It's not Pandora's fault. It's Canada's fault. Stop being a worthless internet crybaby and go get your local laws fixed so that Pandora can offer you service, and not be locked out by the local copyright monopolies.
And thankfully this power is not systematically abused with no fear of reprisal or any chance of the abusers being held to account for their actions...
Except that he wasn't. He was invited to Aryan Nation meetinga, eventually decided he didn't like what they were selling, and had no further contact with the group. Even if he was, however, rights must be protected for the worst of us, or they won't be protected for anyone.
Weaver was no threat and had harmed no one. Then the Federal Government entrapped him and tried to blackmail him into joining the Aryan Nation as an informant, and he refused. Which led (eventually) to the standoff.
If he didn't have guns there wouldn't have been an armed stand-off in the first place
I agree, they would have just indiscriminately killed everyone on the Weaver property. Hundreds of unarmed individuals are shot by U.S. police every year, after all.
Or, maybe they would have shown "restraint" and just arrested Weaver and railroaded him through court on trumped up charges. Charges that were closely scrutinized as a result of the standoff and that were eventually shown to be baseless. Obviously allowing government thugs to round people up and imprison them with no possibility of reprisal is a desirable outcome...
and two people wouldn't have died.
Three people actually died: Weaver's son was killed by U.S. Marshals under questionable circumstances, Weaver's wife was assassinated by an FBI sniper (no other way to describe shooting an unarmed woman holding a 3-month old in the head), and a U.S. Marshal was killed in self defense by a friend of the Weaver family.
That third death is very key: A Federal Agent, who was in the process of violating the rights of U.S. citizens, and who had just killed the Weaver family's dog and fatally wounded Weaver's son, was killed by a private citizen. An act ruled as self defense.
No, that's an excellent argument for maintaining the right to bear arms.
Actually, I'd say Randy Weaver: the knowledge that he owned firearms kept an army of Federal Agents at bay without Weaver firing a single shot. If he hadn't been armed, chances are we wouldn't even know who he was, as he'd of been executed like his wife and son by a bunch of out-of-control "law enforcers".
Did you notice the constant erosion of your rights since 9/11?
Are you arguing my rights would have been eroded LESS if Federal agents didn't have to worry about being shot in the face when entering my home uninvited?
The American public's acceptance of unconstitutional expansion of government power since 2001 is not an argument for allowing more rights to be stripped away, but instead an argument as to why we must zealously guard the few we have left.
Well, to be fair, I didn't actually PAY for my tuition, that was covered by my Research Assistantship... I got paid a lot less than $22k, though. Probably about a third of that. Lower cost of living and all that.
The only excuses for guns are the hobbies of hunting and target shooting. It's not worth it.
The primary purpose of protecting the right to own firearms is to allow the civilian populace of the United States to maintain the necessary power to resist and possibly violently overthrow an oppressive, out-of-control government.
Hunting and target shooting are just side benefits.
It's been about six years since I've been in school, but even my most expensive semester of graduate school was only about $1750. Last I checked prices were still in the low $2000 range there. That's for 12+ credits (9+ credits in Graduate School), not a single 4 credit course.
These big schools and their even bigger price tags. What the flying fsck are they smoking?
Set up a commission, give them unlimited fact-finding authority over the ISPs.
Any such commission would eventually be captured by the industry it's supposed to regulate, becoming useless.
The only solution to our problems is a freeer market. Competition is the only thing that will provide the necessary downward pressure on prices and incentive to invest in better quality of service. The only way to achieve increased competition in these marketplaces, however, is probably through a decidedly non-free-market path.
The service providers must be broken up, with the divisions that control the infrastructure being split off from the portions that provide services/content to the end user--either into separate private corporations, or by nationalizing the infrastructure, thereby eliminating the conflicts of interest that plague the existing industries.
Yes, even as a quasi-libertarian die-hard free market capitalist, I am quite serious about the suggestion to nationalize. Infrastructure (spectrum/towers, copper cable, fiber, whatever) is a natural monopoly. The only way for it to be efficiently managed is either via heavily regulated (preferably via something like common carrier) private companies, or a publicly owned utility model. As long as the people who own the pipes are also the ones delivering you service, all the pressure is applied in the exact wrong direction, leading to increases in prices and reduction in quality.
On the other hand, when anyone can become a service provider by paying for access to the lines/towers (on a pricing schedule that treats all providers equally), if a service provider starts overcharging or under-performing, a competitor can move in and eat their lunch. People will flock to providers who provide the best value, since they will no longer be chained to a specific company by regional monopolies on the resources.
Oh, and while you're at it, get rid of that abomination called CDMA.
And, BTW - the GOVERNMENT is mandated to respect free speech.
In the U.S., WE ARE the government. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's still true regardless.
Besides, what exactly are you suggesting the people being disrupted do? Are you trying to incite violence against individuals taking part in a peaceful demonstration?
There is so much legacy copper cabling running between the floors in the labs I work in that they're practically Faraday cages. Even my desk, which is outside of a lab proper but has a lab above it, I get no reception. "Desk phones" are still necessary in situations like that... Though I prefer asynchronous communication via email or IM, so people can deal with it on their own time.
A few of us who are lucky enough get to use Spectralink mobiles, at least. There are repeaters for them inside the labs.
There was actually a noticeable tech industry presence in the Tennessee Valley and northern Alabama last time I was in the area. Lots of incentives being offered to start a business. Now Millville, NJ? Those are the rednecks you are looking for.
Projection systems require space for throw-distance, or expensive first-surface mirrors. That adds cost. And they're a maintenance nightmare. Plus the cost of a good screen. Good, bright projectors are also usually in the $20k-$50k range.
Really, projectors weren't an option. There is literally only one inch of clearance between the wall and two of the screens in the room we built the first system in. We had to build something that fit in the space we had been provided.
At the end of the day, we got nine "acceptable" displays for less than the price of one good projector, mirror, and screen.
The first Air-Traffic Control Tower simulator I helped build used 9 73" Mitsubishi rear-projection DLPs. They weren't our first choice, but we didn't get the funding we asked for so it was either settle or get nothing. They were awful for our purposes, except in one key factor: price. The image quality was bad: fuzzy, low contrast, inconsistent colors between displays. Their mirrors were fragile! I think we lost two displays to broken mirrors eventually. They were also prone to bending, and not well calibrated, often with significant overdraw, meaning we had to hand-tweak view frustums for each display to line up the image. And if a display was ever moved or jostled, we had to do it again. I've seen people claim (in these comments!) that off-center viewing was better on these DLPs than on LCDs... They must have been using some other brand, because the Mitsubishi sets were just as bad as any LCDs we own. In addition, the image became darker and unfocused if you got closer to the televisions than 10ft, which was completely counter-intuitive for Controllers who were new to the system... Like I said, though, the price couldn't be beat. We built a 270-degree system with 9 displays, at a price of something like $2400/display. Even five years later, when we built a new system out of bezel-less LCD panels, it took 24 60" NEC LCD panels at a price of $5-6k/panel to build a 288-degree system comparable to our original setup. The NEC panels look a hell of a lot better, though, there's no comparison there...
I work in Air Traffic Control simulation, primarily Control Tower and Cockpit simulators. We've got a custom deferred renderer for very complicated lighting conditions... Like night time around an airport with literally thousands of dynamic lights.
In the past, our shaders just didn't work on ATI cards under Linux. Or they fell back to software mode. Or they gave unacceptable performance. Haven't tried them recently, but any time I look into the current quality level of AMD's open source Radeon drivers, the answers I usually get back is "Well, they mostly work, but at least they're open!"
If someone wants to point me to a Radeon card and driver combination that gives comparable performance to a GeForce GTX 580 on Fedora 16, I'll be more than happy to try and get a test rig together. I'd like to be proven wrong--I use Radeon cards (in Windows) for my home machines, after all.
In the meantime, though, nVidia's "binary blob" Linux drivers usually provide better performance than their Windows counterparts. I've never heard anything remotely similar about the open source AMD drivers.
Oh absolutely nothing technical, just Intel's refusal to give any ISA other than x86 (since Intel only makes x86 chips, unless you know something I don't) its fab advantage. Intel could easily make ARM stuff in its fab, but why would it bother if it could put out a superior x86 chip?
Because Apple might go all ARM in the near future? We're focusing on Android in this thread (my fault), but iOS devices are ARM-based, have a significant chunk of the market, and ONLY run native code. Lots of rumors flying that Apple is considering using ARM in their laptops and desktops going forward, which could make a lot of sense in the next few years for them.
Intel already makes ARM chips for at least one customer, and they have said in the past that they would license ARM and produce their own chips if it made sense.
Alright, I was mistaken about the extent of native ARM in Android. But what makes it different than the WinTel ecosystem that dominated PCs is that PC ISA lock-in involved the OS. Android, including all of its libraries, GUI, and the base Android-supplied apps, already runs on x86.
And all the base Windows NT code ran on Alpha. Developers still weren't willing to support an alternative, but more powerful, ISA for NT.
Your Chrome for x86-Android bit is just stupid - Google released it 2 weeks after the phone's release, hardly much to get upset about, wouldn't you say?
Yes, Google, the biggest, most well-funded, most dedicated Android developer took two weeks to provide an x86 compatible version of one of their flagship apps. For a phone produced by one of their own subsidiaries. How quickly do you think one and two man shops would provide alternative versions of their apps, if ever? Why would anyone (the developer, or the consumer) want to have to worry about compatibility of their phone/app?
No, it still doesn't make sense. And at this point it appears that there is no further discussion we can have as you seem to have a baseless bias against x86 regardless of any technical merits.
Bias against x86... Is that why I asked for an i7 workstation? x86 is fine for desktop computing, I just see no advantage to using it in the mobile space. Again, what's the benefit of having a phone or tablet that is compatible with 80386 software? That's the only advantage x86 gets you.
You know, I could just easily accuse you of pro-x86 bias, especially since you haven't listed any actual "technical merits" of x86, and I've managed to list several actual disadvantages of having an x86 Android device.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, won't someone think of the virtual children.
Except that it has nothing to do with "CanCon" restrictions and everything to do with the stupidity of copyright laws and licensing.
Also, the person I was responding to doesn't seem to give a flip about "protecting Canadian culture". I bet most other Canadians don't, either.
It's not Pandora's fault. It's Canada's fault. Stop being a worthless internet crybaby and go get your local laws fixed so that Pandora can offer you service, and not be locked out by the local copyright monopolies.
And thankfully this power is not systematically abused with no fear of reprisal or any chance of the abusers being held to account for their actions...
Right?
Are you saying law enforcement in the US does not regularly kill unarmed, innocent individuals? Without ever having to answer for it?
And I'm insane?
Except that he wasn't. He was invited to Aryan Nation meetinga, eventually decided he didn't like what they were selling, and had no further contact with the group. Even if he was, however, rights must be protected for the worst of us, or they won't be protected for anyone.
Weaver was no threat and had harmed no one. Then the Federal Government entrapped him and tried to blackmail him into joining the Aryan Nation as an informant, and he refused. Which led (eventually) to the standoff.
If he didn't have guns there wouldn't have been an armed stand-off in the first place
I agree, they would have just indiscriminately killed everyone on the Weaver property. Hundreds of unarmed individuals are shot by U.S. police every year, after all.
Or, maybe they would have shown "restraint" and just arrested Weaver and railroaded him through court on trumped up charges. Charges that were closely scrutinized as a result of the standoff and that were eventually shown to be baseless. Obviously allowing government thugs to round people up and imprison them with no possibility of reprisal is a desirable outcome...
Three people actually died: Weaver's son was killed by U.S. Marshals under questionable circumstances, Weaver's wife was assassinated by an FBI sniper (no other way to describe shooting an unarmed woman holding a 3-month old in the head), and a U.S. Marshal was killed in self defense by a friend of the Weaver family.
That third death is very key: A Federal Agent, who was in the process of violating the rights of U.S. citizens, and who had just killed the Weaver family's dog and fatally wounded Weaver's son, was killed by a private citizen. An act ruled as self defense.
No, that's an excellent argument for maintaining the right to bear arms.
Actually, I'd say Randy Weaver: the knowledge that he owned firearms kept an army of Federal Agents at bay without Weaver firing a single shot. If he hadn't been armed, chances are we wouldn't even know who he was, as he'd of been executed like his wife and son by a bunch of out-of-control "law enforcers".
Are you arguing my rights would have been eroded LESS if Federal agents didn't have to worry about being shot in the face when entering my home uninvited?
The American public's acceptance of unconstitutional expansion of government power since 2001 is not an argument for allowing more rights to be stripped away, but instead an argument as to why we must zealously guard the few we have left.
Well, to be fair, I didn't actually PAY for my tuition, that was covered by my Research Assistantship... I got paid a lot less than $22k, though. Probably about a third of that. Lower cost of living and all that.
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Admittedly, prices have gone up since I left, but are still nothing compared to the prices I see my coworkers quote for the schools they went to.
$230.0/hr for Undergrad at "full-time" status of 12 hours, or $186.0/hr when you take 15 hours like I tried to always do.
$331.34/hr for Graduate "full-time" at 9 hours, $264.00/hr if you can manage 12 hours (4 classes).
Both are resident prices. Non-resident works out to be like 3X for Undergrad and 2X for Grad, I believe.
Even 12 hours of graduate school for a semester is still less than UC was asking for some of these classes...
The primary purpose of protecting the right to own firearms is to allow the civilian populace of the United States to maintain the necessary power to resist and possibly violently overthrow an oppressive, out-of-control government.
Hunting and target shooting are just side benefits.
It's been about six years since I've been in school, but even my most expensive semester of graduate school was only about $1750. Last I checked prices were still in the low $2000 range there. That's for 12+ credits (9+ credits in Graduate School), not a single 4 credit course.
These big schools and their even bigger price tags. What the flying fsck are they smoking?
Are you a commercial pilot?
No they're not.
Wait, wait, wait. Guns are illegal in Chicago. No one gets killed there!
Nothing else to add, really.
Any such commission would eventually be captured by the industry it's supposed to regulate, becoming useless.
The only solution to our problems is a freeer market. Competition is the only thing that will provide the necessary downward pressure on prices and incentive to invest in better quality of service. The only way to achieve increased competition in these marketplaces, however, is probably through a decidedly non-free-market path.
The service providers must be broken up, with the divisions that control the infrastructure being split off from the portions that provide services/content to the end user--either into separate private corporations, or by nationalizing the infrastructure, thereby eliminating the conflicts of interest that plague the existing industries.
Yes, even as a quasi-libertarian die-hard free market capitalist, I am quite serious about the suggestion to nationalize. Infrastructure (spectrum/towers, copper cable, fiber, whatever) is a natural monopoly. The only way for it to be efficiently managed is either via heavily regulated (preferably via something like common carrier) private companies, or a publicly owned utility model. As long as the people who own the pipes are also the ones delivering you service, all the pressure is applied in the exact wrong direction, leading to increases in prices and reduction in quality.
On the other hand, when anyone can become a service provider by paying for access to the lines/towers (on a pricing schedule that treats all providers equally), if a service provider starts overcharging or under-performing, a competitor can move in and eat their lunch. People will flock to providers who provide the best value, since they will no longer be chained to a specific company by regional monopolies on the resources.
Oh, and while you're at it, get rid of that abomination called CDMA.
In the U.S., WE ARE the government. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like it, but it's still true regardless.
Besides, what exactly are you suggesting the people being disrupted do? Are you trying to incite violence against individuals taking part in a peaceful demonstration?
There is so much legacy copper cabling running between the floors in the labs I work in that they're practically Faraday cages. Even my desk, which is outside of a lab proper but has a lab above it, I get no reception. "Desk phones" are still necessary in situations like that... Though I prefer asynchronous communication via email or IM, so people can deal with it on their own time.
A few of us who are lucky enough get to use Spectralink mobiles, at least. There are repeaters for them inside the labs.
There was actually a noticeable tech industry presence in the Tennessee Valley and northern Alabama last time I was in the area. Lots of incentives being offered to start a business.
Now Millville, NJ? Those are the rednecks you are looking for.
Projection systems require space for throw-distance, or expensive first-surface mirrors. That adds cost. And they're a maintenance nightmare. Plus the cost of a good screen. Good, bright projectors are also usually in the $20k-$50k range.
Really, projectors weren't an option. There is literally only one inch of clearance between the wall and two of the screens in the room we built the first system in. We had to build something that fit in the space we had been provided.
At the end of the day, we got nine "acceptable" displays for less than the price of one good projector, mirror, and screen.
The first Air-Traffic Control Tower simulator I helped build used 9 73" Mitsubishi rear-projection DLPs. They weren't our first choice, but we didn't get the funding we asked for so it was either settle or get nothing.
They were awful for our purposes, except in one key factor: price. The image quality was bad: fuzzy, low contrast, inconsistent colors between displays. Their mirrors were fragile! I think we lost two displays to broken mirrors eventually. They were also prone to bending, and not well calibrated, often with significant overdraw, meaning we had to hand-tweak view frustums for each display to line up the image. And if a display was ever moved or jostled, we had to do it again.
I've seen people claim (in these comments!) that off-center viewing was better on these DLPs than on LCDs... They must have been using some other brand, because the Mitsubishi sets were just as bad as any LCDs we own. In addition, the image became darker and unfocused if you got closer to the televisions than 10ft, which was completely counter-intuitive for Controllers who were new to the system...
Like I said, though, the price couldn't be beat. We built a 270-degree system with 9 displays, at a price of something like $2400/display. Even five years later, when we built a new system out of bezel-less LCD panels, it took 24 60" NEC LCD panels at a price of $5-6k/panel to build a 288-degree system comparable to our original setup.
The NEC panels look a hell of a lot better, though, there's no comparison there...
Yes, because Israel's leaders are publicly proclaiming every day that they will see to it that Iran is cleansed from the Earth by holy fire...
I work in Air Traffic Control simulation, primarily Control Tower and Cockpit simulators. We've got a custom deferred renderer for very complicated lighting conditions... Like night time around an airport with literally thousands of dynamic lights.
In the past, our shaders just didn't work on ATI cards under Linux. Or they fell back to software mode. Or they gave unacceptable performance. Haven't tried them recently, but any time I look into the current quality level of AMD's open source Radeon drivers, the answers I usually get back is "Well, they mostly work, but at least they're open!"
If someone wants to point me to a Radeon card and driver combination that gives comparable performance to a GeForce GTX 580 on Fedora 16, I'll be more than happy to try and get a test rig together. I'd like to be proven wrong--I use Radeon cards (in Windows) for my home machines, after all.
In the meantime, though, nVidia's "binary blob" Linux drivers usually provide better performance than their Windows counterparts. I've never heard anything remotely similar about the open source AMD drivers.
Because Apple might go all ARM in the near future? We're focusing on Android in this thread (my fault), but iOS devices are ARM-based, have a significant chunk of the market, and ONLY run native code. Lots of rumors flying that Apple is considering using ARM in their laptops and desktops going forward, which could make a lot of sense in the next few years for them.
Intel already makes ARM chips for at least one customer, and they have said in the past that they would license ARM and produce their own chips if it made sense.
And all the base Windows NT code ran on Alpha. Developers still weren't willing to support an alternative, but more powerful, ISA for NT.
Yes, Google, the biggest, most well-funded, most dedicated Android developer took two weeks to provide an x86 compatible version of one of their flagship apps. For a phone produced by one of their own subsidiaries. How quickly do you think one and two man shops would provide alternative versions of their apps, if ever? Why would anyone (the developer, or the consumer) want to have to worry about compatibility of their phone/app?
Bias against x86... Is that why I asked for an i7 workstation? x86 is fine for desktop computing, I just see no advantage to using it in the mobile space. Again, what's the benefit of having a phone or tablet that is compatible with 80386 software? That's the only advantage x86 gets you.
You know, I could just easily accuse you of pro-x86 bias, especially since you haven't listed any actual "technical merits" of x86, and I've managed to list several actual disadvantages of having an x86 Android device.