Grab a meterstick and try to measure out a third of a meter.
Then grab a yardstick and try to measure out a third of a yard.
Note that once can be done with accuracy with the yardstick.
Now you can argue that a meter can be divided by ten accurately and a yard can't, but this is where practicality comes in: I divide things into thirds far more often than I divide them into tenths. So, the yard stick is more useful to me.
Metric system - we still stand by our archaic and inexcusable system
You meant to say "we still stand by our empirically validated system, and refuse to adopt one that doesn't work very well in practical application due to being designed exclusively to meet the needs of calculation, instead of measurement."
Which is why the concept of paying people by the hour is silly. The company isn't buying time from you, they're buying work from you. If you are giving them the same output, who cares how you managed your time to create it?
Telecommuting gives you the ability to manage your own time as you see fit, and to integrate your work into the rest of your life instead of maintaining a pointless distinction between the two.
I could see if current DVD-R prices dropped to 50 cents a disc and the DVD9's took over the $1-2 range, but it doesn't look as if it will be that way.
Why not? When I bought my first cd-burner in 1997, the price of a single CD-RW was $15-20. Now they're about 50 apiece. Why wouldn't DVD media similarly drop in price?
MPEG2 is part of the DVD-video specification. No other video formats are part of the DVD standard. There's no way that you can burn DivX video to DVD media and make a disc playable by standlone DVD players that aren't specifically equipped to play DivX files.
The only way you achieve what you want is to convert your DivX video to 720x480 MPEG2 at 29.97 fps (or 720x576 at 25fps for PAL). If your DivX video is lower resolution, or if the framerate is different, the resulting MPEG2 is going to wind up being very poor quality. You'll also need some DVD-mastering software to create the DVD disc layout and compose the VOBs from the input video and audio sources. This adds up to processing your video through at least 2-3 different applications, and running time-consuming rendering operations.
So it can be done, but not easily, and may not yield good quality results.
If you want to get pedantic, NTSC is actually 480 lines at 29.97 fps. The horizontal resolution is variable.
NTSC DVD is 720x480 at 29.97 fps.
NTSC SVCD would be 480x480 at 29.97 fps.
However, since most NTSC displays use a 4:3 aspect ratio, the most accurate translation of NTSC video into a computer-viewable format would probably be 640x480.
Why? Although a PDF file on a floppy might not be sufficient, since there's no way of definitevely ascertaining the date of creation, what's wrong with a sealed, postmarked envelope?
Unfortunately, a non-monopolistic market cannot be restored until a monopolistic market is established, and I think it would be folly to pursue the latter in order to get to the former. It would be better to just leave the current non-monopolistic conditions intact.
When driving around Hawaii's Big Island, I was very glad that PBS *radio* was available
Nitpick: There is no PBS radio. There is a radio network called NPR which is similar to what PBS is for television, but they're seperate organizations.
I would gladly pay fees to make sure my programs remain on the air instead of watching the entire TV land become the 24 hour bastion of "reality" programming.
So do it. HBO, Showtime, etc. aren't that expensive.
You want to watch TV for free? Fine, you'll get what you pay for.
You want mandatory TV fees? Then someone else gets what you pay for, and you can take it or leave it.
In other words, the UK practiced lassez faire capitalism (which an astonishing number of people on/. advocate) while the US and Germany offered state support to private indistry, also known as fascism.
Not quite. Fascism attempts to direct nominally private industry towards the aims of the state, rather than using the state as a tool to advance the interests of private industry.
What you're describing is mercantilism, a doctrine that precedes capitalism (and the very doctrine that Adam Smith was objecting to when he crystallised modern concepts of capitalism in Wealth of Nations). Industrial protectionism and labor socialism are both forms of mercantilism - both wish to use the power of the state to distort market conditions in order to benefit one faction at the expense of another.
As much as I oppose government funding for such things, it's worth pointing out that PBS is a private corporation, and only about a third of their funding comes from federal & state grants -- the vast majority is from private contributions.
That's incorrect. The 'company' is formed by the investors.
The 'employees' are contractors who sell them commodity labor.
The managers of a coporation have are responsible to the company -- that is, to their investors; they have no obligation to purchase labor from any specific providers, and in fact have an obligation not to waste their investors' resources by purchasing from providers whose prices exceed the market value of their services.
A large body of 'common law' based on precedence goes back to Roman times at least...
Common law generally developed without any significant Roman influences, unlike typical codified European laws. The basis of the common law was formed when England was culturally most insular, and deliberately ignorant of much of Roman law, fortunately for us.
Slashdot Mirror
Grab a meterstick and try to measure out a third of a meter.
Then grab a yardstick and try to measure out a third of a yard.
Note that once can be done with accuracy with the yardstick.
Now you can argue that a meter can be divided by ten accurately and a yard can't, but this is where practicality comes in: I divide things into thirds far more often than I divide them into tenths. So, the yard stick is more useful to me.
Fraction: 1/3
Decimal:
UPS does it for a flat $7.50 per package.
Metric system - we still stand by our archaic and inexcusable system
You meant to say "we still stand by our empirically validated system, and refuse to adopt one that doesn't work very well in practical application due to being designed exclusively to meet the needs of calculation, instead of measurement."
Does he mean the US government?
"US" stands for "United States." This is a political institution, so it's clearly a reference to the federal government.
If the article intended to refer to society in general, the term "America" would have been used.
What's a "95% monopoly?" 95% is 5% less than a monopoly.
15 Years ago was 1989.
I should hope people were doing their own word processing by then, considering WordStar and WordPerfect had both been out for years.
So what's stopping you from paying for your own connection? Your money, your rules, right?
Which is why the concept of paying people by the hour is silly. The company isn't buying time from you, they're buying work from you. If you are giving them the same output, who cares how you managed your time to create it?
Telecommuting gives you the ability to manage your own time as you see fit, and to integrate your work into the rest of your life instead of maintaining a pointless distinction between the two.
In a word: No.
MPEG2 is part of the DVD-video specification. No other video formats are part of the DVD standard. There's no way that you can burn DivX video to DVD media and make a disc playable by standlone DVD players that aren't specifically equipped to play DivX files.
The only way you achieve what you want is to convert your DivX video to 720x480 MPEG2 at 29.97 fps (or 720x576 at 25fps for PAL). If your DivX video is lower resolution, or if the framerate is different, the resulting MPEG2 is going to wind up being very poor quality. You'll also need some DVD-mastering software to create the DVD disc layout and compose the VOBs from the input video and audio sources. This adds up to processing your video through at least 2-3 different applications, and running time-consuming rendering operations.
So it can be done, but not easily, and may not yield good quality results.
If you want to get pedantic, NTSC is actually 480 lines at 29.97 fps. The horizontal resolution is variable.
NTSC DVD is 720x480 at 29.97 fps.
NTSC SVCD would be 480x480 at 29.97 fps.
However, since most NTSC displays use a 4:3 aspect ratio, the most accurate translation of NTSC video into a computer-viewable format would probably be 640x480.
Why? Although a PDF file on a floppy might not be sufficient, since there's no way of definitevely ascertaining the date of creation, what's wrong with a sealed, postmarked envelope?
Unfortunately, a non-monopolistic market cannot be restored until a monopolistic market is established, and I think it would be folly to pursue the latter in order to get to the former. It would be better to just leave the current non-monopolistic conditions intact.
Yes, but he should have used ellipsis to indicate that.
So do it. HBO, Showtime, etc. aren't that expensive.
You want to watch TV for free? Fine, you'll get what you pay for.
You want mandatory TV fees? Then someone else gets what you pay for, and you can take it or leave it.
Then try travelling on a train in the US, and you'll understand why both types of monopoly suck.
What you're describing is mercantilism, a doctrine that precedes capitalism (and the very doctrine that Adam Smith was objecting to when he crystallised modern concepts of capitalism in Wealth of Nations). Industrial protectionism and labor socialism are both forms of mercantilism - both wish to use the power of the state to distort market conditions in order to benefit one faction at the expense of another.
As much as I oppose government funding for such things, it's worth pointing out that PBS is a private corporation, and only about a third of their funding comes from federal & state grants -- the vast majority is from private contributions.
That's incorrect. The 'company' is formed by the investors.
The 'employees' are contractors who sell them commodity labor.
The managers of a coporation have are responsible to the company -- that is, to their investors; they have no obligation to purchase labor from any specific providers, and in fact have an obligation not to waste their investors' resources by purchasing from providers whose prices exceed the market value of their services.
A large body of 'common law' based on precedence goes back to Roman times at least...
Common law generally developed without any significant Roman influences, unlike typical codified European laws. The basis of the common law was formed when England was culturally most insular, and deliberately ignorant of much of Roman law, fortunately for us.
We've never had a president who didn't recieve a majority of the vote...
RAR does this too - WinRar has a "create solid archive" option that can be enabled when compressing an archive.
Except that this is perfectly legal and acceptable.