"The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' "
If it's really crap like you say, is it really worth listening to at all? Why even download it "for free" if you think it's crap? It just sounds like a sad excuse to download. There are alternatives to "Big 4" music, unfortunately, sometimes the anti-RIAA crowds neglect to mention them.
GPS isn't necessary. E911 location is probably "good enough" for this type of location and it's in every phone right now. I woudn't go for it because both systems suck down batteries. Another reason I wouldn't want to participate in a program that would help the Department of Fatherland Security anyway, they'll probably find some way to get unfettered access to the information.
People have been killing each other in the absense of American weapons for millennia. All that's needed to kill is a rock. Sometimes not even that. The abundance of rocks suitable for killing probably doesn't cause the demand for weaponized rocks. The same with pointy sticks. I think it's basic human nature. People with any sort of power are willing to kill to keep it. Others wanting power are willing to kill for it. The same goes for resources. It's quite a vicious feedback loop, but the availability of a weapon isn't the root cause.
I also really don't think it's fair to single out US weapons suppliers when probably every country that makes weapons sells them too. Russia, China, France, the UK and maybe every other "major" country exports weapons.
I don't think touchscreens will be a good idea on all desktops. Still, I think I would use it a lot. I would probably want the screen to be at a 15 degree tilt from horizontal, rather than vertical, then it would kind of work in a manner reminiscent of drafting tables.
People generally accept jet aircraft. I don't know why you mention cross continental walking. That's beside my point. I'm just pointing out that there's a significant political and societal hurdle for "jet packs", even if the technological ones are fixed. As yet, I don't think any "jet pack" has operated for more than 30 seconds at a time.
I used to watch that show a lot, but I don't remember a single story segment. The show is still available, under the name "Beyond Tomorrow" on the Discovery & Discovery Science Channel. Sometimes they provide updates and show parts of a previous story on a given company that ran on B2000. Beyond Tomorrow is re-run quite a bit, I don't remember seeing a new episode in several months if not longer.
I really haven't seen a lot of that kind of vandalism. It seems like slashdotters are trying hard to find reasons when it wouldn't work when other display systems would have most of the same problems under the same circumstances.
They aren't total outages like you seem to think. There is redundancy. The internet is slower in those areas because some of their links are severed, but it's not out.
A lot of people aren't liking the noise of jet aircraft, which is still pretty loud despite advancements in noise reduction. I can't imagine a whole lot of people liking to wake up to the rumble of a 130+ dB jet pack being fired in their neighbor's driveway.
I think the car battery thing was a gripe about the Intrepid that they had on the show. Car batteries usually last a pretty long time, and they pack a lot of stuff under the hood, so it's probably not that terrible of a place to put it. I think they do provide jump-start terminals right under the hood.
Desktops have plenty of room, size and weight aren't a concern. You can have liters of dead space and it doesn't matter. If space and weight did matter, then we wouldn't be stuck with full height cards and space for full-length boards.
Notebooks need a heck of a lot of optimization to fit that power into a space that's less than 2" thick and a carryable weight. Sure, there's MXM for video, but that's only part of the problem.
Macs certainly do crash on occasion. Given that a Mac with only Apple software would be quite frustratingly limited to use, I wouldn't know if that would help at all. It's certainly not often enough that I'll give up third party software, I'd probably give up Macs first.
I think iPhones are a bit more constrained in some ways, it's a portable computer, but a handset platform like that doesn't necessarily have hardware preemptive multitasking to assure that the device can recover from an errant program.
Also, the rumor was that the iPhone was behind in development anyway, they might have decided they needed to put an SDK on the backburner, and they even backburnered Leopard by reassinging Leopard coders to iPhone just to push the thing out the door.
Game consoles aren't sold as general purpose computers. The hardware is purely a means to an end, what they're really trying to sell is the games. With the Wii, they're still hard enough to get in many places, I don't think they want to sell them to people that aren't going to be buying the games. With the other two consoles, they're sold at a loss with the intent that it will be made up for in licence fees, so it's not necessarily in their best interest to let you do just anything with them.
I thought the studies I saw suggested that talking on the phone is a bit worse than talking with passengers. At least the adult passengers can see the circumstances and have a chance to shut up if the situation is tight. Someone on the other end of the line isn't going to get that. Also, an adult riding with you might notice things the driver misses. But talking can be a distraction, no matter who it is or where they are.
I think it's your kind of arrogance that is more dangerous. Your comment suggests that government can do no wrong. Yes, there are smart and honest people in government, but it's not those people that necesssarily have the power, it's the corrupt ones. If you think judges are impartial, I think that's quite naive.
Democratically elected governments do not remain so for very long if they are allowed to muzzle citizens and the media.
Slashdot Mirror
But that says nothing to the argument. All I see in your post is an ad hominem argument.
Google + Yahoo! wouldn't fly with the antitrust regulators.
And they would automatically let Yahoo! + MS through?
Are there specific reasons to not like Google?
"The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' "
If it's really crap like you say, is it really worth listening to at all? Why even download it "for free" if you think it's crap? It just sounds like a sad excuse to download. There are alternatives to "Big 4" music, unfortunately, sometimes the anti-RIAA crowds neglect to mention them.
GPS isn't necessary. E911 location is probably "good enough" for this type of location and it's in every phone right now. I woudn't go for it because both systems suck down batteries. Another reason I wouldn't want to participate in a program that would help the Department of Fatherland Security anyway, they'll probably find some way to get unfettered access to the information.
Quiet now. We don't need our senators to know that.
OK, it's not that big of a deal.
Sure, I can see the NFL doing this, but are cops really going to go to churches and bust people for it?
If the NFL presses a lawful charge, then I can see that. If the NFL gets a judgment in their favor and the church violates it, then yes.
Dude, I DID read the article. No thanks to you for the asinine and flippant accusation suggesting otherwise.
The article seems to suggest that the cell tower was 16 miles away. I'm just saying that's pretty impressive range.
People have been killing each other in the absense of American weapons for millennia. All that's needed to kill is a rock. Sometimes not even that. The abundance of rocks suitable for killing probably doesn't cause the demand for weaponized rocks. The same with pointy sticks. I think it's basic human nature. People with any sort of power are willing to kill to keep it. Others wanting power are willing to kill for it. The same goes for resources. It's quite a vicious feedback loop, but the availability of a weapon isn't the root cause.
I also really don't think it's fair to single out US weapons suppliers when probably every country that makes weapons sells them too. Russia, China, France, the UK and maybe every other "major" country exports weapons.
I'm surprised they can get the range they are getting from the cell tower they're using.
I read the entire article you linked. It doesn't look like the guy is out of trouble yet.
I don't think touchscreens will be a good idea on all desktops. Still, I think I would use it a lot. I would probably want the screen to be at a 15 degree tilt from horizontal, rather than vertical, then it would kind of work in a manner reminiscent of drafting tables.
People generally accept jet aircraft. I don't know why you mention cross continental walking. That's beside my point. I'm just pointing out that there's a significant political and societal hurdle for "jet packs", even if the technological ones are fixed. As yet, I don't think any "jet pack" has operated for more than 30 seconds at a time.
I used to watch that show a lot, but I don't remember a single story segment. The show is still available, under the name "Beyond Tomorrow" on the Discovery & Discovery Science Channel. Sometimes they provide updates and show parts of a previous story on a given company that ran on B2000. Beyond Tomorrow is re-run quite a bit, I don't remember seeing a new episode in several months if not longer.
I really haven't seen a lot of that kind of vandalism. It seems like slashdotters are trying hard to find reasons when it wouldn't work when other display systems would have most of the same problems under the same circumstances.
They aren't total outages like you seem to think. There is redundancy. The internet is slower in those areas because some of their links are severed, but it's not out.
A lot of people aren't liking the noise of jet aircraft, which is still pretty loud despite advancements in noise reduction. I can't imagine a whole lot of people liking to wake up to the rumble of a 130+ dB jet pack being fired in their neighbor's driveway.
I think the car battery thing was a gripe about the Intrepid that they had on the show. Car batteries usually last a pretty long time, and they pack a lot of stuff under the hood, so it's probably not that terrible of a place to put it. I think they do provide jump-start terminals right under the hood.
Desktops have plenty of room, size and weight aren't a concern. You can have liters of dead space and it doesn't matter. If space and weight did matter, then we wouldn't be stuck with full height cards and space for full-length boards.
Notebooks need a heck of a lot of optimization to fit that power into a space that's less than 2" thick and a carryable weight. Sure, there's MXM for video, but that's only part of the problem.
They can't go back to forcing people to "re-buy" music every few years.
They never had it like that. It wasn't more often than once a decade, and most music isn't and wasn't worth rebuying anyway.
Macs certainly do crash on occasion. Given that a Mac with only Apple software would be quite frustratingly limited to use, I wouldn't know if that would help at all. It's certainly not often enough that I'll give up third party software, I'd probably give up Macs first.
I think iPhones are a bit more constrained in some ways, it's a portable computer, but a handset platform like that doesn't necessarily have hardware preemptive multitasking to assure that the device can recover from an errant program.
Also, the rumor was that the iPhone was behind in development anyway, they might have decided they needed to put an SDK on the backburner, and they even backburnered Leopard by reassinging Leopard coders to iPhone just to push the thing out the door.
Game consoles aren't sold as general purpose computers. The hardware is purely a means to an end, what they're really trying to sell is the games. With the Wii, they're still hard enough to get in many places, I don't think they want to sell them to people that aren't going to be buying the games. With the other two consoles, they're sold at a loss with the intent that it will be made up for in licence fees, so it's not necessarily in their best interest to let you do just anything with them.
I thought the studies I saw suggested that talking on the phone is a bit worse than talking with passengers. At least the adult passengers can see the circumstances and have a chance to shut up if the situation is tight. Someone on the other end of the line isn't going to get that. Also, an adult riding with you might notice things the driver misses. But talking can be a distraction, no matter who it is or where they are.
I think it's your kind of arrogance that is more dangerous. Your comment suggests that government can do no wrong. Yes, there are smart and honest people in government, but it's not those people that necesssarily have the power, it's the corrupt ones. If you think judges are impartial, I think that's quite naive.
Democratically elected governments do not remain so for very long if they are allowed to muzzle citizens and the media.