This is still a problem, as there's a statistically significant chance of this going the other way and one retard on the jury letting someone clearly needing jail time go free (or more commonly, 3-6 retards making decisions on corporate issues they have no clue on).
Skype already had a working implementation on the world's biggest mobile plarform, as symbian application called fring allowed you to essentially tunnel into your skype account and make phone to pc, pc to phone and phone to phone video calls on any symbian mobile phone with front facing camera (which is pretty much any decent nokia made in the last 4 years).
At some point, folks at skype decided that they didn't want to be a source for free video calls over 3g and blocked fring. But to actually need to make a phone when all you need is to allow integration into already existing phones for money... why? Video calls already worked for mobile phones over skype for a while (and apparently work again over fring itself as it added the functionality recently, but fring still seems to lack PC endpoint application). They could probably set up a small charge for every time you video call a phone with data connection, though I suspect that they have to hurry before one of the small start ups like fring grabs enough of the market and becomes skype of the mobile world.
I just wish they'd mandate a course on impartial trial BEFORE they are called for jury service. What about all those cases that are heard by men and women like her who don't get caught?
You're afraid of government protecting you from this sort of behaviour more then you are afraid of potential misuse of this kind informational centralization and sharing by private sector companies? Most people would call that tinfoil, because that's hip and fashionable, just like most anti-government pro private sector rhetoric. Most sensible people would call that either "clueless" or "stupid". Seriously, which one has happened more often, and who has screwed you over more in the last couple of decades?
Indeed. Common sense is a bitch when it runs counter to what mass media likes to rave about, isn't it?
I could be wrong, but wasn't the higher energy "potential" in bluray drives was used because of the slightly different disk construction, which required a bit more power to get a proper reflection in some parts as well as an attempt to fix problems with future RW disks that were visibly observable in CD and DVD drives?
I'm fairly certain that modern DVD drives have quite powerful red lasers as well, to facilitate reading from rather dim RW disks. Those should be rated to be capable of far greater power output then those in initial drives.
Or am I wrong? Would appreciate a correction from people with inside knowledge, google seems to fail on this one.
This is actually false for one simple reason: for every right, there is always an exactly opposite right. Both cannot be granted at once. This is why we grant and deny rights via legal system.
Examples: Right to life vs right to murder one with right to life. Right to privacy vs right to publish all of your private life everywhere we want. Right to carry weapons vs right to life not threatened by weapons.
In this case we're going for right of privacy vs police's right to monitor someone's movement without warrant. Both are rights, however neither is inherent. Both are granted by various pieces of (often overlapping and controversial) legislation. As you'll notice from my third example, sometimes rights that are opposite can also be argued to be exactly the same right (small scale MAD in that particular case).
Are blue lasers used in bluray actually more powerful? I was under impression that they just used shorter wavelength light to be able to pack more data into smaller size.
Actually it does. Countries, or more accurately cultures tend to be cyclic. At a phase where one is liberal, other can be extremely conservative, and vice versa. Iran makes a brilliant example of this, during the dark ages in Europe, when people were literally being raped en masse by feudal lords, science was nonexistent and christianity was a horrifying religion focused around death and destruction, Persia was flourishing, being the center of culture, science, mathematics, literature, and islam was actually a refined modern religion that mandated rights for weaker groups like women or those of minority religions - something unheard of at the time in Europe.
Now we have the exact opposite end of the cycle. West is highly liberal, with relatively free science, rights for minorities, and so on. In fact you can already see on macro level that we probably passed the peak and are into the downward path back to concervative-dominated realm.
In general, when comparing two countries on a scale as major as "good-evil", if you try to take a snapshot of a short time, you can paint anyone a saint or a devil. Easily. Which is why history is important, why slavery and such was compared, and why snapshot comparison is indeed apples vs oranges, while comparison over long time is more of an apples vs apples.
Very easy discussion. Both countries had quite a bit of viking presence. Vikings were people who taught their kids how to be inherently cruel by forcing them to rip wigs off live birds at the age of three.
You can imagine how they treated their victims as adults. Actually scratch that, most modern people lack imagination to be able to. Being a viking thrall was probably one of the worst fates one could have across all times.
So yes, grand parent is completely correct in spite of that retarded flamebait mod. We really need a "I disagree does not equal flamebait/overrated/troll" - notice every time people get mod points.
You can't actually commit a crime, as defined by the US laws if you're not an american citizen and you never set foot in the US or directly accessed resources over there in a criminal way. As far as I know, the CIA isn't supposed to be the KGB, since in a democracy something that embarrasses the government is not in itself a reason for intelligence agencies to be involved.
Your knowledge is FALSE. CIA is the exact mirror organisation of KGB's foreign intelligence arm (First Chief Directorate of KGB). It's NOT a law enforcement agency, it's an INTELLIGENCE agency that operates ABOVE the law by intent.
In this case, we see it work exactly as intended - protecting interests of US military on foreign soil, through any means necessary, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. It's not pretty, you may agree or disagree with both reasons for the actions as well as actions themselves, but they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Technically, the problem with heatwave in Russia and floods in Pakistan comes from unusual change to local jet stream, which typically separates hot and cold fronts. This ear, jet stream was a bit unusual, on one hand bringing the heat front far north to Moscow (and parts of eastern Europe), and at the same time interacted with seasonal monsoon clouds in Pakistan causing them to become larger then normal and causing floods.
Now, if US indeed has a way to change direction of jet streams, most of the things described by conspiracy theorist are indeed possible. Problem is that energy carried by jet stream, and potentially required to significantly modify it's direction is quite immense, and would probably be detected easily even if such a feat was possible. This is of course, hypothetical, and if someone has a degree in meteorology with specialization in jet streams and their impact on weather patterns would be welcome to chip in. Is it hypothetically possible to affect small portions of the stream to cause a domino effect? If so, even a scale suggested by parent would be workable.
As a very long term FM listener (I owned my first portable player in mid 1990s, mostly used it to listen to FM music with headphones antenna), I can vouch that reception on headphones wire antenna in fact does NOT suck. One of the advantages of FM is its resilience to various signal issues, which made FM music sound a LOT better then audio cassette music on the portables, and on par with a portable CD player.
I do. If you want to listen to music at a decent quality, wired beats wireless easily - there are very few high quality wireless speakers that actually provide extra layer of comfort that is big enough for me to drop wired ones.
Not to even mention the price difference, or the incredible weakness to noise (I have about 4 points on my casual cycling route where wireless headphones become saturated with noise, probably some powerlines or powerful transmitter in the vicinity being the cause).
Wired is the way for long term music listener. Wireless is a bit more casual, and quite a bit more expensive, plus it's arguably less comfortable with extra weight cause by battery, especially with small headphones that are inserted into the ear like my KOSS Plugs. It's a matter of choice, not a matter of "you're an old fart if you use them" as parent seems to imply.
All online games where transfer of resources (either in-game or out-of-game, by handing over login info) is possible are being monetized by one party or another.
Correct, but money's impact on end game gameplay is nonexistent. The best gear you can buy for cash is usually at least one tier behind the raiding tier and those are just one-two pieces, and PvP gear that you can get for gold is at least 5 tiers behind and has never been even borderline viable.
What you need gold for in end game is mostly enchanting and gemming gear, which while expensive does not differentiate between a guy who just has bare minimal sum to buy the best gems and enchantments and a guy who has 100 times the sum. And minimal sum can be easily gained by just questing, or even raiding now that bosses drop meaningful sums of gold for each raid member alongside other loot.
All end game gear in the game is earned by tokens that drop from bosses and loot that drops off bosses directly. All high end PvP gear is handed out judging on how well your arena team did that particular week and has a minimum requirement of how good you are (minimal required team and personal rating) and your battleground success for off-pieces.
This is why blizzard is doing so well with hardcore crowd. They virtually eliminated all paths of advancement except to play the game and gain stuff on your own. The only still unplugged hole is ability to purchase an entire character(which will obviously get banned if they find out), which has a very limited audience for obvious reasons.
World of Warcraft is generally a good example here. They're been selling aesthetic items that give no advantage gameplay-wise, such as various pets, and That Retarded Horse (google it).
They also sell leveling aid through recruit-a-friend program, which is more functional. But in the end, the real meat of the game, end-game is completely untouched by anything extra they sell. You can't get more powerful items by buying, or increase your drop chance or anything like that, and even recruit a friend experience bonus ends at level 60, while level cap is 80.
And there is a wide sentiment among players and officially acknowledged by blizzard that if any kind of gameplay-altering for-sale items enter endgame, blizzard could kiss them good bye.
It sounds like GPS antenna in your phone is borked in some way, or GPS controller is. I own a nokia 5800, and while accuracy leaves a lot to be desired, usually between 50m and 100m (as it should, the antenna is about a centimeter long), it exhibits none of the problems you mention. Initial lock is acquired within minutes of activation (no aGPS, no data, no wifi, internal GPS antenna only), and once it's in, driving instructions are impeccable, actually beating older tomtom standalone navigators by a very wide margin (and worlds ahead and beyond anything that android can offer at the moment afaik).
Heck, the phone warns me about speed cameras and warns me audibly if my speed is above allowed in the area as I drive. That just isn't possible in the situation you describe. Get your phone checked with local repair shop.
Real patent problems almost never to never make news. They are about people dropping research outright, without ever getting to the point of infringing patents, because of simple FEAR or infringement, or because when they start, the lawyer tells them to drop it because of the aforementioned risk. Number of such cases dwarfs the cases that actually progress to level of getting actual patent problems.
Yes, it is this bad. What you see on slashdot doesn't count as a tip of an iceberg - it's more of a few ice crystals from the tip of the iceberg at best.
It's very long overdue considering that voice commands have been in the most basic, cheap ass nokia feature phones for years, not to even mention smartphone line.
I'm quite surprised no one complained about lack of those before. I can't even imagine not being able to tell my phone to call someone on my contact list when it's in my pocket and bluetooth earpiece is in its place. It just seems so... last millenium.
You're not listening to mass media then. Try TV. Word "deserve" has been used more then can be easily counted.
Just because you happen to be reasonable, doesn't mean that most people crying about the issue are. And this includes even uniform wearing armchair generals who like showing up on talk shows and news.
Slashdot Mirror
This is still a problem, as there's a statistically significant chance of this going the other way and one retard on the jury letting someone clearly needing jail time go free (or more commonly, 3-6 retards making decisions on corporate issues they have no clue on).
Skype already had a working implementation on the world's biggest mobile plarform, as symbian application called fring allowed you to essentially tunnel into your skype account and make phone to pc, pc to phone and phone to phone video calls on any symbian mobile phone with front facing camera (which is pretty much any decent nokia made in the last 4 years).
At some point, folks at skype decided that they didn't want to be a source for free video calls over 3g and blocked fring. But to actually need to make a phone when all you need is to allow integration into already existing phones for money... why?
Video calls already worked for mobile phones over skype for a while (and apparently work again over fring itself as it added the functionality recently, but fring still seems to lack PC endpoint application). They could probably set up a small charge for every time you video call a phone with data connection, though I suspect that they have to hurry before one of the small start ups like fring grabs enough of the market and becomes skype of the mobile world.
I just wish they'd mandate a course on impartial trial BEFORE they are called for jury service. What about all those cases that are heard by men and women like her who don't get caught?
Ghostery axes tracking, while adblock plus axes the ads themselves.
Together they essentially eliminate both tracking and advertisements on majority of pages.
You're afraid of government protecting you from this sort of behaviour more then you are afraid of potential misuse of this kind informational centralization and sharing by private sector companies?
Most people would call that tinfoil, because that's hip and fashionable, just like most anti-government pro private sector rhetoric. Most sensible people would call that either "clueless" or "stupid". Seriously, which one has happened more often, and who has screwed you over more in the last couple of decades?
Indeed. Common sense is a bitch when it runs counter to what mass media likes to rave about, isn't it?
I could be wrong, but wasn't the higher energy "potential" in bluray drives was used because of the slightly different disk construction, which required a bit more power to get a proper reflection in some parts as well as an attempt to fix problems with future RW disks that were visibly observable in CD and DVD drives?
I'm fairly certain that modern DVD drives have quite powerful red lasers as well, to facilitate reading from rather dim RW disks. Those should be rated to be capable of far greater power output then those in initial drives.
Or am I wrong? Would appreciate a correction from people with inside knowledge, google seems to fail on this one.
This is actually false for one simple reason: for every right, there is always an exactly opposite right. Both cannot be granted at once. This is why we grant and deny rights via legal system.
Examples: Right to life vs right to murder one with right to life.
Right to privacy vs right to publish all of your private life everywhere we want.
Right to carry weapons vs right to life not threatened by weapons.
In this case we're going for right of privacy vs police's right to monitor someone's movement without warrant. Both are rights, however neither is inherent. Both are granted by various pieces of (often overlapping and controversial) legislation. As you'll notice from my third example, sometimes rights that are opposite can also be argued to be exactly the same right (small scale MAD in that particular case).
Are blue lasers used in bluray actually more powerful? I was under impression that they just used shorter wavelength light to be able to pack more data into smaller size.
Actually it does. Countries, or more accurately cultures tend to be cyclic. At a phase where one is liberal, other can be extremely conservative, and vice versa. Iran makes a brilliant example of this, during the dark ages in Europe, when people were literally being raped en masse by feudal lords, science was nonexistent and christianity was a horrifying religion focused around death and destruction, Persia was flourishing, being the center of culture, science, mathematics, literature, and islam was actually a refined modern religion that mandated rights for weaker groups like women or those of minority religions - something unheard of at the time in Europe.
Now we have the exact opposite end of the cycle. West is highly liberal, with relatively free science, rights for minorities, and so on. In fact you can already see on macro level that we probably passed the peak and are into the downward path back to concervative-dominated realm.
In general, when comparing two countries on a scale as major as "good-evil", if you try to take a snapshot of a short time, you can paint anyone a saint or a devil. Easily. Which is why history is important, why slavery and such was compared, and why snapshot comparison is indeed apples vs oranges, while comparison over long time is more of an apples vs apples.
Strange assumption considering that the thread he answers talks about slavery in Iran, which is indeed not about modern Iran.
Very easy discussion. Both countries had quite a bit of viking presence. Vikings were people who taught their kids how to be inherently cruel by forcing them to rip wigs off live birds at the age of three.
You can imagine how they treated their victims as adults. Actually scratch that, most modern people lack imagination to be able to. Being a viking thrall was probably one of the worst fates one could have across all times.
So yes, grand parent is completely correct in spite of that retarded flamebait mod. We really need a "I disagree does not equal flamebait/overrated/troll" - notice every time people get mod points.
You can't actually commit a crime, as defined by the US laws if you're not an american citizen and you never set foot in the US or directly accessed resources over there in a criminal way. As far as I know, the CIA isn't supposed to be the KGB, since in a democracy something that embarrasses the government is not in itself a reason for intelligence agencies to be involved.
Your knowledge is FALSE. CIA is the exact mirror organisation of KGB's foreign intelligence arm (First Chief Directorate of KGB). It's NOT a law enforcement agency, it's an INTELLIGENCE agency that operates ABOVE the law by intent.
In this case, we see it work exactly as intended - protecting interests of US military on foreign soil, through any means necessary, legal or illegal, ethical or unethical. It's not pretty, you may agree or disagree with both reasons for the actions as well as actions themselves, but they are doing what they are supposed to be doing.
Well, technically they did hit the taliban stronghold areas very accurately.
Technically, the problem with heatwave in Russia and floods in Pakistan comes from unusual change to local jet stream, which typically separates hot and cold fronts. This ear, jet stream was a bit unusual, on one hand bringing the heat front far north to Moscow (and parts of eastern Europe), and at the same time interacted with seasonal monsoon clouds in Pakistan causing them to become larger then normal and causing floods.
Now, if US indeed has a way to change direction of jet streams, most of the things described by conspiracy theorist are indeed possible. Problem is that energy carried by jet stream, and potentially required to significantly modify it's direction is quite immense, and would probably be detected easily even if such a feat was possible.
This is of course, hypothetical, and if someone has a degree in meteorology with specialization in jet streams and their impact on weather patterns would be welcome to chip in. Is it hypothetically possible to affect small portions of the stream to cause a domino effect? If so, even a scale suggested by parent would be workable.
As a very long term FM listener (I owned my first portable player in mid 1990s, mostly used it to listen to FM music with headphones antenna), I can vouch that reception on headphones wire antenna in fact does NOT suck. One of the advantages of FM is its resilience to various signal issues, which made FM music sound a LOT better then audio cassette music on the portables, and on par with a portable CD player.
I do. If you want to listen to music at a decent quality, wired beats wireless easily - there are very few high quality wireless speakers that actually provide extra layer of comfort that is big enough for me to drop wired ones.
Not to even mention the price difference, or the incredible weakness to noise (I have about 4 points on my casual cycling route where wireless headphones become saturated with noise, probably some powerlines or powerful transmitter in the vicinity being the cause).
Wired is the way for long term music listener. Wireless is a bit more casual, and quite a bit more expensive, plus it's arguably less comfortable with extra weight cause by battery, especially with small headphones that are inserted into the ear like my KOSS Plugs. It's a matter of choice, not a matter of "you're an old fart if you use them" as parent seems to imply.
All online games where transfer of resources (either in-game or out-of-game, by handing over login info) is possible are being monetized by one party or another.
Correct, but money's impact on end game gameplay is nonexistent. The best gear you can buy for cash is usually at least one tier behind the raiding tier and those are just one-two pieces, and PvP gear that you can get for gold is at least 5 tiers behind and has never been even borderline viable.
What you need gold for in end game is mostly enchanting and gemming gear, which while expensive does not differentiate between a guy who just has bare minimal sum to buy the best gems and enchantments and a guy who has 100 times the sum. And minimal sum can be easily gained by just questing, or even raiding now that bosses drop meaningful sums of gold for each raid member alongside other loot.
All end game gear in the game is earned by tokens that drop from bosses and loot that drops off bosses directly. All high end PvP gear is handed out judging on how well your arena team did that particular week and has a minimum requirement of how good you are (minimal required team and personal rating) and your battleground success for off-pieces.
This is why blizzard is doing so well with hardcore crowd. They virtually eliminated all paths of advancement except to play the game and gain stuff on your own. The only still unplugged hole is ability to purchase an entire character(which will obviously get banned if they find out), which has a very limited audience for obvious reasons.
Dogs typically aren't allowed within 10-15m of good running tracks, for that exact reason.
With university-onwed track, the distance can easily go to 100m+.
World of Warcraft is generally a good example here. They're been selling aesthetic items that give no advantage gameplay-wise, such as various pets, and That Retarded Horse (google it).
They also sell leveling aid through recruit-a-friend program, which is more functional. But in the end, the real meat of the game, end-game is completely untouched by anything extra they sell. You can't get more powerful items by buying, or increase your drop chance or anything like that, and even recruit a friend experience bonus ends at level 60, while level cap is 80.
And there is a wide sentiment among players and officially acknowledged by blizzard that if any kind of gameplay-altering for-sale items enter endgame, blizzard could kiss them good bye.
I've actually typed that out first, but then stopped to think: are there really any snowflakes on the icebergs?
You'd think that between oceanic winds, water vapour and so on, there is no snow on them? /offtopic
Starcraft 2.
It sounds like GPS antenna in your phone is borked in some way, or GPS controller is. I own a nokia 5800, and while accuracy leaves a lot to be desired, usually between 50m and 100m (as it should, the antenna is about a centimeter long), it exhibits none of the problems you mention. Initial lock is acquired within minutes of activation (no aGPS, no data, no wifi, internal GPS antenna only), and once it's in, driving instructions are impeccable, actually beating older tomtom standalone navigators by a very wide margin (and worlds ahead and beyond anything that android can offer at the moment afaik).
Heck, the phone warns me about speed cameras and warns me audibly if my speed is above allowed in the area as I drive. That just isn't possible in the situation you describe. Get your phone checked with local repair shop.
Real patent problems almost never to never make news. They are about people dropping research outright, without ever getting to the point of infringing patents, because of simple FEAR or infringement, or because when they start, the lawyer tells them to drop it because of the aforementioned risk. Number of such cases dwarfs the cases that actually progress to level of getting actual patent problems.
Yes, it is this bad. What you see on slashdot doesn't count as a tip of an iceberg - it's more of a few ice crystals from the tip of the iceberg at best.
It's very long overdue considering that voice commands have been in the most basic, cheap ass nokia feature phones for years, not to even mention smartphone line.
I'm quite surprised no one complained about lack of those before. I can't even imagine not being able to tell my phone to call someone on my contact list when it's in my pocket and bluetooth earpiece is in its place. It just seems so... last millenium.
You're not listening to mass media then. Try TV. Word "deserve" has been used more then can be easily counted.
Just because you happen to be reasonable, doesn't mean that most people crying about the issue are. And this includes even uniform wearing armchair generals who like showing up on talk shows and news.