I stopped watching films in the cinema years ago because it's just way too expensive here in the UK. For just a bit more than the price of a single ticket (less, if it's a 3D film), I can buy the DVD brand new if I wait a few months. Since I'm married, and that means two tickets, the DVD is always way, way cheaper, and that's before even considering buying popcorn etc.
I stopped because a big enough chunk of the public has forgotten how to behave in a cinema. There's nothing quite like being in a full screen, where everyone is gasping or laughing along with each other. But in the last 5 years or so, whenever I've been in a reasonably full UK cinema, other patrons have been happy to chat with each other at normal speaking volume, during the film.
Ironically, there was a period when they showed an anti-piracy ad, in which someone watches a grainy version of a film, in which a silhouette of a cinema punter getting up to go to the toilet spoils the film. This has never happened to me with a DVD, *nor* with a BT download -- but of course it's happened for real in the cinema.
So, for less money, I can see the film at home, with better sound (5.1 DTS without strangers' chat), equivalent size (if I want to sit close enough, that is) for less money.
I have made an exception for 3D -- Toy Story 3 was OK. Jackass 3D was well worth it -- with 8 other people in the auditorium, giving the film their full attention and cackling like idiots.:)
My grandmother has driven manual shift cars for over 50 years, she can't drive an automatic, despite the fact that an automatic is undeniably easier (simply less to worry about)... She instinctively goes for the clutch with her left foot, and hits the brake instead.
The solution to this is to put your left foot on a "virtual clutch pedal" somewhere to the left of the brake pedal, and leave it there. As long as you're not tempted to use one foot for each pedal, you'll be fine.
The first time I hired a car in the US, I fell into the same trap as your grandmother: within a few tens of metres from starting, I slammed in the "clutch", and jolted to a sudden halt, such that the car behind nearly rear-ended me.
Yes, I agree with all of this. I was with Everything from the start, then there was something about how Everything2 was run that caused me to abandon involvement.
I can't quite remember the exact policy, but it definitely made me say "right, if that's how it's going to be, I'm not taking part any more".
You seem to have trouble understanding the word "expect".
Not really. If you roll a 6 sided die 6 times, you don't "expect" to see each side exactly once, but over 600 rolls, you'd expect approximately 100 of each side.
The parent is questioning whether 30 years is long enough for climate trends to be perceptible.
(I'm not a AGW denier myself -- I don't know enough about it to think I know better than the vast majority of climate scientists)
UI problems in iTunes is easy to say, but I prefer examples.
- The checkboxes next to songs, which seem to mean "this song has been checkboxed", with different functions using it for different purposes. - Having to create a playlist, just to burn an audio CD of an album - Choosing an album via the search field, then playing it, is fiddly enough that most of the time I go "that'll do", resulting in situations like listening to a moody PJ Harvey album abutted with PJ and Duncan's early 90s pop-rap. - It really doesn't make sense to me that albums and playlists are different "things". I want to be able to create compilation albums, out of tracks that are already in my library, and have them listed in the same place as ordinary albums.
What's annoying is that, as clumsy as iTunes is, I don't know of a better alternative. Winamp is worse. Windows Media Player is worse.
I'm pretty certain there are those in the Conservative party that would love to outsource most of the NHS. The thing stopping them is that the NHS is a sacred cow.
They're effectively working on that right now. GPs are being given the "choice" to do their own admin, so they'll outsource their admin to private companies. Rawnsley said on the radio only this week that there's "no reason why NHS GPs should be civil servants".
it's people like the idiot woman this morning in the Range Rover who think that size overrides the Highway Code that present the problem, and this doesn't address it.
On motorways it might -- because the idiot woman would join a road train for selfish reasons (reduction in fuel costs; ability to relax rather than drive), and hence would do a couple of hundred miles without the opportunity to drive badly.
The dogma of papal infallibility is widely misunderstood.
According to the Catholic church, only papal pronouncements made ex cathedra are covered by papal infallibility. That is to say, in order for it to apply, he has to make a big deal about making A Pronouncement. See Wikipedia.
So the Pope can lose pub quizzes without invalidating his own claimed role.
The pope is a cunt, a backwards, über-conservative dickhead who would rather ignore the problems facing his millions of subjects than take any real action. Problems like pedophilia, AIDS and crippling poverty and hunger.
I would say the difference between them is patent encumbrance. Sure you can use h.264 if you're a smelly basement dwelling open source fanatic, but commercial usage is limited by patent licensing and royalties.
However if you're the kind of open source fanatic who likes to give away their code to a large number of people (like, say, Debian) you encounter royalty issues.
A barrier that is self-imposed is not a barrier. Refusal by Google & Opera to pay MPEG's 10 cent/browser license fee is equivalent to me saying, "I am barred from watching SyFy Channel, because I have to pay the $60 fee to access it." - That is not a barrier; that is a self-inflicted wound because I'm a cheapass.
Of course SyFy's subscription fee is a barrier. But it doesn't really matter if there are SyFy haves and have-nots.
And of course MPEG's 10c fee is a barrier -- as is their higher fee for encoding.
Now, these fees might seem very cheap to you -- but they'll be a significant barrier to the developing world, and we'll end up with internet video haves and have-nots, which is exactly what Mozilla's mission it is to avoid.
I dunno about Google, but the issue for Mozilla Foundation is that by supporting the closed format, you're enabling a two tier web with aspects that users in developing countries etc. won't be able to access. As long as Safari and IE do not support a free codec, kids in Sudan (*) might not be able to encode video for the web. As long as Chrome supports H.264, there's weak incentives for rich people (*) who just want it to work, to move to something else.
(*1) "Kids in Sudan" is a placeholder for whatever poor people you want to consider (*2) "rich people" relative to the kids in Sudan.
There's an apocryphal story that in the halls of residence where I went to university, some years before I was there, someone hooked the UHF output of his VCR to his room's radiator, and thus broadcast porn to anyone in the halls who cared to connect their TV's aerial socket to their own radiator.
An electrical engineer has explained to me why this story can't possibly be true -- but it's cute anyway.
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I stopped watching films in the cinema years ago because it's just way too expensive here in the UK. For just a bit more than the price of a single ticket (less, if it's a 3D film), I can buy the DVD brand new if I wait a few months. Since I'm married, and that means two tickets, the DVD is always way, way cheaper, and that's before even considering buying popcorn etc.
I stopped because a big enough chunk of the public has forgotten how to behave in a cinema. There's nothing quite like being in a full screen, where everyone is gasping or laughing along with each other. But in the last 5 years or so, whenever I've been in a reasonably full UK cinema, other patrons have been happy to chat with each other at normal speaking volume, during the film.
Ironically, there was a period when they showed an anti-piracy ad, in which someone watches a grainy version of a film, in which a silhouette of a cinema punter getting up to go to the toilet spoils the film. This has never happened to me with a DVD, *nor* with a BT download -- but of course it's happened for real in the cinema.
So, for less money, I can see the film at home, with better sound (5.1 DTS without strangers' chat), equivalent size (if I want to sit close enough, that is) for less money.
I have made an exception for 3D -- Toy Story 3 was OK. Jackass 3D was well worth it -- with 8 other people in the auditorium, giving the film their full attention and cackling like idiots. :)
Mmm, but I think Thiery may be a work of fiction to some extent -- and more Banksy's creation than his own.
Because of Natalie Portman's hot grits scene in Black Swan?
Well, I wrote a bit about it, but then I deleted it because it had too many spoilers.
Suffice to say that I think the LA show was a bit of a Candid Camera stunt, with the punters as the stooges.
My grandmother has driven manual shift cars for over 50 years, she can't drive an automatic, despite the fact that an automatic is undeniably easier (simply less to worry about)... She instinctively goes for the clutch with her left foot, and hits the brake instead.
The solution to this is to put your left foot on a "virtual clutch pedal" somewhere to the left of the brake pedal, and leave it there. As long as you're not tempted to use one foot for each pedal, you'll be fine.
The first time I hired a car in the US, I fell into the same trap as your grandmother: within a few tens of metres from starting, I slammed in the "clutch", and jolted to a sudden halt, such that the car behind nearly rear-ended me.
The analogy with an office suite... erm...
It's a fantastic film -- I'd recommended it to anyone, even if they're not "into that kind of thing" (by which I assume, street art).
But let's not assume too much about its veracity, eh?
Even those with a healthy distaste for the institution of monarchy?
Yes, I agree with all of this. I was with Everything from the start, then there was something about how Everything2 was run that caused me to abandon involvement.
I can't quite remember the exact policy, but it definitely made me say "right, if that's how it's going to be, I'm not taking part any more".
H2G2 is predated by Everything, started in 1998 by Nathan of this parish.
At the time it really felt as if we were building something akin to a Hitch Hiker's Guide.
OK, yes, we're talking about varying degrees of "directly" here. I just meant my house won't get flooded by sea water.
You and the rest of your NYC friends are DETESTED by the rest of the country. So go fuck yourself.
I live in the middle of England, where rising sea levels won't affect me directly (the economic repercussions of London being flooded might).
I'd have said the same of any coastal city though. Bombay, for example.
New York find itself underwater? No loss.
That shows a pretty callous attitude to the 8.4 million people who live there -- and add all the other coastal population centres.
You seem to have trouble understanding the word "expect".
Not really. If you roll a 6 sided die 6 times, you don't "expect" to see each side exactly once, but over 600 rolls, you'd expect approximately 100 of each side.
The parent is questioning whether 30 years is long enough for climate trends to be perceptible.
(I'm not a AGW denier myself -- I don't know enough about it to think I know better than the vast majority of climate scientists)
UI problems in iTunes is easy to say, but I prefer examples.
- The checkboxes next to songs, which seem to mean "this song has been checkboxed", with different functions using it for different purposes.
- Having to create a playlist, just to burn an audio CD of an album
- Choosing an album via the search field, then playing it, is fiddly enough that most of the time I go "that'll do", resulting in situations like listening to a moody PJ Harvey album abutted with PJ and Duncan's early 90s pop-rap.
- It really doesn't make sense to me that albums and playlists are different "things". I want to be able to create compilation albums, out of tracks that are already in my library, and have them listed in the same place as ordinary albums.
What's annoying is that, as clumsy as iTunes is, I don't know of a better alternative. Winamp is worse. Windows Media Player is worse.
I'm pretty certain there are those in the Conservative party that would love to outsource most of the NHS. The thing stopping them is that the NHS is a sacred cow.
They're effectively working on that right now. GPs are being given the "choice" to do their own admin, so they'll outsource their admin to private companies. Rawnsley said on the radio only this week that there's "no reason why NHS GPs should be civil servants".
Just one question.
If it's proven that P==NP, does it necessarily follow that for an arbitrary NP hard problem, an algorithm to solve it in linear time will be found?
I think P==NP implies that such an algorithm *exists*, but surely finding it is another matter?
it's people like the idiot woman this morning in the Range Rover who think that size overrides the Highway Code that present the problem, and this doesn't address it.
On motorways it might -- because the idiot woman would join a road train for selfish reasons (reduction in fuel costs; ability to relax rather than drive), and hence would do a couple of hundred miles without the opportunity to drive badly.
The dogma of papal infallibility is widely misunderstood.
According to the Catholic church, only papal pronouncements made ex cathedra are covered by papal infallibility. That is to say, in order for it to apply, he has to make a big deal about making A Pronouncement. See Wikipedia.
So the Pope can lose pub quizzes without invalidating his own claimed role.
(I'm an atheist by the way)
The pope is a cunt, a backwards, über-conservative dickhead who would rather ignore the problems facing his millions of subjects than take any real action. Problems like pedophilia, AIDS and crippling poverty and hunger.
Ignore? You mean aggravate, right?
I would say the difference between them is patent encumbrance. Sure you can use h.264 if you're a smelly basement dwelling open source fanatic, but commercial usage is limited by patent licensing and royalties.
However if you're the kind of open source fanatic who likes to give away their code to a large number of people (like, say, Debian) you encounter royalty issues.
OLPC XO Laptop's internal camera?
Just a f'rinstance.
A barrier that is self-imposed is not a barrier. Refusal by Google & Opera to pay MPEG's 10 cent/browser license fee is equivalent to me saying, "I am barred from watching SyFy Channel, because I have to pay the $60 fee to access it." - That is not a barrier; that is a self-inflicted wound because I'm a cheapass.
Of course SyFy's subscription fee is a barrier. But it doesn't really matter if there are SyFy haves and have-nots.
And of course MPEG's 10c fee is a barrier -- as is their higher fee for encoding.
Now, these fees might seem very cheap to you -- but they'll be a significant barrier to the developing world, and we'll end up with internet video haves and have-nots, which is exactly what Mozilla's mission it is to avoid.
I dunno about Google, but the issue for Mozilla Foundation is that by supporting the closed format, you're enabling a two tier web with aspects that users in developing countries etc. won't be able to access. As long as Safari and IE do not support a free codec, kids in Sudan (*) might not be able to encode video for the web. As long as Chrome supports H.264, there's weak incentives for rich people (*) who just want it to work, to move to something else.
(*1) "Kids in Sudan" is a placeholder for whatever poor people you want to consider
(*2) "rich people" relative to the kids in Sudan.
Here, MS has by many measurements, less than 50% share, and Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all reject H264, meaning it actually has a shot.
Er, Safari prefers H.264. Apple are right behind H.264.
There's an apocryphal story that in the halls of residence where I went to university, some years before I was there, someone hooked the UHF output of his VCR to his room's radiator, and thus broadcast porn to anyone in the halls who cared to connect their TV's aerial socket to their own radiator.
An electrical engineer has explained to me why this story can't possibly be true -- but it's cute anyway.