I did too, though I'm saying that it's because of the article from earlier today on BDSM porn - though I hadn't quite figured out what value there would be to extending pron copyrights to 70 years, given that the industry seems not to be too concerned about their back catalog (so to speak).
No. While I'm not championing higher prices, I'm not really worried about them either - and I drive a full size pickup that gets about 14mpg. The higher gas prices go, the more viable alternative fuels and power systems will become. What I find most interesting is that gasoline costs no more to produce than it did 7 years ago when I could get it for $.49/gal (plus $.38 in taxes, of course). Most of the cost has come from contract speculators who drive up the price of both raw oil and refined product. You could say that the prices are due to scarcity, but I haven't seen any gas stations without gas, so there is no actual shortage.
As for your gas, the cost in the UK/EU has little to do with the cost of the gasoline - it has to do with taxes. I always laugh at you folks on the other side of the pind when you complain about gas prices, because you pay (about) the same as we do for the product, you just pay a bunch more to your government. Turnabout is fairplay, of course; feel free to laugh when we Americans complain about lack of universal healthcare.
It also allows officers information to remain private, iirc, along with some preferential tax treatment.
Actually, its relatively cheap to incorporate anywhere, and normally more expensive to incorporate outside of a state where you have a physical presence since you need a local address of record in most cases, and have to pay for that in addition to the fees.
Unsigned Band with break-out potential: "So any unit sales revenue we see from you will be from Wal-Mart and Best Buy sales, nothing else?"
Universal A/R dude/dudette: "No, of course not. You will never see sales revenue because we will cook the books so that you never see a penny. But you are othewise correct - the unit sales revenue you will never see will only come from Wal-Mart and Best Buy."
Unsigned Band with break-out potential: "Where do we sign?"
The problem with HTML is that eyecandy has trumped information and most web designers out there have forgotton that they should be designing for 50kbps unless they know that their audience is on a high speed connection. I did early web work (I mean early 90s, text editor stuff) as a side-assignment when I was a junior engineer, and I learned a lot about speed and efficiency during a time when the dialup to my work was limited to 9600bps on the "old" modem pool. When I had my professional site done about three years ago, I asked that the designer make sure that each page would load in uner 10 seconds on a 56k dialup. She does high end work (including the NRA site), but agreed to keep it slim because she knows that my area has a lot of folks that aren't on broadband.
I still haven't figured out why the on-mouse drop downs are so popular.
It's mostly not-funny to those who don't fit the stereotype, but want to get out from under said stereotype. I'm an engineer, and we take our digs along with the rest. It doesn't bother me because I know I'm not "one of them," but I do know a lot of engineers who are genuinely offended by engineer stereotypes. They usually think a bit too much about what other people think of them, and have what I would consider a lower-than-average sense of humor. I was probably a bit like that when I was younger. Today, I can say that one of my favorite movies is Undercover Brother - if you can laugh at the stereotypes there, you never have to worry about the Simpsons. Now Southpark, otoh... which reminds me - my first thought about the Kwik E Marts was that I sure as hell wouldn't want to walk into a store and see Salty Chocolate Balls anywhere on the shelves. *shiver*
It is. And it wouldn't be funny, except at some time in our lives, we have all encountered someone like Apu. And, I'll admit, I accept any offense given my the stereotype as retribution for the economics TA I had in college ("I am not believing that you have all failed this exam so badly!").
There are stereotypes everywhere in comedy - if you don't like it, don't watch. It's not like anybody really comes out looking good in the Simpsons. Except maybe Lisa, but nobody makes fun of smart, well adjusted girls. Except other girls, of course, and that's not the Simpson's demographic, afaict.
Simply stated, the (three, five?) judge panel setting the ruling should be sacked. It is clear that they have absolutely no business setting royalty payments, as they are entirely ignroant of the underlying industry which they are ruling on. The expert for the stations stated, in effect, this exact outcome and they either didn't understand the technology enough to realize the implications, or were so biased towards one party that they chose to ignore the information. Either way, they should be replaced with members which understand the industry and the conditions present.
Of course, that won't happen. Incompetence and ignorance are not grounds for removing a judge, and from the prespective of the current administration they played the game very nicely.
I actually have (or, rather, had) that WP6.0 CD. The music was pretty good. The last track, done a capella by Kurt Bestor. Very cool track, imho. Made my demo CD for speakers a few years ago when outfitted my stereo room. Totally irrellevant to the discussion, but interesting to know that anyone else actually remembers the disc.
I think they should have her set it up, then give the two laptops to a pair of teenage girls for 3 weeks with $300 to spend on any software they choose and an unencumbered internet connection. Then have them search the two. Think of it as two decks of cards, but shuffling them before you try to find the differences.
Hrmmm...I don't buy it. My Hermes is 3G, and I can go three days between charges easily (over the weekend, for example, when I don't dock it). I'm on GPRS where I live, which does suck donkey balls, but the ability to run UTMS (is that right?) in the bigger cities doesn't seem to cause drain problems when I'm in the sticks. I will say that battery life seems much less when in 3G areas (maybe 50%), but that could be becuase I'm just so damned tempted to surf when I'm getting 400-500kB/s and I don't shut down the data connection when I'm done (lack of a habit). I still managed to have half a battery after a day in Winston-Salem with UTMS, with a good bit of surfing and BT turned on the whole time so I could use my GPS.
I don't envy anyone trying to use their iPhone under GPRS rates. I practically never use the web because of the speed, and when I do I try to hold exclusively to monbile sites and the google mobile gateway. Everything else is just too damned slow.
In retrospect, I suppose you could go two handed with the soap in one hand and a wireless chording keyboard in the other, but it really cuts down on the newbie-friendliness of the system.
How about -$100,000 and possible jail time? Not an unusual price for a criminal investigation, say, for a DMCA violation. These guys really do play hardball, and if you're lawyer agrees with their lawyers, you'd have to have quite a set to go to a public forum where the authorities are waiting for you to finish your talk so they can take you downtown, along with your presentation as proof to turn over to the DA.
Not saying it's right...but there are both carrots and sticks, and I have no doubt they are both used.
Not because the phone is faster, but because you won't be out of your subsidy period when the new one arrives. There's got to be a 3. Profit in here somewhere!
This is probably the most useless invention, from a "average user" practical standpoint. I don't know any HT folks that would de-mount and unhook their projector to take it to a friends house to gang. And if you had 12k for a projector, plus several computers (remember - you'd need 12 video-outs), you could probably get one far better that projects the current maximum consumer-available content. And that doesn't even begin to address color tracking and contrast ratio with differing projectors, or the fact that you're burning 12x the number of lamp hours (which are not insignificant in cost yet) to produce the super-image.
Cool application - no doubt - but not really in the realm of being practical or useful at the consumer level, considering that a typical $1500 projector will produce an HD (720p) image that's 10' wide, which is about as big or bigger than most rooms in a house can handle (@1.5-2.0 screen width to seating distance ratio). I suppose it might be of interest for fixed-width fans that want a 2.35:1 movie theater and can drop in three 1024x768 standard PJs turned 90 degrees. Not sure that's an easy setup to mess with, though, since everything is going to need serious scaling and coordination.
Only if it overturns...um, I mean upholds...um, I mean clarifies...some existing, longstanging supreme court precident. That's what Roberts said he would do in his confirmation hearings - respect the courts previous precidents, right?
Actually, precision is one of the things I would be concerned about. Think about it - with a desk-bound mouse you can make relatively precise movements in two axes, as the third is constrained and the surface provides support for the device. With a hand held object, you must support it with the same fingers used to manipulate the device. Very few people have perfectly steady hands, which means decreasing the sensitivity to avoid shake - further aggravating the speed issue. Second, most of my mouse operations end in a click. My mouse doesn't move under the pressure required to register a click. It's one of the big problems I have with tapping a touch pad - enough sensitivity to allow useful mouse motion causes drag-clicks (i.e. - misses) with all but the most careful taps. That may not matter for a big Allow or Deny dialog, but for accurate cursor placement in graphics, dense text, or CAD, it's the kiss of prductivity death. Zoom and pan, I hear you cry? So I need to do an extra zoom/pan action to offset the click accuracy? How does that speed up my progress.
No, it's a fun looking device, but I think it may not be the mouse of the future unless a lot of other things change.
I usually try to get the graphics up first, so it's actually easier (i.e. - takes less of my personal in-chair time) to reinstall the OS, though it does blow the evening of getting anything done on the HTPC.
My most recent install to a perfetly clean XP MCE went something like: downlaod drivers from AMD/ATI, start install exe, get message that.net(x) framework needs to be installed, installation continues, bluescreen on boot immediately following driver installation completion. ATI Uninstall/install.net after a LKG boot causes the installer to fail with an exception. Next time I clean-installed, I did.net first. ATI installer failed with an exception.
And I paid money for this? Don't even get me started with the HDTV wonder. It is a well known problem (see AVSforums) that the install sequence must be perfect or the system barfs.
I stand by my post - ATI drivers really do suck. Others have said they don't have problems with other cards. If it's card specific, ATI needs to realize the problem and provide non-monolithic installation packages. It still goes back to incompetent driver models.
I went to the soap homepage (http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/soap/inde x.html) and watched the demo. DOA. The gyrations that guys hand has to make to control the mouse, and the speed of the cursor (I know, you can set that, but there's a limit to maintain precision) makes the propsect of using something like that for an extended period of time seem like a CIA torture technique. I use a "regular" optical moust with a wrist pad that has a wrist rest. It requires very little effort, and I can both zip across a 1920pixel screen and precisely pick points in CAD using the same settings. Plus I get three buttons and a scroll wheel (which, if you pan and zoom in good applications is a great movement saver).
In some ways it reminds me of a trackpad. Very cool looking and futuristic (back when they were first introduced) until you try to use it for anything, at which point it becomes a burden which slows down and degrades the accuracy of all of your pointing and selection operations.
Besides, once I get to eliminate my desk, end table, couch, and bed, where should I put my keyboard - or will they come up with a 60wpm on-screen soap-mouse-pick keyboard?
FTFA: "...AMD needs to have its drivers in full working order before rolling out new SKUs."
Yes, but wouldn't that keep them from ever releasing any new hardware? I have yet to get an old 9800pro working with the latest drivers, and a new install of the drivers generally requires a fresh OS install (under win, of course) because of all the crap strewn about the system on uninstall. With ATI, you once chance, and one chance only. Lord help you if you have one of their capture devices installed as well. Better off playing the lottery - you're chances of winning are far higher.
I don't have the mean and standard deviation for a 3000 death terrorist event in the US, but I'm going to make a wild guess that we haven't even come close to the average return period. Besides, with targets in their backyard they're staying quite busy blowing up US citizens "over there."
Slashdot Mirror
I did too, though I'm saying that it's because of the article from earlier today on BDSM porn - though I hadn't quite figured out what value there would be to extending pron copyrights to 70 years, given that the industry seems not to be too concerned about their back catalog (so to speak).
No. While I'm not championing higher prices, I'm not really worried about them either - and I drive a full size pickup that gets about 14mpg. The higher gas prices go, the more viable alternative fuels and power systems will become. What I find most interesting is that gasoline costs no more to produce than it did 7 years ago when I could get it for $.49/gal (plus $.38 in taxes, of course). Most of the cost has come from contract speculators who drive up the price of both raw oil and refined product. You could say that the prices are due to scarcity, but I haven't seen any gas stations without gas, so there is no actual shortage.
As for your gas, the cost in the UK/EU has little to do with the cost of the gasoline - it has to do with taxes. I always laugh at you folks on the other side of the pind when you complain about gas prices, because you pay (about) the same as we do for the product, you just pay a bunch more to your government. Turnabout is fairplay, of course; feel free to laugh when we Americans complain about lack of universal healthcare.
I also shake the drops off, but it's mainly because I don't want to end up with pee on my underwear.
(sorry, I just couldn't help it)
It also allows officers information to remain private, iirc, along with some preferential tax treatment.
Actually, its relatively cheap to incorporate anywhere, and normally more expensive to incorporate outside of a state where you have a physical presence since you need a local address of record in most cases, and have to pay for that in addition to the fees.
Look, all we really want to know is if you have stopped beating your wife. ;-)
At $5/GB of flash ($20 for the extra 4GB of flash in the 8GB iPhone), I presume they are taking bulk purchasing into account.
So who would you back...dolphins with missiles, or sharks with lasers? Maybe that's the next big game, like the old Alien v Predator?
Unsigned Band with break-out potential: "So any unit sales revenue we see from you will be from Wal-Mart and Best Buy sales, nothing else?"
Universal A/R dude/dudette: "No, of course not. You will never see sales revenue because we will cook the books so that you never see a penny. But you are othewise correct - the unit sales revenue you will never see will only come from Wal-Mart and Best Buy."
Unsigned Band with break-out potential: "Where do we sign?"
The problem with HTML is that eyecandy has trumped information and most web designers out there have forgotton that they should be designing for 50kbps unless they know that their audience is on a high speed connection. I did early web work (I mean early 90s, text editor stuff) as a side-assignment when I was a junior engineer, and I learned a lot about speed and efficiency during a time when the dialup to my work was limited to 9600bps on the "old" modem pool. When I had my professional site done about three years ago, I asked that the designer make sure that each page would load in uner 10 seconds on a 56k dialup. She does high end work (including the NRA site), but agreed to keep it slim because she knows that my area has a lot of folks that aren't on broadband.
I still haven't figured out why the on-mouse drop downs are so popular.
It's mostly not-funny to those who don't fit the stereotype, but want to get out from under said stereotype. I'm an engineer, and we take our digs along with the rest. It doesn't bother me because I know I'm not "one of them," but I do know a lot of engineers who are genuinely offended by engineer stereotypes. They usually think a bit too much about what other people think of them, and have what I would consider a lower-than-average sense of humor. I was probably a bit like that when I was younger. Today, I can say that one of my favorite movies is Undercover Brother - if you can laugh at the stereotypes there, you never have to worry about the Simpsons. Now Southpark, otoh... which reminds me - my first thought about the Kwik E Marts was that I sure as hell wouldn't want to walk into a store and see Salty Chocolate Balls anywhere on the shelves. *shiver*
It is. And it wouldn't be funny, except at some time in our lives, we have all encountered someone like Apu. And, I'll admit, I accept any offense given my the stereotype as retribution for the economics TA I had in college ("I am not believing that you have all failed this exam so badly!").
There are stereotypes everywhere in comedy - if you don't like it, don't watch. It's not like anybody really comes out looking good in the Simpsons. Except maybe Lisa, but nobody makes fun of smart, well adjusted girls. Except other girls, of course, and that's not the Simpson's demographic, afaict.
Simply stated, the (three, five?) judge panel setting the ruling should be sacked. It is clear that they have absolutely no business setting royalty payments, as they are entirely ignroant of the underlying industry which they are ruling on. The expert for the stations stated, in effect, this exact outcome and they either didn't understand the technology enough to realize the implications, or were so biased towards one party that they chose to ignore the information. Either way, they should be replaced with members which understand the industry and the conditions present.
Of course, that won't happen. Incompetence and ignorance are not grounds for removing a judge, and from the prespective of the current administration they played the game very nicely.
I actually have (or, rather, had) that WP6.0 CD. The music was pretty good. The last track, done a capella by Kurt Bestor. Very cool track, imho. Made my demo CD for speakers a few years ago when outfitted my stereo room. Totally irrellevant to the discussion, but interesting to know that anyone else actually remembers the disc.
That was my thought, too.
I think they should have her set it up, then give the two laptops to a pair of teenage girls for 3 weeks with $300 to spend on any software they choose and an unencumbered internet connection. Then have them search the two. Think of it as two decks of cards, but shuffling them before you try to find the differences.
Hrmmm...I don't buy it. My Hermes is 3G, and I can go three days between charges easily (over the weekend, for example, when I don't dock it). I'm on GPRS where I live, which does suck donkey balls, but the ability to run UTMS (is that right?) in the bigger cities doesn't seem to cause drain problems when I'm in the sticks. I will say that battery life seems much less when in 3G areas (maybe 50%), but that could be becuase I'm just so damned tempted to surf when I'm getting 400-500kB/s and I don't shut down the data connection when I'm done (lack of a habit). I still managed to have half a battery after a day in Winston-Salem with UTMS, with a good bit of surfing and BT turned on the whole time so I could use my GPS.
I don't envy anyone trying to use their iPhone under GPRS rates. I practically never use the web because of the speed, and when I do I try to hold exclusively to monbile sites and the google mobile gateway. Everything else is just too damned slow.
In retrospect, I suppose you could go two handed with the soap in one hand and a wireless chording keyboard in the other, but it really cuts down on the newbie-friendliness of the system.
How about -$100,000 and possible jail time? Not an unusual price for a criminal investigation, say, for a DMCA violation. These guys really do play hardball, and if you're lawyer agrees with their lawyers, you'd have to have quite a set to go to a public forum where the authorities are waiting for you to finish your talk so they can take you downtown, along with your presentation as proof to turn over to the DA.
Not saying it's right...but there are both carrots and sticks, and I have no doubt they are both used.
Not because the phone is faster, but because you won't be out of your subsidy period when the new one arrives. There's got to be a 3. Profit in here somewhere!
This is probably the most useless invention, from a "average user" practical standpoint. I don't know any HT folks that would de-mount and unhook their projector to take it to a friends house to gang. And if you had 12k for a projector, plus several computers (remember - you'd need 12 video-outs), you could probably get one far better that projects the current maximum consumer-available content. And that doesn't even begin to address color tracking and contrast ratio with differing projectors, or the fact that you're burning 12x the number of lamp hours (which are not insignificant in cost yet) to produce the super-image.
Cool application - no doubt - but not really in the realm of being practical or useful at the consumer level, considering that a typical $1500 projector will produce an HD (720p) image that's 10' wide, which is about as big or bigger than most rooms in a house can handle (@1.5-2.0 screen width to seating distance ratio). I suppose it might be of interest for fixed-width fans that want a 2.35:1 movie theater and can drop in three 1024x768 standard PJs turned 90 degrees. Not sure that's an easy setup to mess with, though, since everything is going to need serious scaling and coordination.
Only if it overturns...um, I mean upholds...um, I mean clarifies...some existing, longstanging supreme court precident. That's what Roberts said he would do in his confirmation hearings - respect the courts previous precidents, right?
Actually, precision is one of the things I would be concerned about. Think about it - with a desk-bound mouse you can make relatively precise movements in two axes, as the third is constrained and the surface provides support for the device. With a hand held object, you must support it with the same fingers used to manipulate the device. Very few people have perfectly steady hands, which means decreasing the sensitivity to avoid shake - further aggravating the speed issue. Second, most of my mouse operations end in a click. My mouse doesn't move under the pressure required to register a click. It's one of the big problems I have with tapping a touch pad - enough sensitivity to allow useful mouse motion causes drag-clicks (i.e. - misses) with all but the most careful taps. That may not matter for a big Allow or Deny dialog, but for accurate cursor placement in graphics, dense text, or CAD, it's the kiss of prductivity death. Zoom and pan, I hear you cry? So I need to do an extra zoom/pan action to offset the click accuracy? How does that speed up my progress.
No, it's a fun looking device, but I think it may not be the mouse of the future unless a lot of other things change.
I usually try to get the graphics up first, so it's actually easier (i.e. - takes less of my personal in-chair time) to reinstall the OS, though it does blow the evening of getting anything done on the HTPC.
.net(x) framework needs to be installed, installation continues, bluescreen on boot immediately following driver installation completion. ATI Uninstall/install .net after a LKG boot causes the installer to fail with an exception. Next time I clean-installed, I did .net first. ATI installer failed with an exception.
My most recent install to a perfetly clean XP MCE went something like: downlaod drivers from AMD/ATI, start install exe, get message that
And I paid money for this? Don't even get me started with the HDTV wonder. It is a well known problem (see AVSforums) that the install sequence must be perfect or the system barfs.
I stand by my post - ATI drivers really do suck. Others have said they don't have problems with other cards. If it's card specific, ATI needs to realize the problem and provide non-monolithic installation packages. It still goes back to incompetent driver models.
I went to the soap homepage (http://www.patrickbaudisch.com/projects/soap/inde x.html) and watched the demo. DOA. The gyrations that guys hand has to make to control the mouse, and the speed of the cursor (I know, you can set that, but there's a limit to maintain precision) makes the propsect of using something like that for an extended period of time seem like a CIA torture technique. I use a "regular" optical moust with a wrist pad that has a wrist rest. It requires very little effort, and I can both zip across a 1920pixel screen and precisely pick points in CAD using the same settings. Plus I get three buttons and a scroll wheel (which, if you pan and zoom in good applications is a great movement saver).
In some ways it reminds me of a trackpad. Very cool looking and futuristic (back when they were first introduced) until you try to use it for anything, at which point it becomes a burden which slows down and degrades the accuracy of all of your pointing and selection operations.
Besides, once I get to eliminate my desk, end table, couch, and bed, where should I put my keyboard - or will they come up with a 60wpm on-screen soap-mouse-pick keyboard?
FTFA: "...AMD needs to have its drivers in full working order before rolling out new SKUs."
Yes, but wouldn't that keep them from ever releasing any new hardware? I have yet to get an old 9800pro working with the latest drivers, and a new install of the drivers generally requires a fresh OS install (under win, of course) because of all the crap strewn about the system on uninstall. With ATI, you once chance, and one chance only. Lord help you if you have one of their capture devices installed as well. Better off playing the lottery - you're chances of winning are far higher.
I don't have the mean and standard deviation for a 3000 death terrorist event in the US, but I'm going to make a wild guess that we haven't even come close to the average return period. Besides, with targets in their backyard they're staying quite busy blowing up US citizens "over there."