email, network share and the Internet in one frame was quite helpful when trying to troubleshoot things, find a product manual, etc... Every so often the information I wanted turned out to be on the internal network, and much time (and bandwidth) was saved.
Not entirely. For example, after the 2005 NYC Transit Strike, the union president got 10 days in jail, the union itself was fined $2.5 million and automatic deduction of dues was suspended... Of course the criminal act committed was striking in the first place, might be different than cable cutting, etc.
Oh really? I'm pretty sure you're a troll but I'll play anyway. If you think: -Living your entire life in servitude -Having to work while sick because there is no such "sick time" (which would probably kill you even though simple rest would have helped) -Turning to prayer to solve every problem you can't understand (which is basically all of them) -Knowledge being sequestered by the wealthy simply because books were hard to make -and everyone was too busy dealing with their own food, illness and wild animals to even learn to read anyway
was somehow more conducive to solving the world's problems than the way things are now, you are quite naive. Before technology the only time you knew of a famine, flood, or disease was when it was happening to you, and then you died before you could do anything about it. Science and technology allows people to study these problems without having the pressure of not dying from them, and their study can be used to help future generations continue the work. Starvation? People would starve to death all the time, and no one would ever know about it. Overpopulation is a myth, stop perpetuating it. This planet is huge and has plenty of farmland, the problem is entirely in distribution, and lack of incentive to improve it, and people spreading out to occupy said farmland rather than living in compact residential towers. HIV? People would just die without even knowing what happened. It would be chalked up to a bad cold. Worse, no one would know they had it and it would have killed most of us off by now, because things like condoms wouldn't have been invented, nor would word have gotten out to be careful about it. Science didn't cause it but it did save us (as a race) from it. Pollution - the only one you're right about. That is a technology+human nature problem, but honestly you cannot say that it's negative effects outweigh the benefits to the majority of humans [yet]. Simply put, would you say your quality of life is better when you have to use 5-10 candles to light up a room, accidentally knock them over and burn your bedroom to ash, then had to worry about rebuilding your home? Anti-slavery? Before science and technology shook people's belief in weird gods, slavery was all there was! Human rights defense? Before our current level of societal evolution, if you had a human rights complaint, your head would be detached from its body in short order. The fact that that is not the case in most of the world is a sign of progress.
The point made somewhere up the chain here, if everyone with a brain used that brain to play chess, we'd all be really good at chess, but none of the above would have changed, with no hope of it ever changing.
Not to say that the 1500s quote is correct, an all work and no play society would probably solve every problem in short order, while entirely missing the joys of life.
As for your final thought, it's simply a meaningless cliche not worthy of addressing. If all you feel like using technology for is bitching about how useless technology is, than please do us all a favor and stop using it. The rest of us will actually be using the tools given us to solve our problems, like we've been doing since the beginning of time.
We should. There's only two things that keep a country from being toyed with by a larger country: (1) a strong military, (2) and a strong global opinion in support of the country. If (1) ever fails for us, it'd be nice to have something to fall back on, no?
It's because of science we even have the luxury of thinking about the problems of human nature.
If you'd prefer the days when priests would exorcise you whenever you got diarrhea (and of course only nobles had access this crucial service), that's your prerogative.
Your plan would only screw over poor people. Think of heating, for example: Someone who enjoys the temperature at 80 degrees indoors in their poorly insulated home, but makes money above his means, will continue to do so even when the price gets bad.
Meanwhile, you will have people living paycheck to paycheck burning newspapers in a trash barrel in their living room.
Also many people rent; they do not have the luxury of installing any fancy things like solar panels for their high rise, or even controlling their own thermostat. Landlords would either turn the thermostats to a very uncomfortable level or pass on the increased costs to the renters at the first opportunity. They have no immediate pressure (until there is legislation) to improve things; since all landlords in a geographic area would be affected equally, it would take some time before "supply and demand" pressure applies.
Thus while hundreds (thousands? we're a small place) of mortgages theoretically issued by the credit union have gone under - none of them appear on the credit union's books. They've already taken their profit and run.
Yes, but thanks to this the members of the credit union (end-users, ie: anyone who puts their life savings in an account there) are in a much safer position than people who put "money in the bank". Your credit union knew exactly how to handle itself to protect its members. If the big guys weren't so eager to buy up bad mortgages, I'm betting the CU wouldn't have made them in the first place, simple supply and demand.
Wow, flamebait if I ever saw it. There are a variety of reasons this could happen: -The parents acknowledge the skills of their son/daughter and reward accordingly -The parents have properly instilled a sense of doing work and getting paid for said work, instead of expecting money to come whenever it is needed and services to be rendered whenever they are desired, just because "they are a family".
Scholarships, financial aid, and very importantly: aim for a State school. And though everyone seems to feel that small schools "give you a better education", large state schools give you a much more diversified social network. It's also easier for someone so inclined to get an on campus IT job at such places... think about it, the number of clients is larger thus they need more IT staff. BUT, since this isn't a fancy shmancy ivy league school, the caliber of competition is not so high, and since these schools are on shoestring budgets, it's easier to hire students than full time staff. Your bosses make excellent references for future jobs as well.
That's how I did it, and while my interview:job ratio is not 1:1, it is 5:4. And I can't think of a single co-worker (who stayed in the IT sector) from that time who didn't get employed within a year after graduation.
If she is found guilty she should simply be banned from driving for 10 years, as she has proven she cannot be trusted with operating a motor vehicle. She's from Chicago, she can take the El like everyone else. Also such a punishment not only fits the crime but is a far better deterrent for such irresponsible actions than jail time (which everyone believes could never happen to them) or financial burdens (which the government usually makes sure you're not made homeless by).
Everyone keeps lamenting how we need more educators -- make it less of a thankless job, and let teachers actually fail kids and be able to enforce some form of discipline.
Sadly that right is reserved only for private schools (and even then only ones with standards, ones that are not afraid to lose students for the sake of the bottom line). This works because public schools are always there to catch the dumb, delinquent and violent of the bunch. Sadly also the poor.
The system does work for those with money or exceptionally intelligent children (Catholic schools can offer scholarships even at grade school level). For everyone else... well, that's not where politicians' kids are anyway...
This. Also third party cables do not seem to work as reliably as third party mini usb cables, so whether or not you'll actually be able to charge/power the phone with it on the computer you plug it into is a crapshoot.
People afraid of flying need to get over it or drive.
You do know that there is a good chunk of the population who *can't* fly, right? No fly list, medical reasons, legitimate psychological reasons (do you want someone trying to "get over it and fly" freaking out, having your flight cancelled, and everyone go through re-screening?).
Security lines for trains would make no sense. It doesn't matter how much the TSA wants it, they aren't used on any other HSR network nor would they have any actual benefit. You cannot take over a train with nail clippers, box cutters or even handguns. Both the signal system and the electrical can stop the train and there's not a damn thing anyone on board can do about it.
You are also not very forward thinking. This network wouldn't be even close to being done in 20 years. But in 20 years, would flying and driving still be this cheap? Do you think gas will not go to above $4 a gallon in 20 years?
I don't understand why everyone is assuming HSR would have TSA security: 1 - No other country has high security for their rail systems, high speed or otherwise 2 - We don't have high security for our low speed rail, just some well trained dogs at key stations
Some politicians may like the idea of it, but really, there is no logical reason behind it. There are far more effective targets out there that will never have security... like the line for airport security.
Not entirely irrelevant. I've imported some anime / games that will likely never get an R1 release because of fansubs. I have also purchased books and manga at Kinokuniya that I would not have never bothered with otherwise as a result.
In that regard, fansubs directly results in the purchase of the Japan versions of BDs/DVDs/games/books.
I admit this is a very, very small percentage and not what most people are talking about here when they talk about fansubs, but in some small way, it does help profits.
Consoles should not have any sort of 'phone home' DRM.
I'll give a relevant anecdote. A snowstorm knocked out our Internet (to 98% packet loss) for a few days. Thus my housemate and I could only play SC2 vs computer (despite being on same lan), couldn't play any steam games since offline mode wasn't working right (something about no local login credentials) until a brief spurt of connectivity allowed it to authenticate.
But all my PS3 and PSP games worked fine. It's one of the rare areas where PC gaming elitists don't have a leg to stand on. If this sort of DRM is allowed then there is even less of a reason to get console games.
One of the nicer things Sony has done. Not *quite* as good as Steam's unlimited downloads to anywhere but five is a good number considering the price of PSN games as compared to hard copies. Some games work for PSP & PS3, it's nice to pay once and get it on both.
I'd rather they let Capcom do their own asinine DRM than Sony change this behavior for all games, the lesser of two evils?
A better option would be A pair of signal repeaters connected via a hardline to bridge the gap. Easy enough to only handle the radio signal, but not a cell phone/wifi/whatever signal.
A few years ago there was a man who was told to turn right... at a railroad crossing. He dutifully did and the car got stuck on the railroad tracks. Shortly thereafter a commuter train made short work of his vehicle (he had safely gotten out). The line is electrified with third rail (the kind that does not have wooden protection boards) so he is pretty lucky to have not hit the damn thing when exiting the car or even with the car itself.
We actually have invented two transportation methods that are easy to keep running regardless of how much snow is falling / has fallen... The subway and elevated railway (el). The biggest problems are when the lines transition from elevated to underground, and any surface portions. An elevated line could run through most of the worst storms we've had. All of the wind that causes snow drifts that wreak havoc on roads actually clears el tracks. The open nature of the track bed on els allow for any buildup to simply fall to the street as the trains go by. Classic els are pretty cheap and easy to build (a simple steel framework above existing roads), and could keep our economy going in the worst of snowstorms. But they're noisy and ugly thus people don't like them.
Bad Snowstorm in Philly from the El As the video progresses you can see cars struggling harder to get through and getting stuck, but the el speeds along as fast as if it were a summer day.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with smartphones as video cameras:
-wastes battery you probably, at some point will need for a phone call
-you have to consider video recording space when deciding how many movies, mp3s you might be putting on there.
-the camera itself is of inferior quality *most* of the time. I have not yet tried the newest HD smartphones but with any SD one from last year, high motion video (or even stills) and you will notice a few microseconds of lag between when the top of the frame is captured versus the bottom.
Flip was designed to be a small, useful video camera and performed that function admirably. I should probably buy one or two because like the Creative Zen Nano/Micro, I can't see anyone making a quality substitute in the forseeable future.
Nice.
I hope the one for 2.0.64 comes out soon... but at the same time I'm glad the 2.2 guys are the guinea pigs seeing regressions and not us :).
Google Desktop was nice in the way it integrated all of your stuff into their main google search. Being able to look at relevant info from your email, network share and the Internet in one frame was quite helpful when trying to troubleshoot things, find a product manual, etc... Every so often the information I wanted turned out to be on the internal network, and much time (and bandwidth) was saved.
Not entirely. For example, after the 2005 NYC Transit Strike, the union president got 10 days in jail, the union itself was fined $2.5 million and automatic deduction of dues was suspended...
Of course the criminal act committed was striking in the first place, might be different than cable cutting, etc.
This is the most useful post on slashdot I've seen in weeks. Installing it now on Squeeze...
Wonder why Linus didn't go back? Kde 3.5 was his desktop of choice until Gnome 2...
Oh really?
I'm pretty sure you're a troll but I'll play anyway. If you think:
-Living your entire life in servitude
-Having to work while sick because there is no such "sick time" (which would probably kill you even though simple rest would have helped)
-Turning to prayer to solve every problem you can't understand (which is basically all of them)
-Knowledge being sequestered by the wealthy simply because books were hard to make
-and everyone was too busy dealing with their own food, illness and wild animals to even learn to read anyway
was somehow more conducive to solving the world's problems than the way things are now, you are quite naive. Before technology the only time you knew of a famine, flood, or disease was when it was happening to you, and then you died before you could do anything about it. Science and technology allows people to study these problems without having the pressure of not dying from them, and their study can be used to help future generations continue the work.
Starvation? People would starve to death all the time, and no one would ever know about it.
Overpopulation is a myth, stop perpetuating it. This planet is huge and has plenty of farmland, the problem is entirely in distribution, and lack of incentive to improve it, and people spreading out to occupy said farmland rather than living in compact residential towers.
HIV? People would just die without even knowing what happened. It would be chalked up to a bad cold. Worse, no one would know they had it and it would have killed most of us off by now, because things like condoms wouldn't have been invented, nor would word have gotten out to be careful about it. Science didn't cause it but it did save us (as a race) from it.
Pollution - the only one you're right about. That is a technology+human nature problem, but honestly you cannot say that it's negative effects outweigh the benefits to the majority of humans [yet]. Simply put, would you say your quality of life is better when you have to use 5-10 candles to light up a room, accidentally knock them over and burn your bedroom to ash, then had to worry about rebuilding your home?
Anti-slavery? Before science and technology shook people's belief in weird gods, slavery was all there was!
Human rights defense? Before our current level of societal evolution, if you had a human rights complaint, your head would be detached from its body in short order. The fact that that is not the case in most of the world is a sign of progress.
The point made somewhere up the chain here, if everyone with a brain used that brain to play chess, we'd all be really good at chess, but none of the above would have changed, with no hope of it ever changing.
Not to say that the 1500s quote is correct, an all work and no play society would probably solve every problem in short order, while entirely missing the joys of life.
As for your final thought, it's simply a meaningless cliche not worthy of addressing. If all you feel like using technology for is bitching about how useless technology is, than please do us all a favor and stop using it. The rest of us will actually be using the tools given us to solve our problems, like we've been doing since the beginning of time.
We should. There's only two things that keep a country from being toyed with by a larger country: (1) a strong military, (2) and a strong global opinion in support of the country. If (1) ever fails for us, it'd be nice to have something to fall back on, no?
It's because of science we even have the luxury of thinking about the problems of human nature.
If you'd prefer the days when priests would exorcise you whenever you got diarrhea (and of course only nobles had access this crucial service), that's your prerogative.
Yup, 169.226.* is the University at Albany. A newbie mistake call center staff get over quickly is saying "user was getting a 169. ip."
Your plan would only screw over poor people. Think of heating, for example: Someone who enjoys the temperature at 80 degrees indoors in their poorly insulated home, but makes money above his means, will continue to do so even when the price gets bad.
Meanwhile, you will have people living paycheck to paycheck burning newspapers in a trash barrel in their living room.
Also many people rent; they do not have the luxury of installing any fancy things like solar panels for their high rise, or even controlling their own thermostat. Landlords would either turn the thermostats to a very uncomfortable level or pass on the increased costs to the renters at the first opportunity. They have no immediate pressure (until there is legislation) to improve things; since all landlords in a geographic area would be affected equally, it would take some time before "supply and demand" pressure applies.
Raising the price is *not* the solution.
1. Get card with PayPass (or equivalent)
2. Duct tape to iPhone
3. Profit
Actually, I just tried it out and mine fits inside the outer shell of my (non-apple) smartphone, looking at it you'd never know it was there...
Thus while hundreds (thousands? we're a small place) of mortgages theoretically issued by the credit union have gone under - none of them appear on the credit union's books. They've already taken their profit and run.
Yes, but thanks to this the members of the credit union (end-users, ie: anyone who puts their life savings in an account there) are in a much safer position than people who put "money in the bank". Your credit union knew exactly how to handle itself to protect its members. If the big guys weren't so eager to buy up bad mortgages, I'm betting the CU wouldn't have made them in the first place, simple supply and demand.
Wow, flamebait if I ever saw it.
There are a variety of reasons this could happen:
-The parents acknowledge the skills of their son/daughter and reward accordingly
-The parents have properly instilled a sense of doing work and getting paid for said work, instead of expecting money to come whenever it is needed and services to be rendered whenever they are desired, just because "they are a family".
Scholarships, financial aid, and very importantly: aim for a State school. And though everyone seems to feel that small schools "give you a better education", large state schools give you a much more diversified social network. It's also easier for someone so inclined to get an on campus IT job at such places... think about it, the number of clients is larger thus they need more IT staff. BUT, since this isn't a fancy shmancy ivy league school, the caliber of competition is not so high, and since these schools are on shoestring budgets, it's easier to hire students than full time staff. Your bosses make excellent references for future jobs as well.
That's how I did it, and while my interview:job ratio is not 1:1, it is 5:4. And I can't think of a single co-worker (who stayed in the IT sector) from that time who didn't get employed within a year after graduation.
If she is found guilty she should simply be banned from driving for 10 years, as she has proven she cannot be trusted with operating a motor vehicle. She's from Chicago, she can take the El like everyone else. Also such a punishment not only fits the crime but is a far better deterrent for such irresponsible actions than jail time (which everyone believes could never happen to them) or financial burdens (which the government usually makes sure you're not made homeless by).
Everyone keeps lamenting how we need more educators -- make it less of a thankless job, and let teachers actually fail kids and be able to enforce some form of discipline.
Sadly that right is reserved only for private schools (and even then only ones with standards, ones that are not afraid to lose students for the sake of the bottom line). This works because public schools are always there to catch the dumb, delinquent and violent of the bunch. Sadly also the poor.
The system does work for those with money or exceptionally intelligent children (Catholic schools can offer scholarships even at grade school level). For everyone else... well, that's not where politicians' kids are anyway...
This. Also third party cables do not seem to work as reliably as third party mini usb cables, so whether or not you'll actually be able to charge/power the phone with it on the computer you plug it into is a crapshoot.
People afraid of flying need to get over it or drive.
You do know that there is a good chunk of the population who *can't* fly, right? No fly list, medical reasons, legitimate psychological reasons (do you want someone trying to "get over it and fly" freaking out, having your flight cancelled, and everyone go through re-screening?).
Security lines for trains would make no sense. It doesn't matter how much the TSA wants it, they aren't used on any other HSR network nor would they have any actual benefit. You cannot take over a train with nail clippers, box cutters or even handguns. Both the signal system and the electrical can stop the train and there's not a damn thing anyone on board can do about it.
You are also not very forward thinking. This network wouldn't be even close to being done in 20 years. But in 20 years, would flying and driving still be this cheap? Do you think gas will not go to above $4 a gallon in 20 years?
I don't understand why everyone is assuming HSR would have TSA security:
1 - No other country has high security for their rail systems, high speed or otherwise
2 - We don't have high security for our low speed rail, just some well trained dogs at key stations
Some politicians may like the idea of it, but really, there is no logical reason behind it. There are far more effective targets out there that will never have security... like the line for airport security.
Not entirely irrelevant. I've imported some anime / games that will likely never get an R1 release because of fansubs. I have also purchased books and manga at Kinokuniya that I would not have never bothered with otherwise as a result.
In that regard, fansubs directly results in the purchase of the Japan versions of BDs/DVDs/games/books.
I admit this is a very, very small percentage and not what most people are talking about here when they talk about fansubs, but in some small way, it does help profits.
Consoles should not have any sort of 'phone home' DRM.
I'll give a relevant anecdote. A snowstorm knocked out our Internet (to 98% packet loss) for a few days. Thus my housemate and I could only play SC2 vs computer (despite being on same lan), couldn't play any steam games since offline mode wasn't working right (something about no local login credentials) until a brief spurt of connectivity allowed it to authenticate.
But all my PS3 and PSP games worked fine. It's one of the rare areas where PC gaming elitists don't have a leg to stand on. If this sort of DRM is allowed then there is even less of a reason to get console games.
One of the nicer things Sony has done. Not *quite* as good as Steam's unlimited downloads to anywhere but five is a good number considering the price of PSN games as compared to hard copies. Some games work for PSP & PS3, it's nice to pay once and get it on both.
I'd rather they let Capcom do their own asinine DRM than Sony change this behavior for all games, the lesser of two evils?
A better option would be A pair of signal repeaters connected via a hardline to bridge the gap. Easy enough to only handle the radio signal, but not a cell phone/wifi/whatever signal.
A few years ago there was a man who was told to turn right... at a railroad crossing. He dutifully did and the car got stuck on the railroad tracks. Shortly thereafter a commuter train made short work of his vehicle (he had safely gotten out). The line is electrified with third rail (the kind that does not have wooden protection boards) so he is pretty lucky to have not hit the damn thing when exiting the car or even with the car itself.
We actually have invented two transportation methods that are easy to keep running regardless of how much snow is falling / has fallen...
The subway and elevated railway (el). The biggest problems are when the lines transition from elevated to underground, and any surface portions.
An elevated line could run through most of the worst storms we've had. All of the wind that causes snow drifts that wreak havoc on roads actually clears el tracks. The open nature of the track bed on els allow for any buildup to simply fall to the street as the trains go by.
Classic els are pretty cheap and easy to build (a simple steel framework above existing roads), and could keep our economy going in the worst of snowstorms. But they're noisy and ugly thus people don't like them.
Bad Snowstorm in Philly from the El
As the video progresses you can see cars struggling harder to get through and getting stuck, but the el speeds along as fast as if it were a summer day.