I agree; local time should be a natural measure so that the sun is at the zenith at 12:00 noon. Daylight saving time disrupts this idea, because then the noon (sun at zenith) is at 1 pm.
I think the main problem with daylight saving time is that while sunlight is symmetrical around 12 am / 12 pm, our use of that time is skewed so that the center of our waking day is in the afternoon. DST is an attempt to force the "waking midday" closer to solar noon, but it would take more than one hour to do that, with our typical use of time. On the other hand, why should it be forced? Why not let people and businesses decide how they use their time?
Broadband is called such because it uses a broader waveband to transmit information (whether its data or voice transmission).
Broader than what?
The problem starts with the concept of bandwidth, which is something measured in Hz, kHz, MHz etc. and is not the same thing as data transmission rate, but people use it that way nevertheless. From there, people use 'broadband' to mean high data rate.
There is some connection between data rate and bandwidth, namely a linear one if other variables are equal. To call one by the other name was originally a hacker joke, but unfortunately some people took it seriously.
Of course when you're working in technical circles, you can be sure that people use the correct terms. Nevertheless it's unfortunate to have terms mixed. I'd be happier if there was a new buzzword (like blog, etc.) to describe high data rate communications, instead of reusing an existing technical term in a new buzzwordish meaning.
Wifi has been a term for years, are you just now seeing it?
No, but I've started to see the term more and more. It's the same thing with blogs, for example. It wasn't annoying at first, as it was just another buzzword that had the potential to fade out. Now everything is blog-this and blog-that in the blogosphere and it's really starting to piss off people.
There have been still video cameras that used analog signals recorded on magnetic discs. I've never seen these in real life, so I'm not sure if the disc is the one we're looking for.
No, we are not "stubborn". And yes, the standard system SUCKS. The reason we haven't moved to metric is that we have too much momentum built up in society for anyone to switch over.
How come Europe has been able to switch over to metric? We did use some backward measuring systems in the past, and I'm sure we had problems converting.
I've found scrolling to be a necessity because it is a lot more efficient to just roll the wheel than it is to cursor over to the scroll bar, drag, then re-cursor to the part of the screen I wanted to be in the first place.
In most cases you can scroll with the arrow and pgup/pgdn keys. This is why I don't see the point in scroll wheels, they are just redundant. I'd rather use regular three-button mice, because when you middle-click a lot, it's nice to have the same touch as the other mouse buttons. When you middle-click with a scroll wheel, it takes more pressure and you have to be careful not to scroll it at the same time. So for me it ends up being harder to use than a regular three-buttoner.
Well since companies like Linksys use linux in their devices, they still have to comply with the gpl. meaning if they keep using Linux they will be revealing all the back door code, or they'll have to stop using it or get sued.
Not necessarily. The backdoor could be, for example, a certain username/password account for logging in via ssh, a piece of GPL'd software. I think this was all trivial; for another example, you can use https for secure banking even if all the software is Free. The security is independent of the Freedom of the code, because the secrets are data, not code.
I think this solution is much more elegant than a battery-based one. This has no extra parts compared to a regular fluorescent light, whereas the battery system has several pieces that could break. And a rechargeable battery will go bad over time.
If I had a WLAN*, I wouldn't bother with encryption either. If you do something sensitive on the Internet, you probably use encryption at a higher level, like https or ssh, in any case.
I wouldn't mind someone else using my connection, because "mother taught me to share":) As long as they dont hog all of the capacity. I would hate it if people had to waste resources in building different wireless networks for each of them, when one would suffice.
This would be different if I used WLAN as a strictly local, trusted network. Though I probably wouldn't do that, no matter how good the encryption was. But if you use it as a part of Internet, then everything you use to protect your data from the dangers of Internet should be enough.
(*Wi-fi, IMHO, is a completely undescriptive and stupid name, even less so than 'blog', and I don't see what it has to do with fidelity. With analog sound you can have worse or better fidelity to the original source, hence Hi-Fi, and I don't see how the term should make sense with wireless digital communication.
For one thing, 'wired fidelity' isn't used with wired communications, which are subject to the same notions of reliability, data rate, latency etc, and even if it was, you could also call that Wi-Fi by the same logic;)
In fact it'd make more sense if WLAN was the wired version and LAN the wireless, because the former has a Wire and the latter does not!!!1)
So, my question to Microsoft fans is, what happened between 1990 and 2000 that turned Microsoft from hero to goat? You be the judge.
I'm no Microsoft fan but I hazard a guess...
In the 1980s, Microsoft products were in some ways more open/free than the competition. For example, their software was not tied to the hardware of any given vendor, as was/is the case with Apple.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has stuck with the same principles they had in the 1980 (for instance that you can sell software like tangible products). In the meantime new software has become available, the kind that is much more free/open than Microsoft's.
I think it's clear that MS's position today is solely due to what they did in the 1980s, not because they are making the best software today. Therefore people are questioning their position, and they are also realizing that there are better alternatives.
Not all information is created equal. The information that "wants to be free" is information that adds meaningfully to the sum of human knowledge.
What about freely distributing music, movies etc? It's harder to tell whether they contribute meaningfully to human knowledge.
My opinion is that, for example, once a CD is released, it's "out there" in public and should be Free. It's not a secret, like a password. Anything that's not a secret should be Free.
My reasoning is that, for example, musicians want to spread their works as widely as possible. They like you to hear their songs on the radio, even if you didn't pay them to hear it. It's only a detail if they want you to pay for the CD, the key is that they want you to want their stuff.
Conversely, I don't tell my passwords to anyone, whether they pay or not.
I'm currently using a small Logitech mouse that has a cord of about three feet, and it came with an extension cord. It's obviously intended for laptop use, and that's the way I use it as well. On the other hand (pun intended), I mouse on the left and my laptop has USB connectors on the right, which means I need to use the extension. I still think it's a great idea.
"Hey, now that there's been 2 half-lives past are we down to a quarter life?"
I was going to make a nasty joke about you sucking at math, but it's just too easy.
How about a joke of you sucking at physics?
The time it takes for a radioactive substance to decay into half its original value is the half-live. Wait for another half-life and you have one quarter of the original left (it's exponential decay). Hence two half-lives = one quarter-life.
Too bad about your experiences. But there's a lot of legal and free music for download, and it's not encumbered by DRM or other silly limitations. For example legaltorrents and kahvi.
Generally speaking, radio airplay encourages sales -- it's how many people learn about music. Piracy discourages sales -- once people have an MP3 of a song that they can listen to as many times as they want, there's little need to go buy another copy.
However, an MP3 can also encourage people to buy CDs or attend concerts. Especially the latter, as you can't really download the full club experience with today's technology. This has happened to me a number of times.
Amen! I couldn't agree more, but perhaps I have something to add here as well...
I like to remind people of the economic theory that the price of a good tends to its marginal production cost, which for a CD must be less than the price of a blank CD-R. The price of information itself is zero by this argument.
On the other hand, I think people should be paid for the work they do.
The twist is that the work that musicians do is not the duplication of bits, it's the making of music! Therefore it's natural to pay for live gigs, if you want to pay for their work.
It may be that I've come to feel this way only because I'm an amateur musician myself, and I've never had records sold, but I've been paid for live performances. But even when I'm audience, I think a live gig is an experience worth a lot more than listening to a CD at home.
Moreover, I think a gig is a natural place to sell CDs as well, and not just because you're more prone to buy it there. For me the most beloved CDs are by bands I've experienced live, because they take my mind back to the show. So I still buy CDs, but mainly because of the live shows. Besides, the bands usually sell their stuff a lot cheaper than the usual music store.
No modern game requires more than the 8GB of space that a dual-layer DVD can provide. Few console games even need more than the 1.5GB provided by Gamecube's discs.
I wasn't aware of this side of Card. I've enjoyed his novels a lot, and knowing that his religious stance is very different from mine hasn't made my reading experiences any worse. In fact I've been surprised how questioning or agnostic the Ender books are, and they leave a lot of room for interpretations and different religious viewpoints.
However, this point got me worrying a little:
But as the adolescent moves into adulthood and continues to engage in sinful practices far beyond the level of experimentation, then the consequences
within the Church must grow more severe and more long-lasting;
This notion of "experimentation" worries me. It seems to mean that it's OK to "experiment" with different off-mainstream things when you're young, but once you grow up you have to forget about them and become a docile little consumer. I've seen this idea being applied to various things besides sexual life, for example hair and dress styles.
I hate this kind of thinking; what's the point of experimentation if it never leads to permanent and pervasive changes? We have goodies like fire, wheel, jet engines and Unix because of people who dared to experiment, dammit.
I want to say this generally, not specifically to homosexuality, but it got me thinking: what if homosexuality is simply nature's way of dealing with population explosion? (I wonder if Slashdot is the place to discuss this seriously, but what the heck. Cue the trolls.)
Slashdot Mirror
I think the main problem with daylight saving time is that while sunlight is symmetrical around 12 am / 12 pm, our use of that time is skewed so that the center of our waking day is in the afternoon. DST is an attempt to force the "waking midday" closer to solar noon, but it would take more than one hour to do that, with our typical use of time. On the other hand, why should it be forced? Why not let people and businesses decide how they use their time?
Broader than what?
The problem starts with the concept of bandwidth, which is something measured in Hz, kHz, MHz etc. and is not the same thing as data transmission rate, but people use it that way nevertheless. From there, people use 'broadband' to mean high data rate.
There is some connection between data rate and bandwidth, namely a linear one if other variables are equal. To call one by the other name was originally a hacker joke, but unfortunately some people took it seriously.
Of course when you're working in technical circles, you can be sure that people use the correct terms. Nevertheless it's unfortunate to have terms mixed. I'd be happier if there was a new buzzword (like blog, etc.) to describe high data rate communications, instead of reusing an existing technical term in a new buzzwordish meaning.
No, but I've started to see the term more and more. It's the same thing with blogs, for example. It wasn't annoying at first, as it was just another buzzword that had the potential to fade out. Now everything is blog-this and blog-that in the blogosphere and it's really starting to piss off people.
Wi-fi = wireless fidelity???
Are we choosing technical terms on the basis of making cool-sounding abbreviations, instead of having any technical meaning?
Well, after podcasting, blogging and broadband, what did I expect...
There have been still video cameras that used analog signals recorded on magnetic discs. I've never seen these in real life, so I'm not sure if the disc is the one we're looking for.
How come Europe has been able to switch over to metric? We did use some backward measuring systems in the past, and I'm sure we had problems converting.
In most cases you can scroll with the arrow and pgup/pgdn keys. This is why I don't see the point in scroll wheels, they are just redundant. I'd rather use regular three-button mice, because when you middle-click a lot, it's nice to have the same touch as the other mouse buttons. When you middle-click with a scroll wheel, it takes more pressure and you have to be careful not to scroll it at the same time. So for me it ends up being harder to use than a regular three-buttoner.
Not necessarily. The backdoor could be, for example, a certain username/password account for logging in via ssh, a piece of GPL'd software. I think this was all trivial; for another example, you can use https for secure banking even if all the software is Free. The security is independent of the Freedom of the code, because the secrets are data, not code.
I think this solution is much more elegant than a battery-based one. This has no extra parts compared to a regular fluorescent light, whereas the battery system has several pieces that could break. And a rechargeable battery will go bad over time.
I wouldn't mind someone else using my connection, because "mother taught me to share" :) As long as they dont hog all of the capacity. I would hate it if people had to waste resources in building different wireless networks for each of them, when one would suffice.
This would be different if I used WLAN as a strictly local, trusted network. Though I probably wouldn't do that, no matter how good the encryption was. But if you use it as a part of Internet, then everything you use to protect your data from the dangers of Internet should be enough.
(*Wi-fi, IMHO, is a completely undescriptive and stupid name, even less so than 'blog', and I don't see what it has to do with fidelity. With analog sound you can have worse or better fidelity to the original source, hence Hi-Fi, and I don't see how the term should make sense with wireless digital communication.
For one thing, 'wired fidelity' isn't used with wired communications, which are subject to the same notions of reliability, data rate, latency etc, and even if it was, you could also call that Wi-Fi by the same logic ;)
In fact it'd make more sense if WLAN was the wired version and LAN the wireless, because the former has a Wire and the latter does not!!!1)
I'm no Microsoft fan but I hazard a guess...
In the 1980s, Microsoft products were in some ways more open/free than the competition. For example, their software was not tied to the hardware of any given vendor, as was/is the case with Apple.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has stuck with the same principles they had in the 1980 (for instance that you can sell software like tangible products). In the meantime new software has become available, the kind that is much more free/open than Microsoft's.
I think it's clear that MS's position today is solely due to what they did in the 1980s, not because they are making the best software today. Therefore people are questioning their position, and they are also realizing that there are better alternatives.
"Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly."
What about freely distributing music, movies etc? It's harder to tell whether they contribute meaningfully to human knowledge.
My opinion is that, for example, once a CD is released, it's "out there" in public and should be Free. It's not a secret, like a password. Anything that's not a secret should be Free.
My reasoning is that, for example, musicians want to spread their works as widely as possible. They like you to hear their songs on the radio, even if you didn't pay them to hear it. It's only a detail if they want you to pay for the CD, the key is that they want you to want their stuff.
Conversely, I don't tell my passwords to anyone, whether they pay or not.
But I agree, having trained with one of these babies..
Bush himself seems to be living proof of mankind's evolutionary connection with apes.
I'm currently using a small Logitech mouse that has a cord of about three feet, and it came with an extension cord. It's obviously intended for laptop use, and that's the way I use it as well. On the other hand (pun intended), I mouse on the left and my laptop has USB connectors on the right, which means I need to use the extension. I still think it's a great idea.
I was going to make a nasty joke about you sucking at math, but it's just too easy.
How about a joke of you sucking at physics?
The time it takes for a radioactive substance to decay into half its original value is the half-live. Wait for another half-life and you have one quarter of the original left (it's exponential decay). Hence two half-lives = one quarter-life.
*coughshamelessplugcough*
However, an MP3 can also encourage people to buy CDs or attend concerts. Especially the latter, as you can't really download the full club experience with today's technology. This has happened to me a number of times.
I like to remind people of the economic theory that the price of a good tends to its marginal production cost, which for a CD must be less than the price of a blank CD-R. The price of information itself is zero by this argument.
On the other hand, I think people should be paid for the work they do.
The twist is that the work that musicians do is not the duplication of bits, it's the making of music! Therefore it's natural to pay for live gigs, if you want to pay for their work.
It may be that I've come to feel this way only because I'm an amateur musician myself, and I've never had records sold, but I've been paid for live performances. But even when I'm audience, I think a live gig is an experience worth a lot more than listening to a CD at home.
Moreover, I think a gig is a natural place to sell CDs as well, and not just because you're more prone to buy it there. For me the most beloved CDs are by bands I've experienced live, because they take my mind back to the show. So I still buy CDs, but mainly because of the live shows. Besides, the bands usually sell their stuff a lot cheaper than the usual music store.
I thought Downtown is where all the money is.
This is the perfect tool for telepornation. Gotta love those dirty-minded Apple engineers.
Yeah, and 640KB ought to be enough for everyone.
However, this point got me worrying a little:
But as the adolescent moves into adulthood and continues to engage in sinful practices far beyond the level of experimentation, then the consequences within the Church must grow more severe and more long-lasting;
This notion of "experimentation" worries me. It seems to mean that it's OK to "experiment" with different off-mainstream things when you're young, but once you grow up you have to forget about them and become a docile little consumer. I've seen this idea being applied to various things besides sexual life, for example hair and dress styles.
I hate this kind of thinking; what's the point of experimentation if it never leads to permanent and pervasive changes? We have goodies like fire, wheel, jet engines and Unix because of people who dared to experiment, dammit.
I want to say this generally, not specifically to homosexuality, but it got me thinking: what if homosexuality is simply nature's way of dealing with population explosion? (I wonder if Slashdot is the place to discuss this seriously, but what the heck. Cue the trolls.)
Duh, it's because PI number is 3.14159265358979323846... ;D