You are correct julesh. The telephoto trick doesn't rely on changing the focal length so much as it does on changing the distance of the camera from the subjects. You can't change the relative size of objects by switching lenses and staying in the same spot.
Jupiter really is that much bigger than the big blue marble.
Yeah, who cares that OJ killed his wife, I mean that's been done like a hundred thousand times over. We only want to report and punish misdeeds that are new and fresh!
-Ryan C.
Not really much of a slowdown
on
802.11g Slows Down
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The post and article compare incompatible metrics, 54Mbps is the theoretical bandwith, vs. 20Mbps measured throughput. The maximum throughput of the draft devices is between 22-24Mbps. The new 10Mbps mode is only when an 802.11b network is detected in the same channel, which is better than the nasty and unpredictable timeslicing that happens with most draft equipment. So... real speed loss = 22-24 to 20. Bad, but not that bad.
The Science article seems to be good science, but it clearly indicates in its abstract that it does not determine or attempt to determine the direction of the association between violent behavior and violent media. All it proves is that violent people like violent media. It does reference some articles that attempt to show causation, but with results all over the board.
This time with feeling: "Correlation != Causation"
But thanks for the link, good article and starting place for discussion.
-Ryan C.
How much do you think MS paid for the SCO license?
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 1
$1? $0.01? -$1,000,000?
Seriously, I'm sure MS paid nothing or got some kick-back to accept the license. It's a common market strategy (e.g. Rambus) to "sell" licenses for undisclosed terms to major players to make your claim seem stronger. Seems to have worked again, SCO stock is way up on the news.
And I thought it was from the song 'Weapon Of Choice' by Fatboy Slim.
It was, but the lyric was a reference to Dune. Probably the concept of voice being his weapon of choice was also tied to this reference.
-Ryan C.
Re:I don't like where this is headed
on
DVRs for Cop Cars
·
· Score: 1
Well, if you feel that way then lobby to have police officers paid in accordance with this responsibility. Yes, there are many altruistic people out there in blue, but not enough to fill the ranks. And even the most saintly of us can make a bad judgment call or let down their guard and "goof off" after having to work 3 consecutive shifts to make ends meet.
or "or fitness for a particular use" is a concept in most legal systems and is what would determine this case. In the U.S., even if the license says "this may not work, tough.", the consumer still has a right expect it to work for the advertised purpose.
So you could recover damages from a car that explodes when you try to start it, since that's not what a "car" is supposed to do. But you can't recover damages froma car that explodes when you hit a tree, since that is outside the expected use of a car.
I'd say there's no case here since SQL did what it was supposed to do, it just had a flaw. Since the flaw was not covered by any warranty, tough luck.
but once we get to court, those who say that will look as strange as the Iraqi information minister on TV saying the infidels are defeated and did not get into Baghdad.
But some of his assertions are just as audacious or odd:
IBM has been very arrogant in the last few years. They're having their oats.
System V is the basis for all operating systems outside of Redmond. - "There is no BSD, it is nowhere!"
If we're wrong, we deserve people throwing rocks at us. - And shoes, don't forget the shoes.
whenever bad laws get applied to entities with money. This is usually the only way the laws get struck down or narrowed by the courts.
Why is this law bad? Because lawmakers can't seem to understand what can and can't be legislated. This is another law that makes about as much sense as the "evil bit" joke RFC. Just because it's a good idea to prevent something doesn't mean you can. It would be good to keep childern from playing in the streets as well, but you won't see millions spent on "you must be this tall to enter" signs.
if everyone would agree on something like this it would definitely reduce the spam
I think it would be easier to get everyone to agree to not send spam.
In order for something like this to work every single user of the Internet has to agree to use it. There is no central authority. And this is a good thing. If you want to make a new authentication scheme and have people opt-in to it, we already have that with PGP and SSL signed messages.
A case could be made to have commercial ISPs enforce some rules, so long as nobody is forced to use a particular ISP.
Many do. Why am I not surprised you've never heard of them? Oh, that's right, without the RIAA marketing cartel doing promotion, most people will never know they exist.
This is a circular argument. The record companies have to lose their stranglehold on legal music distribution before we can test the theory.
I live in New York and my favorite band is a relatively unknown act from San Diego...
I think it would work something like this: Bands release music for free, people (like you) listen to it and develop a liking for the band. When a band "makes it" is when they have enough fans to tour. Before that, they squeak by on local gigs. Like now.
How does the band get 40-50,000 fans to begin with? By virtue of their talent alone? Right.
There's this new "Internet" thing now. You should check it out, it's pretty neat.
It's over. The genie is out of the bottle. The RIAA wonders how it will control and profit from music distribution. It won't.
How will artists make money? Just like they do now, from live appearances, endorsements, and the other trappings of fame. They already make on avearage less than zero from record sales royalties. As more artists realize this and release music royalty-free (except the ones under dealth-penalty lifetime contracts) the need for record labels will finally be over.
How will artists get the money to record? Please. The requirement for expensive studio time isn't just over, it never existed. Some of the best music you'll hear on the radio came from live sessions on what are by today's standards junk equipment. And for those that want to use multi-track mixing, 24-bit mixers are about as expensive as a new Statocaster. The popularity of ~128Kbps MP3s shows that music isn't about perfect fidelity for most folks. You wan't better fidelity? Go to a show.
There's no extra civil charge if you shoot someone that you used your gun outside the manufacturer's prescribed usage. The criminal act is what is forbidden, whether you buy or make your own gun does not matter.
I don't believe that there are any physical exceptions to this, and <offtopic>most of Europe makes no exception for software. Eventually the logic of the situation will force the U.S. to comply or be harmed economically.</offtopic>
Everyone calm down, put away the torches and the pitchforks. No one was charged with anything. Apparently the DOJ doesn't have enough real crime to prosecue and fills its spare time writing harassment letters to companies it feels it can use to further its neo-republican goals. The DOJ isn't stupid enough to ruin a good scare tactic like the PATRIOT act by making a test case out of PayPal. They've got a couple more years of cease-and-desist type activity until they either try to use the law or are voted out of office.
-Ryan C.
You've made mistake #2
on
World of Ends
·
· Score: 1
You're thinking of the Internet as a thing that could have been invented, you're thinking of the IP protocol. Gore didn't claim to have invented that. He's taking just credit for taking the initiative in creating "The Internet" as we know it today. He played a major role in creating a worldwide, free, and open network. The fact that it was based on existing technology is irrelevant. If it was based on BITNET, IPX, EtherTalk, or some new network protocol, it would still be the Internet. The Internet wasn't invented, it was, and still is being, created.
I'm sure your company just decided to pay something like a quarter of what it had already spent in man-hours to make the slimeballs go away, but asking for receipts is really just a bluff.
If you didn't have licenses, a civil court could reasonably decide that the preponderance of the evidence shows you liable for damages. But to say you have licenses and obtained them illegally is a charge of grand theft, a criminal charge. They would have to prove this in criminal court, beyond the shadow of a doubt. No way they'd waste the money on that. IANAL, BIPOOTV.
There is not, and should not, be anything wrong with this, DMCA notwithstanding. If you purchase, or are freely given, a copy of copyrighted code/text/art, you can fold/spindle/mutilate it to your heart's content. You can make a million-billion copies of it, you can tell everyone who will listen how much it blows. The only thing you cannot do with a copyrighted work is give a copy to someone else.
That is, until the DMCA came along and said that somehow digitized information is somehow magical and is more important to protect than the U.S. constitution.
This is not a black and white issue. There are an unlimited number of things you could do to an image in photoshop. To say that no amout of digital processing can be applied to an image would eliminate digital photography altoghether as evidence. All digital cameras apply some processing to the image (even in RAW mode). To say that all processing is OK is absurd (see the Weekly World News).
A good litmus test would be that processes that do not take input other than the whole original image would usually be OK. So something like an unsharp mask or gamma adjust would be OK but some of the other techniques described in the article would not since they take input from an operator to direct the process.
They show the results of very different tests. 800x600 vs 1600x1200 resolution. That's a difference of 4x in required fill rate. Since neither of these tests were run at a relevant resolution (most laptops run around 1024x768), neither can be called conclusive. My guess it that Anand is waiting for more stable drivers to test "real" resolutions.
The extremetech.com review is pretty unfair, it's like testing a new Ferrari by seeing how much cargo it can carry and then declaring it a bad car because it doesn't haul as much as a Ford Explorer. This card is aimed at lower resolution (lower fill rate) applications that require low power and cost. Having a DX9 entrant into this arena to me is welcome.
We'll just have to wait for a real review to see if this card is any good.
To reseach prior art? No, they don't do that anymore.
To enable inventors to file a patent? No, you can't do that without a good lawyer unless you want a useless patent.
To defend patents? No, lawyers again.
To write patent law? Nope. Congress and more lawyers.
So the difference between the current situation and doing away with the USPTO and just letting lawyers write up descriptions of inventions and defending patent rights would be? Nothing. (except $1 Billion US dollars saved)
I've often heard from astronomers and astronomy texts that a moon is an object that primarily orbits a non-stellar object. Thus our moon is not a moon since its orbit never gets concave with respect to the sun.
There is an obvious scientific problem with this definition though. The term "moon" predates scientific astronomy and thus any definition or theory with regard to something's "moonness" must account for observed data. When we discovered that our moon primarily orbits the sun, we didn't discover it wasn't a moon, we discovered our definition was wrong.
How about this one? "A body which from a non-stellar mass reference always contains that mass within its arc of rotation providing that reference mass does not also fit the reciprocal condition (double-planet)"
Slashdot Mirror
Rats! I used the trademark Jell-O(tm) improperly. Now you can subpoena my ISP to find out all my personal information. I gotta be more carefull...
-Ryan C.
Fine. I'd like to find out the names behind some IPs I personally suspect of using the brand name Jello(tm) without permission. How do I file?
What? I can't unless I'm a multinational corporation? That sure sounds like equal protection under the law to me.
-Ryan C.
You are correct julesh. The telephoto trick doesn't rely on changing the focal length so much as it does on changing the distance of the camera from the subjects. You can't change the relative size of objects by switching lenses and staying in the same spot.
Jupiter really is that much bigger than the big blue marble.
-Ryan C.
Yeah, who cares that OJ killed his wife, I mean that's been done like a hundred thousand times over. We only want to report and punish misdeeds that are new and fresh!
-Ryan C.
The post and article compare incompatible metrics, 54Mbps is the theoretical bandwith, vs. 20Mbps measured throughput. The maximum throughput of the draft devices is between 22-24Mbps. The new 10Mbps mode is only when an 802.11b network is detected in the same channel, which is better than the nasty and unpredictable timeslicing that happens with most draft equipment. So... real speed loss = 22-24 to 20. Bad, but not that bad.
-Ryan C.
The Science article seems to be good science, but it clearly indicates in its abstract that it does not determine or attempt to determine the direction of the association between violent behavior and violent media. All it proves is that violent people like violent media. It does reference some articles that attempt to show causation, but with results all over the board.
This time with feeling: "Correlation != Causation"
But thanks for the link, good article and starting place for discussion.
-Ryan C.
$1?
$0.01?
-$1,000,000?
Seriously, I'm sure MS paid nothing or got some kick-back to accept the license. It's a common market strategy (e.g. Rambus) to "sell" licenses for undisclosed terms to major players to make your claim seem stronger. Seems to have worked again, SCO stock is way up on the news.
-Ryan C.
And I thought it was from the song 'Weapon Of Choice' by Fatboy Slim.
It was, but the lyric was a reference to Dune. Probably the concept of voice being his weapon of choice was also tied to this reference.
-Ryan C.
Well, if you feel that way then lobby to have police officers paid in accordance with this responsibility. Yes, there are many altruistic people out there in blue, but not enough to fill the ranks. And even the most saintly of us can make a bad judgment call or let down their guard and "goof off" after having to work 3 consecutive shifts to make ends meet.
-Ryan C.
or "or fitness for a particular use" is a concept in most legal systems and is what would determine this case. In the U.S., even if the license says "this may not work, tough.", the consumer still has a right expect it to work for the advertised purpose.
So you could recover damages from a car that explodes when you try to start it, since that's not what a "car" is supposed to do. But you can't recover damages froma car that explodes when you hit a tree, since that is outside the expected use of a car.
I'd say there's no case here since SQL did what it was supposed to do, it just had a flaw. Since the flaw was not covered by any warranty, tough luck.
-Ryan C.
He says in his interview:
but once we get to court, those who say that will look as strange as the Iraqi information minister on TV saying the infidels are defeated and did not get into Baghdad.
But some of his assertions are just as audacious or odd:
IBM has been very arrogant in the last few years. They're having their oats.
System V is the basis for all operating systems outside of Redmond. - "There is no BSD, it is nowhere!"
If we're wrong, we deserve people throwing rocks at us. - And shoes, don't forget the shoes.
-Ryan C.
whenever bad laws get applied to entities with money. This is usually the only way the laws get struck down or narrowed by the courts.
Why is this law bad? Because lawmakers can't seem to understand what can and can't be legislated. This is another law that makes about as much sense as the "evil bit" joke RFC. Just because it's a good idea to prevent something doesn't mean you can. It would be good to keep childern from playing in the streets as well, but you won't see millions spent on "you must be this tall to enter" signs.
-Ryan C.
if everyone would agree on something like this it would definitely reduce the spam
I think it would be easier to get everyone to agree to not send spam.
In order for something like this to work every single user of the Internet has to agree to use it. There is no central authority. And this is a good thing. If you want to make a new authentication scheme and have people opt-in to it, we already have that with PGP and SSL signed messages.
A case could be made to have commercial ISPs enforce some rules, so long as nobody is forced to use a particular ISP.
-Ryan C.
This is a circular argument. The record companies have to lose their stranglehold on legal music distribution before we can test the theory.
I live in New York and my favorite band is a relatively unknown act from San Diego...
I think it would work something like this: Bands release music for free, people (like you) listen to it and develop a liking for the band. When a band "makes it" is when they have enough fans to tour. Before that, they squeak by on local gigs. Like now.
How does the band get 40-50,000 fans to begin with? By virtue of their talent alone? Right.
There's this new "Internet" thing now. You should check it out, it's pretty neat.
-Ryan C.
From the article:
The 1984 material witness statute was...
-Ryan C.
It's over. The genie is out of the bottle. The RIAA wonders how it will control and profit from music distribution. It won't.
How will artists make money? Just like they do now, from live appearances, endorsements, and the other trappings of fame. They already make on avearage less than zero from record sales royalties. As more artists realize this and release music royalty-free (except the ones under dealth-penalty lifetime contracts) the need for record labels will finally be over.
How will artists get the money to record? Please. The requirement for expensive studio time isn't just over, it never existed. Some of the best music you'll hear on the radio came from live sessions on what are by today's standards junk equipment. And for those that want to use multi-track mixing, 24-bit mixers are about as expensive as a new Statocaster. The popularity of ~128Kbps MP3s shows that music isn't about perfect fidelity for most folks. You wan't better fidelity? Go to a show.
-Ryan C.
There's no extra civil charge if you shoot someone that you used your gun outside the manufacturer's prescribed usage. The criminal act is what is forbidden, whether you buy or make your own gun does not matter.
I don't believe that there are any physical exceptions to this, and <offtopic>most of Europe makes no exception for software. Eventually the logic of the situation will force the U.S. to comply or be harmed economically.</offtopic>
-Ryan C.
Everyone calm down, put away the torches and the pitchforks. No one was charged with anything.
Apparently the DOJ doesn't have enough real crime to prosecue and fills its spare time writing harassment letters to companies it feels it can use to further its neo-republican goals.
The DOJ isn't stupid enough to ruin a good scare tactic like the PATRIOT act by making a test case out of PayPal. They've got a couple more years of cease-and-desist type activity until they either try to use the law or are voted out of office.
-Ryan C.
You're thinking of the Internet as a thing that could have been invented, you're thinking of the IP protocol. Gore didn't claim to have invented that. He's taking just credit for taking the initiative in creating "The Internet" as we know it today. He played a major role in creating a worldwide, free, and open network. The fact that it was based on existing technology is irrelevant. If it was based on BITNET, IPX, EtherTalk, or some new network protocol, it would still be the Internet. The Internet wasn't invented, it was, and still is being, created.
-Ryan C.
I'm sure your company just decided to pay something like a quarter of what it had already spent in man-hours to make the slimeballs go away, but asking for receipts is really just a bluff.
If you didn't have licenses, a civil court could reasonably decide that the preponderance of the
evidence shows you liable for damages. But to say you have licenses and obtained them illegally is a charge of grand theft, a criminal charge. They would have to prove this in criminal court, beyond the shadow of a doubt. No way they'd waste the money on that. IANAL, BIPOOTV.
-Ryan C.
There is not, and should not, be anything wrong with this, DMCA notwithstanding. If you purchase, or are freely given, a copy of copyrighted code/text/art, you can fold/spindle/mutilate it to your heart's content. You can make a million-billion copies of it, you can tell everyone who will listen how much it blows. The only thing you cannot do with a copyrighted work is give a copy to someone else.
That is, until the DMCA came along and said that somehow digitized information is somehow magical and is more important to protect than the U.S. constitution.
-Ryan C.
This is not a black and white issue. There are an unlimited number of things you could do to an image in photoshop. To say that no amout of digital processing can be applied to an image would eliminate digital photography altoghether as evidence. All digital cameras apply some processing to the image (even in RAW mode). To say that all processing is OK is absurd (see the Weekly World News).
A good litmus test would be that processes that do not take input other than the whole original image would usually be OK. So something like an unsharp mask or gamma adjust would be OK but some of the other techniques described in the article would not since they take input from an operator to direct the process.
-Ryan C.
They show the results of very different tests. 800x600 vs 1600x1200 resolution. That's a difference of 4x in required fill rate. Since neither of these tests were run at a relevant resolution (most laptops run around 1024x768), neither can be called conclusive. My guess it that Anand is waiting for more stable drivers to test "real" resolutions.
The extremetech.com review is pretty unfair, it's like testing a new Ferrari by seeing how much cargo it can carry and then declaring it a bad car because it doesn't haul as much as a Ford Explorer. This card is aimed at lower resolution (lower fill rate) applications that require low power and cost. Having a DX9 entrant into this arena to me is welcome.
We'll just have to wait for a real review to see if this card is any good.
-Ryan C.
Lets see:
To reseach prior art? No, they don't do that anymore.
To enable inventors to file a patent? No, you can't do that without a good lawyer unless you want a useless patent.
To defend patents? No, lawyers again.
To write patent law? Nope. Congress and more lawyers.
So the difference between the current situation and doing away with the USPTO and just letting lawyers write up descriptions of inventions and defending patent rights would be? Nothing. (except $1 Billion US dollars saved)
-Ryan C.
I've often heard from astronomers and astronomy texts that a moon is an object that primarily orbits a non-stellar object. Thus our moon is not a moon since its orbit never gets concave with respect to the sun.
There is an obvious scientific problem with this definition though. The term "moon" predates scientific astronomy and thus any definition or theory with regard to something's "moonness" must account for observed data. When we discovered that our moon primarily orbits the sun, we didn't discover it wasn't a moon, we discovered our definition was wrong.
How about this one? "A body which from a non-stellar mass reference always contains that mass within its arc of rotation providing that reference mass does not also fit the reciprocal condition (double-planet)"
-Ryan C.