Now all that needs to be done is to have a cryptographically secure public/private key authorization on each transaction with a biometric and a 9-12 digit alphanumaric pin I can change every once in a while. Is that really asking too much?
That would be awesome, but there need to be good "converters". The ability to leverage the RG-6 in my walls would be a wecome relief to the troublesome fishing of 100' of cable that's as thick as my thumb and can't have a connector field crimped.
Of course, for maximum flexibility, what I'd prefer is a consumer-priced MPEG2 encoder/modulator so I could add all my component channels on my local cctv system just like I do with SD video right now. SDI would be snazzy, but would require some pretty expensive nxm switching gear in the basement.
Those of us over thirty don't need geek cards - we invented geek. Anyone who has learned to code in assembly by poking two hexadecimals into an 8 bit computer will never - I repeat - never have to fear that his or her geekiness might be questioned by someone who was born after Apple created their first computer.
Seriously, there does need to be regulation in this arena.
I'm sure it may be a bit difficult to measure, but I'd say minimum guaranteed speed at 99.5% uptime, or 1st percentile speed without an uptime guarantee (i.e Obps for less than 99% uptime), should be the maximum allowable advertised speed for any internet connection.
When I moved out of town in '2001, I inquired with the local phone cooperative about the availability of high speed internet. The cs rep exitiedly told me that - they did offer high speed. In fact, the'd just upgraded half of the modem pool to V.92 modems, and the rest of the modems would be upgraded in the next year. I was underwhelmed, to say the least.
It would be cheaper to RAID5 three 500GB drives on a $/GB basis and buy two others as backup media. At $110/HD that's $330 extra to cover your pr0n collection, vs. $360 for a pair of 600GB holographic discs (Fry's has a 500GB UDMA available for $110 shipped today, btw), and you wouldn't need to go spend $18k on the holographic drive. Don't worry, I'll split the $9k in savings with you - you can just send me a cashier's check.
I know that with a 4 digit UID this can't be the case, but I'm just compelled to say...
You must be new here.
And, yes, it is pretty stupid - unless the inventor is (a) young and (b) has had no contact with other experts in the field, in which case he may think it quite novel. He'd be wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything in the patent process, apparently.
You need to get Media Monkey and set up your portable devices with custom convert-on-the-fly sync rules. It's easy - even I managed to do it. If you've got a pretty static collection, you can convert-sync to another directory. That's what I did when my wife got an ipod - converted the 80GB of FLAC to 15GB of MP3, then let her sift it down to the 8GB of her device memory by cutting out the chuncks of my collection she never listens to. She's happy with iTunes, and I rip all our CDs and just give her an MP3 copy, so there are few tears involved.
I used to use foobar, but it takes a bit of customization to really be useful as a full-time app, and I don't have that kind of time or patience. MM does most everything for me, and tagging is pretty easy. Version 3 is looking to be pretty cool.
APE is just another lossless. Foobar2000 is a quick and dirty way to transcode, and lossless-lossless is (naturally) lossless - so you can swap out to a new format in the future if you really decide you hate what you're using. I actually converted my whole collection with foobar once - took about 3 days, but it worked. I always delete.cue, etc. and just keep the base files when I useually download from the net. I always have to go in and clean up the tags anyway - even on my own rips - since I'm particular about my genre and album-artist settings.
I'm lazy, and I use an el cheapo drip coffee maker (love espresso, don't have the tolerance for the caffeine or the time/$$ for a machine), but you're right about the short shelf life. I go through about a pound of coffee every 5 weeks (I get my hair cut in a shop above a local coffee shop that roasts their own - one cut, on lb of coffee). Sadly, after a week, the coffee loses it's essence, but it's still better than nothing. This month I vaccum sealed and froze 3/4 of the lb...we'll see if it holds up. I've got my fingers crossed.
The reason is that MP3s play in every player without conversion. Most players can't convert on the fly. Media Monkey can, though not to MP4 yet, and even with a fast machine its slower than a straight copy,
I would prefer FLAC (or even APE, since I just transcode to FLAC), but to be popular you have to be simple. MP3 is simple. You also need to appear to be "compact", so they'll proabably send them out at 128 or - if we're luckly 192kb. That may sound silly, but imagine the iTMS commercial that touts "If you download from iTMS, your player will hold twice as many songs as the leading competitor." Stupid but true.
Now, if they were to offer a FLAC option, that would be awesome - but I'm not holding my breath. Somebody needs to swipe the AllOfMP3 engine, if you want to know my opinion. Now that the DRM beast is retreating, you may as well let people download whatever bit rate they want.
If you did, you'd know that your (properly maintained) books would show the purchases. You would have a list of assets you bought with the date and amount paid.
Then again, you might be running your company outof your garage and keeping the books on the back of In-n-Out hamburger wrappers, in which case yes, you'd be screwed.
Well, actually, gallons per mile is difficult to determine as well, since you'll be dealing with small decimals all the time.
Litres per 100km makes for nice numbers, but it's metric, and we Americans can't understand metric. I think it's biological.
Also, how could I figure out how many miles my car can go on a tank of gas if I didn't have a mpg number? Remember, we've stopped teaching our children math, so there's no possible way we could invert the gal/100mi figure and get anything close to the right answer. Even worse, if I found out my truck used 8gal/100mi, I'd suddenly realize that a simple 25 mile round-trip to the discount mega-mart would cost me almost $6 in fuel. That just doesn't seem right to spend $6 to save a nickel on a pack of gum. The whole American society might collapse under the weight of it all.
1. A recent study (I'm not going to like it, it was on/. last week) noted that conservative driving resulted in mileage similar to most hybrids, and comes primarily from reducing the use of brakes. By not using brakes in a hybrid, you rob the batteries of the energy from regenrative breaking. Not driving at high speeds, and not maximizing your acceleration also helps. In otherwords, smart driving will always help, but it helps a hybrid driver far less (becuase they already conserve that energy - you don't get to double dip)
2. The batteries ARE more toxic than those in a normal car. Automobiles use lead-acid batteries, which are bad; Hybrids use Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries, which are worse. And they use more of them, to boot. All batteries should be recycled, so that size is somewhat equal.
3. IF the vehicle has lots of aluminum (vs steel) then the energy cost of manufacturing is higher. Also, I wasn't aware that all these manufacturers created parts in Japan. I thought they mostly came from China and Mexico, and were shipped to the US for assembly - at least that's what the country-of-origin stickers say.
4. GPcould be lying about the drop off in year 6, but why would he bother? The fact is that all of the warranties are gone (including Fed mandated emissions components), and the batteries will need to be replaced soon. Since each battery has a $200 "bounty" built into the price, you're looking at a cash outlay larger than a new transmission to keep the car running.
If it weren't for my wife, I could do the same thing. Problem is, she watches so much crap on her TiVo that isn't available on d/l or fixed media it would never work. My daughter could live on packaged programs and movies, and I almost never watch TV except for movies and some shows which are available on disc by the time I get around to viewing them. For the $700 we spend on programming, we could buy a lot of fixed media or downloads.
Actually, now that I come to think of it, maybe we could get by with the right media center. I would just ahve to wean the wife off of TiVos suggestions for the latest history/biography stuff she likes so much.
Yes, but if the legal profession is like most other, the board which regulates their conduct is comprised mostly, if not exclusively, of fellow lawyers - which tend to look at such actions with a less cynical eye than the general public. There are cases of blatent disregard for the law, but those in the gray area are going to be seen in the accused favor more likely than not. I've been involved with both a professional and occupational board, and both tended to be pretty lenient on even the least trustworthy of members.
Determining these things are actually not thta difficult. Even with processing power back then, FEM could have provided a zero-g trasformed shape from the known assembly and geometry, and optical modeling programs (such as CODE V, though I don't know if CODE V existed at the time) could have backed out the proper results. I managed to determine why some aspheric optics were ~40 microns (iirc) off of correct in the mid 90s by analysing the deflection of the machining jig due to centripetal acceleration on the lathe. The deformed shape matched the final optical calibration error to within 4%.
Anyway, there are lots of optical tricks that can be used as well. I'm no expert in optics, but these guys were - and I'm certian they could have figured out the error. I don't rememebr the reason for the mistake, but I seem to remember it being obvious in hindsight.
I don't have one, but have considered it. I'm with you an a two-pager...
In fact, if the "page" is sufficiently fleaxible, why not make it a single sheet with a bend in the middle? Open a clamshell case partially and it could read as two side-by-side pages, lock it in the fully-open-and-flat position and it can be read as one (nearly) A4 page. Best of both worlds, as long as the display can take the fatigue cycles at the center.
I agree that there certianly have been times in the geologic past when the earth was hotter, and colder, and CO2 was in higher - or lower - concentration. It's "just a few degrees" right? More summer sounds like a good idea, of course, unless you hate the heat of the summer.
Everytime someone touts the variations over the life of the earth, I'm always compelled to point out that almost nothing that was alive then is alive now. So as long as you're not really concered about becoming extinct, it's not a big deal. Whether climate change occurs "naturally" or by human intervention is somewhat irrelevant if the end result is that we are all going to die. It seems that it is in our best interest to maintain the status quo. To do so, we should not be ignoring the changes as "inevitable" but determining what effects we can have to keep the system stable. That's a pretty big order, but given the consequeces I think a little forethought might not be a bad idea.
Based on the way his jowles have ballooned over the last 8 years, I'm going to guess there's just about nothing that could be done to make him qualify as "hot" anymore.
Actually, you touched on the problem in your first sentence: completely frivilous lawsuits are not really common. Why? Because lawyers are the ones determining what constitutes frivolity? It's a clear conflict of interest. And one we will never get away from, considering the large percentage of the legislators and judges are lawyers.
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That's why I'd want two copies.
Now all that needs to be done is to have a cryptographically secure public/private key authorization on each transaction with a biometric and a 9-12 digit alphanumaric pin I can change every once in a while. Is that really asking too much?
That would be awesome, but there need to be good "converters". The ability to leverage the RG-6 in my walls would be a wecome relief to the troublesome fishing of 100' of cable that's as thick as my thumb and can't have a connector field crimped.
Of course, for maximum flexibility, what I'd prefer is a consumer-priced MPEG2 encoder/modulator so I could add all my component channels on my local cctv system just like I do with SD video right now. SDI would be snazzy, but would require some pretty expensive nxm switching gear in the basement.
Those of us over thirty don't need geek cards - we invented geek. Anyone who has learned to code in assembly by poking two hexadecimals into an 8 bit computer will never - I repeat - never have to fear that his or her geekiness might be questioned by someone who was born after Apple created their first computer.
Seriously, there does need to be regulation in this arena.
I'm sure it may be a bit difficult to measure, but I'd say minimum guaranteed speed at 99.5% uptime, or 1st percentile speed without an uptime guarantee (i.e Obps for less than 99% uptime), should be the maximum allowable advertised speed for any internet connection.
When I moved out of town in '2001, I inquired with the local phone cooperative about the availability of high speed internet. The cs rep exitiedly told me that - they did offer high speed. In fact, the'd just upgraded half of the modem pool to V.92 modems, and the rest of the modems would be upgraded in the next year. I was underwhelmed, to say the least.
It would be cheaper to RAID5 three 500GB drives on a $/GB basis and buy two others as backup media. At $110/HD that's $330 extra to cover your pr0n collection, vs. $360 for a pair of 600GB holographic discs (Fry's has a 500GB UDMA available for $110 shipped today, btw), and you wouldn't need to go spend $18k on the holographic drive. Don't worry, I'll split the $9k in savings with you - you can just send me a cashier's check.
I know that with a 4 digit UID this can't be the case, but I'm just compelled to say...
You must be new here.
And, yes, it is pretty stupid - unless the inventor is (a) young and (b) has had no contact with other experts in the field, in which case he may think it quite novel. He'd be wrong, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything in the patent process, apparently.
You need to get Media Monkey and set up your portable devices with custom convert-on-the-fly sync rules. It's easy - even I managed to do it. If you've got a pretty static collection, you can convert-sync to another directory. That's what I did when my wife got an ipod - converted the 80GB of FLAC to 15GB of MP3, then let her sift it down to the 8GB of her device memory by cutting out the chuncks of my collection she never listens to. She's happy with iTunes, and I rip all our CDs and just give her an MP3 copy, so there are few tears involved.
.cue, etc. and just keep the base files when I useually download from the net. I always have to go in and clean up the tags anyway - even on my own rips - since I'm particular about my genre and album-artist settings.
I used to use foobar, but it takes a bit of customization to really be useful as a full-time app, and I don't have that kind of time or patience. MM does most everything for me, and tagging is pretty easy. Version 3 is looking to be pretty cool.
APE is just another lossless. Foobar2000 is a quick and dirty way to transcode, and lossless-lossless is (naturally) lossless - so you can swap out to a new format in the future if you really decide you hate what you're using. I actually converted my whole collection with foobar once - took about 3 days, but it worked. I always delete
The first rule of usenet...
(it's oosnetyea in pig latin, isn't it?)
Which reminds me...wtf is everthing doing in boneless? Is there some inside joke I missed when I was offline in the late 90s?
I'm lazy, and I use an el cheapo drip coffee maker (love espresso, don't have the tolerance for the caffeine or the time/$$ for a machine), but you're right about the short shelf life. I go through about a pound of coffee every 5 weeks (I get my hair cut in a shop above a local coffee shop that roasts their own - one cut, on lb of coffee). Sadly, after a week, the coffee loses it's essence, but it's still better than nothing. This month I vaccum sealed and froze 3/4 of the lb...we'll see if it holds up. I've got my fingers crossed.
The reason is that MP3s play in every player without conversion. Most players can't convert on the fly. Media Monkey can, though not to MP4 yet, and even with a fast machine its slower than a straight copy,
I would prefer FLAC (or even APE, since I just transcode to FLAC), but to be popular you have to be simple. MP3 is simple. You also need to appear to be "compact", so they'll proabably send them out at 128 or - if we're luckly 192kb. That may sound silly, but imagine the iTMS commercial that touts "If you download from iTMS, your player will hold twice as many songs as the leading competitor." Stupid but true.
Now, if they were to offer a FLAC option, that would be awesome - but I'm not holding my breath. Somebody needs to swipe the AllOfMP3 engine, if you want to know my opinion. Now that the DRM beast is retreating, you may as well let people download whatever bit rate they want.
He should look in his own back yard at all the shady electronics/camera merchants in Brooklyn. Fix you own problems first.
FWIW, I paid for business level support on my laptop, and with very few exceptions have had nothing but quick response from fairly knowledgable reps.
The last part may be a bit flamebaitish, but the correction of the GP is good enough reason.
Change is only good if you're okay with the fact that you will, like 99% of all the other creatures in the history of the earth, soon become extinct.
It is, as they say, the natural order of things.
If you did, you'd know that your (properly maintained) books would show the purchases. You would have a list of assets you bought with the date and amount paid.
Then again, you might be running your company outof your garage and keeping the books on the back of In-n-Out hamburger wrappers, in which case yes, you'd be screwed.
Well, actually, gallons per mile is difficult to determine as well, since you'll be dealing with small decimals all the time.
Litres per 100km makes for nice numbers, but it's metric, and we Americans can't understand metric. I think it's biological.
Also, how could I figure out how many miles my car can go on a tank of gas if I didn't have a mpg number? Remember, we've stopped teaching our children math, so there's no possible way we could invert the gal/100mi figure and get anything close to the right answer. Even worse, if I found out my truck used 8gal/100mi, I'd suddenly realize that a simple 25 mile round-trip to the discount mega-mart would cost me almost $6 in fuel. That just doesn't seem right to spend $6 to save a nickel on a pack of gum. The whole American society might collapse under the weight of it all.
1. A recent study (I'm not going to like it, it was on /. last week) noted that conservative driving resulted in mileage similar to most hybrids, and comes primarily from reducing the use of brakes. By not using brakes in a hybrid, you rob the batteries of the energy from regenrative breaking. Not driving at high speeds, and not maximizing your acceleration also helps. In otherwords, smart driving will always help, but it helps a hybrid driver far less (becuase they already conserve that energy - you don't get to double dip)
2. The batteries ARE more toxic than those in a normal car. Automobiles use lead-acid batteries, which are bad; Hybrids use Nickel-Metal Hydride batteries, which are worse. And they use more of them, to boot. All batteries should be recycled, so that size is somewhat equal.
3. IF the vehicle has lots of aluminum (vs steel) then the energy cost of manufacturing is higher. Also, I wasn't aware that all these manufacturers created parts in Japan. I thought they mostly came from China and Mexico, and were shipped to the US for assembly - at least that's what the country-of-origin stickers say.
4. GPcould be lying about the drop off in year 6, but why would he bother? The fact is that all of the warranties are gone (including Fed mandated emissions components), and the batteries will need to be replaced soon. Since each battery has a $200 "bounty" built into the price, you're looking at a cash outlay larger than a new transmission to keep the car running.
5. Recycling is good.
If it weren't for my wife, I could do the same thing. Problem is, she watches so much crap on her TiVo that isn't available on d/l or fixed media it would never work. My daughter could live on packaged programs and movies, and I almost never watch TV except for movies and some shows which are available on disc by the time I get around to viewing them. For the $700 we spend on programming, we could buy a lot of fixed media or downloads.
Actually, now that I come to think of it, maybe we could get by with the right media center. I would just ahve to wean the wife off of TiVos suggestions for the latest history/biography stuff she likes so much.
Yes, but if the legal profession is like most other, the board which regulates their conduct is comprised mostly, if not exclusively, of fellow lawyers - which tend to look at such actions with a less cynical eye than the general public. There are cases of blatent disregard for the law, but those in the gray area are going to be seen in the accused favor more likely than not. I've been involved with both a professional and occupational board, and both tended to be pretty lenient on even the least trustworthy of members.
A little late, but...
Determining these things are actually not thta difficult. Even with processing power back then, FEM could have provided a zero-g trasformed shape from the known assembly and geometry, and optical modeling programs (such as CODE V, though I don't know if CODE V existed at the time) could have backed out the proper results. I managed to determine why some aspheric optics were ~40 microns (iirc) off of correct in the mid 90s by analysing the deflection of the machining jig due to centripetal acceleration on the lathe. The deformed shape matched the final optical calibration error to within 4%.
Anyway, there are lots of optical tricks that can be used as well. I'm no expert in optics, but these guys were - and I'm certian they could have figured out the error. I don't rememebr the reason for the mistake, but I seem to remember it being obvious in hindsight.
I don't have one, but have considered it. I'm with you an a two-pager...
In fact, if the "page" is sufficiently fleaxible, why not make it a single sheet with a bend in the middle? Open a clamshell case partially and it could read as two side-by-side pages, lock it in the fully-open-and-flat position and it can be read as one (nearly) A4 page. Best of both worlds, as long as the display can take the fatigue cycles at the center.
Hmmmm.. [runs off to patent office]
You know they arrest people for doing that kind of stuff in public. You should really reconsider.
/. Well, in that case you're probably okay.
Oh, you meant actually working or surfing
I agree that there certianly have been times in the geologic past when the earth was hotter, and colder, and CO2 was in higher - or lower - concentration. It's "just a few degrees" right? More summer sounds like a good idea, of course, unless you hate the heat of the summer.
Everytime someone touts the variations over the life of the earth, I'm always compelled to point out that almost nothing that was alive then is alive now. So as long as you're not really concered about becoming extinct, it's not a big deal. Whether climate change occurs "naturally" or by human intervention is somewhat irrelevant if the end result is that we are all going to die. It seems that it is in our best interest to maintain the status quo. To do so, we should not be ignoring the changes as "inevitable" but determining what effects we can have to keep the system stable. That's a pretty big order, but given the consequeces I think a little forethought might not be a bad idea.
Based on the way his jowles have ballooned over the last 8 years, I'm going to guess there's just about nothing that could be done to make him qualify as "hot" anymore.
Actually, you touched on the problem in your first sentence: completely frivilous lawsuits are not really common. Why? Because lawyers are the ones determining what constitutes frivolity? It's a clear conflict of interest. And one we will never get away from, considering the large percentage of the legislators and judges are lawyers.