Stolen Identity? When was the last time a videogame created a fake driver's license or some credit cards?
This is no different than if some prostitute in a Duke Nukem game was named "Lolly Pop", and an ex-employee of the Bunny Ranch sued to make some extra cash. Max Payne is fairly high up on the list of obvious names for an action star.
So, let's see. In the first incident mentioned, testimony comes from:
National Transportation Safety Board
American Airlines
Allied Pilot's Association
Association of Professional Flight Attendants
We're supposed to take the word of these obviously unbiased expert electrical engineers that EM interference was the cause of the error. A bunch of groups, some of which have glaringly obvious vested interests in not finding fault with the pilots, suddenly are a bunch of expert electrical engineers.
Even if if they didn't have ulterior motives, they aren't experts in EM, and we're supposed to take their word on the matter? Obviously not... And yet, that's what the author does, by presupposing that someone looking for a straw man constitutes any sort of "proof" of incidents. There's NO way that there could be a problem with the instruments, either in hardware in software, since we ALL know that hardware and software engineers are perfect, so it must've been that guy in first class with laptop...
While the author admits that the inflight ban of cell phones has nothing to do with interference reasons (it just makes life more difficult for the cell phone providers), he tries to justify fearmongering whithout any basis in fact...
Though, in truth, it depends on where you're talking about the friction. The ideal wheel has infinite surface friction, zero rotational(axle) friction, and infinite friction between it and the drive train... (Though one-way friction is more useful for the drive train, allow coastin a la clutch down...)
For each song sold to an individual, there is a chance they will buy the rest of the album based on liking that initial song. For those who didn't take the risk of buying that whole album, they can find out from those who did (friends, family, newsgroups, press, etc.) and change their mind.
It's the same way we found out about that kid with the star wars/lightsaber video. Someone found out about it, liked it, and told others.
If it truly is a work of art, as they suggest, it will stand on it's own merit and be viewed as such.
The artists this has the most chance of hurting is the one-hit wonder, who depends on the purchase of either a $7 single for that one song, or the $22 album (bought via retail.)
On the other hand, that one-hit wonder is currently dependent on the media companies who offer up very strict contracts for unproven artists where that 8% has various cuts taken off the top. As smaller labels gain access to electronic distributers, the artists' share will hopefully rise enough to offset the lower volume (less middlemen, and lower (zero) distribution costs, since the distribution cost is shouldered by the electronic distributer).
I'd actually kind of hope that MSOffice goes sooner than later... If it does, than you'll see a mad rush from Apple to update OpenOffice to have Apple's legendary smoothness. Don't get me wrong, I use OpenOffice, but it's not quite there yet...
Alternatively, they may already have something like this up their sleeves... Just look at Keynote...
One important thing to note is the group who left JBoss (I think they're called Core Something or other now) started their own company.
I've read tons of post that complain about the recession, and how you'd be screwing yourself out of a job. That's defeatist thinking from the start. If the only way you can imagine yourself making a living is by finding some company to hire you, than you will more often than not one of the beleagured and put upon.
Start a company, write a book, change professions... Join a commune, join peace corps, join geek corps...
There will be a recession as long as people are not sufficiently motivated to go out and make a change for themselves. Industrialized nations produce far more output than is necessary for the sustenance of their citizens. Booms happen when there is a high rate of transfer/churn of the money that does exist. Conversely, busts happen, when everyone freezes up, gets scared, and stops taking the risks necessary to keep things smoothly flowing.
I realize that some or all of the options I mentioned may not be possible for YOU, but if you aren't willing to look for other options at all, than your complaints will fall on deaf ears.
Note: This economics mentioned here are grossly oversimplified, but that doesn't make them untrue...
I have a couple of Tablet PCs. The handwriting recognition that comes with Tablet PC is largely useless
It's not useless, it's not even largely useless. I'm not gonna say that it's not severely flawed, but if you understand it, it's very usable. For handwriting recognition for me, it's near perfect. When it doesn't work is when I'm not typing in english (commands, or slang, etc...). Being aware of this, if you have the input panel set to two lines, you can enter commands a character at a time, alternating between the two lines. (Using standard letters, not graffiti)
What truly intrigues me are applications like this. It's a math application called MathJournal, where you write in equations, and then the computer will draw them. I'd like to see similar treatment for writing code...
I kind of agree, If I had the time, I'd work on a cross-platform "ink" standard (if for no other reason than so I could write a GAIM plugin that handled ink:-) ). But I just wanted to note that Adobe Acrobat does support inking (I'm not sure what version it started with...) I have Adobe Acrobat (not the reader), and I've inked documents before emailing before...
Red is a hue. Green is a hue. With either of these, if you remove all saturation, you're left with white. (Which is, by extension, true for all hues.) The argument you're making is that white is red, and white is green, etc., according to this logic, there are many different colors called white, all with different hues, and just the same saturation. In truth, once the saturation hits zero, you have lost all color, and are left with with.
I'm going to go down a slightly different path, since black is easier to explain than white. If you turn off all light in a room, (and I do mean all light. Imagine the "perfect" darkroom.) Are you seeing a color called black? No. You are not seeing anything at all, yet you perceive what we think of as black. Which is lack of light Anything that we see and think of as black, we're not actually seeing, since no light is being reflected off that object and making it's way into you eye. What we "see" is the absence of light. Hence, by definition, black is the lack of all color.
You can set up a similar experiment for white, but it's much harder to come across a light source that emits all frequencies of light. (The sun does this, but it's way too strong to use in this kind of experiment.)
And if she were talking about a subtractive color wheel, she'd be right. Green is only a primary color in the additive color wheel (light), which just happens to be how our eyes work... Also, the parent is right, black and white are NOT colors, they are merely the absorption or reflection of light. Color as we know it is defined by the presence of cones (as opposed to rods) in the retina. Cones are only sensitive to blue, green and red, while rods are sensitive to the darks and the lights (also known as tints when lightening, or shades when darkening.). (There are some people, though it is rare, who can see a fourth primary color.)
The same thing that happened to iSociale. After iCapitale started creeping through Russia, it was relegated to a much smaller amount of the world, though I hear a hacked version of it is still enjoying widespread circulation in China...
Or maybe this should read: In Soviet Russia, iCommune shares YOU...
That's very nice to say, but there's a WORLD of difference between being incredibly competent and being incredibly trustworthy.
I in no way intend to imply that the two are mutually exclusive, but there is no correlation between the two. And what's important in this case is the trustworthy aspect. I, like many Americans, don't have that much trust in the government. It's one of the great things about our country. (Skepticism, that is; it keeps us on our toes...)
Frozen Orange Juice concentrate is there to throw you off the track. If you really wanted to do this, you'd read the jolly roger, or the arsonist's cookbook. (I think those are the name's, it's been a long time...) They'll tell you specific things to use that are gelatin based that will accomplish a napalm like effect.
Note that the above conversation on bomb/anti-personnel weaponry is legal, while posting the DeCSS code is not...
This kind of reminds me of the whole ArtX Ars Technica thing awhile back... Is there anyway to verify that this AC didn't post from SCO? (Sorry if this is a troll)
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but everytime I see the counter-argument about the price of an iMac being a little bit more, it makes me want to set the record straight.
<Disclaimer>Yes, I have owned an iProduct. I traded an old development desktop of mine for an old iBook, and I loved it, but then I won a Tablet PC at Microsoft's launch event, and haven't been able to go back</Disclaimer>
What you fail to realize about most enthusiast PC owners is that they almost never buy a new PC. It's more of a rolling investment whereby they trickle in cash as they have it to upgrade whatever part happens to be lagging. This is often done at the rate of ~$100-$300 a purchase, where $300 is definitely a very high end purchase. So, in order to switch to an iSomething, a typical enthusiast PC owner (who has a "very fast box"(TM)), will have to save up enough for five to twenty instances of their regular purchase cycle (that's a lot!) in order to get something that has a similar performance level to what they're used to. (And make no mistakes, an enthusiast won't put out a large sum of money for something that's going to be slower.)
That's not just expensive, that's an entirely different economy! Owning apple hardware is like buying a new car every time the speed limit is raised... Granted, it isn't often, but when it happens, it really sucks to have to replace your machine.
Apple won't go down the constant stream of revenue path because they aren't the only ones who sell upgrades, and they like being the only ones who sell Apple computers. Often it makes more sense for a business to work in the service/stream model (just look at how all of the software companies are trying to get us to switch to software under the service model), but Apple doesn't like the loss of control.
Me, I'm in love with my tablet, and plan on selling it in order to buy a Centrino/Pentium-M tablet as soon as they're available (Hopefully, some company will come out with the enthusiast's model, and not just those dinky-900Mhz ULV models. Are you listening???) When Apple has their tablet available, I'll give it a shot, and maybe switch again, but then agian, I have a high paying job, and I'm not working within the confines of trickle purchasing...
True, privacy isn't a right, but what you're missing here is the issue. Why does the U.S. exist as it is? Because the framers of the constitution realized that a necessary part of government is change, and that change needs to be driven by the governed, and not the governers...
The main reason that privacy is important is that there needs to be a distinguishment between agencies of governmental change, and traitors. When there is the chance that you will be branded an enemy of the state (Terrorist), because of your desire to drive change, that is when your privacy is important.
The framers wanted to protect the rights of the people to be in control of government, which is why they valued such things as privacy in the home (No illegal search/seizure), and the right to bear arms (an armed populace is not a captive populace. And I do mean populace, as being armed doesn't prevent an individual from capture, but it's kind of hard to control the majority with a select few if the majority can defend themselves as a whole.)
For the first time in the history of America, it is now legal for the people in positions of power to abduct an agent of change under whatever auspices they choose, and not be held accountable for it, since they don't have to tell anybody, don't have to charge anyone, etc. [This has been done before, it's just the first time it's been legal.]
So, yes, you should be afraid! You should be trying to prevent this from happening! You should value your privacy! If you want to retain control of your own government, than you have to fight! If you don't, than soon those in positions of power will HAVE the power, rather than just WIELDING the power as an agent of the population...
Slashdot Mirror
Stolen Identity? When was the last time a videogame created a fake driver's license or some credit cards?
This is no different than if some prostitute in a Duke Nukem game was named "Lolly Pop", and an ex-employee of the Bunny Ranch sued to make some extra cash. Max Payne is fairly high up on the list of obvious names for an action star.
Guess it's time to fire up the incinerators... Let's see you stitch scan after a chemical change...
So, let's see. In the first incident mentioned, testimony comes from:
We're supposed to take the word of these obviously unbiased expert electrical engineers that EM interference was the cause of the error. A bunch of groups, some of which have glaringly obvious vested interests in not finding fault with the pilots, suddenly are a bunch of expert electrical engineers.
Even if if they didn't have ulterior motives, they aren't experts in EM, and we're supposed to take their word on the matter? Obviously not... And yet, that's what the author does, by presupposing that someone looking for a straw man constitutes any sort of "proof" of incidents. There's NO way that there could be a problem with the instruments, either in hardware in software, since we ALL know that hardware and software engineers are perfect, so it must've been that guy in first class with laptop...
While the author admits that the inflight ban of cell phones has nothing to do with interference reasons (it just makes life more difficult for the cell phone providers), he tries to justify fearmongering whithout any basis in fact...
What a waste of a read...
Though, in truth, it depends on where you're talking about the friction. The ideal wheel has infinite surface friction, zero rotational(axle) friction, and infinite friction between it and the drive train... (Though one-way friction is more useful for the drive train, allow coastin a la clutch down...)
You think you jest... Here in France, the drive-thru didn't exist before McDonalds came, so they called it a "McDrive" and trademarked the name...
For each song sold to an individual, there is a chance they will buy the rest of the album based on liking that initial song. For those who didn't take the risk of buying that whole album, they can find out from those who did (friends, family, newsgroups, press, etc.) and change their mind.
It's the same way we found out about that kid with the star wars/lightsaber video. Someone found out about it, liked it, and told others.
If it truly is a work of art, as they suggest, it will stand on it's own merit and be viewed as such.
The artists this has the most chance of hurting is the one-hit wonder, who depends on the purchase of either a $7 single for that one song, or the $22 album (bought via retail.)
On the other hand, that one-hit wonder is currently dependent on the media companies who offer up very strict contracts for unproven artists where that 8% has various cuts taken off the top. As smaller labels gain access to electronic distributers, the artists' share will hopefully rise enough to offset the lower volume (less middlemen, and lower (zero) distribution costs, since the distribution cost is shouldered by the electronic distributer).
I fold paper (Origami)... There's even a convention next weekend in New York (Manhattan)...
This definitely reminds me of a blonde chick I once knew....
<ducks>European Software Patents
I live in Buttfuck, Idaho, you insensitive clod!
No really... Go look it up...
I'd actually kind of hope that MSOffice goes sooner than later... If it does, than you'll see a mad rush from Apple to update OpenOffice to have Apple's legendary smoothness. Don't get me wrong, I use OpenOffice, but it's not quite there yet...
Alternatively, they may already have something like this up their sleeves... Just look at Keynote...
One important thing to note is the group who left JBoss (I think they're called Core Something or other now) started their own company.
I've read tons of post that complain about the recession, and how you'd be screwing yourself out of a job. That's defeatist thinking from the start. If the only way you can imagine yourself making a living is by finding some company to hire you, than you will more often than not one of the beleagured and put upon.
Start a company, write a book, change professions... Join a commune, join peace corps, join geek corps...
There will be a recession as long as people are not sufficiently motivated to go out and make a change for themselves. Industrialized nations produce far more output than is necessary for the sustenance of their citizens. Booms happen when there is a high rate of transfer/churn of the money that does exist. Conversely, busts happen, when everyone freezes up, gets scared, and stops taking the risks necessary to keep things smoothly flowing.
I realize that some or all of the options I mentioned may not be possible for YOU, but if you aren't willing to look for other options at all, than your complaints will fall on deaf ears.
Note: This economics mentioned here are grossly oversimplified, but that doesn't make them untrue...
I have a couple of Tablet PCs. The handwriting recognition that comes with Tablet PC is largely useless
It's not useless, it's not even largely useless. I'm not gonna say that it's not severely flawed, but if you understand it, it's very usable. For handwriting recognition for me, it's near perfect. When it doesn't work is when I'm not typing in english (commands, or slang, etc...). Being aware of this, if you have the input panel set to two lines, you can enter commands a character at a time, alternating between the two lines. (Using standard letters, not graffiti)
What truly intrigues me are applications like this. It's a math application called MathJournal, where you write in equations, and then the computer will draw them. I'd like to see similar treatment for writing code...
I kind of agree, If I had the time, I'd work on a cross-platform "ink" standard (if for no other reason than so I could write a GAIM plugin that handled ink :-) ). But I just wanted to note that Adobe Acrobat does support inking (I'm not sure what version it started with...) I have Adobe Acrobat (not the reader), and I've inked documents before emailing before...
I'm going to go down a slightly different path, since black is easier to explain than white. If you turn off all light in a room, (and I do mean all light. Imagine the "perfect" darkroom.) Are you seeing a color called black? No. You are not seeing anything at all, yet you perceive what we think of as black. Which is lack of light Anything that we see and think of as black, we're not actually seeing, since no light is being reflected off that object and making it's way into you eye. What we "see" is the absence of light. Hence, by definition, black is the lack of all color.
You can set up a similar experiment for white, but it's much harder to come across a light source that emits all frequencies of light. (The sun does this, but it's way too strong to use in this kind of experiment.)
And if she were talking about a subtractive color wheel, she'd be right. Green is only a primary color in the additive color wheel (light), which just happens to be how our eyes work... Also, the parent is right, black and white are NOT colors, they are merely the absorption or reflection of light. Color as we know it is defined by the presence of cones (as opposed to rods) in the retina. Cones are only sensitive to blue, green and red, while rods are sensitive to the darks and the lights (also known as tints when lightening, or shades when darkening.). (There are some people, though it is rare, who can see a fourth primary color.)
The same thing that happened to iSociale. After iCapitale started creeping through Russia, it was relegated to a much smaller amount of the world, though I hear a hacked version of it is still enjoying widespread circulation in China...
Or maybe this should read: In Soviet Russia, iCommune shares YOU...
That's very nice to say, but there's a WORLD of difference between being incredibly competent and being incredibly trustworthy.
I in no way intend to imply that the two are mutually exclusive, but there is no correlation between the two. And what's important in this case is the trustworthy aspect. I, like many Americans, don't have that much trust in the government. It's one of the great things about our country. (Skepticism, that is; it keeps us on our toes...)
Frozen Orange Juice concentrate is there to throw you off the track. If you really wanted to do this, you'd read the jolly roger, or the arsonist's cookbook. (I think those are the name's, it's been a long time...) They'll tell you specific things to use that are gelatin based that will accomplish a napalm like effect.
Note that the above conversation on bomb/anti-personnel weaponry is legal, while posting the DeCSS code is not...
Why not? FIRST POST!!!
(Sorry, please mod me down, I just had to, this once...)
Ohhh... so you're the dick who kept me from testing out that home theatre set up...
This kind of reminds me of the whole ArtX Ars Technica thing awhile back... Is there anyway to verify that this AC didn't post from SCO? (Sorry if this is a troll)
I know this is somewhat offtopic, but everytime I see the counter-argument about the price of an iMac being a little bit more, it makes me want to set the record straight.
<Disclaimer>Yes, I have owned an iProduct. I traded an old development desktop of mine for an old iBook, and I loved it, but then I won a Tablet PC at Microsoft's launch event, and haven't been able to go back</Disclaimer>
What you fail to realize about most enthusiast PC owners is that they almost never buy a new PC. It's more of a rolling investment whereby they trickle in cash as they have it to upgrade whatever part happens to be lagging. This is often done at the rate of ~$100-$300 a purchase, where $300 is definitely a very high end purchase. So, in order to switch to an iSomething, a typical enthusiast PC owner (who has a "very fast box"(TM)), will have to save up enough for five to twenty instances of their regular purchase cycle (that's a lot!) in order to get something that has a similar performance level to what they're used to. (And make no mistakes, an enthusiast won't put out a large sum of money for something that's going to be slower.)
That's not just expensive, that's an entirely different economy! Owning apple hardware is like buying a new car every time the speed limit is raised... Granted, it isn't often, but when it happens, it really sucks to have to replace your machine.
Apple won't go down the constant stream of revenue path because they aren't the only ones who sell upgrades, and they like being the only ones who sell Apple computers. Often it makes more sense for a business to work in the service/stream model (just look at how all of the software companies are trying to get us to switch to software under the service model), but Apple doesn't like the loss of control.
Me, I'm in love with my tablet, and plan on selling it in order to buy a Centrino/Pentium-M tablet as soon as they're available (Hopefully, some company will come out with the enthusiast's model, and not just those dinky-900Mhz ULV models. Are you listening???) When Apple has their tablet available, I'll give it a shot, and maybe switch again, but then agian, I have a high paying job, and I'm not working within the confines of trickle purchasing...
True, privacy isn't a right, but what you're missing here is the issue. Why does the U.S. exist as it is? Because the framers of the constitution realized that a necessary part of government is change, and that change needs to be driven by the governed, and not the governers...
The main reason that privacy is important is that there needs to be a distinguishment between agencies of governmental change, and traitors. When there is the chance that you will be branded an enemy of the state (Terrorist), because of your desire to drive change, that is when your privacy is important.
The framers wanted to protect the rights of the people to be in control of government, which is why they valued such things as privacy in the home (No illegal search/seizure), and the right to bear arms (an armed populace is not a captive populace. And I do mean populace, as being armed doesn't prevent an individual from capture, but it's kind of hard to control the majority with a select few if the majority can defend themselves as a whole.)
For the first time in the history of America, it is now legal for the people in positions of power to abduct an agent of change under whatever auspices they choose, and not be held accountable for it, since they don't have to tell anybody, don't have to charge anyone, etc. [This has been done before, it's just the first time it's been legal.]
So, yes, you should be afraid! You should be trying to prevent this from happening! You should value your privacy! If you want to retain control of your own government, than you have to fight! If you don't, than soon those in positions of power will HAVE the power, rather than just WIELDING the power as an agent of the population...