When will "they" realise that this isn't going to cut the mustard?
I guess it will be when the biggest "pointless DRM based lossy music service", the iTunes Music Store, loses so much money for Apple that they shut it down.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that one, were I you.
The bill also includes an extra 592 Million Dollars for a new US embassy in Baghdad. Doesn't that kind of sound like overkill?
Well, considering that it'll probably be attacked and re-built several times before Iraq becomes stable enough for US troops to withdraw, it seems like a reasonable price.
It's not the federal government's place to tell the individual states how to handle their drivers' licensing schemes, it's true.
*ahem* Interstate commerce clause.
If the federal government has no right to intervene in state's licensing schemes for motorists, then there's no requirement for states to honor each others' licenses reciprocally. Watch the shipping industry die should that ever stop.
Now you will have a US drivers license...basically. That means most of the traffic rules will need to be merged.
Why would it mean that?
Consider that at present, if you are in New York City it is illegal to make a right turn at a red light. In most of the rest of the state, it is not illegal. Yet the same stage agency issues driving licenses for both locales.
Traffic laws can and will continue to be established independently at any level of government allowed to do so, from municipal to state.
The federal government is heading toward "monoculturing" the US. Pretty soon we'll be "Former United States of America".
And the sky is falling, and BSD* is dying, etc.
The arguments over federalism have been going on since even before we had a Constitution. I see no indicators that even with the recent laws being passed, that the balance of power between state and federal governments is in imminent danger of collapsing.
You know what Sen. Obama's office is going to say? "Too long, didn't read."
Oh, and I'm sure the sarcasm will be well-received, too. And the way you acted like you were happy about the bill's passing until halfway down the page? Excellent.
Your elected representatives DO want to know what you think of the job they're doing -- it prevents unpleasant surprises on election night. But please, if you write, have some respect for your representatives' time. Be concise and direct. Write a single sentence at the top of your message stating your stance on an issue, and then flesh it out with reasoning in the following paragraphs.
If that sort of argument can win an election, it sounds like the people got the quality of representation they deserve.
No.
People, of all countries, deserve democratic and competent representation in government, regardless of how gullible/dumb/uneducated/whatever the people themselves are.
It's controversial for lots of reasons, and most of them don't have to do with tinfoil hats.
You gave a list of reasons why the bill law is poorly written, regardless of intent. That isn't equivalent to "controversial".
Controversy suggests there is some substantial amount of disagreement over the merits of something. Which, given a 100-0 vote in the Senate, does not seem to be the case.
The lightsaber combat in eps 4, 5 and 6 especially seem a little lacklustre compared with the excitement of the big fight in episode 1.
Well, yeah, they would. In the prequels, there were armies of Jedi and Sith warriors who had trained in lightsaber combat since they were children. The skill levels would have been expectedly high.
By the time we get to the "classic" trilogy, the Jedi are all but extinct. Who we're left with is an old man who's spent 20 years hiding from Empire death squads, a sullen neophyte who didn't begin training until adulthood, and a cyborg who lost much of the organic body he originally honed his skills with. It makes sense that they wouldn't be quite as skillful as their predecessors.
It is the laziness and irresponsibility of the slashdot editors to not provide a bittorrent link.
The content of the site that gets slashdotted is copyrighted by the authors of that site. It would be a violation of copyright law for Slashdot's editors to make a torrent of any of the site content available without first getting approval to do so from the authors.
And that is the real problem with Slashdot's link-first-ask-questions-later mentality. If they gave sites the courtesy of a quick email conversation prior to putting a link up, a large portion of slashdottings could be anticipated and prevented.
Besides, if the Mac Mini was intended as an HDTV PVR, it would have come with a 3.5" HDD that could hold 300GBs
Not to mention, an integrated Video In jack and TV Tuner, plus Composite/S-Video Out and Digital Audio Out... And a remote control, or at least an IR port...
Watching video on a 2 inch screen is insanity. No. It's just completely fucking stupid.
Try placing the screen a foot away from you. MAGIC! The viewing area now takes up the same amount of your field of vision that your 30" TV does from across the room!
Sure, resolution is an issue -- if a 2" LCD on a commercial product exceeds QVGA 320x240, I'll eat it. But even then, it's barely worse than Standard Definition TV, especially if you're used to watching NTSC signals blown up on a 50" screen.
Building a device perfectly capable of playing video and using it to display photos is insanity.
Was the iPod Photo actually "perfectly capable of playing video", though? That would imply at the very least the presence of a dedicated video decoder chip, and a device with an iPod form factor isn't going to handle multiple formats -- it will probably only handle H.264.
Which means that Apple isn't going to roll out an iPod Video until they've established H.264 as the video codec of choice for Apple computers. It's in Quicktime now; it's just a matter of time before enough people upgrade to hit the sweet spot.
I just wish they would sell higher quality/lossless audio files first. Bandwidth wouldn't be much greater than these video files they will be selling. I won't even mind paying $2 a song
So your proposal is that you're willing to spend twice as much if Apple spends four times as much?
MP3/AAC compression ratios are generally around 6:1. Lossless algorithms are amazing if they can do 2:1. And Apple would have to maintain BOTH formats side by side... well, it's just not an attractive proposition to them.
"Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service."
How is this substantially different from the situation today, where I need to present a state-issued driver's license and/or a federally-issued Social Security number in order to do any of those things?
I'm sure there are some pretty nefarious riders attached to this bill, since that's the case with almost all legislation. But the basic concept of a national ID card is not anything that I have any objection to.
Perhaps MS should get a graphic designer to design their screens of death like Apple does.
Considering that when Windows barfs, the video driver is often the first thing to go (why do you think the BSOD uses console display?), it doesn't do much good to have a GRAPHIC designer work on it.
Maybe they can get the Last Living ASCII Artist In Captivity to work on it... is ANSI.SYS still included with Windows?
links that say 'delete this' or 'unsubscribe' etc. Many webpages use GET links to do these actions
In which case, many webpages are BROKEN AS HELL.
Come on, "webmasters". I knew well enough to implement any irreversible actions as a form with method=POST to prevent spiders from triggering them back in 1998. There's no excuse for a professional web developer to make that mistake in 2005.
Google being the global aggregator that it is, though, should have expected the worst and foreseen that this kind of thing would happen and planned for it. Disappointing.
every time someone else has a question about my using a "non-approved" piece of software on my machine. ("Freeware. It means I can use it for free. No restrictions. Even on a business machine. Read what it says!")
Um, I'm pretty sure Desktop Support's concern isn't that you're running pirated software on your corporate PC.
See the other part of the EULA, where Spybot disclaims the software's suitability for any use? See the big "Use at your own risk!" in the app's title bar?
They're afraid that by running a piece of software that they have not vetted, you could end up hosing your system and possibly other systems on the network as well. As you've demonstrated, this is PROBABLY no more likely to happen with a trusted freeware app than it is with commercial software, but given that your Desktop Support group can only have a finite amount of support capacity it makes sense to restrict users to a manageable list of supported applications.
Keep in mind that "Windows Explorer", the GUI for browsing local and network filesystems, uses some of the same APIs as "Internet Explorer", the web browser integrated into Windows...
Slashdot Mirror
The Yahoo guy's response: "Well, Oracle may scale well technologically, but it doesn't scale financially".
That may be so, but name an RDBMS that DOES scale well both technologically and financially. You have to pick one or the other, pretty much.
Thing is, I wager the aquarium walls have a lower total area against the surrounding air than his computer would've had otherwise.
No, this isn't possible, at least not with solid objects and Euclidean geometry.
A large object which is capable of containing a smaller object must have a larger surface area than the smaller object.
it's regular old cooking oil!
So it has an even lower smokepoint and flashpoint than mineral oil would?
That's hot.
Yah but Fluorinert is EXPENSIVE. Even compared to filling up a fishtank with gallons of mineral oil.
When will "they" realise that this isn't going to cut the mustard?
I guess it will be when the biggest "pointless DRM based lossy music service", the iTunes Music Store, loses so much money for Apple that they shut it down.
I wouldn't hold my breath on that one, were I you.
The bill also includes an extra 592 Million Dollars for a new US embassy in Baghdad. Doesn't that kind of sound like overkill?
Well, considering that it'll probably be attacked and re-built several times before Iraq becomes stable enough for US troops to withdraw, it seems like a reasonable price.
It's not the federal government's place to tell the individual states how to handle their drivers' licensing schemes, it's true.
*ahem* Interstate commerce clause.
If the federal government has no right to intervene in state's licensing schemes for motorists, then there's no requirement for states to honor each others' licenses reciprocally. Watch the shipping industry die should that ever stop.
Now you will have a US drivers license...basically. That means most of the traffic rules will need to be merged.
Why would it mean that?
Consider that at present, if you are in New York City it is illegal to make a right turn at a red light. In most of the rest of the state, it is not illegal. Yet the same stage agency issues driving licenses for both locales.
Traffic laws can and will continue to be established independently at any level of government allowed to do so, from municipal to state.
The federal government is heading toward "monoculturing" the US. Pretty soon we'll be "Former United States of America".
And the sky is falling, and BSD* is dying, etc.
The arguments over federalism have been going on since even before we had a Constitution. I see no indicators that even with the recent laws being passed, that the balance of power between state and federal governments is in imminent danger of collapsing.
You know what Sen. Obama's office is going to say? "Too long, didn't read."
Oh, and I'm sure the sarcasm will be well-received, too. And the way you acted like you were happy about the bill's passing until halfway down the page? Excellent.
Your elected representatives DO want to know what you think of the job they're doing -- it prevents unpleasant surprises on election night. But please, if you write, have some respect for your representatives' time. Be concise and direct. Write a single sentence at the top of your message stating your stance on an issue, and then flesh it out with reasoning in the following paragraphs.
If that sort of argument can win an election, it sounds like the people got the quality of representation they deserve.
No.
People, of all countries, deserve democratic and competent representation in government, regardless of how gullible/dumb/uneducated/whatever the people themselves are.
It's controversial for lots of reasons, and most of them don't have to do with tinfoil hats.
You gave a list of reasons why the bill law is poorly written, regardless of intent. That isn't equivalent to "controversial".
Controversy suggests there is some substantial amount of disagreement over the merits of something. Which, given a 100-0 vote in the Senate, does not seem to be the case.
considering that the Nintendo console is always the cheapest on the market.....
And usually the least powerful, too...
The lightsaber combat in eps 4, 5 and 6 especially seem a little lacklustre compared with the excitement of the big fight in episode 1.
Well, yeah, they would. In the prequels, there were armies of Jedi and Sith warriors who had trained in lightsaber combat since they were children. The skill levels would have been expectedly high.
By the time we get to the "classic" trilogy, the Jedi are all but extinct. Who we're left with is an old man who's spent 20 years hiding from Empire death squads, a sullen neophyte who didn't begin training until adulthood, and a cyborg who lost much of the organic body he originally honed his skills with. It makes sense that they wouldn't be quite as skillful as their predecessors.
(Oh yeah... SPOILER ALERT)
It is the laziness and irresponsibility of the slashdot editors to not provide a bittorrent link.
The content of the site that gets slashdotted is copyrighted by the authors of that site. It would be a violation of copyright law for Slashdot's editors to make a torrent of any of the site content available without first getting approval to do so from the authors.
And that is the real problem with Slashdot's link-first-ask-questions-later mentality. If they gave sites the courtesy of a quick email conversation prior to putting a link up, a large portion of slashdottings could be anticipated and prevented.
With this technology, any man can find the g-spot.
Unlikely -- you'd still need to get the light source in there somehow...
Besides, if the Mac Mini was intended as an HDTV PVR, it would have come with a 3.5" HDD that could hold 300GBs
...
Not to mention, an integrated Video In jack and TV Tuner, plus Composite/S-Video Out and Digital Audio Out... And a remote control, or at least an IR port
Watching video on a 2 inch screen is insanity. No. It's just completely fucking stupid.
Try placing the screen a foot away from you. MAGIC! The viewing area now takes up the same amount of your field of vision that your 30" TV does from across the room!
Sure, resolution is an issue -- if a 2" LCD on a commercial product exceeds QVGA 320x240, I'll eat it. But even then, it's barely worse than Standard Definition TV, especially if you're used to watching NTSC signals blown up on a 50" screen.
Building a device perfectly capable of playing video and using it to display photos is insanity.
Was the iPod Photo actually "perfectly capable of playing video", though? That would imply at the very least the presence of a dedicated video decoder chip, and a device with an iPod form factor isn't going to handle multiple formats -- it will probably only handle H.264.
Which means that Apple isn't going to roll out an iPod Video until they've established H.264 as the video codec of choice for Apple computers. It's in Quicktime now; it's just a matter of time before enough people upgrade to hit the sweet spot.
I just wish they would sell higher quality/lossless audio files first. Bandwidth wouldn't be much greater than these video files they will be selling. I won't even mind paying $2 a song
So your proposal is that you're willing to spend twice as much if Apple spends four times as much?
MP3/AAC compression ratios are generally around 6:1. Lossless algorithms are amazing if they can do 2:1. And Apple would have to maintain BOTH formats side by side... well, it's just not an attractive proposition to them.
"Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service."
How is this substantially different from the situation today, where I need to present a state-issued driver's license and/or a federally-issued Social Security number in order to do any of those things?
I'm sure there are some pretty nefarious riders attached to this bill, since that's the case with almost all legislation. But the basic concept of a national ID card is not anything that I have any objection to.
Perhaps MS should get a graphic designer to design their screens of death like Apple does.
Considering that when Windows barfs, the video driver is often the first thing to go (why do you think the BSOD uses console display?), it doesn't do much good to have a GRAPHIC designer work on it.
Maybe they can get the Last Living ASCII Artist In Captivity to work on it... is ANSI.SYS still included with Windows?
links that say 'delete this' or 'unsubscribe' etc. Many webpages use GET links to do these actions
In which case, many webpages are BROKEN AS HELL.
Come on, "webmasters". I knew well enough to implement any irreversible actions as a form with method=POST to prevent spiders from triggering them back in 1998. There's no excuse for a professional web developer to make that mistake in 2005.
Google being the global aggregator that it is, though, should have expected the worst and foreseen that this kind of thing would happen and planned for it. Disappointing.
every time someone else has a question about my using a "non-approved" piece of software on my machine. ("Freeware. It means I can use it for free. No restrictions. Even on a business machine. Read what it says!")
Um, I'm pretty sure Desktop Support's concern isn't that you're running pirated software on your corporate PC.
See the other part of the EULA, where Spybot disclaims the software's suitability for any use? See the big "Use at your own risk!" in the app's title bar?
They're afraid that by running a piece of software that they have not vetted, you could end up hosing your system and possibly other systems on the network as well. As you've demonstrated, this is PROBABLY no more likely to happen with a trusted freeware app than it is with commercial software, but given that your Desktop Support group can only have a finite amount of support capacity it makes sense to restrict users to a manageable list of supported applications.
why talk about "the Internet Explorer plugin"?
Keep in mind that "Windows Explorer", the GUI for browsing local and network filesystems, uses some of the same APIs as "Internet Explorer", the web browser integrated into Windows...
or maybe I should just stick to playing it on a linux pda and stop throwing money away...
So where'd you buy this mythical $150 Linux PDA? I'm interested in picking one up for myself...