The problems that you describe can in large part be attributed to phishing and resulting stolen eBay accounts. I used to work at eBay and we knew very well that the mob (primarily eastern European) was the major player in phishing. However, there was nothing that we could do. We weren't a law enforcement body and had no jurisdiction or even proof that something was up until the first complaint by a buyer that had actually been scammed by a hacked account. Then we'd immediately pull the auctions and freeze it.
The number of hacked accounts thanks to phishing ran into the tens of thousands PER DAY. I can only imagine the nightmare the banking industry must be suffering as a result of phishing right now. And to add insult to injury, the phishing victims were by and large incapable of understanding what had happened to them, and many turned around and tried to sue eBay because they assumed that eBay had committed the fraud using their identity. ("What do you mean that email was a fake? You're all liars and frauds, that email clearly had an official eBay logo on it and I followed the instructions exactly. eBay is ruining my good name to engage in fraud. I WANT IT STOPPED!")
I am an eBay seller, and I can tell you as someone who used to work at eBay that this would drive sellers off of eBay. There are an awful lot of buyers (maybe 20% of them) that hold THEIR feedback back until sellers give them perks, realizing that a seller who has 2,000 feedbacks that are 100% positive is going to go to great lengths to protect that. They demand free accessories, issue credit card chargebacks after receiving the item, demand that sellers accept a return (after they've swapped half the parts out to fix their own possessions and send you back a non-working item that has clearly been tampered with), claim that the $1,000 digital camera they bought doesn't work and then demand a replacement--while REFUSING to return the original "broken" one... They sue, launch Internet campaigns against specific sellers or against eBay, and all because they didn't get something for nothing.
There are even cases in which after failing to get free item(s) by demanding "no ship replacements" or other perks, such buyers have pulled the seller's contact information and proceeded to stalk them, traveling several states in order to be threatening. If seller's were to lose their ability to even leave a negative about such people once they'd made the initial payment, eBay would lost most of its major sellers who, let's not forget, actually pay eBay's bills.
Fraud is rampant on both sides, and nothing short of government regulation limiting just who is allowed to buy and sell in a society, period, is going to stop it. eBay doesn't do themselves any favors when they screw legitimate buyers or sellers, but to assume that sellers are responsible for all the fraud is to make a very incorrect assumption.
For three years I've already run MS Office 2002 on Fedora Core. It works perfectly, insert CD-ROM, launch "Setup," click "Next" all the way through, then the first time you run it complete the product activation, etc. It starts faster than OpenOffice.org, is more stable, and it's absolutely transparently like any other Linux application.
I've also run Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and FrameMaker for the same period of time.
Wine really is that good now, people, if you configure it well, *or* if you go to Codeweavers.com and buy Crossover Office for well under $100. No, I don't work for them, nor do I work for the Wine project, I'm just still shocked at how people treat Windows compatibility like it's such an issue here--the posts that talk about it as if Microsoft loses the farm the moment Office runs on Linux... well, it has now for years. I wrote two books and my thesis on it, in Linux.
Same thing with Photoshop, I'm always seeing all these posts about how Linux desperately Lacks a Photoshop and GIMP isn't there yet... Well, install @#($* Photoshop in Linux and be done with it.
I was a nonbeliever when I used to try to configure Wine myself (though I did get Office 97 to run under it, after lots of self-configuration), but once I finally broke down and gave Crossover Office a start, I'm recommended it to all my family and friends. I know it sounds like a commercial, but Office for Linux is such a solved problem. And I know people don't like commercial software, but Codeweavers is an OSS service company in most ways: their product is simply a reworked version of an OSS project, and they contribute code back regularly.
But if Office for Linux came out tomorrow, I wouldn't buy it. I already have Office 2002 for Windows running flawlessly on my FC5 desktop. Why would I shell out again?
Have you heard what conservative wealthy folks say about Sesame Street? Suffice it to say they hate it and think it's liberal commie trash. I've heard some pretty angry rants about SS from some higher ups at corporations and some wall street types. Obviously they were never shown it as a kid.
I think some of this split depends not only on whether you need absolute uptime, but also whether you are liable for absolute uptime.
I am responsible for two mid-level infrastructure servers (quad-Xeon, dual-raid-cage variety) that are internal (behind a several levels of routing/firewalling), that have run Fedora Core 1 almost since its release, very happily, and that have not ever (ever) gone down for hardware/software bug reasons, even under load. They are responsible for a heavy dose of file and database serving and also some internal web serving.
My position is such (I am a volunteer in this organization) that with these servers that I don't have to justify my choices to anyone or offer any particular kind of insurance against their going down at some point--it would just be bad if they did. So I feel free to use Fedora, and Fedora has treated me very well, at least as well as Red Hat did before I switched to Fedora. Other people in the organization have also come to be very appreciative of Linux because of this (You mean those servers that never go down are running Linux? Sheesh, why don't they all run Linux?)
So if I was in management in a Fortune 100 and needed a five-nines installation, I probably wouldn't choose fedora. But serverspace is composed of much larger than must-have-guaranteed-five-nines, and just because you don't have five nines actually guaranteed doesn't mean that a product isn't capable of delivering it under the right circumstances.
Once again the ugly western-capitalist "all worthwhile things are money" mentality rears its head.
Who said that money is the only thing one can be desperate about? Have you considered other possible motivations? Religion? The suffering of others? Domestic policy in home nations? Personal vendettas?
I'd say that of all the reasons for desperation in the world, money falls at the bottom of my list. Politics falls near the top. I'd sooner kill for policy than for a dollar, and I suspect I'm not the only one.
Why? Because you're satisfied so long as your country is one step freer than some other arbitrary country that you think is laughably unfree? Why don't you stand on your own principle, instead of comparisons to other countries?
I keep laughing the people who say "well Britain does it!" even though the U.S. was founded in the first place because Britain was too unfree for the people who came to North America, and I laugh at those who say "well, the insurgents target women and children" when trying to justify American women and children casualties. Because America only needs to be as good as the next guerilla movement in a warzone in order to win your support.
Umm, just about every poll since time immemorial (well, the 2000 election) shows a 48/48 or 49/51 or 50/50 or some similar split between R's an D's in this country. If you don't know this, you haven't been reading the news for the last six years.
For five minutes after 9/11 maybe 25% of the D's were onboard with the R's. That was before the R's launched the Neo-Neo-Nazi party and began to wantonly torture and kill brown people, sell the lower class out to the corporatists, and line their own pockets with the blood of slave children.
Now's it's back to 50-50. There's gonna be a civil war in the U.S., sooner or later, and it will come out as three nations: liberal left coast, dopey, backward "heartland" full of violent, inbred simpletons, and liberal right coast.
Christian = stupid Conservative = stupid Fundamentalist = stupid Religious = stupid
Christian = evil Conservative = evil Fundamentalist = evil Religious = evil
Very simple, with mounds and mounts of historical evidence dating back millenia. If god exists, he is a murdering tyrant child rapist. If god does not exist, Christians, conservatives, fundamentalists, and religious people are murdering tyrant child rapists.
Car power systems aren't particularly well regulated, and DC devices range from 5v to 30v+ and have a myriad of different connectors. So you still need a DCDC converter for each device. That's one additional cable per. With an inverter, you spend $20 once and you're done.
You don't need a new car to get a 120v outlet, stop into any truckstop on a major highway and you can get a little box that will plug into your cigarette lighter and give you a 150-200w 120v outlet (enough for nearly any laptop) and it will only cost you $25 or so. They've been around for years, and can be used for other things, too. Running off your car battery you can watch a couple of DVDs and still have enough juice to start your car with no trouble at all.
Rig one up with a big fat deep cycle RV or motorhome battery in the trunk and an eBay solar panel on top of your vehicle and you can have transportable reserve 120v AC power wherever you go without needing to pull it off the grid.
There are simple things that are obvious. For example, just by assuming and output format appropriate to the data type, a new object-aware 'icat' command (improved cat) and graphical command line terminal could do:
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat mypic.jpg
(image is displayed, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
(animation is played, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
[myaccount@mybox]$ ls --thumbnails *.jpg
(thumbnails for all jpg images in dir are shown above filenames, like normal ls output only rows of imgs) (now, user begins mv command:)
[myaccount@mybox]$ mv
(then, at this point, user begins clicking on thumbnails in the ls output from the previous command, and as he clicks on each one, their names are automatically appended to the command being entered at the text cursor... finally once all desired thumbs are selected, the user types the destintaion folder in by hand)
(voila! a command half typed, half clicked. And now the user wants to mail them...)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat myfolder/*.jpg | imail -s "My pictures are attached."
(curses-based object-aware mail application is opened, with jpg files already attached)
And so on, and so on. I could have sworn that about five years ago I stumbled across a Linux project like this, but I didn't download it or bookmark it, and I never found it again.
There are simple things that are obvious. For example, just by assuming and output format appropriate to the data type, a new object-aware 'icat' command (improved cat) and graphical command line terminal could do:
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat mypic.jpg
(image is displayed, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
(animation is played, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
[myaccount@mybox]$ ls --thumbnails *.jpg
(thumbnails for all jpg images in dir are shown above filenames, like normal ls output only rows of imgs) (now, user begins mv command:)
[myaccount@mybox]$ mv
(then, at this point, user begins clicking on thumbnails in the ls output from the previous command, and as he clicks on each one, their names are automatically appended to the command being entered at the text cursor... finally once all desired thumbs are selected, the user types the destintaion folder in by hand)
(voila! a command half typed, half clicked. And now the user wants to mail them...)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat myfolder/*.jpg | imail -s "My pictures are attached."
curses-based object-aware mail application is opened, with jpg files already attached
And so on, and so on. I could have sworn that about five years ago I stumbled across a Linux project like this, but I didn't download it or bookmark it, and I never found it again.
It takes a heartless recording corporation to believe that the only incentive for creating music is money.
Welcome to late capitalism, where the only motive for anything (at least that anyone will believe) is 'profit' and everything, including human emotions, are 'monetized.'
"We are not going to settle for 'profitability' like some cheap whore. Either we want ALL of the money, or you can keep your f@#($@*^%# money, god damn it."
I'm fully aware of house the U.S. election system works. And I won't be at all surprised if Bush refuses to hold an election, or if one is held, if he turns up with the Army and the Joint Chiefs armaments and stages an out-and-out coup in the interest of "national defense," saying that the electorate has been taken over by "extremists" (which he will then proceed to shoot and/or move to Guantanamo).
The conservatives want a theocratic dictatorship and will seize any opportunity they see to create one. Lieberman, of course, loves them.
Lieberman had bipartisan support among the same bums that this thread is talking about throwing out. Among actual voters (i.e. the population), his stands on the issues vs. national public opinion polls give him approximately the same level of public bipartisan support as, say, President Bush right now (i.e. not a hell of a lot).
And the fact that after losing a primary election he says "this will not stand" and continues to run... as an "independent democrat" says that he has no respect for voters or democracy. By definition he is saying that votes don't count. Don't like the outcome? Don't listen to the concerns of the public, then wait until next election cycle and run again. Just ignore the public, tell them that they're all wacky, and continue to claim you're involved in the process.
Why even hold primaries?
I'll be both he and Bush make a great show of still turning up for work after losing in the general elections, claiming that what the "radical public" has done by voting them out of office is wrong and therefore they don't have to "stand for" it. No point in holding elections at all, they just let "radical elements" vote incumbents out.
In any case, here's how to reproduce with your own DSLR (this will not work with most consumer digicams).
1. Shoot a shot with clear blue sky, preferably a low-contrast scene (or even just the blue sky itself). Use RAW (will not work with JPEG). It'll look your basic blue (like any sky) in the on-screen review.
2. Open up this raw file in any developer that has high-dynamic range support and tone-mapping.
3. Take the narrow visible color field and map it across the largest possible range/highest possible contrast.
Aside from the fact that the sky will now be a deep, dark blue like a night sky, you will see in this clear blue sky all of the detail that the human eye can't discern. Layers of clouds, a few of the brightest stars, unevenness in atmospheric density, etc.
Develop with blue-leaning white balance and it's a great technique for taking "dramatic nighttime photos" of buildings or objects against the sky, without having to set up a tripod and go out at night.
Because reading wikipedia directly is more fun than playing an encylopedic game. Because listening to classical music is more fun than having to pass a stage to hear more. Because discussing Sorbonne philosophers is more fun than hearing their words from silly characters.
The definition of "highbrow" is that it is intellectually engaging and that is why people enjoy/partake in it. Games are generally less intellectually engaging and seek escapism instead. To encapsulate "highbrow" into a less engaging format would be to dilute the reason that people engage in "highbrow" pastimes to begin with.
If you're really after highbrow, you're going to take the direct route and go right to the sources (or, from another perspective, the destinations). You're not going to go by way of an indirect, distortive, incomplete route. To do so would be... well... not very highbrow.
I think well-done puzzle/adventure games like Riven and classic strategy games like chess are about as highbrow as anyone is ever going to get in computer gaming.
Don't forget the increasingly obvious general unfitness of the PC for long-term gaming.
I have a CD case full of Windows games from 1998-2002 and a CD case full of Linux (Loki, mostly) games from years gone by as well. Probably these total 200 games. Despite the fact that I have a modern PC and the ability to multi-boot into Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Fedora Core, the total number that actually operate today is probably 15.
Many have copy protection that (apparently) runs afoul of my Thinkpad's DVD and/or CD-RW drive. They either won't install or won't run, prompting me to insert the "original" disks. Firmware upgrades to the drives haven't solved the issue.
Others aren't happy with my sound or graphics hardware, including some using big name game engines like the id (i.e. Quake) engines. They might run for two or three minutes and dump me back to the desktop, or textures come up unrecognizable (and unplayable), or sound doesn't work and is necessary to play.
Still others have expiry dates (no kidding!) About five of my games pop up messages about the license having expired and asking me to get a new CD key by calling the manufacturer. Naturally, all of them are long gone and/or not supporting the game. Am I really expected to set my date back every time I want to play?
Some were written for alternative graphics systems (i.e. glide) and while they had some DirectDraw/X compatibility back then, they don't seem to be happy with and/or find today's versions.
Some also don't seem to like modern display hardware, even when I boot into Windows 98. They complain about incorrect numbers of colors (no matter whether I set to 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit depth) or about incorrect desktop resolution (no matter whether I set to 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024).
The Loki games for Linux continue to hobble along by and large better than the Windows games, but installing them is more and more difficult (alternate library folders, editing launch scripts, game updates that no longer run without applying them by hand on the command line, or no longer run at all) and they tend to crash a lot. I can't dual boot to an older Linux OS because many of the drivers required for my current hardware haven't been backported to the 2.4 kernel and 2.6 won't compile with the gcc/glibc versions in question, and I'm not willing to try to hack together/roll my own obsolete distro just to get a few games to work really well.
In short, I have buckets full of games that I spent good money on once upon a time, some of which I'd love to play now and then--but they simply don't work anymore. The only way to get them to work appears to be to maintain a separate system frozen in time--a period PC running a period operating system in addition to the PC I actually use to get things done.
I'm not proposing a solution of any kind to this state of affairs, I'm just posing the following rhetorical question: if I *have* to maintain an entire separate gaming system to play the games I buy, why not just buy a console and completely avoid the compatibility headaches, additional power and space requirements, extra cost, and so on? This provides the added benefit of being more survivable, i.e. you can still pick up a working PSOne, Sega Genesis or NEC TurboGrafx on eBay for not that much money. Good luck having such an easy time assembling a working ca. 1992 PC for a game that will only work with EGA, Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound, and a 1.2MB floppy drive, much less finding the drivers to make all of the obsolete hardware work again.
Yes and no. You're right for the most part but wrong (as are so many others) in creating an dichotomy rather than a spectrum between "perspective" and "lies." All images should be seen as suspect, because even minor "truthful" (to use others' terms) manipulations can create what some people would consider to be significant "lies." Indeed, even photos taken with no after-click manipulation can be seen by many as "lies" because a significant portion of the photography process occurs before light ever hits the media.
I'm not trying to draw equivalence between this untruth and any other untruth; I am trying only to say that anyone who attributes a clear and uncontextualized truthfulness to any photo or class of photos is believing a lie every bit as much as they're sure they're not.
I'm not at all saying that all pictures are equally untrue (or, by extension, that there is nothing to say about the "reality" of a picture), only that they are all untrue to some extent that varies with the viewer and to posit some class of "true" images against which to juxtapose others is to be naive.
"our eyes see a different image when exiting a dark bar at high noon from what they see five minutes later. I think most people would agree that the later "properly exposed" image on your retina best corresponds to reality."
What a claim to make! Doesn't the second "exposure" ignore the fact that you were really just inside a dark bar at high noon? One is not more real than the other, they are both real.
I am not trying to water down the bounds of honest photo manipulation, I am trying to destroy them. I am trying to say that in using such a phrase you are making suppositions about photographer's intent and an original scene that you weren't there to see. I am not saying that this photographer was honest. I am saying that you should in no way assume that all the rest (including the ones you like) are "honest," because there is no way to ever establish that this is the case.
I am not making the case for adding smoke to photos. I am making the case for remembering each time you see a photo that the smoke may have been added.
Slashdot Mirror
There are actually Slashdot posters that know what's going on in international economics! Wow.
This guy's got it right, folks.
The problems that you describe can in large part be attributed to phishing and resulting stolen eBay accounts. I used to work at eBay and we knew very well that the mob (primarily eastern European) was the major player in phishing. However, there was nothing that we could do. We weren't a law enforcement body and had no jurisdiction or even proof that something was up until the first complaint by a buyer that had actually been scammed by a hacked account. Then we'd immediately pull the auctions and freeze it.
The number of hacked accounts thanks to phishing ran into the tens of thousands PER DAY. I can only imagine the nightmare the banking industry must be suffering as a result of phishing right now. And to add insult to injury, the phishing victims were by and large incapable of understanding what had happened to them, and many turned around and tried to sue eBay because they assumed that eBay had committed the fraud using their identity. ("What do you mean that email was a fake? You're all liars and frauds, that email clearly had an official eBay logo on it and I followed the instructions exactly. eBay is ruining my good name to engage in fraud. I WANT IT STOPPED!")
I am an eBay seller, and I can tell you as someone who used to work at eBay that this would drive sellers off of eBay. There are an awful lot of buyers (maybe 20% of them) that hold THEIR feedback back until sellers give them perks, realizing that a seller who has 2,000 feedbacks that are 100% positive is going to go to great lengths to protect that. They demand free accessories, issue credit card chargebacks after receiving the item, demand that sellers accept a return (after they've swapped half the parts out to fix their own possessions and send you back a non-working item that has clearly been tampered with), claim that the $1,000 digital camera they bought doesn't work and then demand a replacement--while REFUSING to return the original "broken" one... They sue, launch Internet campaigns against specific sellers or against eBay, and all because they didn't get something for nothing.
There are even cases in which after failing to get free item(s) by demanding "no ship replacements" or other perks, such buyers have pulled the seller's contact information and proceeded to stalk them, traveling several states in order to be threatening. If seller's were to lose their ability to even leave a negative about such people once they'd made the initial payment, eBay would lost most of its major sellers who, let's not forget, actually pay eBay's bills.
Fraud is rampant on both sides, and nothing short of government regulation limiting just who is allowed to buy and sell in a society, period, is going to stop it. eBay doesn't do themselves any favors when they screw legitimate buyers or sellers, but to assume that sellers are responsible for all the fraud is to make a very incorrect assumption.
For three years I've already run MS Office 2002 on Fedora Core. It works perfectly, insert CD-ROM, launch "Setup," click "Next" all the way through, then the first time you run it complete the product activation, etc. It starts faster than OpenOffice.org, is more stable, and it's absolutely transparently like any other Linux application.
I've also run Photoshop, Internet Explorer, and FrameMaker for the same period of time.
Wine really is that good now, people, if you configure it well, *or* if you go to Codeweavers.com and buy Crossover Office for well under $100. No, I don't work for them, nor do I work for the Wine project, I'm just still shocked at how people treat Windows compatibility like it's such an issue here--the posts that talk about it as if Microsoft loses the farm the moment Office runs on Linux... well, it has now for years. I wrote two books and my thesis on it, in Linux.
Same thing with Photoshop, I'm always seeing all these posts about how Linux desperately Lacks a Photoshop and GIMP isn't there yet... Well, install @#($* Photoshop in Linux and be done with it.
I was a nonbeliever when I used to try to configure Wine myself (though I did get Office 97 to run under it, after lots of self-configuration), but once I finally broke down and gave Crossover Office a start, I'm recommended it to all my family and friends. I know it sounds like a commercial, but Office for Linux is such a solved problem. And I know people don't like commercial software, but Codeweavers is an OSS service company in most ways: their product is simply a reworked version of an OSS project, and they contribute code back regularly.
But if Office for Linux came out tomorrow, I wouldn't buy it. I already have Office 2002 for Windows running flawlessly on my FC5 desktop. Why would I shell out again?
Have you heard what conservative wealthy folks say about Sesame Street? Suffice it to say they hate it and think it's liberal commie trash. I've heard some pretty angry rants about SS from some higher ups at corporations and some wall street types. Obviously they were never shown it as a kid.
I think some of this split depends not only on whether you need absolute uptime, but also whether you are liable for absolute uptime.
I am responsible for two mid-level infrastructure servers (quad-Xeon, dual-raid-cage variety) that are internal (behind a several levels of routing/firewalling), that have run Fedora Core 1 almost since its release, very happily, and that have not ever (ever) gone down for hardware/software bug reasons, even under load. They are responsible for a heavy dose of file and database serving and also some internal web serving.
My position is such (I am a volunteer in this organization) that with these servers that I don't have to justify my choices to anyone or offer any particular kind of insurance against their going down at some point--it would just be bad if they did. So I feel free to use Fedora, and Fedora has treated me very well, at least as well as Red Hat did before I switched to Fedora. Other people in the organization have also come to be very appreciative of Linux because of this (You mean those servers that never go down are running Linux? Sheesh, why don't they all run Linux?)
So if I was in management in a Fortune 100 and needed a five-nines installation, I probably wouldn't choose fedora. But serverspace is composed of much larger than must-have-guaranteed-five-nines, and just because you don't have five nines actually guaranteed doesn't mean that a product isn't capable of delivering it under the right circumstances.
Once again the ugly western-capitalist "all worthwhile things are money" mentality rears its head.
Who said that money is the only thing one can be desperate about? Have you considered other possible motivations? Religion? The suffering of others? Domestic policy in home nations? Personal vendettas?
I'd say that of all the reasons for desperation in the world, money falls at the bottom of my list. Politics falls near the top. I'd sooner kill for policy than for a dollar, and I suspect I'm not the only one.
Why? Because you're satisfied so long as your country is one step freer than some other arbitrary country that you think is laughably unfree? Why don't you stand on your own principle, instead of comparisons to other countries?
I keep laughing the people who say "well Britain does it!" even though the U.S. was founded in the first place because Britain was too unfree for the people who came to North America, and I laugh at those who say "well, the insurgents target women and children" when trying to justify American women and children casualties. Because America only needs to be as good as the next guerilla movement in a warzone in order to win your support.
Umm, just about every poll since time immemorial (well, the 2000 election) shows a 48/48 or 49/51 or 50/50 or some similar split between R's an D's in this country. If you don't know this, you haven't been reading the news for the last six years.
For five minutes after 9/11 maybe 25% of the D's were onboard with the R's. That was before the R's launched the Neo-Neo-Nazi party and began to wantonly torture and kill brown people, sell the lower class out to the corporatists, and line their own pockets with the blood of slave children.
Now's it's back to 50-50. There's gonna be a civil war in the U.S., sooner or later, and it will come out as three nations: liberal left coast, dopey, backward "heartland" full of violent, inbred simpletons, and liberal right coast.
Christian = stupid
Conservative = stupid
Fundamentalist = stupid
Religious = stupid
Christian = evil
Conservative = evil
Fundamentalist = evil
Religious = evil
Very simple, with mounds and mounts of historical evidence dating back millenia. If god exists, he is a murdering tyrant child rapist. If god does not exist, Christians, conservatives, fundamentalists, and religious people are murdering tyrant child rapists.
Either way, nobody should worship god.
Car power systems aren't particularly well regulated, and DC devices range from 5v to 30v+ and have a myriad of different connectors. So you still need a DCDC converter for each device. That's one additional cable per. With an inverter, you spend $20 once and you're done.
You don't need a new car to get a 120v outlet, stop into any truckstop on a major highway and you can get a little box that will plug into your cigarette lighter and give you a 150-200w 120v outlet (enough for nearly any laptop) and it will only cost you $25 or so. They've been around for years, and can be used for other things, too. Running off your car battery you can watch a couple of DVDs and still have enough juice to start your car with no trouble at all.
Rig one up with a big fat deep cycle RV or motorhome battery in the trunk and an eBay solar panel on top of your vehicle and you can have transportable reserve 120v AC power wherever you go without needing to pull it off the grid.
There are simple things that are obvious. For example, just by assuming and output format appropriate to the data type, a new object-aware 'icat' command (improved cat) and graphical command line terminal could do:
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat mypic.jpg
(image is displayed, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat mysound.wav
(sound is played out speakers)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat *.jpg > myanimation.mpg
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat myanimation.mpg
(animation is played, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
[myaccount@mybox]$ ls --thumbnails *.jpg
(thumbnails for all jpg images in dir are shown above filenames, like normal ls output only rows of imgs)
(now, user begins mv command:)
[myaccount@mybox]$ mv
(then, at this point, user begins clicking on thumbnails in the ls output from the previous command, and as he clicks on each one, their names are automatically appended to the command being entered at the text cursor... finally once all desired thumbs are selected, the user types the destintaion folder in by hand)
[myaccount@mybox]$ mv myimg1.jpg lastnight.jpg thursday.jpg myfolder
(voila! a command half typed, half clicked. And now the user wants to mail them...)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat myfolder/*.jpg | imail -s "My pictures are attached."
(curses-based object-aware mail application is opened, with jpg files already attached)
And so on, and so on. I could have sworn that about five years ago I stumbled across a Linux project like this, but I didn't download it or bookmark it, and I never found it again.
There are simple things that are obvious. For example, just by assuming and output format appropriate to the data type, a new object-aware 'icat' command (improved cat) and graphical command line terminal could do:
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat mypic.jpg
(image is displayed, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat mysound.wav
(sound is played out speakers)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat *.jpg > myanimation.mpg
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat myanimation.mpg
(animation is played, not in window, but simply in terminal, scrolling with rest of text)
[myaccount@mybox]$ ls --thumbnails *.jpg
(thumbnails for all jpg images in dir are shown above filenames, like normal ls output only rows of imgs)
(now, user begins mv command:)
[myaccount@mybox]$ mv
(then, at this point, user begins clicking on thumbnails in the ls output from the previous command, and as he clicks on each one, their names are automatically appended to the command being entered at the text cursor... finally once all desired thumbs are selected, the user types the destintaion folder in by hand)
[myaccount@mybox]$ mv myimg1.jpg lastnight.jpg thursday.jpg myfolder
(voila! a command half typed, half clicked. And now the user wants to mail them...)
[myaccount@mybox]$ icat myfolder/*.jpg | imail -s "My pictures are attached."
curses-based object-aware mail application is opened, with jpg files already attached
And so on, and so on. I could have sworn that about five years ago I stumbled across a Linux project like this, but I didn't download it or bookmark it, and I never found it again.
It takes a heartless recording corporation to believe that the only incentive for creating music is money.
Welcome to late capitalism, where the only motive for anything (at least that anyone will believe) is 'profit' and everything, including human emotions, are 'monetized.'
Sony:
"We are not going to settle for 'profitability' like some cheap whore. Either we want ALL of the money, or you can keep your f@#($@*^%# money, god damn it."
I'm fully aware of house the U.S. election system works. And I won't be at all surprised if Bush refuses to hold an election, or if one is held, if he turns up with the Army and the Joint Chiefs armaments and stages an out-and-out coup in the interest of "national defense," saying that the electorate has been taken over by "extremists" (which he will then proceed to shoot and/or move to Guantanamo).
The conservatives want a theocratic dictatorship and will seize any opportunity they see to create one. Lieberman, of course, loves them.
Lieberman had bipartisan support among the same bums that this thread is talking about throwing out. Among actual voters (i.e. the population), his stands on the issues vs. national public opinion polls give him approximately the same level of public bipartisan support as, say, President Bush right now (i.e. not a hell of a lot).
And the fact that after losing a primary election he says "this will not stand" and continues to run... as an "independent democrat" says that he has no respect for voters or democracy. By definition he is saying that votes don't count. Don't like the outcome? Don't listen to the concerns of the public, then wait until next election cycle and run again. Just ignore the public, tell them that they're all wacky, and continue to claim you're involved in the process.
Why even hold primaries?
I'll be both he and Bush make a great show of still turning up for work after losing in the general elections, claiming that what the "radical public" has done by voting them out of office is wrong and therefore they don't have to "stand for" it. No point in holding elections at all, they just let "radical elements" vote incumbents out.
It's a problem for the industry if it kills the industry because it leads to a decrease in sales.
Are you serious? You've never seen a photo of some stars? Well, here you go, lots of them.
p olar2small.jpg
http://i.pbase.com/g3/29/633929/2/57488418.Circum
Or maybe those are fireflies.
In any case, here's how to reproduce with your own DSLR (this will not work with most consumer digicams).
1. Shoot a shot with clear blue sky, preferably a low-contrast scene (or even just the blue sky itself). Use RAW (will not work with JPEG). It'll look your basic blue (like any sky) in the on-screen review.
2. Open up this raw file in any developer that has high-dynamic range support and tone-mapping.
3. Take the narrow visible color field and map it across the largest possible range/highest possible contrast.
Aside from the fact that the sky will now be a deep, dark blue like a night sky, you will see in this clear blue sky all of the detail that the human eye can't discern. Layers of clouds, a few of the brightest stars, unevenness in atmospheric density, etc.
Develop with blue-leaning white balance and it's a great technique for taking "dramatic nighttime photos" of buildings or objects against the sky, without having to set up a tripod and go out at night.
Because reading wikipedia directly is more fun than playing an encylopedic game.
Because listening to classical music is more fun than having to pass a stage to hear more.
Because discussing Sorbonne philosophers is more fun than hearing their words from silly characters.
The definition of "highbrow" is that it is intellectually engaging and that is why people enjoy/partake in it. Games are generally less intellectually engaging and seek escapism instead. To encapsulate "highbrow" into a less engaging format would be to dilute the reason that people engage in "highbrow" pastimes to begin with.
If you're really after highbrow, you're going to take the direct route and go right to the sources (or, from another perspective, the destinations). You're not going to go by way of an indirect, distortive, incomplete route. To do so would be... well... not very highbrow.
I think well-done puzzle/adventure games like Riven and classic strategy games like chess are about as highbrow as anyone is ever going to get in computer gaming.
Don't forget the increasingly obvious general unfitness of the PC for long-term gaming.
I have a CD case full of Windows games from 1998-2002 and a CD case full of Linux (Loki, mostly) games from years gone by as well. Probably these total 200 games. Despite the fact that I have a modern PC and the ability to multi-boot into Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Fedora Core, the total number that actually operate today is probably 15.
Many have copy protection that (apparently) runs afoul of my Thinkpad's DVD and/or CD-RW drive. They either won't install or won't run, prompting me to insert the "original" disks. Firmware upgrades to the drives haven't solved the issue.
Others aren't happy with my sound or graphics hardware, including some using big name game engines like the id (i.e. Quake) engines. They might run for two or three minutes and dump me back to the desktop, or textures come up unrecognizable (and unplayable), or sound doesn't work and is necessary to play.
Still others have expiry dates (no kidding!) About five of my games pop up messages about the license having expired and asking me to get a new CD key by calling the manufacturer. Naturally, all of them are long gone and/or not supporting the game. Am I really expected to set my date back every time I want to play?
Some were written for alternative graphics systems (i.e. glide) and while they had some DirectDraw/X compatibility back then, they don't seem to be happy with and/or find today's versions.
Some also don't seem to like modern display hardware, even when I boot into Windows 98. They complain about incorrect numbers of colors (no matter whether I set to 8-bit, 16-bit, or 24-bit depth) or about incorrect desktop resolution (no matter whether I set to 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, or 1280x1024).
The Loki games for Linux continue to hobble along by and large better than the Windows games, but installing them is more and more difficult (alternate library folders, editing launch scripts, game updates that no longer run without applying them by hand on the command line, or no longer run at all) and they tend to crash a lot. I can't dual boot to an older Linux OS because many of the drivers required for my current hardware haven't been backported to the 2.4 kernel and 2.6 won't compile with the gcc/glibc versions in question, and I'm not willing to try to hack together/roll my own obsolete distro just to get a few games to work really well.
In short, I have buckets full of games that I spent good money on once upon a time, some of which I'd love to play now and then--but they simply don't work anymore. The only way to get them to work appears to be to maintain a separate system frozen in time--a period PC running a period operating system in addition to the PC I actually use to get things done.
I'm not proposing a solution of any kind to this state of affairs, I'm just posing the following rhetorical question: if I *have* to maintain an entire separate gaming system to play the games I buy, why not just buy a console and completely avoid the compatibility headaches, additional power and space requirements, extra cost, and so on? This provides the added benefit of being more survivable, i.e. you can still pick up a working PSOne, Sega Genesis or NEC TurboGrafx on eBay for not that much money. Good luck having such an easy time assembling a working ca. 1992 PC for a game that will only work with EGA, Pro Audio Spectrum 16 sound, and a 1.2MB floppy drive, much less finding the drivers to make all of the obsolete hardware work again.
Yes and no. You're right for the most part but wrong (as are so many others) in creating an dichotomy rather than a spectrum between "perspective" and "lies." All images should be seen as suspect, because even minor "truthful" (to use others' terms) manipulations can create what some people would consider to be significant "lies." Indeed, even photos taken with no after-click manipulation can be seen by many as "lies" because a significant portion of the photography process occurs before light ever hits the media.
I'm not trying to draw equivalence between this untruth and any other untruth; I am trying only to say that anyone who attributes a clear and uncontextualized truthfulness to any photo or class of photos is believing a lie every bit as much as they're sure they're not.
I'm not at all saying that all pictures are equally untrue (or, by extension, that there is nothing to say about the "reality" of a picture), only that they are all untrue to some extent that varies with the viewer and to posit some class of "true" images against which to juxtapose others is to be naive.
What a claim to make! Doesn't the second "exposure" ignore the fact that you were really just inside a dark bar at high noon? One is not more real than the other, they are both real.
I am not trying to water down the bounds of honest photo manipulation, I am trying to destroy them. I am trying to say that in using such a phrase you are making suppositions about photographer's intent and an original scene that you weren't there to see. I am not saying that this photographer was honest. I am saying that you should in no way assume that all the rest (including the ones you like) are "honest," because there is no way to ever establish that this is the case.
I am not making the case for adding smoke to photos. I am making the case for remembering each time you see a photo that the smoke may have been added.