We only work for a living because work has to be done! If we could automate these processes then we could do more IMPORTANT things like raising families and furthering intellectual discourse. Star Trek anyone?
OT: That is the inherent flaw of the Communist Manifesto- Marx and Engels could not have forseen the rise of technology. When there is no more work to be done there will be no more chains for the proletarians to lose, nor will there be any more proletarians. For more information read Banks' The Culture.
This is a good point, but I indeed only referring to DVD Video, referencing MPAA's stance towards Bittorrent and how basically despite that a sortof movie was actually distributed over bittorrent legally.
You may take it for granted, but Google's Pagerank system is what made their search engine revolutionary. It's what made their engine able to cut through the spam and deliver relevant results to the users. The slender interface you make reference to is just part of the Google way of doing things and isn't what TFA was talking about. It's really Pagerank that made them who they are today.
You got it. I think this guy is thinking of the Overture ads that run on Yahoo and MSN that are almost EXACTLY like the search resutls except with a little teeny bit of gray text thats says "sponsored links" and a header rule seperating them from the rest of the results.
And why Google is doing better? For the exact reasons you described-- they made it clear what are ads and what are not (earning trust from it's users) and made those ads relevant to the searcher (earning loyalty from it's users).
I think the grandparent is confusing the issue with Google's Adsense program where anyone can run Google ads on a webpage and get paid for them- some people haxor them up to appear as if they were part of the content of the page (or in some cases, the ads ARE the only content in the page at all!). I also think the grandparent is confusing Yahoo & MSN's Overture powered ads with Google's ads. Otherwise his post just doesn't make sense.
"no, you can't use this lawsuit to replace your 'faulty' MGM discs with 'correct' ones; you've already got correctly framed discs. All that MGM have done wrong is be misleading by oversimplifying their explanation of the 'widescreen' process in their booklets. If they'd just left the consumer confused, like every other DVD manufacturer, then this would never have happened."
It turns out that things are not as they seem and getting paid $7 per eligble DVD is actually a pretty good deal for consumers after all!
Now here's where my comment gets informative-- $5k-$7.5k compensation for named plaintiffs is very appropriate-- speaking from personal experience, named plaintiffs have to WORK their ASS off helping the case along-- the money isn't an award so much as it is compensation for lost time, wages and expenses for the named plaintiffs to assist on the case. Believe me, you don't want to be a named plaintiff unless your personal convictions about the case are very high and all you care about is fixing the problem, not the money, because in the end you'll probably actually end up with less.
Now as far as attorney's fees are concerned, $2.7m isn't extreme or inappropriate considering that they originally filed the complaint in 2002! They've been at this for several years already! Not to mention the fact that you just don't go to court right away, there was probably a year or more of work before they ever got to the point of filing the complaint in the first place!
And believe me, MGM is really the one we should be complaining about here regarding those fees-- I'm certain that MGM had a chance to settle well before going to court, and at THAT time the attorneys fees were probably nowheres NEAR as high. MGM chose to play ball, and they lost-- and probably spent millions on their own defending the suit, but we don't hear anyone complaining about them wasting money defending their own wrongdoing at the expense of DVD prices everywhere? Then again, they do have the right to do it and they should continue to exercise that right.
The real thing we should be concentrating on here is the # of eligble DVDs that are claimed * $7.10. Thats the punishment that MGM has to bear and thats the figure that really matters in the end.
On a side note, I don't really see any wrongdoing here where MGM included these pamphlets with these DVDS about widescreen having more information-- because they probably included those pamphlets with ALL their wide screen dvds-- ie it was an accident. Where the wrongdoing occured, however, was where MGM was confronted with the problem and apparently didn't do anything to fix the problem-- they could have easily just issued a recall or a press release or an ad or something correcting the mistake and called it a day. Fighting this for 3 years in court just does not compute. They deserved what they got.
Disclaimer: I work for a plaintiff's consumer class action law firm but IANAL.
So like... I guess the FCC doesn't consider the widely available 2 way satellite as broadband or something? I mean Alaska/Hawaii can't be that 6% without BB right?
I can understand shutting it down or turning back on the "built in inaccuracy" or whatever if they SUSPECT a terrorist attack is about to happen and they know they are using GPS. But the way this is worded, that in the event OF a terrorist attack GPS would be shut down, seems to me that we would be WITHOUT GPS in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack!
This is incredibly shortsighted, let me give you a good example: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Charley, cellphones, telephones and existing radio systems were down in the areas hardest hit, but amateur radio operators swarmed the area and deployed new antennas and crank up towers and tons of radios for the first responders. In addition to that they deployed this amazing technology called APRS for the salvation army and others that allowed the participating groups to track in realtime the location of all of their vehicles.
Now, if your not familiar with APRS, it starts with a low powered radio, a GPS unit, and a device that hooks up to the GPS and the radio that transmits the GPS coordinates in digital format on the radio. Then, ideally, a central radio tower can hear these signals and develop a picture of where all the signals are based off of their GPS coordinates. Whats even more insane is that APRS has grown so much that satellites and even the international space station repeat and broadcast APRS signals!
So if GPS were shut down first responders would lose a valuable emergency coordination resource. Not to mention the fact that some police/fire already have similar systems in place, though generally such systems are wiped out in disasters, hence the amateur radio operators who are at the ready to redeploy communications gear.
"The Christian Science building in Boston [the one related to the Christian Science Monitor] is a favorite photographic subject as an architecturally interesting building. Additionally, in the early days of MIT's radar history, the Christian Science building was one of the more prominent buildings (before it was occluded by the newer tall skyscrapers) and showed up clearly on radar. It was a favorite test subject, and instantly recognizable on screen. When the first major breakthrough in radar (transmitting and receiving through the same antenna) occurred, during World War II, this great news was broadcast to the world through a cryptic shortwave message saying "Saw Mary Baker Eddy with one eye." By this, it was meant that a clear picture of the Christian Science building could be seen with just one antenna (rather than two antennas as had previously been the case, they being separate transmit and receive antennas). Of course the enemy had no way of knowing what this cryptic message meant, but the allies knew an important moment in history had occurred.
Thus the Christian Science building, in addition to being an important architectural landmark, is also an important radar landmark."
"This island is definitely a potential time bomb, because the shrinking of the sea and the likely emergence within a few years of a land bridge to the mainland and the possibility that insects and rodents, carrying deadly diseases, could cross over and infect the local population," Tucker said.
The article is a little over 5 years old.. so uhm. Be on the lookout:(
A vacation in Azerbaijan?? I bet you are there for reasons other then vacation.. perhaps you are a missionary or are volunteering there to provide aid? Though personally I am intrigued by the country myself, mostly from light bit of research I've done on it.
"Local scientists consider the Abseron Yasaqligi (Apsheron Peninsula) (including Baku and Sumqayit) and the Caspian Sea to be the ecologically most devastated area in the world because of severe air, soil, and water pollution; soil pollution results from oil spills, from the use of DDT as a pesticide, and from toxic defoliants used in the production of cotton" (source)
And here's another beauty:
"Towns once located on the coast are now as far as fifty miles away from the shoreline, the salinity of the water is heavily increased, and the fishing industry is destroyed. As if these problems were not enough, the receding sea is beginning to expose a land bridge to an island used by the Soviet Union for chemical and biological agent testing. Although the facility is closed, the remains of lab equipment had been simply buried and could become easily accessible." (source)
I also read somewhere that they fear animals will/are making their way accross that land bridge and becoming infected with the agents in the facility and possibly spreading the agents amongst the local wildlife and people. Can't find that article now though but in any case be on the lookout while you are over there!
Or maybe you are over there looking for the true location of CITY 17? Thats how my fascination with Azerbaijan began anyways.
And yes I knew where Baku was without looking at a map;) But I blame VALVE for that.
Re:BBC is putting ALL of their content online free
on
Coming soon: Google TV?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
To paraphrase from the previous poster who said "better then in Canada where they charge you in Taxes for the CBC, even if you don't own a TV," basically if you don't own a TV then being charged for television programming through taxes is unfair and ideally only those that watched the public programming should get charged.
Whats crazy is that because of this the British Government actually developed equipment to detect whether or not you have a television in your home from the street. They drive around special TV detecting vans ensuring that noone tries to shirk the tv license fee/tax.
If I'm not mistaken, vast quantities of tv archive, much of it from the "golden age" when people expected their educational programs to be presided over by professors, are going to be put online for free through the BBC's Creative Archive. I'm sure you'll be able to dig up some early BBC2 there.
Assuming you've paid your UK TV license fee of course.:)
I think its time we start the drum beat for a LoTR-like showing of all the Star Wars movies for the premiere of Episode 3 this May.
But what order should they show them? What order, hmm.
Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope - May 25, 1977 Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back - May 21, 1980 Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi - May 25, 1983 Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace - May 19, 1999 Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones - May 16, 2002 Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith - May 19, 2005
Slashdot Mirror
I must have missed the evidence in that link supporting what you said. Can you be more specific?
According to the specs sheet, they are using Bluetooth 2.0+EDR which fixes the refresh rate problem, amongst other things.
Read more
Earthlink has some of the best usenet servers I've ever seen. Only challenge is that they cap your downloads on a 30 day rolling basis.
If you really need binaries tho go with giganews or some such. Google is your friend.
We only work for a living because work has to be done! If we could automate these processes then we could do more IMPORTANT things like raising families and furthering intellectual discourse. Star Trek anyone?
OT: That is the inherent flaw of the Communist Manifesto- Marx and Engels could not have forseen the rise of technology. When there is no more work to be done there will be no more chains for the proletarians to lose, nor will there be any more proletarians. For more information read Banks' The Culture.
"the intelligent species of our planet would have been birds"
Eh? It'll happen eventually. Ever hear of the Shoe event horizon?
This is a good point, but I indeed only referring to DVD Video, referencing MPAA's stance towards Bittorrent and how basically despite that a sortof movie was actually distributed over bittorrent legally.
Don't forget that the authors of the I Love Bees Anthology DVD chose BitTorrent to distribute their DVD online! AFAIK this was the first commercially produced DVD to be legitimately distributed via BitTorrent-- an important first that I think didn't get enough attention.
If that's not legitimizing BitTorrent then I don't know what is!
You may take it for granted, but Google's Pagerank system is what made their search engine revolutionary. It's what made their engine able to cut through the spam and deliver relevant results to the users. The slender interface you make reference to is just part of the Google way of doing things and isn't what TFA was talking about. It's really Pagerank that made them who they are today.
You got it. I think this guy is thinking of the Overture ads that run on Yahoo and MSN that are almost EXACTLY like the search resutls except with a little teeny bit of gray text thats says "sponsored links" and a header rule seperating them from the rest of the results.
And why Google is doing better? For the exact reasons you described-- they made it clear what are ads and what are not (earning trust from it's users) and made those ads relevant to the searcher (earning loyalty from it's users).
I think the grandparent is confusing the issue with Google's Adsense program where anyone can run Google ads on a webpage and get paid for them- some people haxor them up to appear as if they were part of the content of the page (or in some cases, the ads ARE the only content in the page at all!). I also think the grandparent is confusing Yahoo & MSN's Overture powered ads with Google's ads. Otherwise his post just doesn't make sense.
I would love more information on this, please someone, explain the joke/info?
As another poster said
"no, you can't use this lawsuit to replace your 'faulty' MGM discs with 'correct' ones; you've already got correctly framed discs. All that MGM have done wrong is be misleading by oversimplifying their explanation of the 'widescreen' process in their booklets. If they'd just left the consumer confused, like every other DVD manufacturer, then this would never have happened."
It turns out that things are not as they seem and getting paid $7 per eligble DVD is actually a pretty good deal for consumers after all!
Now here's where my comment gets informative-- $5k-$7.5k compensation for named plaintiffs is very appropriate-- speaking from personal experience, named plaintiffs have to WORK their ASS off helping the case along-- the money isn't an award so much as it is compensation for lost time, wages and expenses for the named plaintiffs to assist on the case. Believe me, you don't want to be a named plaintiff unless your personal convictions about the case are very high and all you care about is fixing the problem, not the money, because in the end you'll probably actually end up with less.
Now as far as attorney's fees are concerned, $2.7m isn't extreme or inappropriate considering that they originally filed the complaint in 2002! They've been at this for several years already! Not to mention the fact that you just don't go to court right away, there was probably a year or more of work before they ever got to the point of filing the complaint in the first place!
And believe me, MGM is really the one we should be complaining about here regarding those fees-- I'm certain that MGM had a chance to settle well before going to court, and at THAT time the attorneys fees were probably nowheres NEAR as high. MGM chose to play ball, and they lost-- and probably spent millions on their own defending the suit, but we don't hear anyone complaining about them wasting money defending their own wrongdoing at the expense of DVD prices everywhere? Then again, they do have the right to do it and they should continue to exercise that right.
The real thing we should be concentrating on here is the # of eligble DVDs that are claimed * $7.10. Thats the punishment that MGM has to bear and thats the figure that really matters in the end.
On a side note, I don't really see any wrongdoing here where MGM included these pamphlets with these DVDS about widescreen having more information-- because they probably included those pamphlets with ALL their wide screen dvds-- ie it was an accident. Where the wrongdoing occured, however, was where MGM was confronted with the problem and apparently didn't do anything to fix the problem-- they could have easily just issued a recall or a press release or an ad or something correcting the mistake and called it a day. Fighting this for 3 years in court just does not compute. They deserved what they got.
Disclaimer: I work for a plaintiff's consumer class action law firm but IANAL.
So like... I guess the FCC doesn't consider the widely available 2 way satellite as broadband or something? I mean Alaska/Hawaii can't be that 6% without BB right?
You spell it "G-d", I presume to be respectful, but then you say "muthafukkas"?
:P
Interesting.
I can understand shutting it down or turning back on the "built in inaccuracy" or whatever if they SUSPECT a terrorist attack is about to happen and they know they are using GPS. But the way this is worded, that in the event OF a terrorist attack GPS would be shut down, seems to me that we would be WITHOUT GPS in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist attack!
This is incredibly shortsighted, let me give you a good example: In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Charley, cellphones, telephones and existing radio systems were down in the areas hardest hit, but amateur radio operators swarmed the area and deployed new antennas and crank up towers and tons of radios for the first responders. In addition to that they deployed this amazing technology called APRS for the salvation army and others that allowed the participating groups to track in realtime the location of all of their vehicles.
Now, if your not familiar with APRS, it starts with a low powered radio, a GPS unit, and a device that hooks up to the GPS and the radio that transmits the GPS coordinates in digital format on the radio. Then, ideally, a central radio tower can hear these signals and develop a picture of where all the signals are based off of their GPS coordinates. Whats even more insane is that APRS has grown so much that satellites and even the international space station repeat and broadcast APRS signals!
So if GPS were shut down first responders would lose a valuable emergency coordination resource. Not to mention the fact that some police/fire already have similar systems in place, though generally such systems are wiped out in disasters, hence the amateur radio operators who are at the ready to redeploy communications gear.
Read more:
More on APRS
APRS on the ISS
Amateur Radio Emergency Communication
Couldn't come up with the exact quote but figured this picture will explain what I intended
Those buttons are red! You'll destroy us all!
Treebeard? Is that you?
Boom boom rumboom boorar boom boom dahar boom boom dahar boom!
The guy looks like he has an honest face atleast :)
Since this is /. and all:
"The Christian Science building in Boston [the one related to the Christian Science Monitor] is a favorite photographic subject as an architecturally interesting building. Additionally, in the early days of MIT's radar history, the Christian Science building was one of the more prominent buildings (before it was occluded by the newer tall skyscrapers) and showed up clearly on radar. It was a favorite test subject, and instantly recognizable on screen. When the first major breakthrough in radar (transmitting and receiving through the same antenna) occurred, during World War II, this great news was broadcast to the world through a cryptic shortwave message saying "Saw Mary Baker Eddy with one eye." By this, it was meant that a clear picture of the Christian Science building could be seen with just one antenna (rather than two antennas as had previously been the case, they being separate transmit and receive antennas). Of course the enemy had no way of knowing what this cryptic message meant, but the allies knew an important moment in history had occurred.
Thus the Christian Science building, in addition to being an important architectural landmark, is also an important radar landmark."
Got that from the great wikipedia article on them.
Cool stuff!
Is there a chance that there the grandparent wasn't using "sarcasm" regarding the iPod? And that you might have misinterpreted it as such? :P
CNN wrote about it. Look near the bottom for the juicy stuff:
"This island is definitely a potential time bomb, because the shrinking of the sea and the likely emergence within a few years of a land bridge to the mainland and the possibility that insects and rodents, carrying deadly diseases, could cross over and infect the local population," Tucker said.
:(
The article is a little over 5 years old.. so uhm. Be on the lookout
A vacation in Azerbaijan?? I bet you are there for reasons other then vacation.. perhaps you are a missionary or are volunteering there to provide aid? Though personally I am intrigued by the country myself, mostly from light bit of research I've done on it.
;) But I blame VALVE for that.
"Local scientists consider the Abseron Yasaqligi (Apsheron Peninsula) (including Baku and Sumqayit) and the Caspian Sea to be the ecologically most devastated area in the world because of severe air, soil, and water pollution; soil pollution results from oil spills, from the use of DDT as a pesticide, and from toxic defoliants used in the production of cotton" (source)
And here's another beauty:
"Towns once located on the coast are now as far as fifty miles away from the shoreline, the salinity of the water is heavily increased, and the fishing industry is destroyed. As if these problems were not enough, the receding sea is beginning to expose a land bridge to an island used by the Soviet Union for chemical and biological agent testing. Although the facility is closed, the remains of lab equipment had been simply buried and could become easily accessible." (source)
I also read somewhere that they fear animals will/are making their way accross that land bridge and becoming infected with the agents in the facility and possibly spreading the agents amongst the local wildlife and people. Can't find that article now though but in any case be on the lookout while you are over there!
Or maybe you are over there looking for the true location of CITY 17? Thats how my fascination with Azerbaijan began anyways.
And yes I knew where Baku was without looking at a map
To paraphrase from the previous poster who said "better then in Canada where they charge you in Taxes for the CBC, even if you don't own a TV," basically if you don't own a TV then being charged for television programming through taxes is unfair and ideally only those that watched the public programming should get charged.
Whats crazy is that because of this the British Government actually developed equipment to detect whether or not you have a television in your home from the street. They drive around special TV detecting vans ensuring that noone tries to shirk the tv license fee/tax.
TV detecting has been going on for 52 years now.
Insane!
Of course there is the other side of the argument, that public broadcasting has benefits to you even if you don't watch it yourself.
That TV detecting thing was unreal when I first heard about it.
If I'm not mistaken, vast quantities of tv archive, much of it from the "golden age" when people expected their educational programs to be presided over by professors, are going to be put online for free through the BBC's Creative Archive. I'm sure you'll be able to dig up some early BBC2 there.
:)
Assuming you've paid your UK TV license fee of course.
I think its time we start the drum beat for a LoTR-like showing of all the Star Wars movies for the premiere of Episode 3 this May.
But what order should they show them? What order, hmm.
Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope - May 25, 1977
Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back - May 21, 1980
Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi - May 25, 1983
Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace - May 19, 1999
Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones - May 16, 2002
Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith - May 19, 2005
And don't forget about PearPC's impostor perfume cousin, now in cherry scent.