Quite the same here in Norway... I spend $25 a month on my pre-paid card and you can get a phone with a pre-paid start pack for $50.
However, we have a situation a bit similar to the US also. We have the one Evil former government phone company, that after privatization turned into a monster the US companies would be proud of. Hidden fees, small print contracts etc. They had free-use DSL, which became $5 for 6 gigs a month, which now has become free-use again. Guess they lost too many customers.
There's one main competitor, 10 years old now, which in general is more customer-friendly, no small print, you know exactly what you pay for. There's also a slew of smaller telephone companies mostly targeted at youths. The fun part is that most of these are either owned by the Evil company, or 0wn3d by the Evil company since everyone has to lease capacity from one of the two competing companies - they're the only ones with the infrastructure for cell phone communication. The Evil company is the only one with the infrastructure for line-based comms like ISDN and xDSL.
That... THING... can... IMPOSSIBLY be called... (buerch) FOOD! (hurl)
Seriously, that's the worst pile of crap I've ever seen.
It's almost so that it should be illegal and the makers punished by eating one of these for each hour of the day until they die from severe heart problems.
...and to petition the UN to pass a resolution forbidding california vintners to call their brew "champagne".
I kinda like the French for this... Champagne is made from grapes in the Champagne district. Cognaq is made - where? You got it. Roquefort is one in the cheese department, and to be patriotic I have to say Jarlsberg also (I hear it's quite popular over there). That cheese got its name from a place ten miles from where I live.
The French farmers and vineyards are obviously very proud of their product. Look at it as trademark protection. I'm not French, but I wouldn't like to see the aforementioned "brand names" become as withered as... "Thermos" or "Xerox".
Not to start a flamewar on religion and all, but I seriously don't think we'll ever create a computer which works like a human brain nor has a "soul" (or "ghost", I kinda like that term).
I don't believe (and note the words "I" and "believe") the soul is a concept we as humans can fathom. Ever. Again, that's me, you may think differently of course.
Funny thing (though I won't bother googling for it right now - fact check yourselces. Debunk if I'm wrong), some scientists have tried figuring out where our soul is, if it exists. They figured it had to be a place in the brain where all the information (sight, sound etc) is combined and processed - one intersection of neurons where everything connects - but there is none. Information from our senses, it seems, is processed by our brains completely independent of each other and that no single area of the brain is/contains a "master cluster controller". OT, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.
Disclaimer: I do not follow any religion or belief system. I believe what I believe. You believe what you will.
forgot to add that the Iraqi refugee mentioned was a soldier in Saddam's army when the Iran/Iraq war was raging. He deserted and fled to my country. Weird, he were insanely afraid of dogs, which he said came from his soldier days. After I saw the picture of the US soldier restraining that snarling dog from biting the terrified Iraqi soldier's face off, I imagine the Iraqi and/or Irani troops must have had their share of fun with POW's themselves. He must also walk with crutches all the time because of bio/chem weapon side-effects.
I think Saddam probably meant he had no _active_ weapons of MD, but sure you're going to find a few broken, buried, disarmed ones. The country's been at war for awful long, remember the Iran/Iraq thing? Lots of gases and foul stuff used in that one, I've had the interesting pleasure of talking to an Iraqi refugee of that war, and boy did bad shit go on back then - on both sides of the conflict.
What would really be embarrasing: Get hundreds of really good kernel fixes from Microsoft coders paid by Microsoft to code on the Linux kernel for a while:)
Pop music has never been about high art, it's about having catchy tunes that young people like to listen to and dance to. The BackStreet Boys actually deliver on that. I'm no great fan of them, but I know their music is catchy and a lot of 14 year-old girls genuinly liked the sound. That just make them "not my taste" rather than "the death of good music."
Even though modern pop/boyband music follows pretty much the same recipe as yesteryear - chorus tease, verse, verse, chorus, verse/bridge, chorus chorus repeat to fade (+ small variations) - pop music from the '60s and '70s had a lot more soul!
In the local music scene (I call the entire Norwegian country's scene "local" what with our staggering population of 4,5 million) there are the big companies spewing out the usual hit, but also a quite large number of artists with varied musical expressions getting a fair bit of mainstream attention. And the indie scene is really growing in these days of record-company hatred.
Surely, your local town/county/country must have its fair share of white labels and small waiting-to-get-noticed bands? Support them! Go to their gigs, buy their T-shirts, spread the music to radio stations (oops... no-one will play unknown groups? get a decent station), let people know how good they are. As a last resort, I've found locking ignorant teenager relatives/aquaintances(sp?) in my room with a 24-hour playlist of CSN&Y, Phish, Metallica, Grateful Dead, Sibelius, Strauss etc fixes the nu-metal/boyband fixation:)
Thanks. Now I have to clean out my keyboard, as I sprayed my morning coffee all over I laughed so hard! And the top 10 lists... "never send spam. it is bad" yup...
In Norway, The Phantom Menace was called "Den Skjulte Trussel" which directly translated means "The Hidden Threat". No ghosts.
I think it's just GL _trying_ to be a decent writer using "difficult" words and phrases to say what can be said in simpler words. The movie was for kids, why use weird phrasing? And George, stop trying. You're not Shakespeare.
If you can't hear it, maybe you're one of those (not degratory meant now:) that can't hear the difference between a 128 and a 192 Kbps MP3.
A 256 Kbit re-encoding of a 128 or 160 Kbps MP3 sounds... lousy. In my ears, that is. 256 K source and 320 K re-encoding, however, wouldn't be _that_ bad but still less optimal than the solution in the article. I thank $deity for the long-awaited lossless codecs:)
I thought the smiley in the heading would be enough, but no. Well, there should be another one after the post. Just to mark it 'not serious', you know?
Yes, Apple _must_ port OSX to AMD64 or something... but that would maybe screw with the sales of their (somewhat overpriced, but you really get what you pay for) hardware.
Man, I remember skimming a line about some mouse gesture something for firefox somewhere sometime not long ago, and was actually looking for it now, loaded texturizer.net but forgot it in another desktop:)
Opera had one thing I liked: the mouse movement based back/left and other actions... press the left key, move the mouse up and then to the left and the browser hits 'back'. It's great, at least when you're mousing around the page anyways. We all know keyboard shortcuts are best, right?
nah, wouldn't think so. AFAIK, the only way a cellphone might disrupt with a computer's data is with the speaker's magnet - but it's so tiny, I think the casing on the hard drive itself would shield enough.
As for memory, calculations in progress... I really don't know, but it would be cool if someone here with the expertise could explain WHY the cellphones (GSM at least) make clickety noises in loudspeakers when there's an incoming call. (dat dadadat dadadat dadaDAAA%#%") And if this signal, frequency, whatever can actually interfere with the electronic processes in a computer?
I know, it interferes when placing a call too, and sending an SMS, just weaker. Again, why? I could google for it but I don't care much really. I keep my cell on the computer case and haven't had problems yet:)
Heavy Metal was quite cool... The first couple of times I saw it, I thought it was crap. But the movie really grew on me. Cheesy stuff really, but lots of fun.
FAKK2 wasn't that good... they should make a Heavy Metal 3 in the style of the first one - multiple lead animators, one with his/her own segment and storyline of the movie.
Come on... have a bit of tolerance! The man can look however he wants for me, if he's hygienic. Long beard != unhygienic. It's easily taken care of. I guess he showers? Then he most likely also clean his beard.
I recently cut mine (i had a beard almost as long as RMS) because, frankly, while it's easy keeping the beard clean and free from food etc:) it's a time-consuming thing keeping it even and not looking ugly. But frankly I don't care as long as the man doesn't smell awful:)
And hey... the 60's peace&love thing will be back someday, when the world's ready! Dont' disrespect the hippie movement. What's wrong caring about each other for a change:)
GIF: Lossless, because they were designed for 256-color images. Any image with more colors that are saved as GIFs are (AFAIK) dithered in the image processing software and saved with a selective 256-color palette - the format itself is lossless, it's just an old, bad design:)
JPEG: Lossy, and here the JPEG compression itself degrades the image (again, AFAIK)
PNG: great format, but HUGE files in PNG-24, so it's not the best to use for photos etc... screenshots are good though.
I'd like to stress the point that I'm not an image format guru in any way (as can be seen from this post as it's bound to be erronous) but the above is what I've understood from how the formats work...
Slashdot Mirror
One could always use this
zap!
Quite the same here in Norway... I spend $25 a month on my pre-paid card and you can get a phone with a pre-paid start pack for $50.
However, we have a situation a bit similar to the US also. We have the one Evil former government phone company, that after privatization turned into a monster the US companies would be proud of. Hidden fees, small print contracts etc. They had free-use DSL, which became $5 for 6 gigs a month, which now has become free-use again. Guess they lost too many customers.
There's one main competitor, 10 years old now, which in general is more customer-friendly, no small print, you know exactly what you pay for. There's also a slew of smaller telephone companies mostly targeted at youths. The fun part is that most of these are either owned by the Evil company, or 0wn3d by the Evil company since everyone has to lease capacity from one of the two competing companies - they're the only ones with the infrastructure for cell phone communication. The Evil company is the only one with the infrastructure for line-based comms like ISDN and xDSL.
That... THING... can... IMPOSSIBLY be called... (buerch) FOOD! (hurl)
Seriously, that's the worst pile of crap I've ever seen.
It's almost so that it should be illegal and the makers punished by eating one of these for each hour of the day until they die from severe heart problems.
People actually eat this stuff?
Man I was gonna flame you for not reading my entire 1-line post, but then I got _your_ joke... bit slow as always :)
R-word? What, recession? (rimshot). Sorry, of course you mean robots.
I kinda like the French for this... Champagne is made from grapes in the Champagne district. Cognaq is made - where? You got it. Roquefort is one in the cheese department, and to be patriotic I have to say Jarlsberg also (I hear it's quite popular over there). That cheese got its name from a place ten miles from where I live.
The French farmers and vineyards are obviously very proud of their product. Look at it as trademark protection. I'm not French, but I wouldn't like to see the aforementioned "brand names" become as withered as... "Thermos" or "Xerox".
Not to start a flamewar on religion and all, but I seriously don't think we'll ever create a computer which works like a human brain nor has a "soul" (or "ghost", I kinda like that term).
I don't believe (and note the words "I" and "believe") the soul is a concept we as humans can fathom. Ever. Again, that's me, you may think differently of course.
Funny thing (though I won't bother googling for it right now - fact check yourselces. Debunk if I'm wrong), some scientists have tried figuring out where our soul is, if it exists. They figured it had to be a place in the brain where all the information (sight, sound etc) is combined and processed - one intersection of neurons where everything connects - but there is none. Information from our senses, it seems, is processed by our brains completely independent of each other and that no single area of the brain is/contains a "master cluster controller". OT, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.
Disclaimer: I do not follow any religion or belief system. I believe what I believe. You believe what you will.
forgot to add that the Iraqi refugee mentioned was a soldier in Saddam's army when the Iran/Iraq war was raging. He deserted and fled to my country. Weird, he were insanely afraid of dogs, which he said came from his soldier days. After I saw the picture of the US soldier restraining that snarling dog from biting the terrified Iraqi soldier's face off, I imagine the Iraqi and/or Irani troops must have had their share of fun with POW's themselves. He must also walk with crutches all the time because of bio/chem weapon side-effects.
I think Saddam probably meant he had no _active_ weapons of MD, but sure you're going to find a few broken, buried, disarmed ones. The country's been at war for awful long, remember the Iran/Iraq thing? Lots of gases and foul stuff used in that one, I've had the interesting pleasure of talking to an Iraqi refugee of that war, and boy did bad shit go on back then - on both sides of the conflict.
What would really be embarrasing: Get hundreds of really good kernel fixes from Microsoft coders paid by Microsoft to code on the Linux kernel for a while :)
Even though modern pop/boyband music follows pretty much the same recipe as yesteryear - chorus tease, verse, verse, chorus, verse/bridge, chorus chorus repeat to fade (+ small variations) - pop music from the '60s and '70s had a lot more soul!
In the local music scene (I call the entire Norwegian country's scene "local" what with our staggering population of 4,5 million) there are the big companies spewing out the usual hit, but also a quite large number of artists with varied musical expressions getting a fair bit of mainstream attention. And the indie scene is really growing in these days of record-company hatred.
Surely, your local town/county/country must have its fair share of white labels and small waiting-to-get-noticed bands? Support them! Go to their gigs, buy their T-shirts, spread the music to radio stations (oops... no-one will play unknown groups? get a decent station), let people know how good they are. As a last resort, I've found locking ignorant teenager relatives/aquaintances(sp?) in my room with a 24-hour playlist of CSN&Y, Phish, Metallica, Grateful Dead, Sibelius, Strauss etc fixes the nu-metal/boyband fixation
Thanks. Now I have to clean out my keyboard, as I sprayed my morning coffee all over I laughed so hard! And the top 10 lists... "never send spam. it is bad" yup...
In Norway, The Phantom Menace was called "Den Skjulte Trussel" which directly translated means "The Hidden Threat". No ghosts.
I think it's just GL _trying_ to be a decent writer using "difficult" words and phrases to say what can be said in simpler words. The movie was for kids, why use weird phrasing? And George, stop trying. You're not Shakespeare.
you still lose in audio quality.
:) that can't hear the difference between a 128 and a 192 Kbps MP3.
:)
If you can't hear it, maybe you're one of those (not degratory meant now
A 256 Kbit re-encoding of a 128 or 160 Kbps MP3 sounds... lousy. In my ears, that is. 256 K source and 320 K re-encoding, however, wouldn't be _that_ bad but still less optimal than the solution in the article. I thank $deity for the long-awaited lossless codecs
I thought the smiley in the heading would be enough, but no. Well, there should be another one after the post. Just to mark it 'not serious', you know?
...running VirtualPC again, with the PearPC running OSX with VirtualPC with.... hm. Wonder when it all says *poof* if you try this...
Not _quite_ sure but a puff in the right direction; when I had a PowerBook 15" (667 MHz G4, 512 MB ram) it took about an hour. For all CD's.
:(
With the newer faster DVD+R drives on a new G5 I guess it goes quite lickety-split according to a Mac zealot friend of mine.
Damn, I want a PowerBook again
Yes, Apple _must_ port OSX to AMD64 or something... but that would maybe screw with the sales of their (somewhat overpriced, but you really get what you pay for) hardware.
Man, I remember skimming a line about some mouse gesture something for firefox somewhere sometime not long ago, and was actually looking for it now, loaded texturizer.net but forgot it in another desktop :)
Thanks, and to the second reply too.
Opera had one thing I liked: the mouse movement based back/left and other actions... press the left key, move the mouse up and then to the left and the browser hits 'back'. It's great, at least when you're mousing around the page anyways. We all know keyboard shortcuts are best, right?
But still, everyone can have bad luck and the tiniest spark could blow up the entire gas station in a freak accident. It could happen!
I wonder if gasoline compression is lossless?
nah, wouldn't think so. AFAIK, the only way a cellphone might disrupt with a computer's data is with the speaker's magnet - but it's so tiny, I think the casing on the hard drive itself would shield enough.
:)
As for memory, calculations in progress... I really don't know, but it would be cool if someone here with the expertise could explain WHY the cellphones (GSM at least) make clickety noises in loudspeakers when there's an incoming call. (dat dadadat dadadat dadaDAAA%#%") And if this signal, frequency, whatever can actually interfere with the electronic processes in a computer?
I know, it interferes when placing a call too, and sending an SMS, just weaker. Again, why? I could google for it but I don't care much really. I keep my cell on the computer case and haven't had problems yet
Heavy Metal was quite cool... The first couple of times I saw it, I thought it was crap. But the movie really grew on me. Cheesy stuff really, but lots of fun.
FAKK2 wasn't that good... they should make a Heavy Metal 3 in the style of the first one - multiple lead animators, one with his/her own segment and storyline of the movie.
Come on... have a bit of tolerance! The man can look however he wants for me, if he's hygienic. Long beard != unhygienic. It's easily taken care of. I guess he showers? Then he most likely also clean his beard.
:) it's a time-consuming thing keeping it even and not looking ugly. But frankly I don't care as long as the man doesn't smell awful :)
:)
I recently cut mine (i had a beard almost as long as RMS) because, frankly, while it's easy keeping the beard clean and free from food etc
And hey... the 60's peace&love thing will be back someday, when the world's ready! Dont' disrespect the hippie movement. What's wrong caring about each other for a change
GIF: Lossless, because they were designed for 256-color images. Any image with more colors that are saved as GIFs are (AFAIK) dithered in the image processing software and saved with a selective 256-color palette - the format itself is lossless, it's just an old, bad design :)
JPEG: Lossy, and here the JPEG compression itself degrades the image (again, AFAIK)
PNG: great format, but HUGE files in PNG-24, so it's not the best to use for photos etc... screenshots are good though.
I'd like to stress the point that I'm not an image format guru in any way (as can be seen from this post as it's bound to be erronous) but the above is what I've understood from how the formats work...