I know it's too much to expect anyone to read the article, but the problem here is not an absence of "standards." There is a standard DVD-R format, set by the DVD Forum. (Yes, there is also a competing DVD+RW format, but that has nothing to do with the problem at hand.) However, that standard format was not designed for higher speed technology. So the same standard-setting DVD Forum is putting their blessing on a higher speed 4x DVD-R which turns out not to be 100% backwards compatible with the old drives. They are forced to do this by the realities of the marketplace.
Note, companies build incompatible extensions into their technologies all the time. WinXP broke some Win98 apps. OSX broke some older MacOS apps. SVHS broke compatibility with regular VHS. DivX broke DivX;-). This is the price we pay for progress.
DVD+R/RW is heading for the dump, where it belongs.
Nice semi-troll. The article you linked to, of course, implies no such thing. Instead, it seems that single-format only drives are heading for the dump, where they belong.
I think we should have just stuck with the Roman names and kept a consistent system
First of all, what's this talk of consistency? Is there some utility to naming this planet after an old Roman god? It's not like Sedna is any harder to remember than Bacchus or some of the other names that have been floating around this topic. I think it's a good name because it brings forth images of "sediment" and "sedentary," thoughts that go well with a cold, dark planet.
If a co-conspirator is a member of a conspiracy, what's a conspirator?
That's called begging the question.:)
The two words are obviously different. Here's why.
I am a conspirator in a scheme against John's company. John is also a conspirator, but he's conspiring against my company. We are both conspirators, but we are not co-conspirators.
What your two anecdotes together establish is that in the absence of additional evidence, it appears that a certain non-zero percentage of iPods are faulty. Enough to construct a hypothesis that there may be something warranting further investigation. So in no sense is his anecdote "absurd." It's quite useful to me since it indicates something I might want to research before plunking down $400.
It's also a bit of unintended irony to use the legalese expression prima facie, since it's in a court of law that eyewitness (by definition anecdotal) testimony bears the most weight.
And before you are quick to whip out a response where you parrot further misinterpretations of Logical Fallacies 101, really reflect for a moment and consider how frequently you rely upon anecdotal evidence in your daily life. It's an indispensible tool. Just not a perfect one.
It's true that entropy can decrease when matter/energy enters a spontaneously ordered state, e.g. all the gas collects in the corner of the room. In itself that's infinitesimally unlikely, yet still possible. But in the case of the universe we live in, there's an additional wrinke. The edges of the "room" are expanding faster than the speed of light. Which means, eventually, every particle will disappear over every other particle's event horizon, and it will be impossible to put them back together again.
Another person downthread alludes to the idea of surviving through increasing entropy by presumably using decreasing amounts of energy. In other words, as the universe gets older and colder, there will be, say, 1/100th the free energy available utilizable by a heat pump. So a form of alife could simply run itself 100 times more slowly and thereby experience time subjectively at a linear rate. Right? Wrong. Two problems pop up. One is proton decay, which means the building blocks of any sentient computer will eventually decay on their own. And second is the cosmic background radiation. Machines work on the principle of taking in energy and outputting it in the form of waste heat. But once the universe has cooled down to the same temperature as the CBR, it will be impossible for any machine to output waste heat. It will cease to function. There is some work being done on reversible computing which might, in the long run, be able to tackle the second problem, but not the first.
Hahaha. Your 1/4 sec latency is caused by the entire internet, not by your USB cable. I realize you know that and you were just being droll, but this is for the benefit of the slow bus riders, no pun intended.
Piece of advice... don't post both as an AC and non-AC in the same thread when you have a very distinctive post style if you really want the AC post to be anonymous.;-)
Better piece of advice. Try not using your real name as your Slashdot name in the first place. Then you won't have to worry about AC or not.
True, things are totally broken now. Even the United States' national anthem would've been illegal under our current regime. The original melody was composed in 177x by John Stafford Smith, and while he was still alive, Francis Scott Key (who was ironically a lawyer) "stole" his IP to compose the words to the Star Spangled Banner in 1814.
Of course, back then all that was quite legal. Mostly because The Walt Disney Company wasn't around to buy the rights to it.
Unless you can find a niche to fill with your Internet cafe
The premier niche around here is in tourist areas. Most people don't carry their laptops on vacation with them, so Wi-Fi access points are useless. A coffee+web shop with a uniform internationalized menu, decent overpriced java, and internet access located in a heavily trafficked downtown area is certainly a workable business plan, as evidenced by the thousands of "cyber cafes" that still exist in a market ripe for consolidation.
You don't say who wrote that article, but it's totally incorrect.
Think about it. My company buys a hacked copy of MS Office 2003 from a company called MyCrowsOffed for 5 bucks, and we install it on 200 computers. Meanwhile MyCrowsOffed goes out of business.
Microsoft finds out and wants to sue us. Under what grounds? Can't be license violation, because we didn't agree to any license, we bought de-licensed hackware from a defunct company.
So does that mean I get to install and use illegal software without penalties? I didn't write it, so I can't be blamed? Cool.
Well, no. So obviously the quoted article is wrong.
Another idea: breakdown of the Federation. It collapses sometime after Picard's retirement, and a starship crew makes the rounds restoring order to worlds and rebuilding alliances.
I believe Roddenberry already came up with a similar premise. Now known as "Andromeda."
Is it not illegal to do circumventing of technology.
I wonder about that. How is circumventing my pop-up-blocker against my wishes any different from me circumventing DoubleClick's firewall against their wishes?
I consider popups a form of DoS. They steal unwanted cycles from my CPU, steal the "focus" of my windows, and impede my work.
(Actually, shortly after making the original post a year ago, I wrote to Microsoft with this suggestion. This is about the third time I've found one of my suggestions to them in a product. Of course, a thousand other people could've sent the same request, but I can at least pretend it was my doing. Anyone else have similar luck with them?)
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
It's an issue because he was trying to get sanctions against people who used the term "black" instead of "African-American".
Really, now? How's that work? Maybe little black trolls with tipping jars would follow everyone around. If you get caught saying "black" instead of "African-American" then the troll makes you throw some of your Hard Earned Tax Money(TM) into the jar, to be distributed to "whining, lazy" black activists, of course.
I suppose it could happen but Jackson would have to sanction himself since the word "black" is all over his own web site. I guess he wouldn't, though, since we've already established he's a hypocrite. Unlike most politicians.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's been fun, but at this point, I'm calling "shenanigans" on you and I'm done.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
Er no. "African-American" wasn't ever meant to replace "black" because the two terms mean entirely different things. What do Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandela and Seal have in common? They're black. Members of the black race. Except in some bent over backwards PC sociology dissertation gone mad, nobody's calling Seal "African-American."
African-American is just another one of the United States' many ethnic groups, like Italian-American, German-American, etc. Jackson clearly isn't the one who came up with the term "white" nor did he come up with the hyphenated American scheme, so pinning our nation's racial ills upon him seems a bit odd. (Maybe Al Sharpton called in sick that day??) Anyway, I used to be a member of a bank which was since 1968 called European-American Bank, and before that, since 1952, it was known as the Belgian-American Bank. If only I'd consulted with the good Reverend. I could've been taught the sublime pleasure of calling it the "White" bank against its wishes. Damn, now it's too late, because Citibank has gobbled it up. Capitalist Devils!!!
Honestly, I don't know why people seem to get worked up about this. Like I hinted to the other poster, what's stopping you from calling blacks/coloreds/African-Americans whatever you want? Clearly, only your own sense of shame or propriety. Why blame your own self-repression on Jesse Jackson? Unless you really think he's going to organize a boycott of your summer barbecue because you said "Negro" under your breath in the shower.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 1
Dude, I'm totally black, m'kay?! Even though I used "nigger" about 35 times in my grandparent post, I'm highly offended by your jocular use of that pejorative. >:-(
Well, maybe not highly offended. How about, er, weakly offended?
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
on
What You Can't Say
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· Score: 3, Insightful
If it puts his job on the line for using the phrase, yet it doesn't put other people's jobs on the line then it very much IS reverse descrimination.
Well, no, that would be just plain old "discrimination." "Reverse discrimination" presumes that the people who are normally discriminated against are the ones doing the discriminating, i.e., that his black superior would be the one threatening to fire him. In the overwhelming majority of tech environments, this is not the case.
In any event, is there any substantiation whatsoever that this really happens, that blacks are traipsing around AT WORK using "nigger" to describe themselves while whites are cowering in fear of being fired for doing the same? Or are we just all going, "Umm-hmm, it happened to Eminem -- it must happen all the time!"
Slashdot Mirror
I know it's too much to expect anyone to read the article, but the problem here is not an absence of "standards." There is a standard DVD-R format, set by the DVD Forum. (Yes, there is also a competing DVD+RW format, but that has nothing to do with the problem at hand.) However, that standard format was not designed for higher speed technology. So the same standard-setting DVD Forum is putting their blessing on a higher speed 4x DVD-R which turns out not to be 100% backwards compatible with the old drives. They are forced to do this by the realities of the marketplace.
;-). This is the price we pay for progress.
Note, companies build incompatible extensions into their technologies all the time. WinXP broke some Win98 apps. OSX broke some older MacOS apps. SVHS broke compatibility with regular VHS. DivX broke DivX
DVD+R/RW is heading for the dump, where it belongs.
Nice semi-troll. The article you linked to, of course, implies no such thing. Instead, it seems that single-format only drives are heading for the dump, where they belong.
TREPAN TEH EAR7H!!!!!1!
"We made out like frickin' bandits," President Bill McEwen was heard to chuckle as the screen door of his double-wide mobile home slammed shut.
I think we should have just stuck with the Roman names and kept a consistent system
First of all, what's this talk of consistency? Is there some utility to naming this planet after an old Roman god? It's not like Sedna is any harder to remember than Bacchus or some of the other names that have been floating around this topic. I think it's a good name because it brings forth images of "sediment" and "sedentary," thoughts that go well with a cold, dark planet.
Secondly, what do you mean "we," white man?
If a co-conspirator is a member of a conspiracy, what's a conspirator?
:)
That's called begging the question.
The two words are obviously different. Here's why.
I am a conspirator in a scheme against John's company. John is also a conspirator, but he's conspiring against my company. We are both conspirators, but we are not co-conspirators.
What your two anecdotes together establish is that in the absence of additional evidence, it appears that a certain non-zero percentage of iPods are faulty. Enough to construct a hypothesis that there may be something warranting further investigation. So in no sense is his anecdote "absurd." It's quite useful to me since it indicates something I might want to research before plunking down $400.
It's also a bit of unintended irony to use the legalese expression prima facie, since it's in a court of law that eyewitness (by definition anecdotal) testimony bears the most weight.
And before you are quick to whip out a response where you parrot further misinterpretations of Logical Fallacies 101, really reflect for a moment and consider how frequently you rely upon anecdotal evidence in your daily life. It's an indispensible tool. Just not a perfect one.
It's true that entropy can decrease when matter/energy enters a spontaneously ordered state, e.g. all the gas collects in the corner of the room. In itself that's infinitesimally unlikely, yet still possible. But in the case of the universe we live in, there's an additional wrinke. The edges of the "room" are expanding faster than the speed of light. Which means, eventually, every particle will disappear over every other particle's event horizon, and it will be impossible to put them back together again.
Another person downthread alludes to the idea of surviving through increasing entropy by presumably using decreasing amounts of energy. In other words, as the universe gets older and colder, there will be, say, 1/100th the free energy available utilizable by a heat pump. So a form of alife could simply run itself 100 times more slowly and thereby experience time subjectively at a linear rate. Right? Wrong. Two problems pop up. One is proton decay, which means the building blocks of any sentient computer will eventually decay on their own. And second is the cosmic background radiation. Machines work on the principle of taking in energy and outputting it in the form of waste heat. But once the universe has cooled down to the same temperature as the CBR, it will be impossible for any machine to output waste heat. It will cease to function. There is some work being done on reversible computing which might, in the long run, be able to tackle the second problem, but not the first.
Hahaha. Your 1/4 sec latency is caused by the entire internet, not by your USB cable. I realize you know that and you were just being droll, but this is for the benefit of the slow bus riders, no pun intended.
Piece of advice... don't post both as an AC and non-AC in the same thread when you have a very distinctive post style if you really want the AC post to be anonymous. ;-)
Better piece of advice. Try not using your real name as your Slashdot name in the first place. Then you won't have to worry about AC or not.
~MEOW~
This'll free up another hour of WB time for fine family programming like, "7th Heaven: The Mary Camden Crack Ho Years."
I can hardly wait.
True, things are totally broken now. Even the United States' national anthem would've been illegal under our current regime. The original melody was composed in 177x by John Stafford Smith, and while he was still alive, Francis Scott Key (who was ironically a lawyer) "stole" his IP to compose the words to the Star Spangled Banner in 1814.
Of course, back then all that was quite legal. Mostly because The Walt Disney Company wasn't around to buy the rights to it.
Unless you can find a niche to fill with your Internet cafe
The premier niche around here is in tourist areas. Most people don't carry their laptops on vacation with them, so Wi-Fi access points are useless. A coffee+web shop with a uniform internationalized menu, decent overpriced java, and internet access located in a heavily trafficked downtown area is certainly a workable business plan, as evidenced by the thousands of "cyber cafes" that still exist in a market ripe for consolidation.
reminds me of RTMark
Wow, your browbeating an Anonymous Coward shows your utter lack of basic Slashdot knowledge. ;)
You don't say who wrote that article, but it's totally incorrect.
Think about it. My company buys a hacked copy of MS Office 2003 from a company called MyCrowsOffed for 5 bucks, and we install it on 200 computers. Meanwhile MyCrowsOffed goes out of business.
Microsoft finds out and wants to sue us. Under what grounds? Can't be license violation, because we didn't agree to any license, we bought de-licensed hackware from a defunct company.
So does that mean I get to install and use illegal software without penalties? I didn't write it, so I can't be blamed? Cool.
Well, no. So obviously the quoted article is wrong.
Copyright protection encourages creation
Proof? Before you answer that remember that correlation doesn't equal causation, and that 90% of everything is crap.
Nobody else has any right to works I've created.
That's called begging the question.
Another idea: breakdown of the Federation. It collapses sometime after Picard's retirement, and a starship crew makes the rounds restoring order to worlds and rebuilding alliances.
I believe Roddenberry already came up with a similar premise. Now known as "Andromeda."
Why is the secret service involved? Arent they only concerned with protecvting the president and fake currency?
I think you mean, they're only concerned with protecting the fake president, and currency.
Is it not illegal to do circumventing of technology.
I wonder about that. How is circumventing my pop-up-blocker against my wishes any different from me circumventing DoubleClick's firewall against their wishes?
I consider popups a form of DoS. They steal unwanted cycles from my CPU, steal the "focus" of my windows, and impede my work.
Um...wow...
;)
Microsoft stole my suggestion!
And you stole my cheat!
Crazy!
(Actually, shortly after making the original post a year ago, I wrote to Microsoft with this suggestion. This is about the third time I've found one of my suggestions to them in a product. Of course, a thousand other people could've sent the same request, but I can at least pretend it was my doing. Anyone else have similar luck with them?)
It's an issue because he was trying to get sanctions against people who used the term "black" instead of "African-American".
Really, now? How's that work? Maybe little black trolls with tipping jars would follow everyone around. If you get caught saying "black" instead of "African-American" then the troll makes you throw some of your Hard Earned Tax Money(TM) into the jar, to be distributed to "whining, lazy" black activists, of course.
I suppose it could happen but Jackson would have to sanction himself since the word "black" is all over his own web site. I guess he wouldn't, though, since we've already established he's a hypocrite. Unlike most politicians.
I guess what I'm saying is that it's been fun, but at this point, I'm calling "shenanigans" on you and I'm done.
Er no. "African-American" wasn't ever meant to replace "black" because the two terms mean entirely different things. What do Jesse Jackson, Nelson Mandela and Seal have in common? They're black. Members of the black race. Except in some bent over backwards PC sociology dissertation gone mad, nobody's calling Seal "African-American."
African-American is just another one of the United States' many ethnic groups, like Italian-American, German-American, etc. Jackson clearly isn't the one who came up with the term "white" nor did he come up with the hyphenated American scheme, so pinning our nation's racial ills upon him seems a bit odd. (Maybe Al Sharpton called in sick that day??) Anyway, I used to be a member of a bank which was since 1968 called European-American Bank, and before that, since 1952, it was known as the Belgian-American Bank. If only I'd consulted with the good Reverend. I could've been taught the sublime pleasure of calling it the "White" bank against its wishes. Damn, now it's too late, because Citibank has gobbled it up. Capitalist Devils!!!
Honestly, I don't know why people seem to get worked up about this. Like I hinted to the other poster, what's stopping you from calling blacks/coloreds/African-Americans whatever you want? Clearly, only your own sense of shame or propriety. Why blame your own self-repression on Jesse Jackson? Unless you really think he's going to organize a boycott of your summer barbecue because you said "Negro" under your breath in the shower.
Dude, I'm totally black, m'kay?! Even though I used "nigger" about 35 times in my grandparent post, I'm highly offended by your jocular use of that pejorative. >:-(
Well, maybe not highly offended. How about, er, weakly offended?
If it puts his job on the line for using the phrase, yet it doesn't put other people's jobs on the line then it very much IS reverse descrimination.
Well, no, that would be just plain old "discrimination." "Reverse discrimination" presumes that the people who are normally discriminated against are the ones doing the discriminating, i.e., that his black superior would be the one threatening to fire him. In the overwhelming majority of tech environments, this is not the case.
In any event, is there any substantiation whatsoever that this really happens, that blacks are traipsing around AT WORK using "nigger" to describe themselves while whites are cowering in fear of being fired for doing the same? Or are we just all going, "Umm-hmm, it happened to Eminem -- it must happen all the time!"