Opera Mobile's support of particular video codecs is device-dependent: WebM and H.264 are supported, if available on the platform.
So Opera is not refusing to use the system codecs on mobile, like Firefox is.
Which? Microsoft and Apple? So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins. Blah blah everybody blah blah.
Opera is practically insignificant on the desktop and they support H.264 on the mobile. And yes IE does support H.264 it's everything else they only support via plugins.
Yeh google should remove all support for h264 in android. Oh thats 60% of smart phones. woops. And remove flash and h264 from youtube. Should make webM relevant then. How many sites do you use which have videos?
And here's really the clue, there's no indication Google is actually doing any of these things. Chrome still ships with H.264 support, every Android phone ships with H.264 support, YouTube's WebM is in eternal beta while everything is standardizing on H.264. Mozilla has been standing on the other side waiting for Google to join them but they're not coming, it's like threatening to migrate from MS Office to LibreOffice to get a better price but in the end you're staying on MS Office anyway. And Mozilla is now standing there dumbfounded saying "but but but you said you were migrating". It's not Firefox and Google, it's just Firefox and wishful thinking.
"Adoption of the HTML5 video element has been hampered by the lack of (software vendors like Microsoft and Apple implementing WebM)" is closer to reality
Companies that won't support H.264: Mozilla Companies that won't support WebM: Many...
Not to mention that for mobile devices, in many cases the hardware support for WebM is missing. H.264 is what almost all cameras record in now. H.264 is what professionals use in BluRays etc. H.264 is what pirates tend to use. Almost everybody, everywhere is using H.264, apart from the WebM beta on YouTube I haven't seen it used anywhere. Firefox represents one web browser, zero devices and a microscopic share of the whole video format ecosystem but think the whole world will bend to their will for WebM. The rest of the world will continue to work with H.264, while Firefox is worked around with Flash/H.264 until Mozilla either changes their mind or becomes irrelevant. Which I suppose is the case on mobile, I can't even find them on the mobile browser stats.
The section that appears to be missing is the "What about all of us poor bastards who use our computers for work, rather than Facebook and might need more than one window open?"
Well, if adoption rates ruck and Metro is cited as leading cause then they'll be back with a sane interface in Windows 9. Besides, I'm pretty sure you'll get a "classic" interface option in the final version - it's usually missing from tech previews and betas because they want focus on "this is the new way" not "this is how you can keep the old ways". And worst case you can stay on Win7, even the home version is in extended support until 2020 when you can review the alternatives again. Honestly if the sky is falling, it's falling very, very slowly. GNOME, Unity and KDE can go off into la-la land if they want, at Microsoft they'll feel it on the bottom line if the customers give them the finger. It may be an imperfect system but in this case I feel the market forces will sort this out by itself.
In my opinion, those are not "flops". Microsoft apparently deliberately releases bad versions to make more money. I understand that it was discovered during the Vista court case that a Microsoft top manager said the Vista was not ready for release, but Vista was released anyway. (I could not find a reference to the exact language.)
Yeah, because Microsoft totally made money by not releasing an OS for 5+ years and when they did, release the turd that was plain Vista before any Service Packs. They'd scrapped one round of development, was fumbling the next but I'm guessing the order came down from the top that "Come on guys... we must release something", you'd have to dig pretty deep into the tinfoil to think that was anything like profit-maximizing. Windows XP is their longest supported OS ever, it's still in extended support and will be for another two years which obviously costs money. On top of that it became an extremely entrenched version so Microsoft has had great trouble getting people back on the upgrade treadmill. Windows ME on the other hand I'd call a doomed to fail cash grab while they worked on the 2K/XP line.
A big part of the dispute is that some folks aren't happy with saying, "I don't sell my software for profit, I contribute it to the community." but instead insist on adding, "And I think that's what you should do, also."
I've not really hard that one so much, most seem to agree you do what you want with your own code. But the way distros use applications and applications use libraries, I have heard people insist on adding "And I don't think you should be trying to make profit on my software either." I can sort of see that, particularly if there's a paid support sending bugs upstream to unpaid volunteers so they get the work and downstream get the profit.
Problem is, "sell support" doesn't go very far when the "buyers" are cheapskates.
I think that's a vast oversimplification of the problem, by far most cases people want software that works not support. I paid my 7 NOK ($1 + VAT) for Angry Birds, but I'd never pay for Angry Bird support even if you for that dollar could give me platinum 24x7x365 phone/e-mail/onsite direct-to-tier-X support. Because if it works great, if it's broken I'll move on. If I've bought a game and it's crashing and I have to spend any time in the support forums my net pleasure/utility from it quickly goes in the negative, but then I've already committed my money - at best I can insist on a refund. Support is only worth something if you know that if the software breaks I want to work with (or depending on your cynicism, fight with) support to get the problem solved and I only want that if the value is higher than the time and effort it takes.
This is particularly true if you are trying to sell support that will ask many technical questions to non-technical users. I'm not going to distribute blame for that but the fact is that many users don't feel they're able to use support and something you can't use doesn't have value. And even if you are able to work with support and reproduce the issue, it can still take a very long time if ever before it's fixed. Of course here you have support plans with code hotfixes but then you need way more at stake to balance the cost. Very often the window of benefit is right now, it is of little value to me if it'll be fixed next month or next year. Of course I know software can't be developed at the snap of a finger, but it makes support much less worth than software that would work right now.
The other problem is that most people are used to COTS prices. There you pay for the software when it works and the value of fixing a bug in support is amplified by better reviews and more sales, if fact just the idea of an enhancement that would increase sales is a net benefit. With open source you usually have to carry 100% of the cost yourself. Maybe you have an employer that's used to developing and supporting custom in-house system, but most people are not used to it. They will compare 2 days of work at minimum wage and say I can get Windows Home Premium or Office Home And Student with all the bells and whistles for that price. And if you could share the cost on a million customers, well then you could deliver for a fraction of a cent too. Using support is an incredibly expensive resource, it's one customer spending one support person's time.
Finally, when it comes to new development there's very little cost sharing. With COTS it's simple, if you want the new version with the new features you'll be paying for an upgrade, a $1000 feature can be distributed over 1000 sales of $1. With OSS you pay nothing for code that's already written, so you try very hard to not use it for anything it doesn't already do. Complain about the price for Photoshop, but is one man sinking that into GIMP development going to turn GIMP into Photoshop? Not even close. You can try various micro-transactions and crowdsourcing and whatnot but the easiest way to win is not to play, it's a free chance to get the feature for free. Even if all in total would benefit more than the cost, nobody wants to carry the cost for everybody. Everybody waits for someone else to bite the bullet.
I'm guessing it's tied into the metamoderation system, if you could just karma whore and then use those mod points to modbomb or shill-mod other accounts without recourse that'd be a problem too. So if enough other accounts indicate you're giving unfair moderations then yes I expect you'd get less mod points in the future. I guess it also dials up the groupthink but it cuts down on a lot of other unwanted behavior.
True but you have a quite varied bunch of people that claim to have experienced or been witness to miracles, that is events that can't be explained in terms of the laws of nature as we know them. If you consider those eye witnesses to the work of God they're about on the same level as eye witnesses to aliens. It's not like the part from believing in God to believing in ID is the leap of faith, it's believing in an omnipotent deity in the first place. Once you believe that all other bets are off because you know... omnipotent.
They can fire you because you're left-handed. They can fire you because you have green eyes. (..) As belief in the Loch Ness Monster is not a religious belief nor is it real or perceived { gender, sex, race, color, disability, age, genetic information } (...) it is not a protected status
Eye color is definitively genetic, I think left handedness too so one of those statements must be false.
I once frequented a coffee shop run by a pair of brothers who were Jehovah's Witness. (...) but they got it, that religion is not barred from the workplace,
Assuming they were running the place and not only worked there, they could have a church with a coffee bar if they wanted. Not really the same situation at all.
From what I know a tenure-track position at a decent university can average around 200 applicants per spot. I have difficulties imagining that more candidates apply for a warehouse assistant post.
I couldn't find the source but here's one (in Norwegian of course) where they got 119 applicants from friday afternoon to wednesday morning, no report on what the total ended up as. Maybe it was the final figure for this one or a similar one or my memory is off, but yes they do get very many applicants. Did you get the first 100+ applications in half a week? At 3% unemployment and maybe 1 million people in Oslo+surrounding areas that's 30,000 unemployed. If we say this is a position practically everyone can apply for and 1% do, there's your 300. It's not that unreasonable actually.
But very few can work in unskilled labor, those jobs are practically going away not to mention when the going gets tough you're in competition with all the skilled labor too. I remember there was an article here in Norway about a position as warehouse assistant, they got 3-400 applicants and the job market here isn't even tough. If it had been I'm guessing 1000+ applicants because it's the kind of job absolutely everyone can do. But there's a very limited number of McJobs and even most of those want people that have worked retail before plus domain experience like working with food. You don't need qualifications to stand on the street corner and sell drugs or break windows and steal shit. Of course some would continue to be criminals, but I think a lot of them did because they failed at everything else.
Of course this is just highly anecdotal, but at least on my school I'd say there was a group of losers that compensated by being badass. Drinking, smoking, talking tough and following through if necessary, breaking the rules - if they couldn't be successful at school they'd make their own kind of success. They were attractive to the kind of girls that like "bad boys" too, that was important in that age. Particularly since those that were neither badass nor did well weren't treated very nice. But once that becomes the defining order, it escalates. You're not drinking beers to be badass, you're drinking liquor. Or you're doing drugs. You're not breaking school rules, you're shoplifting. And as everyone else's opinion of you deteriorates - other school mates, parents etc. your standing in the gang only becomes more important.
I'm not talking about street gangs in New York here, I'm talking about a fairly quiet suburb in low crime Norway. I'm thinking this is a pattern that exists more or less all over the world, of course it doesn't explain all crime but I think it explains a lot of petty crime, the kind people say came from "hanging with a bad crowd". And yes, I'd say failing at school is a leading cause as to why people start doing that. I'm not so sure it'll help though, most of these people were failing for a reason and they're not going to be the brightest even if they get remedial education. But maybe it can give them some sense of achievement on the other scale, they might not win any Nobel prizes but they're making a honest living. It's at least a chance to getting out of a bad circle if they're willing to take it.
Not really that surprising, a silicon atom is about 0.11nm and the lattice grid in a silicon crystal 0.54nm, which is still way smaller than the 32nm processors he's talking about. I don't know how many electrons flow down each 32nm path but they're between 0.1nm and 0.000006nm in diameter depending on what model you use - quantum mechanics makes a mess of this anyway - so it's way more than one. If you want single electron calculations you'll have single electron signals, one quantum event and your signal is lost. So the limit is likely to remain a very theoretical limit.
The other thing is that this only includes the operation itself, no clock cycle, no instruction pointer, no caching, prefetching, branching, this is the ideal you could get out of a fixed-function ASIC that only does one thing, not even as programmable as a GPU shader. We already know that there's a significant gain to that, but even supercomputers aren't built that specifically to the task. Formulas must be tweaked, models adjusted, parts must be able to be used in many computers. We've already seen that a GPGPU can beat a CPU by far on some tasks, but even they aren't close to such an ideal.
If you think about this in encryption terms it's not that much... it says you can at most improve 23-24 bits, in encryption most have used the Landauer limit to "prove" there's not enough energy to break a 256 bit chipher by brute force. In some places I don't think it's that relevant either, in for example mobile I think the energy involved in bandwidth use will be more significant. Want to stream a HD movie? It's not the decoding that kills the battery, it's the 3/4G data connection. Just like cameras get better but good optics still isn't small, light or cheap.
Subsidies sound so good, like there was somebody else actually paying for it. Except it's not, you're paying it all back it's just a "hidden" loan payable over your contract. If this drives smartphone sales it's only because people are stupid, not because it actually gives people better value for money. In fact, quite probably worse as credit risk and premiums tend to be much higher for consumption loans than your mortgage.
That is a bit of an anachronism, but it was entirely appropriate when it was made. We had no idea ten years ago that the Window monopoly was going to be breaking up within our lifetimes.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", first it was IBM, then Microsoft, now it's Apple. Don't get me wrong, I think Apple makes some pretty damn good products that have contributed hugely to progress, but they're just as much control freaks as the old boss. The only real change I believe in is that now there's Android which is open source, even though many lock it down there'll at least be an open platform for the mobile. As has been reported here, there'll be no dual booting/migrating a Windows ARM phone/tablet and there's no Boot Camp for iOS devices so all the other doors are closed. Honestly, those that think Apple will be better than Microsoft just think the grass is greener on the other side, it's a 30% cut and they're not interested in 30% of $0. If they get the chance they'll lock you in and bleed you dry just like Microsoft and IBM did.
As for kids being naturally nice & innocent until spoiled by cultural pollution from adults, that innocence & acceptance only works within what they consider to be "their" community/tribe. Introduce a stranger to their midst & the stranger is almost always excluded.
And I honestly don't find this surprising, because it all comes down to who'd you get behind if it came to choosing sides or a time of need. I'd get behind my family vs somebody else's family, my friends vs somebody else's friends, same with clan/tribe/class/gang/nation/people or any other form of group. If a couple sixth graders came to bully us third graders there was instantly a "we" and a "them". You can't be on both sides, at best you can be a neutral but then you're not part of the "us". Being part of "us" takes time and commitment. You'd be a total fool to trust a random stranger you've just met just like your life long friend.
Not that I think your description fits, often someone will also take the role of "vouching" for the stranger and in turn getting their loyalty. Collective rule, at least in social circles is often an illusion - in reality it's one or a few leaders and many followers. Humans aren't that different from animals with their alphas and betas and omegas. In particular, the alphas would like to exclude anyone who could threaten them (the most popular) or is better left as outsiders (the least popular) as a focus for who we're not and to have as enemies in the "we" versus "them" while those in the middle are brought in to strengthen the group.
You can make this argument both ways, the reason altruism doesn't take over either is because the egoist among altruists wins, assuming of course he's proficient enough in the cheating and deception. Imagine for example a group of hunters. A group of egoists can easily starve one by one as they randomly starve. A group of altruists share their food, but it doesn't prevent famine. The egoist among altruists who keeps a little extra for himself survives, turning selection back towards egoism again. It's not like one is dominant over the other, it's a mix that keeps getting tweaked.
All except that a first attempt at settling another planet sounds exactly like the kind of "early exploration" NASA should be doing. "Most of private individuals I've talked to about interest in settling on Mars" will speculate in the possibility of a privately funded mission since it seems a publicly funded one probably won't happen. They're no longer plowing the way, they're developing plows and surveying the area to be plowed but that's not nearly the same thing. I can understand private money investing in SpaceX because you have satellite launches and such that can pay the bills. There's absolutely no business case for a Mars settlement, maybe if we have an Apollo-style program now we can find a profit incentive in 50 years but for now it looks like exactly the kind of mission NASA should be doing.
Hah! There are so many people in western prisons that should been execute already it's not even funny. Mass murderers, rapists, child abusers...etc.
Rapists is actually a good example of why you should not have the death penalty. When DNA testing came it turned out some people that had been decades in prison was innocent. Of course it'd be easier if they'd just been executed right? Nobody to complain about the miscarriage of justice. Not that long ago we had a deathbed confession 29 years after the murders another man was convicted for. Of course in some cases it's beyond any doubt, but then you'd have to add another standard of conviction in addition to beyond reasonable doubt which is a dangerous tail to pull.
If they're nothing but a passive expense, that is also because we choose them to be. For example, I don't see why any of these people can't be software developers or translate foreign documents or any of a number of other jobs without ever leaving their cells or being a threat to anyone. But sure, if you say you're now in prison for life and your only task for the next 50 years is to stare at that wall you will get a vegetable. It is possible to give them a life that's meaningful both to them and to us, without them ever being in a position to hurt anyone ever again.
I remember back in 2002 I had this huge inner door house key, like really big old fashioned solid iron thing. It ended up being in my pocket as I walked through the metal detector, so I just clenched it in my palm thinking I'll have to show it anyway. Passed right through, not a beep. It was big enough it'd easily be the blade of a pretty good knife. And it beeped for some other passengers so it wasn't defective either. Of course this was after 9/11 so everybody was on their toes, I showed it to a friend and he was like "Seriously? You got to be kidding me..." but it happened.
Here's the thing, 20/20 vision means you can resolve about one arcminute or 1/60th of a degree. So 1920x1080 can cover up to 1920*1/60 = 32 degrees of your field of vision without you being able to see more detail. QFHD or 3840x2160 can cover 3840*1/60 = 64 degrees and 4K 4096*1/60 = 68 degrees. People don't actually want that for a normal movie, it's nauseating and disorienting. THX recommends that the worst seat in the theater has at least 36 degree viewing angle (with the absolute minimum to be THX certified 30 degrees), an ideal seat is somewhere in the 40s and max for the front row, which most people find way too close is about 52 degrees. If you see a site that talks like 36 degrees is ideal, they have no clue.
Of course, 20/20 is not actually perfect vision, only a cutoff for normal vision. Wikipedia says "When used as a screening test subjects that reach this level need no further investigation, even though the average visual acuity of healthy eyes is 20/16 to 20/12." So for 20/16 vision it's 4096*(16/20)/60 = 55 degrees and 20/12 it's 4096*(12/20)/60 = 41 degrees. So people with 20/12 vision sitting very close to a big screen can barely begin to resolve anything better than 4K, on the back row or with 20/15 vision you have no chance. To go to 8K is just absurdly overkill for the few percent with the sharpest sight sitting closest to huge cinema/home cinema screens. Note that the figures here are slightly inaccurate as you're watching a flat screen while the field of vision is a cone, but it's not off by enough to make a difference.
I think that you are missing the point of the OP. It also seems that you erroneously believe that "displaying" is different than "downloading". However, things you view on the Internet are downloaded to your computer's harddrive, and also copied into RAM. So, if you were to view a photo that I had copyrighted, simply by visiting a website, you have already committed two instances of copyright violation.
No, read 117(a)(1). I don't commit any copyright violation until I right-click and say "Save as...", copies made automatically to network buffer, browser cache, RAM, display buffer etc. don't count. Note that this is part of copyright law though, if you get caught with other illegal stuff then your browser cache may be just as incriminating as a normal file.
As to the assertion that "McDonalds" is public -- it isn't.
Well, it's certainly open to the public. As in, if you walked into a McDonald's and they tried to charge you with trespass you'd have a good faith belief they wanted customers to come inside, even if no sign explicitly said customers welcome. There's no sign on my door that explicitly says stay out, but there the presumption would be the other way. That's what I'm talking about.
I am not trying to be a "smartass". I just want to get rid of the meme that Downloading is Copyright Infringement. It cannot reasonably be so.
The trouble with your "reductio ad absurdum" attempt is that the law doesn't find that absurd. Copyright is a strict liability offense, same as bedding jailbait. I'm sure many have asked "How was I supposed to know?" and the law doesn't care. It doesn't care how old she said she was. It doesn't care if she showed you a fake id. It doesn't care if she looked 30. If you did it, you're guilty. Same with copyright, the law doesn't care how you should have known it was copyright infringement. In fact there's a section in the statutory damages that says even if you can prove you didn't know, you're still liable for somewhat lesser damages ($200-30000 instead of $750-150000 if I recall correctly). So if you say it can't reasonably be so, then I'm telling you that's how it unreasonably is.
Huh? The fact that it was AC has EVERY bearing, especially considering that it was stated as a bald fact, without ANY evidence to support it.
This is a discussion board, not fucking Wikipedia (and even they sometimes go overboard on citations). For example, I just decided to make you a "Foe" and I was judge, jury and executioner on that one. You didn't get any due process, you didn't get a fair trial, you didn't get a defense attorney and you've got zero right to an appeal. It's not based on any law or standard other than it's shared out at my whim for people I think deserved it or caught me on a bad day or for no reason whatsoever. Because we're on slashdot and not in a court of law. Likewise, you don't need to prove a story to leave a comment.
Although the six degrees of separation doesn't work in the way that most people think.
Not to mention degrees of separation doesn't really practically mean anything. Say two child actors both work with a very old man on separate occasions. Old man dies. How many degrees of separation? One, even though for the vast majority of their life there's no connection at all. The degrees of separation go backwards, forwards, sideways in all possible combinations.
Slashdot Mirror
And Opera
Actually, according to Opera itself:
Opera Mobile's support of particular video codecs is device-dependent: WebM and H.264 are supported, if available on the platform.
So Opera is not refusing to use the system codecs on mobile, like Firefox is.
Which? Microsoft and Apple? So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins. Blah blah everybody blah blah.
Opera is practically insignificant on the desktop and they support H.264 on the mobile. And yes IE does support H.264 it's everything else they only support via plugins.
Yeh google should remove all support for h264 in android. Oh thats 60% of smart phones. woops. And remove flash and h264 from youtube. Should make webM relevant then. How many sites do you use which have videos?
And here's really the clue, there's no indication Google is actually doing any of these things. Chrome still ships with H.264 support, every Android phone ships with H.264 support, YouTube's WebM is in eternal beta while everything is standardizing on H.264. Mozilla has been standing on the other side waiting for Google to join them but they're not coming, it's like threatening to migrate from MS Office to LibreOffice to get a better price but in the end you're staying on MS Office anyway. And Mozilla is now standing there dumbfounded saying "but but but you said you were migrating". It's not Firefox and Google, it's just Firefox and wishful thinking.
"Adoption of the HTML5 video element has been hampered by the lack of (software vendors like Microsoft and Apple implementing WebM)" is closer to reality
Companies that won't support H.264: Mozilla
Companies that won't support WebM: Many...
Not to mention that for mobile devices, in many cases the hardware support for WebM is missing. H.264 is what almost all cameras record in now. H.264 is what professionals use in BluRays etc. H.264 is what pirates tend to use. Almost everybody, everywhere is using H.264, apart from the WebM beta on YouTube I haven't seen it used anywhere. Firefox represents one web browser, zero devices and a microscopic share of the whole video format ecosystem but think the whole world will bend to their will for WebM. The rest of the world will continue to work with H.264, while Firefox is worked around with Flash/H.264 until Mozilla either changes their mind or becomes irrelevant. Which I suppose is the case on mobile, I can't even find them on the mobile browser stats.
The section that appears to be missing is the "What about all of us poor bastards who use our computers for work, rather than Facebook and might need more than one window open?"
Well, if adoption rates ruck and Metro is cited as leading cause then they'll be back with a sane interface in Windows 9. Besides, I'm pretty sure you'll get a "classic" interface option in the final version - it's usually missing from tech previews and betas because they want focus on "this is the new way" not "this is how you can keep the old ways". And worst case you can stay on Win7, even the home version is in extended support until 2020 when you can review the alternatives again. Honestly if the sky is falling, it's falling very, very slowly. GNOME, Unity and KDE can go off into la-la land if they want, at Microsoft they'll feel it on the bottom line if the customers give them the finger. It may be an imperfect system but in this case I feel the market forces will sort this out by itself.
In my opinion, those are not "flops". Microsoft apparently deliberately releases bad versions to make more money. I understand that it was discovered during the Vista court case that a Microsoft top manager said the Vista was not ready for release, but Vista was released anyway. (I could not find a reference to the exact language.)
Yeah, because Microsoft totally made money by not releasing an OS for 5+ years and when they did, release the turd that was plain Vista before any Service Packs. They'd scrapped one round of development, was fumbling the next but I'm guessing the order came down from the top that "Come on guys... we must release something", you'd have to dig pretty deep into the tinfoil to think that was anything like profit-maximizing. Windows XP is their longest supported OS ever, it's still in extended support and will be for another two years which obviously costs money. On top of that it became an extremely entrenched version so Microsoft has had great trouble getting people back on the upgrade treadmill. Windows ME on the other hand I'd call a doomed to fail cash grab while they worked on the 2K/XP line.
A big part of the dispute is that some folks aren't happy with saying, "I don't sell my software for profit, I contribute it to the community." but instead insist on adding, "And I think that's what you should do, also."
I've not really hard that one so much, most seem to agree you do what you want with your own code. But the way distros use applications and applications use libraries, I have heard people insist on adding "And I don't think you should be trying to make profit on my software either." I can sort of see that, particularly if there's a paid support sending bugs upstream to unpaid volunteers so they get the work and downstream get the profit.
Problem is, "sell support" doesn't go very far when the "buyers" are cheapskates.
I think that's a vast oversimplification of the problem, by far most cases people want software that works not support. I paid my 7 NOK ($1 + VAT) for Angry Birds, but I'd never pay for Angry Bird support even if you for that dollar could give me platinum 24x7x365 phone/e-mail/onsite direct-to-tier-X support. Because if it works great, if it's broken I'll move on. If I've bought a game and it's crashing and I have to spend any time in the support forums my net pleasure/utility from it quickly goes in the negative, but then I've already committed my money - at best I can insist on a refund. Support is only worth something if you know that if the software breaks I want to work with (or depending on your cynicism, fight with) support to get the problem solved and I only want that if the value is higher than the time and effort it takes.
This is particularly true if you are trying to sell support that will ask many technical questions to non-technical users. I'm not going to distribute blame for that but the fact is that many users don't feel they're able to use support and something you can't use doesn't have value. And even if you are able to work with support and reproduce the issue, it can still take a very long time if ever before it's fixed. Of course here you have support plans with code hotfixes but then you need way more at stake to balance the cost. Very often the window of benefit is right now, it is of little value to me if it'll be fixed next month or next year. Of course I know software can't be developed at the snap of a finger, but it makes support much less worth than software that would work right now.
The other problem is that most people are used to COTS prices. There you pay for the software when it works and the value of fixing a bug in support is amplified by better reviews and more sales, if fact just the idea of an enhancement that would increase sales is a net benefit. With open source you usually have to carry 100% of the cost yourself. Maybe you have an employer that's used to developing and supporting custom in-house system, but most people are not used to it. They will compare 2 days of work at minimum wage and say I can get Windows Home Premium or Office Home And Student with all the bells and whistles for that price. And if you could share the cost on a million customers, well then you could deliver for a fraction of a cent too. Using support is an incredibly expensive resource, it's one customer spending one support person's time.
Finally, when it comes to new development there's very little cost sharing. With COTS it's simple, if you want the new version with the new features you'll be paying for an upgrade, a $1000 feature can be distributed over 1000 sales of $1. With OSS you pay nothing for code that's already written, so you try very hard to not use it for anything it doesn't already do. Complain about the price for Photoshop, but is one man sinking that into GIMP development going to turn GIMP into Photoshop? Not even close. You can try various micro-transactions and crowdsourcing and whatnot but the easiest way to win is not to play, it's a free chance to get the feature for free. Even if all in total would benefit more than the cost, nobody wants to carry the cost for everybody. Everybody waits for someone else to bite the bullet.
I'm guessing it's tied into the metamoderation system, if you could just karma whore and then use those mod points to modbomb or shill-mod other accounts without recourse that'd be a problem too. So if enough other accounts indicate you're giving unfair moderations then yes I expect you'd get less mod points in the future. I guess it also dials up the groupthink but it cuts down on a lot of other unwanted behavior.
True but you have a quite varied bunch of people that claim to have experienced or been witness to miracles, that is events that can't be explained in terms of the laws of nature as we know them. If you consider those eye witnesses to the work of God they're about on the same level as eye witnesses to aliens. It's not like the part from believing in God to believing in ID is the leap of faith, it's believing in an omnipotent deity in the first place. Once you believe that all other bets are off because you know... omnipotent.
They can fire you because you're left-handed. They can fire you because you have green eyes. (..)
As belief in the Loch Ness Monster is not a religious belief nor is it real or perceived { gender, sex, race, color, disability, age, genetic information } (...) it is not a protected status
Eye color is definitively genetic, I think left handedness too so one of those statements must be false.
I once frequented a coffee shop run by a pair of brothers who were Jehovah's Witness. (...) but they got it, that religion is not barred from the workplace,
Assuming they were running the place and not only worked there, they could have a church with a coffee bar if they wanted. Not really the same situation at all.
From what I know a tenure-track position at a decent university can average around 200 applicants per spot. I have difficulties imagining that more candidates apply for a warehouse assistant post.
I couldn't find the source but here's one (in Norwegian of course) where they got 119 applicants from friday afternoon to wednesday morning, no report on what the total ended up as. Maybe it was the final figure for this one or a similar one or my memory is off, but yes they do get very many applicants. Did you get the first 100+ applications in half a week? At 3% unemployment and maybe 1 million people in Oslo+surrounding areas that's 30,000 unemployed. If we say this is a position practically everyone can apply for and 1% do, there's your 300. It's not that unreasonable actually.
But very few can work in unskilled labor, those jobs are practically going away not to mention when the going gets tough you're in competition with all the skilled labor too. I remember there was an article here in Norway about a position as warehouse assistant, they got 3-400 applicants and the job market here isn't even tough. If it had been I'm guessing 1000+ applicants because it's the kind of job absolutely everyone can do. But there's a very limited number of McJobs and even most of those want people that have worked retail before plus domain experience like working with food. You don't need qualifications to stand on the street corner and sell drugs or break windows and steal shit. Of course some would continue to be criminals, but I think a lot of them did because they failed at everything else.
Of course this is just highly anecdotal, but at least on my school I'd say there was a group of losers that compensated by being badass. Drinking, smoking, talking tough and following through if necessary, breaking the rules - if they couldn't be successful at school they'd make their own kind of success. They were attractive to the kind of girls that like "bad boys" too, that was important in that age. Particularly since those that were neither badass nor did well weren't treated very nice. But once that becomes the defining order, it escalates. You're not drinking beers to be badass, you're drinking liquor. Or you're doing drugs. You're not breaking school rules, you're shoplifting. And as everyone else's opinion of you deteriorates - other school mates, parents etc. your standing in the gang only becomes more important.
I'm not talking about street gangs in New York here, I'm talking about a fairly quiet suburb in low crime Norway. I'm thinking this is a pattern that exists more or less all over the world, of course it doesn't explain all crime but I think it explains a lot of petty crime, the kind people say came from "hanging with a bad crowd". And yes, I'd say failing at school is a leading cause as to why people start doing that. I'm not so sure it'll help though, most of these people were failing for a reason and they're not going to be the brightest even if they get remedial education. But maybe it can give them some sense of achievement on the other scale, they might not win any Nobel prizes but they're making a honest living. It's at least a chance to getting out of a bad circle if they're willing to take it.
Not really that surprising, a silicon atom is about 0.11nm and the lattice grid in a silicon crystal 0.54nm, which is still way smaller than the 32nm processors he's talking about. I don't know how many electrons flow down each 32nm path but they're between 0.1nm and 0.000006nm in diameter depending on what model you use - quantum mechanics makes a mess of this anyway - so it's way more than one. If you want single electron calculations you'll have single electron signals, one quantum event and your signal is lost. So the limit is likely to remain a very theoretical limit.
The other thing is that this only includes the operation itself, no clock cycle, no instruction pointer, no caching, prefetching, branching, this is the ideal you could get out of a fixed-function ASIC that only does one thing, not even as programmable as a GPU shader. We already know that there's a significant gain to that, but even supercomputers aren't built that specifically to the task. Formulas must be tweaked, models adjusted, parts must be able to be used in many computers. We've already seen that a GPGPU can beat a CPU by far on some tasks, but even they aren't close to such an ideal.
If you think about this in encryption terms it's not that much... it says you can at most improve 23-24 bits, in encryption most have used the Landauer limit to "prove" there's not enough energy to break a 256 bit chipher by brute force. In some places I don't think it's that relevant either, in for example mobile I think the energy involved in bandwidth use will be more significant. Want to stream a HD movie? It's not the decoding that kills the battery, it's the 3/4G data connection. Just like cameras get better but good optics still isn't small, light or cheap.
Subsidies sound so good, like there was somebody else actually paying for it. Except it's not, you're paying it all back it's just a "hidden" loan payable over your contract. If this drives smartphone sales it's only because people are stupid, not because it actually gives people better value for money. In fact, quite probably worse as credit risk and premiums tend to be much higher for consumption loans than your mortgage.
That is a bit of an anachronism, but it was entirely appropriate when it was made. We had no idea ten years ago that the Window monopoly was going to be breaking up within our lifetimes.
"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss", first it was IBM, then Microsoft, now it's Apple. Don't get me wrong, I think Apple makes some pretty damn good products that have contributed hugely to progress, but they're just as much control freaks as the old boss. The only real change I believe in is that now there's Android which is open source, even though many lock it down there'll at least be an open platform for the mobile. As has been reported here, there'll be no dual booting/migrating a Windows ARM phone/tablet and there's no Boot Camp for iOS devices so all the other doors are closed. Honestly, those that think Apple will be better than Microsoft just think the grass is greener on the other side, it's a 30% cut and they're not interested in 30% of $0. If they get the chance they'll lock you in and bleed you dry just like Microsoft and IBM did.
As for kids being naturally nice & innocent until spoiled by cultural pollution from adults, that innocence & acceptance only works within what they consider to be "their" community/tribe. Introduce a stranger to their midst & the stranger is almost always excluded.
And I honestly don't find this surprising, because it all comes down to who'd you get behind if it came to choosing sides or a time of need. I'd get behind my family vs somebody else's family, my friends vs somebody else's friends, same with clan/tribe/class/gang/nation/people or any other form of group. If a couple sixth graders came to bully us third graders there was instantly a "we" and a "them". You can't be on both sides, at best you can be a neutral but then you're not part of the "us". Being part of "us" takes time and commitment. You'd be a total fool to trust a random stranger you've just met just like your life long friend.
Not that I think your description fits, often someone will also take the role of "vouching" for the stranger and in turn getting their loyalty. Collective rule, at least in social circles is often an illusion - in reality it's one or a few leaders and many followers. Humans aren't that different from animals with their alphas and betas and omegas. In particular, the alphas would like to exclude anyone who could threaten them (the most popular) or is better left as outsiders (the least popular) as a focus for who we're not and to have as enemies in the "we" versus "them" while those in the middle are brought in to strengthen the group.
You can make this argument both ways, the reason altruism doesn't take over either is because the egoist among altruists wins, assuming of course he's proficient enough in the cheating and deception. Imagine for example a group of hunters. A group of egoists can easily starve one by one as they randomly starve. A group of altruists share their food, but it doesn't prevent famine. The egoist among altruists who keeps a little extra for himself survives, turning selection back towards egoism again. It's not like one is dominant over the other, it's a mix that keeps getting tweaked.
All except that a first attempt at settling another planet sounds exactly like the kind of "early exploration" NASA should be doing. "Most of private individuals I've talked to about interest in settling on Mars" will speculate in the possibility of a privately funded mission since it seems a publicly funded one probably won't happen. They're no longer plowing the way, they're developing plows and surveying the area to be plowed but that's not nearly the same thing. I can understand private money investing in SpaceX because you have satellite launches and such that can pay the bills. There's absolutely no business case for a Mars settlement, maybe if we have an Apollo-style program now we can find a profit incentive in 50 years but for now it looks like exactly the kind of mission NASA should be doing.
Hah! There are so many people in western prisons that should been execute already it's not even funny. Mass murderers, rapists, child abusers...etc.
Rapists is actually a good example of why you should not have the death penalty. When DNA testing came it turned out some people that had been decades in prison was innocent. Of course it'd be easier if they'd just been executed right? Nobody to complain about the miscarriage of justice. Not that long ago we had a deathbed confession 29 years after the murders another man was convicted for. Of course in some cases it's beyond any doubt, but then you'd have to add another standard of conviction in addition to beyond reasonable doubt which is a dangerous tail to pull.
If they're nothing but a passive expense, that is also because we choose them to be. For example, I don't see why any of these people can't be software developers or translate foreign documents or any of a number of other jobs without ever leaving their cells or being a threat to anyone. But sure, if you say you're now in prison for life and your only task for the next 50 years is to stare at that wall you will get a vegetable. It is possible to give them a life that's meaningful both to them and to us, without them ever being in a position to hurt anyone ever again.
I remember back in 2002 I had this huge inner door house key, like really big old fashioned solid iron thing. It ended up being in my pocket as I walked through the metal detector, so I just clenched it in my palm thinking I'll have to show it anyway. Passed right through, not a beep. It was big enough it'd easily be the blade of a pretty good knife. And it beeped for some other passengers so it wasn't defective either. Of course this was after 9/11 so everybody was on their toes, I showed it to a friend and he was like "Seriously? You got to be kidding me..." but it happened.
Here's the thing, 20/20 vision means you can resolve about one arcminute or 1/60th of a degree. So 1920x1080 can cover up to 1920*1/60 = 32 degrees of your field of vision without you being able to see more detail. QFHD or 3840x2160 can cover 3840*1/60 = 64 degrees and 4K 4096*1/60 = 68 degrees. People don't actually want that for a normal movie, it's nauseating and disorienting. THX recommends that the worst seat in the theater has at least 36 degree viewing angle (with the absolute minimum to be THX certified 30 degrees), an ideal seat is somewhere in the 40s and max for the front row, which most people find way too close is about 52 degrees. If you see a site that talks like 36 degrees is ideal, they have no clue.
Of course, 20/20 is not actually perfect vision, only a cutoff for normal vision. Wikipedia says "When used as a screening test subjects that reach this level need no further investigation, even though the average visual acuity of healthy eyes is 20/16 to 20/12." So for 20/16 vision it's 4096*(16/20)/60 = 55 degrees and 20/12 it's 4096*(12/20)/60 = 41 degrees. So people with 20/12 vision sitting very close to a big screen can barely begin to resolve anything better than 4K, on the back row or with 20/15 vision you have no chance. To go to 8K is just absurdly overkill for the few percent with the sharpest sight sitting closest to huge cinema/home cinema screens. Note that the figures here are slightly inaccurate as you're watching a flat screen while the field of vision is a cone, but it's not off by enough to make a difference.
I think that you are missing the point of the OP. It also seems that you erroneously believe that "displaying" is different than "downloading". However, things you view on the Internet are downloaded to your computer's harddrive, and also copied into RAM. So, if you were to view a photo that I had copyrighted, simply by visiting a website, you have already committed two instances of copyright violation.
No, read 117(a)(1). I don't commit any copyright violation until I right-click and say "Save as...", copies made automatically to network buffer, browser cache, RAM, display buffer etc. don't count. Note that this is part of copyright law though, if you get caught with other illegal stuff then your browser cache may be just as incriminating as a normal file.
As to the assertion that "McDonalds" is public -- it isn't.
Well, it's certainly open to the public. As in, if you walked into a McDonald's and they tried to charge you with trespass you'd have a good faith belief they wanted customers to come inside, even if no sign explicitly said customers welcome. There's no sign on my door that explicitly says stay out, but there the presumption would be the other way. That's what I'm talking about.
I am not trying to be a "smartass". I just want to get rid of the meme that Downloading is Copyright Infringement. It cannot reasonably be so.
The trouble with your "reductio ad absurdum" attempt is that the law doesn't find that absurd. Copyright is a strict liability offense, same as bedding jailbait. I'm sure many have asked "How was I supposed to know?" and the law doesn't care. It doesn't care how old she said she was. It doesn't care if she showed you a fake id. It doesn't care if she looked 30. If you did it, you're guilty. Same with copyright, the law doesn't care how you should have known it was copyright infringement. In fact there's a section in the statutory damages that says even if you can prove you didn't know, you're still liable for somewhat lesser damages ($200-30000 instead of $750-150000 if I recall correctly). So if you say it can't reasonably be so, then I'm telling you that's how it unreasonably is.
Huh? The fact that it was AC has EVERY bearing, especially considering that it was stated as a bald fact, without ANY evidence to support it.
This is a discussion board, not fucking Wikipedia (and even they sometimes go overboard on citations). For example, I just decided to make you a "Foe" and I was judge, jury and executioner on that one. You didn't get any due process, you didn't get a fair trial, you didn't get a defense attorney and you've got zero right to an appeal. It's not based on any law or standard other than it's shared out at my whim for people I think deserved it or caught me on a bad day or for no reason whatsoever. Because we're on slashdot and not in a court of law. Likewise, you don't need to prove a story to leave a comment.
Although the six degrees of separation doesn't work in the way that most people think.
Not to mention degrees of separation doesn't really practically mean anything. Say two child actors both work with a very old man on separate occasions. Old man dies. How many degrees of separation? One, even though for the vast majority of their life there's no connection at all. The degrees of separation go backwards, forwards, sideways in all possible combinations.