I find this difficult to believe. It means that just about everyone with broadband has downloaded movies. I guess I'm just a stick-in-the-mud but I haven't and no one I have asked has either.
I think they are pushing the stats to make the situation look worse than it is. By a LOT.
Not that I like people stealing movies, cause I don't. I doubt if any person in a creative art that can be ripped off is much in favor of having their work used and not compensate them for it. Not if they make a living that way.
Punch cards! You had punch cards? WE had to program with the toggle switches on the front panel and if we were lucky we knew the boot loader for the paper tape reader by heart and had it down to 20 bytes. And that was on a GOOD day when the bit 7 position switch wasn't stuck in the off position and we had to enter the alternate boot loader that was 86 bytes.
Aviation Week and Space Technology, MacWorld, Sky and Telescope, Sunset, Undersea Warfare, Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval Submarine League Journal, The New Yorker, Fantasy and Science Fiction, plus four newspapers: SF Chronical, Sacramento Bee, Wall Street Journal and the Davis Enterprise. I read the NY Times and Washington Post online.
I desperately miss the original Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calesthenics and Orthodontia (Running Light without Overbyte). Totally wonderful magazine.
The Element, a car designed to appeal to the 20-something crowd but which is a big hit in the 40 and 50 set as well (some market research Honda did on THAT) already supports an iPod through the connector on EX versions. Doesn't even have to be an iPod.
Sure, it's not tailored into the car's steering wheel. But as an owner of a 1998 540i I'm here to say that the new models stink. You shouldn't have to qualify on your car like you do to operate, say, the reactor plant on a nuclear submarine.
So while BMW may integrate the iPod pretty well, it's barking up the wrong tree with iDrive (ick) and the new 5's.
Child porn hurts children. It's a business with two sides: vendors and subscribers. If only one side is present there is no transaction and children will not be exploited because it won't be profitable.
So...viewing child porn is a part of the problem. Children must be protected against exploitation by adults - its why we have child labor laws in most first-world countries.
In the United States there is a Supreme Court decision that clearly allows for the definition of child porn as prohibited speech.
What to DO with those who both use and create child pornography is a more complex problem. The last time I looked there is no known way to cure a pedophile. It is how their sexuality is wired. Many will want to find and use children. Many will not. For the pornographers themselves - toss them in jail and go after their assets as if they were drug dealers (they are).
Personally I'm in favor of real asylums for those whose desires are incompatible with the world. They do not need to be punished, they need to be isolated. Which means decent living accomodations, a setting that is more campus-like - except it is isolated - protecting society from them AND them from society.
At least a military aircraft would be designed for the maneuvers required to fight forest fires.
But really, these machines are VAST, and are turbojets the right engines for low-altitude use? I don't think so. You want an engine optimized for close-to-the-ground operation, that will spool up quickly so you have power when you need it.
One of the great things about the Pixar films is their extraordinary reach. They talk to BOTH children and adults - different depth - something for the kids all the time but in the background are stories that resonate with adulthood.
Pixar understands how to write, how to make wonderful artistic settings, and how to blend those two together.
I wonder if the folks who find Pixar films the most unsettling might be adolescents who are disturbed by the simultaneous response of both child and adult within themselves.
I don't miss Pixar films. They have always been worthwhile. And their shorts are pretty darn wonderful also! And they certainly rate as "serious film" even though they have a G rating.
I don't see this as a privacy problem. You aren't tracking individuals, just events.
It's very much like the traffic counters on highways. I haven't heard of anyone getting all upset about those although I'm sure there are a few wild-eyed zealots who seem them as a vast government conspiracy.
As long as you simply track a passing event: body moving past a particlation location, and don't provide a technology which can be used to identify the passer-by then I don't think you have an issue.
However, if you used something like video then you might have more of a probem, even if the camera was only used for motion sensing.
Of course the researchers and designers of space probes bond with them: they have put huge parts of their lives into making those complex system function and have sent them vast distances. They have to care because the machine represents a vast amount of intellect.
I was in the submarine service, reported to a boat in new construction, road her down the ways, watched her go from a nearly empty tube (forward of the reactor compartment) to a fully functioning warship. I was on watch during initial criticality, during her first dive, her first surface. I KNEW her, as only the crew of a new vessel can know. I knew the people who built her, who tested her, and (of course) who operated her.
She will be decommissioned this summer. I'll go. It will be a sad time, to watch the life of a vessel end. She's the last of her kind.
I'm sure the designers and mission planners and researchers will feel much the same when Spirit and Opportunity go silent. They SHOULD - they earned the caring.
I have never felt that way about any computer I have ever owned. And definately NOT about a piece of software.
Re:As an ex-commercial photographer
on
Beyond Megapixels
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
1. Storing data in RAW format is always a good thing for non-casual users. But for many jpeg files are all they will ever use.
I think all high-quality cameras now can store RAW image formats.
2. Store at the highest resolution. Well, maybe, although it's a great way to save memory which ain't cheap or as large as I'd like to have it yet.
3. If you can shoot in RAW mode then you don't need the camera to do white-balance and you can do it in the computer where you have the horsepower and GUI to do it right.
4. I disagree. It's really nice to have a full manual mode but even Leica came to realize the joy of having Aperture Priority which many Leica shoots live in on the M7.
5. An on-camera flash is useful for fill and is a keeper
If you haven't held and played with a Leica Digilux 2 you should. It is a wonderful camera that works exactly like a film camera. Unfortunately they used an electronic view finder instead of a real range finder. Sigh.
As for manuals, even the M6 has a manual although it's only 20 pages long and in 4 or 5 languages.
Re:Aren't we still in an Ice Age?
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
Okay - water can be liquid AND solid at 32 okay? And ice is always water, just not a liquid.
Sheesh.
There are changes going on - we just aren't good enough to know what those changes will be. BUT...our climate is always changing even without people.
People just make it more exciting.
There's some real science to back up the premise
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 1
Although the film takes the most extreme view and amps it up by the usual 3 or 4 orders of magnitude there is some very real science behind it.
A UC Davis researcher was on KDVS (the University free-form radio station - gotta LOVE that) this week about how they are looking at ocean-bottom sediment core samples. His research was only for the last 100,000 years but they are able to see changes in salinity by looking at the mix of tiny critters which make up the ocean bottom sediment, and that there is a definite "ON" and "OFF" state to these deep ocean currents.
Although he panned the book behind all of this as "over-wrought", the researcher said the theory behind the "ocean conveyor" was sound.
If you're interested you might contact KDVS through the ucdavis.edu web site and see if there is a recording of the program available. It was actually a good interview -- vastly better than PBS's miserable "Science Friday". They asked smart questions and elicited interesting answers.
I believe the program played early this week about 0900 PDT.
The first place I ran into Adventure was on a floppy disk based LSI-11/03 (maybe a/23) running RT-11 down in the plasma physics lab. The version of Adventure was a HEAVILY overlayed FORTRAN version.
And I was totally hooked.
The worlds built by these games make them a hot medium. They exist in your mind. The Hall of the Mountain King is still there.
I guess everyone wants to blast car-jackers or aliens. I'd rather play a great Adventure game.
I keep wondering if there's more to all of this than merely a set of isolated viruses released into the wild.
If you want to destabilize an economy, say the West, then go after the computer networks that bind it together and which make it both different, free, and vulnerable.
There are lots of bits and pieces being assembled. What if this is part of something larger and we're only seeing the perfection of the pieces and a bit of guiding of the immune system toward another goal?
Yeah, maybe I'm not wearing my tin hat, but some things seem to be acting too well...or too badly.
It's amazing to me that musicians haven't connected all the dots to make something better.
No one MAKES recording artists sign with big labels or even smaller ones. The major labels don't own all the recording studios in the world. They don't even have the lock on distribution.
So what part of the current model is works so well that artists feel obliged to make use of it? And why hasn't someone built a better mousetrap? Why haven't YOU?
I know it's been quite a while since I've played a CD. I RIP to my iPod or my Mac. I listen to audio books when I drive. On the radio I listen to PBS and baseball. I buy most music from the iTunes store or, if they don't have it, I buy the CD.
Yeah, I buy music. I don't like stealing someone's creativity and I won't make up excuses for doing it by whining about the distribution process. BUT...I'd rather see a system that gave more bucks to the artist, it's just that artists don't seem smart enough to find ways to do that.
Even if Google were an individual, completely alturistic, there would be conflicts between Google's mission and that of others who want to use it.
So within the legal/technical ecosystem that makes up the United States, the internet, and the world there is no "perfect" behavior: someone will ALWAYS be pissed off.
I found myself worrying about surface contamination as she walked through the buildings and on the tires of her motorcycle. She wasn't wearing gloves as she walked through the buildings nor booties.
She was very concerned about monitoring the direct radiation but what she might have stirred up is another issue. I hope she checked.
The core didn't melt - caught FIRE. The reactor used carbon moderation and the carbon caught fire and carried the fuel with it's fission fragments into the air.
Slashdot Mirror
I find this difficult to believe. It means that just about everyone with broadband has downloaded movies. I guess I'm just a stick-in-the-mud but I haven't and no one I have asked has either.
I think they are pushing the stats to make the situation look worse than it is. By a LOT.
Not that I like people stealing movies, cause I don't. I doubt if any person in a creative art that can be ripped off is much in favor of having their work used and not compensate them for it. Not if they make a living that way.
Punch cards! You had punch cards? WE had to program with the toggle switches on the front panel and if we were lucky we knew the boot loader for the paper tape reader by heart and had it down to 20 bytes. And that was on a GOOD day when the bit 7 position switch wasn't stuck in the off position and we had to enter the alternate boot loader that was 86 bytes.
Aviation Week and Space Technology, MacWorld, Sky and Telescope, Sunset, Undersea Warfare, Naval Institute Proceedings, Naval Submarine League Journal, The New Yorker, Fantasy and Science Fiction, plus four newspapers: SF Chronical, Sacramento Bee, Wall Street Journal and the Davis Enterprise. I read the NY Times and Washington Post online.
I desperately miss the original Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calesthenics and Orthodontia (Running Light without Overbyte). Totally wonderful magazine.
The Element, a car designed to appeal to the 20-something crowd but which is a big hit in the 40 and 50 set as well (some market research Honda did on THAT) already supports an iPod through the connector on EX versions. Doesn't even have to be an iPod.
Sure, it's not tailored into the car's steering wheel. But as an owner of a 1998 540i I'm here to say that the new models stink. You shouldn't have to qualify on your car like you do to operate, say, the reactor plant on a nuclear submarine.
So while BMW may integrate the iPod pretty well, it's barking up the wrong tree with iDrive (ick) and the new 5's.
And as an art form it takes more than just a properly exposed photo to be worthwhile.
Digital makes it easier/cheaper to make images, but it takes a thoughtful appraisal and work to make very good ones.
I encourage everyone to try - and save the precious ones that will mean something to you in future years.
Child porn hurts children. It's a business with two sides: vendors and subscribers. If only one side is present there is no transaction and children will not be exploited because it won't be profitable.
So...viewing child porn is a part of the problem. Children must be protected against exploitation by adults - its why we have child labor laws in most first-world countries.
In the United States there is a Supreme Court decision that clearly allows for the definition of child porn as prohibited speech.
What to DO with those who both use and create child pornography is a more complex problem. The last time I looked there is no known way to cure a pedophile. It is how their sexuality is wired. Many will want to find and use children. Many will not. For the pornographers themselves - toss them in jail and go after their assets as if they were drug dealers (they are).
Personally I'm in favor of real asylums for those whose desires are incompatible with the world. They do not need to be punished, they need to be isolated. Which means decent living accomodations, a setting that is more campus-like - except it is isolated - protecting society from them AND them from society.
Let's see, here's what they say:
"Without anonymity there can never be true freedom of speech, and without decentralization the network will be vulnerable to attack."
Freedom of speech also hinges on the responsibility of the speaker. If you can say it you should own it. Otherwise the lies have no accountability.
Adam Bridge
At least a military aircraft would be designed for the maneuvers required to fight forest fires.
But really, these machines are VAST, and are turbojets the right engines for low-altitude use? I don't think so. You want an engine optimized for close-to-the-ground operation, that will spool up quickly so you have power when you need it.
Fun image
One of the great things about the Pixar films is their extraordinary reach. They talk to BOTH children and adults - different depth - something for the kids all the time but in the background are stories that resonate with adulthood.
Pixar understands how to write, how to make wonderful artistic settings, and how to blend those two together.
I wonder if the folks who find Pixar films the most unsettling might be adolescents who are disturbed by the simultaneous response of both child and adult within themselves.
I don't miss Pixar films. They have always been worthwhile. And their shorts are pretty darn wonderful also! And they certainly rate as "serious film" even though they have a G rating.
I don't see this as a privacy problem. You aren't tracking individuals, just events.
It's very much like the traffic counters on highways. I haven't heard of anyone getting all upset about those although I'm sure there are a few wild-eyed zealots who seem them as a vast government conspiracy.
As long as you simply track a passing event: body moving past a particlation location, and don't provide a technology which can be used to identify the passer-by then I don't think you have an issue.
However, if you used something like video then you might have more of a probem, even if the camera was only used for motion sensing.
Of course the researchers and designers of space probes bond with them: they have put huge parts of their lives into making those complex system function and have sent them vast distances. They have to care because the machine represents a vast amount of intellect.
I was in the submarine service, reported to a boat in new construction, road her down the ways, watched her go from a nearly empty tube (forward of the reactor compartment) to a fully functioning warship. I was on watch during initial criticality, during her first dive, her first surface. I KNEW her, as only the crew of a new vessel can know. I knew the people who built her, who tested her, and (of course) who operated her.
She will be decommissioned this summer. I'll go. It will be a sad time, to watch the life of a vessel end. She's the last of her kind.
I'm sure the designers and mission planners and researchers will feel much the same when Spirit and Opportunity go silent. They SHOULD - they earned the caring.
I have never felt that way about any computer I have ever owned. And definately NOT about a piece of software.
1. Storing data in RAW format is always a good thing for non-casual users. But for many jpeg files are all they will ever use.
I think all high-quality cameras now can store RAW image formats.
2. Store at the highest resolution. Well, maybe, although it's a great way to save memory which ain't cheap or as large as I'd like to have it yet.
3. If you can shoot in RAW mode then you don't need the camera to do white-balance and you can do it in the computer where you have the horsepower and GUI to do it right.
4. I disagree. It's really nice to have a full manual mode but even Leica came to realize the joy of having Aperture Priority which many Leica shoots live in on the M7.
5. An on-camera flash is useful for fill and is a keeper
If you haven't held and played with a Leica Digilux 2 you should. It is a wonderful camera that works exactly like a film camera. Unfortunately they used an electronic view finder instead of a real range finder. Sigh.
As for manuals, even the M6 has a manual although it's only 20 pages long and in 4 or 5 languages.
Okay - water can be liquid AND solid at 32 okay? And ice is always water, just not a liquid.
Sheesh.
There are changes going on - we just aren't good enough to know what those changes will be. BUT...our climate is always changing even without people.
People just make it more exciting.
Although the film takes the most extreme view and amps it up by the usual 3 or 4 orders of magnitude there is some very real science behind it.
A UC Davis researcher was on KDVS (the University free-form radio station - gotta LOVE that) this week about how they are looking at ocean-bottom sediment core samples. His research was only for the last 100,000 years but they are able to see changes in salinity by looking at the mix of tiny critters which make up the ocean bottom sediment, and that there is a definite "ON" and "OFF" state to these deep ocean currents.
Although he panned the book behind all of this as "over-wrought", the researcher said the theory behind the "ocean conveyor" was sound.
If you're interested you might contact KDVS through the ucdavis.edu web site and see if there is a recording of the program available. It was actually a good interview -- vastly better than PBS's miserable "Science Friday". They asked smart questions and elicited interesting answers.
I believe the program played early this week about 0900 PDT.
The first place I ran into Adventure was on a floppy disk based LSI-11/03 (maybe a /23) running RT-11 down in the plasma physics lab. The version of Adventure was a HEAVILY overlayed FORTRAN version.
And I was totally hooked.
The worlds built by these games make them a hot medium. They exist in your mind. The Hall of the Mountain King is still there.
I guess everyone wants to blast car-jackers or aliens. I'd rather play a great Adventure game.
Of COURSE you can - you burn the song to a CD and then rip it as an MP3.
Are you stupid or just lazy?
You break the law there should be consequences, even if you don't like the law. You COULD work to change it.
And you're wrong: it's stealing intellectual property. Oh, you can split hairs but you've made a fundamental violation.
Of course they guys are only making copies for their own personal use, right? HAHAHA - and I have some ocean beach land in Utah for you too.
These arguments just don't pass muster.
Get a life.
Gee, Neal Stephenson's new book, sequel to "Quicksilver" comes out and you have to run and do a "spin plug" for it.
SHAME
I'm assuming that when you talk about Algol descendents you're speaking about block-structured languages in general.
Although you can replace { with BEGIN and } with END you do NOT have an Algol language in C.
I suppose you could go back to FORTRAN IV.
But I assert that the relationship between C and Algol is about the same as C and FORTRAN.
I keep wondering if there's more to all of this than merely a set of isolated viruses released into the wild.
If you want to destabilize an economy, say the West, then go after the computer networks that bind it together and which make it both different, free, and vulnerable.
There are lots of bits and pieces being assembled. What if this is part of something larger and we're only seeing the perfection of the pieces and a bit of guiding of the immune system toward another goal?
Yeah, maybe I'm not wearing my tin hat, but some things seem to be acting too well...or too badly.
It's amazing to me that musicians haven't connected all the dots to make something better.
No one MAKES recording artists sign with big labels or even smaller ones. The major labels don't own all the recording studios in the world. They don't even have the lock on distribution.
So what part of the current model is works so well that artists feel obliged to make use of it? And why hasn't someone built a better mousetrap? Why haven't YOU?
I know it's been quite a while since I've played a CD. I RIP to my iPod or my Mac. I listen to audio books when I drive. On the radio I listen to PBS and baseball. I buy most music from the iTunes store or, if they don't have it, I buy the CD.
Yeah, I buy music. I don't like stealing someone's creativity and I won't make up excuses for doing it by whining about the distribution process. BUT...I'd rather see a system that gave more bucks to the artist, it's just that artists don't seem smart enough to find ways to do that.
Even if Google were an individual, completely alturistic, there would be conflicts between Google's mission and that of others who want to use it.
So within the legal/technical ecosystem that makes up the United States, the internet, and the world there is no "perfect" behavior: someone will ALWAYS be pissed off.
I found myself worrying about surface contamination as she walked through the buildings and on the tires of her motorcycle. She wasn't wearing gloves as she walked through the buildings nor booties.
She was very concerned about monitoring the direct radiation but what she might have stirred up is another issue. I hope she checked.
The core didn't melt - caught FIRE. The reactor used carbon moderation and the carbon caught fire and carried the fuel with it's fission fragments into the air.
Most radioactive waste, by Curie, comes from spent fuel, whether directly from fission or otherwise.
When I wrote "decay upward" I was thinking of the binding energy chart so you are absolutely right and I was mistaken.