Likely the money will come from the account of another victim.
What I had in mind included parole-style supervision, the requirement to get a job, and to have one's paycheck docked a bit each cycle until the restitution is completed.
If the person doing the fraud had a significant amount of money to begin with, they'd be less likely to do identity fraud.
I don't know if that's really true. Fraud seems to stem from greed, not need, and greed is universal.
Things like implanted RFID chips, finger print/retinal scan identification built in to your computer, hardware based ID chips. All a step up in security, and all circumventable and exploitable.
There are three major categories of fraud termed "Identity theft":
"Phishing", where consumers are tricked into giving out personal account information, allowing consumer accounts to be fraudulently accessed.
Clandestine account information fraud: hacking websites, breaking into home computers, etc. to obtain similar information as gotten from phishing
Opening credit accounts under a fraudulent name by using someone else's identifying information.
The first can really only be solved by a combination of user-education and aggressive investigation by financial institutions and government agencies. Of course, banks and the like could use things like OTP, where the single-use keys are mailed to users on pads or stamp-sheets; but that isn't a guarantee (nice idea, though).
The second can be restricted somewhat through better security measures: a more secure Windows installation out-of-the-box, broadband providers shipping and requiring firewalls with reasonable default settings, legal requirements for security on sites which work with financial information.
The last could be seriously reduced if you a credit agency would call you and request an assigned PIN before releasing your information to any creditor. The call would consist of "Hello. With whom am I speaking?" (you reply with your name, if it matches the requester name, then they say) "thank you, [name], I am so-and-so from Credit Agency , and I'm calling to confirm that you've requested a credit card from Discover; is that correct?" (yes) "Can you confirm [information, i.e. billing ZIP, last 4 of SSN, whatever]?" (confirm) "Ok, to confirm this release, you need to call 1-888-42-CREDIT and enter your PIN. The case number for this is #42-1337-09."
After that, the person calls the credit hotline, enters the case number, then their PIN, confirming the application. Yeah, it isn't foolproof, but it isn't "draconian" and it would make fraud more difficult -- and provide more evidence to follow when fraud does occur.
Identity theft should be a capital offense. Life sentences should be the minimum punishment.
Your so-called "Identity Theft" is actually something that's been around for a long time: fraud. In this case, financial fraud by impersonating another person.
Fraud already carries some serious penalties -- the new wave of fraud has more to do with the difficulty of tracing someone who obtains personal information for the purposes of fraud using the Internet. We now have people capable of defrauding others from distant countries. I think we're much better off spending time and money on improving forensic abilities, requiring creditors and vendors accepting credit to implement better security measures, and educating consumers about how they can protect themselves.
The punishment for identity fraud should be:
Restitution of funds gaind by fraud, by 200% (defraud me of $6000, pay me $12000 back)
Required to contact defrauded creditors, with a monitoring justice agent, and clear the accounts
Denied credit for a term of 20 years
For "grand" fraud (over $20000), some prison time
Fines constituting 20% of funds defrauded, the majority of which enforcment agencies can keep.
Those might help agencies develop better security and forensics, which leads to more criminals being caught. When people are actually getting caught, then the penalties are actually effective deterrents.
In both cases, I didn't have to pay the court fee.
In neither case did you "win". "Win" is usually a finding of "not guilty"; what you had was a dismissal of your cases. The first case, the stop sign, was dismissed because the State could not possibly have made its burden without the Cop's testimony. The second was dismissed because the citation was invalid.
Dismissal is always better for the defendant, because it suggests that the State never had enough evidence to make their case. A finding of Not Guilty suggests that there was enough evidence to make a case, but in the end there was reasonable doubt -- usually not enough evidence to make a convincing case. In the latter case, many jurisdictions require some court costs be paid by the defendant.
Heck exclude anyone that is not a healthy, straight non-old white male and the |race|age|sex|-ism card is pulled from the deck.
And promptly returned to the deck when your lawyer demonstrates that there have been many racial minorities, women, old and young people, and sexual minorities that have not been excluded.
I'll be the first to say that discrimination lawsuits often go to far, but the reality is that many more are quickly dismissed as groundless. The problem is the media loves to report "Corp X is being sued for ejecting a black woman", but doesn't bother to mention that "the suit against Corp X is being dismissed because the woman was ejected for causing a disturbance, and Corp X even has a black female board member."
Learn to see through the hype, and check out the reality. There are cases where someone wins over a dumb claim like this, but it's usually overturned on appeal.
I have no idea how anyone would actually teach someone how to start a business.
The vast majority of these "entreprenuership" classes are crap, because no one can really teach about how to be an entreprenuer. But, there are a few good programs that fall under the same header.
A high school where I used to live offered a course that covered taking an idea from concept to market, basic economic prinicples (supply and demand, overhead, trade tarriffs), seeking investors, and writing a business plan. Of course, they horribly over-simplified, but they gave enough of an idea to the students that there was a starting point for further research.
double-entry bookkeeping is a thing that I've never really understood completely.
It's easier than it sounds, at least for a small business. The difference between cash-based accounting and double-entry is that the former is concerned with what's in your account, while the latter is concerned with value and transactions.
Basically, cash-based is like balancing a checkbook: money appears in your account when you get paid, and disappears when you pay a bill. With double-entry, all that money has to come from somewhere. Every time you invoice someone, that invoice increases the balance in that customers "account"; once you invoice, that's your money, but it isn't in the bank. When they pay you, you make a double-entry: you deduct money from their balance and add it to your bank balance.
Likewise with accounts payable -- you have "accounts" for each vendor, and when you issue a purchase order, you deduct that money from their account (making it negative). When you pay them, you remove money from your bank account (entry 1) and add it to the vendor's account (entry 2).
Double-entry accounting is basically like having mini-ledgers for every place money can come from or go to, and allows error-tolerance and a better view of what financial shape your company is in.
Then don't try to push beta software down my throat. Don't start this campaign to get 1 million downloads for a preview release.
And how would else you suggest getting 1 million beta testers? Firefox isn't being pushed down your throat. But, as Firefox approaches 1.0, they needed lots of beta testers to make sure it will be rock-solid.
I bet no one told their friends & family that when they download Firefox, they were downloading beta software.
You lost your bet, I did -- but they found the Beta to be a better browsing experience than IE. Opinion, perhaps, but it still speaks to the quality of the Beta. And if that's any guide, the final should be excellent, indeed.
Oh yeah, and don't bitch when companies aren't adopting Firefox.
I never have. I have suggested Firefox -- even in beta -- as an alternative to keeping up with IE security holes. Some of my clients have taken me up on it, others have decided to wait for 1.0. So be it; only the teenage fanboys on/. get upset when a company makes a choice they don't like.
There are a ton of extensions I use. How can you proclaim a browser's strength as its extensibility, and then have this 'don't use extensions' nonsense every time you upgrade version?
Firefox has been Beta, and still is. You can expect better consistency between production-release versions, but expecting that fixing bugs and refining the codebase will never break outside applications (extensions) is insanity.
My agnosticism means that I don't think there is a god, but I've been wrong before and trying to keep an open mind to the possibility.
Aha. That's pretty common. It's interesting how terms like "agnostic" and "atheist" evolve. 50 years ago, your position would have been called atheism, but never agnosticism.
The reasoning and history of that is kind of interesting...
Theists have a definite belief that there is a God. By definition, then, an a-theist believes there is no god -- or arguably, they simply do not believe there is a god. (The difference is minor, but important). So, until "atheist" got a bad connotation during the Communist Era, people with your point of view would be "open-minded atheists" -- not believing there is a god, but willing to be shown proof one exists.
Gnostics, on the other hand, were those that believed one could achieve spiritual enlightenment through a systematic approach to knowing God. Modern Christianity is heavily influenced by Gnostic thought (more than they like to admit), but at the time most people believed that God was largely mysterious. A-Gnostics were those that believed in God, but thought that the fundamental nature of God was beyond human comprehension. Radical agnostics believed that God was not a person, but a "higher power" that one could not have a relationship with.
So, historically, agnostics were by definition theists. But, when atheism got the connotation of Evil Communists, those in the "unsure" or "open-minded" categories were reluctant to identify themselves as "undecided" or "atheist". Somewhere along the line, someone thought agnostic was a good approximation and adopted the term.
So, now when someone says they are atheist or agnostic, I always have to ask more questions!:)
Many of us have heard the Separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution statement before.
That is technically true, Separation of Church and State is a doctrine, not Constitutional Law. And I believe Kerry will adhere to that doctrine, while Bush will not. Disestablishment is something a lot of Slashdot readers support, which is why I brought it up: the original claim was that there weren't many reasons for a Slashdot reader to vote for Kerry.
I've also heard arguments that legally a State could declair an official religion.
That's explicitly excluded. The Disestablishment doctrine may not be law, but it is based ont he Constitution. Specifically, the Constitution states that Congress can make no law (a)establishing a State Religion, or (b)preventing the free exercise of religion. (A) means, at least, that the government cannot unfairly sponsor a particular religion -- that's often been expanded to the idea that government and religion should be completely separate. The former is law, the latter is legal doctrine.
Instead of saying, "In light of new information, I have changed my opinion." he makes excuses that make him sound wishy-washy.
Ah, politics. Most voters wouldn't stand for Kerry making a statement like the above. Sad but true, though I happen to agree with you. Still, I'd rather a President sound "wishy-washy" than sound like an incompetent fool, as Bush is wont to do...;-)
I live in North Carolina and will be voting Badnarik-Campagna.
Excellent! I support 3rd-party votes; I would normally vote in that manner (Cobb is my candidate of choice, though I don't entirely agree with him), it's just that in Minnesota, it would be an effective vote for Bush. For once, pragmatism is more important to me than idealism...
Incidentally, I am a little curious about what sort of odd atheist you are. I'm weird and agnostic, but they are independant of each other.
First, a question: when you say "agnostic", do you mean "don't know, don't care" or "the nature of deity is unknowable"? Just curious, I don't know many people in the latter class.
I'm an odd atheist in that I don't believe conclusively that no gods exist. Rather, I believe that it just doesn't matter if gods exist or not, because it has no effect on our world. If you believe in a deity and that motivates you to be a good and decent human, then great. If it doesn't, your belief is a waste. And, if you would be a good and decent human without a belief in god, then it doesn't matter if one exists. In short, whether god exists or not matters far less than what people believe "god" to be.
I do believe that there is value in worship; I see gods as cyphers for preserved knowledge. Ancient peoples figured out certain truths, and because writing systems were rare and/or confined to the elite, the knowledge about the experience was encoded into gods and the rituals of worship and veneration surrounding them. I don't believe the gods exist, but if one suspends that disbeleif and worships as though the gods do exist, one can gain access to some of those ancient epiphanies.
So, I'm an atheist, but a practicing neo-pagan; and, I don't see any conflict in the two. All of which is a bit unusual for an atheist.:)
I just don't see how There should be no restrictions on international trade over the Internet + All software should be free can be reconciled with People in India shouldn't be allowed to do my job.
I don't think it's so much that we shouldn't allow outsourcing as we shouldn't actively encourage it. Current tax regulations result in a tax benefit for overseas outsourcing; I, like many others, think that constitutes an encouragement to companies to ship jobs overseas. That's very short-sighted, and as a citizen I feel a bit betrayed by my government encouraging corporations to send my job out of the country. This is something the free market -- not tax benefits -- should decide.
As to your sig, you have a slight error; the correct quote is, "Every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right".:)
You take away the war issue, and there isn't much reason for a Slashdot type to vote for either one of them.
Separation of Church and State. Now, I'm not saying Bush has crossed the line here. I'm even one who defends the idea -- if not the current implementation of -- faith-based services [0]. And, I am aware that Kerry is religious, and that such will affect his decisions.
The primary difference, to me, is that Bush is unwilling to look at his decisions outside the context of his spiritual beliefs. He doesn't even appear to be trying to acknowledge his biases in this regard. At least Kerry acknowledges his bias, and promises to do his best not to let them color his decisions.
When a president supports a constitutional ammendment to define a word -- and a word that stands for something that's historically been a right of each State to legislate -- he crosses a line. When he declares that a belief system (in this case, Wicca) "isn't a real religion", and supports acts that repress its practice, he crosses a line. I think Kerry is at least pragmatic enough that if he has such feelings he knows better than to bring them into his politics.
And, international perception. Now, what the world thinks of the US isn't the most important thing; but, it is worth considering. When all of the US' allies view our president as a would-be dicator, and view his administration's foreign policy as insulting and threatening, it should give one pause. The fact that the international commuity at large is hoping that Kerry will win because they feel that Bush is insane, we have to consider that maybe their opinion is worth considering.
The war issue, for me, isn't about "how it's going"; I agree we're doing pretty well, all things considered. For me, it's about how we shouldn't have gone in the first place, and how the administration continues to try and deceive the public into believing that Saddam attacked (or was about to attack) the US. If Bush had gotten on television and said "Saddam may not be a direct threat to the US, but he is a vicious dictator. Eliminating him will bring stability to the region", I wouldn't be so angry about the war in Iraq.
But, war issue aside:
Kerry is more pragmatic on religion-influenced issues
Kerry is willing to alter his opinion when new data are available; Bush sticks to his guns even when he's proved wrong
Kerry is respected by, and is likely to win the support and friendship of, the international community
Now, I think several of the 3rd-party candidates are actually better choices, but since I live in Minnesota, I'm voting Kerry. Simply put, and war aside, Kerry is less insane than Bush.
[0]: If implemented correctly, faith-based services would allow religious groups to have the same standing as secular groups when it comes to charitable work. As long as all faiths are treated equitably, this wouldn't violate the Establishment Clause, and would be (IMHO) a good thing. For the record, I'm an atheist (though of an odd sort).
NetMD, I've never tried it so if you have any real-world stories regarding it do share them.
I tried the *old* NetMD, which was just a USB-audio device that recorded in real-time playback from a media player. Ick.
Then I tried a newer one. They're slick, and you can transfer WAV (or FLAC with some coercing, and third-party software) to the MD ATRAC-3 format at something like 10x. You can also put MP3/WMA onto MD, and the NetMD will play it back. It's great if you want the fidelity of MD, but if you're just putting MP3's on it, it's a bit of a waste.
And, if you're into fidelity, you're better off buying a JetAudio M3, which will play Ogg (some say it's better than ATRAC-3, I can't hear a difference in headphones) and FLAC files, and will work under Linux.
You'll pay slightly more for the JetAudio, but you won't be buying media (20G/40G players), so it evens out pretty quickly for large music collections. The weight is also comparable.
I wasn't talking about U2, but the black iPod being the latest "fad".
A lot of people I know who bought iPods (including my brother) already had vast MP3 collections. The music is not "added value". They can get it free of Soulseek.
Apple doesn't care about people who've already bought an iPod. And not everyone wants to get "free" music -- many people are scared to use trading services, and some people would rather have licensed media than free, unlicensed. To those people, and there are more of them than the/. crowd wants to admin, the music is and added value.
I don't think it's "analytical thinking" that makes geeks good at poker. It's two things: attention to detail (reading the reactions of others), and an inscrutable poker face.
The former is partly helped by the common geek task of assigning meaning to very slight details. The latter is helped by the geek trait of staring expressionless into a monitor for several hours a day. When one gets used to expressing emotion through implication in text -- or through use of emoticons -- one gets out of the habit of showing emotion through facial expression.
$pantheon{chosen_deity} help us if the poker tournaments give us access to ":-)" -- our poker-face would be ruined!:P
Create a text file called dl-patch.sh (or something) with the following contents:
while [ "a" == "a" ]; do
wget -nd <url-to-patch-file> -O/dev/null
sleep 5 done
Of course, you'll have to replace <url-to-patch-file> with the appropriate URL pointing to the patch script. The -O/dev/null causes wget to write the patch to/dev/null, which effectively means it goes off into no-mans land, and never gets written to disk.
The sleep is a good idea because otherwise the server is likely to automatically block you as a DoS attacker.
CDDA is not a compressed format. Some sound engineers compress the audio -- that is, they reduce the distance between the loudest and quietest samples -- but that is not a format issue. It's a mixing issue. Formats such as MP3 and ogg are compressed in that the data is compressed.
CDDA is not a "lossy" digital format. Whatever is digitally recorded can be transferred to CDDA without loss. Just because the waveform is digitally sampled and therefore some recording data is "lost" doesn't make it lossy -- unless you want to go ahead and call all media lossy, including analog.
Once again, Apple demonstrates that they've mastered the art of slick marketing. This new iPod should definately appeal to a few categories of people who don't already own an iPod:
Those who don't like the whiteness
Those who are fad-driven, since this will be the "latest cool thing"
Those pondering an iPod purchase, but who were undecided might see extra value in the preloaded songs, and be pushed to buy
U2 fan{boy|girl}s: they will buy because the black iPod screams "I'm a U2 fan".
I expect that this promotion will be rather effective, and we'll see Apple running similar promos in the future. Also, the poster who predicted changeable iPod covers (a la cellphone faceplates) is, IMO, right on the money.
That may be so, but my point is it isn't as simply "black-and-white" -- there is an attempt to mislead or misdirect, even with those clear disclaimers. It's a gray area.
What are you talking about? Ogg Vorbis files aren't "slightly larger". File size in all of the audio formats is determined by bit rate, plus a negligible amount of container overhead. 128kpbs Ogg Vorbis files are the same size as 128kbps MP3 files or 128kbps WMA files, or 128kbps AC3 files. The only difference is that at a given bitrate Vorbis audio sounds better than MP3 and maybe even a bit better than WMA or AC3.
Heh. Not true. Granted, we are comparing slightly different things, here. But, an OGG file averaged at, say, 160kpbs is going to be slightly larger than an MP3 file at 160kpbs.
OGG isn't just a better encoder for the MPEG3 standard, it's a completely different algorithm. The size difference is negligible, as I pointed out, but it is still there.
Now, it's possible that the Oggs you've run across are larger than the MP3s you've run across, but that's just because people use use Ogg are also, typically, people who want higher audio quality and will typically encode at higher bitrates.
The OGGs I've "run across" are the 80GB of music I have ripped from my CDs onto my home library. I use my own software to downsample and/or transcode my high-bitrate OGG files for various targets. My statistics show that OGG files at comparable bitrates are slightly larger than MP3 files. This is based not only on transcoding, but also on my previous collection of high-bitrate MP3s, which I re-ripped to OGG after 1.0 was released. It's not a criticism -- OGG sounds better at comparable bitrates, so who cares if the file is a bit larger?
Slashdot Mirror
Likely the money will come from the account of another victim.
What I had in mind included parole-style supervision, the requirement to get a job, and to have one's paycheck docked a bit each cycle until the restitution is completed.
If the person doing the fraud had a significant amount of money to begin with, they'd be less likely to do identity fraud.
I don't know if that's really true. Fraud seems to stem from greed, not need, and greed is universal.
As an aside, I wish your friend the best of luck.
But what about the security hole that causes a stream of carefully-constructed Good packets to be interpreted as an Evil packet?
The first can really only be solved by a combination of user-education and aggressive investigation by financial institutions and government agencies. Of course, banks and the like could use things like OTP, where the single-use keys are mailed to users on pads or stamp-sheets; but that isn't a guarantee (nice idea, though).
The second can be restricted somewhat through better security measures: a more secure Windows installation out-of-the-box, broadband providers shipping and requiring firewalls with reasonable default settings, legal requirements for security on sites which work with financial information.
The last could be seriously reduced if you a credit agency would call you and request an assigned PIN before releasing your information to any creditor. The call would consist of "Hello. With whom am I speaking?" (you reply with your name, if it matches the requester name, then they say) "thank you, [name], I am so-and-so from Credit Agency , and I'm calling to confirm that you've requested a credit card from Discover; is that correct?" (yes) "Can you confirm [information, i.e. billing ZIP, last 4 of SSN, whatever]?" (confirm) "Ok, to confirm this release, you need to call 1-888-42-CREDIT and enter your PIN. The case number for this is #42-1337-09."
After that, the person calls the credit hotline, enters the case number, then their PIN, confirming the application. Yeah, it isn't foolproof, but it isn't "draconian" and it would make fraud more difficult -- and provide more evidence to follow when fraud does occur.
Fraud already carries some serious penalties -- the new wave of fraud has more to do with the difficulty of tracing someone who obtains personal information for the purposes of fraud using the Internet. We now have people capable of defrauding others from distant countries. I think we're much better off spending time and money on improving forensic abilities, requiring creditors and vendors accepting credit to implement better security measures, and educating consumers about how they can protect themselves.
The punishment for identity fraud should be:
Those might help agencies develop better security and forensics, which leads to more criminals being caught. When people are actually getting caught, then the penalties are actually effective deterrents.
Dismissal is always better for the defendant, because it suggests that the State never had enough evidence to make their case. A finding of Not Guilty suggests that there was enough evidence to make a case, but in the end there was reasonable doubt -- usually not enough evidence to make a convincing case. In the latter case, many jurisdictions require some court costs be paid by the defendant.
#define I_AM_A_LAWYER 0
I'll be the first to say that discrimination lawsuits often go to far, but the reality is that many more are quickly dismissed as groundless. The problem is the media loves to report "Corp X is being sued for ejecting a black woman", but doesn't bother to mention that "the suit against Corp X is being dismissed because the woman was ejected for causing a disturbance, and Corp X even has a black female board member."
Learn to see through the hype, and check out the reality. There are cases where someone wins over a dumb claim like this, but it's usually overturned on appeal.
A high school where I used to live offered a course that covered taking an idea from concept to market, basic economic prinicples (supply and demand, overhead, trade tarriffs), seeking investors, and writing a business plan. Of course, they horribly over-simplified, but they gave enough of an idea to the students that there was a starting point for further research.It's easier than it sounds, at least for a small business. The difference between cash-based accounting and double-entry is that the former is concerned with what's in your account, while the latter is concerned with value and transactions.
Basically, cash-based is like balancing a checkbook: money appears in your account when you get paid, and disappears when you pay a bill. With double-entry, all that money has to come from somewhere. Every time you invoice someone, that invoice increases the balance in that customers "account"; once you invoice, that's your money, but it isn't in the bank. When they pay you, you make a double-entry: you deduct money from their balance and add it to your bank balance.
Likewise with accounts payable -- you have "accounts" for each vendor, and when you issue a purchase order, you deduct that money from their account (making it negative). When you pay them, you remove money from your bank account (entry 1) and add it to the vendor's account (entry 2).
Double-entry accounting is basically like having mini-ledgers for every place money can come from or go to, and allows error-tolerance and a better view of what financial shape your company is in.
There is no guarantee that a Release Candidate will be compatible with the previous testing version, only with future RC's in the same tree.
The reasoning and history of that is kind of interesting...
Theists have a definite belief that there is a God. By definition, then, an a-theist believes there is no god -- or arguably, they simply do not believe there is a god. (The difference is minor, but important). So, until "atheist" got a bad connotation during the Communist Era, people with your point of view would be "open-minded atheists" -- not believing there is a god, but willing to be shown proof one exists.
Gnostics, on the other hand, were those that believed one could achieve spiritual enlightenment through a systematic approach to knowing God. Modern Christianity is heavily influenced by Gnostic thought (more than they like to admit), but at the time most people believed that God was largely mysterious. A-Gnostics were those that believed in God, but thought that the fundamental nature of God was beyond human comprehension. Radical agnostics believed that God was not a person, but a "higher power" that one could not have a relationship with.
So, historically, agnostics were by definition theists. But, when atheism got the connotation of Evil Communists, those in the "unsure" or "open-minded" categories were reluctant to identify themselves as "undecided" or "atheist". Somewhere along the line, someone thought agnostic was a good approximation and adopted the term.
So, now when someone says they are atheist or agnostic, I always have to ask more questions!
I'm an odd atheist in that I don't believe conclusively that no gods exist. Rather, I believe that it just doesn't matter if gods exist or not, because it has no effect on our world. If you believe in a deity and that motivates you to be a good and decent human, then great. If it doesn't, your belief is a waste. And, if you would be a good and decent human without a belief in god, then it doesn't matter if one exists. In short, whether god exists or not matters far less than what people believe "god" to be.
I do believe that there is value in worship; I see gods as cyphers for preserved knowledge. Ancient peoples figured out certain truths, and because writing systems were rare and/or confined to the elite, the knowledge about the experience was encoded into gods and the rituals of worship and veneration surrounding them. I don't believe the gods exist, but if one suspends that disbeleif and worships as though the gods do exist, one can gain access to some of those ancient epiphanies.
So, I'm an atheist, but a practicing neo-pagan; and, I don't see any conflict in the two. All of which is a bit unusual for an atheist.
As to your sig, you have a slight error; the correct quote is, "Every tool is a weapon, if you hold it right".
The primary difference, to me, is that Bush is unwilling to look at his decisions outside the context of his spiritual beliefs. He doesn't even appear to be trying to acknowledge his biases in this regard. At least Kerry acknowledges his bias, and promises to do his best not to let them color his decisions.
When a president supports a constitutional ammendment to define a word -- and a word that stands for something that's historically been a right of each State to legislate -- he crosses a line. When he declares that a belief system (in this case, Wicca) "isn't a real religion", and supports acts that repress its practice, he crosses a line. I think Kerry is at least pragmatic enough that if he has such feelings he knows better than to bring them into his politics.
And, international perception. Now, what the world thinks of the US isn't the most important thing; but, it is worth considering. When all of the US' allies view our president as a would-be dicator, and view his administration's foreign policy as insulting and threatening, it should give one pause. The fact that the international commuity at large is hoping that Kerry will win because they feel that Bush is insane, we have to consider that maybe their opinion is worth considering.
The war issue, for me, isn't about "how it's going"; I agree we're doing pretty well, all things considered. For me, it's about how we shouldn't have gone in the first place, and how the administration continues to try and deceive the public into believing that Saddam attacked (or was about to attack) the US. If Bush had gotten on television and said "Saddam may not be a direct threat to the US, but he is a vicious dictator. Eliminating him will bring stability to the region", I wouldn't be so angry about the war in Iraq.
But, war issue aside:
Now, I think several of the 3rd-party candidates are actually better choices, but since I live in Minnesota, I'm voting Kerry. Simply put, and war aside, Kerry is less insane than Bush.
[0]: If implemented correctly, faith-based services would allow religious groups to have the same standing as secular groups when it comes to charitable work. As long as all faiths are treated equitably, this wouldn't violate the Establishment Clause, and would be (IMHO) a good thing. For the record, I'm an atheist (though of an odd sort).
Then I tried a newer one. They're slick, and you can transfer WAV (or FLAC with some coercing, and third-party software) to the MD ATRAC-3 format at something like 10x. You can also put MP3/WMA onto MD, and the NetMD will play it back. It's great if you want the fidelity of MD, but if you're just putting MP3's on it, it's a bit of a waste.
And, if you're into fidelity, you're better off buying a JetAudio M3, which will play Ogg (some say it's better than ATRAC-3, I can't hear a difference in headphones) and FLAC files, and will work under Linux.
You'll pay slightly more for the JetAudio, but you won't be buying media (20G/40G players), so it evens out pretty quickly for large music collections. The weight is also comparable.
I don't think it's "analytical thinking" that makes geeks good at poker. It's two things: attention to detail (reading the reactions of others), and an inscrutable poker face.
:P
The former is partly helped by the common geek task of assigning meaning to very slight details. The latter is helped by the geek trait of staring expressionless into a monitor for several hours a day. When one gets used to expressing emotion through implication in text -- or through use of emoticons -- one gets out of the habit of showing emotion through facial expression.
$pantheon{chosen_deity} help us if the poker tournaments give us access to ":-)" -- our poker-face would be ruined!
The sleep is a good idea because otherwise the server is likely to automatically block you as a DoS attacker.
*Sigh*.
CDDA is not a compressed format. Some sound engineers compress the audio -- that is, they reduce the distance between the loudest and quietest samples -- but that is not a format issue. It's a mixing issue. Formats such as MP3 and ogg are compressed in that the data is compressed.
CDDA is not a "lossy" digital format. Whatever is digitally recorded can be transferred to CDDA without loss. Just because the waveform is digitally sampled and therefore some recording data is "lost" doesn't make it lossy -- unless you want to go ahead and call all media lossy, including analog.
- Those who don't like the whiteness
- Those who are fad-driven, since this will be the "latest cool thing"
- Those pondering an iPod purchase, but who were undecided might see extra value in the preloaded songs, and be pushed to buy
- U2 fan{boy|girl}s: they will buy because the black iPod screams "I'm a U2 fan".
I expect that this promotion will be rather effective, and we'll see Apple running similar promos in the future. Also, the poster who predicted changeable iPod covers (a la cellphone faceplates) is, IMO, right on the money.Or perhaps you meant that the Beatles won't allow their songs to be sold in a compressed, lossy, digital format?
That may be so, but my point is it isn't as simply "black-and-white" -- there is an attempt to mislead or misdirect, even with those clear disclaimers. It's a gray area.
OGG isn't just a better encoder for the MPEG3 standard, it's a completely different algorithm. The size difference is negligible, as I pointed out, but it is still there.The OGGs I've "run across" are the 80GB of music I have ripped from my CDs onto my home library. I use my own software to downsample and/or transcode my high-bitrate OGG files for various targets. My statistics show that OGG files at comparable bitrates are slightly larger than MP3 files. This is based not only on transcoding, but also on my previous collection of high-bitrate MP3s, which I re-ripped to OGG after 1.0 was released. It's not a criticism -- OGG sounds better at comparable bitrates, so who cares if the file is a bit larger?