What will happen is AT&T and Version will only bid high on the major areas with population and let the rest go by the way. The frequency segments being offered are not available in separate pieces geographically. When you buy (say) 710mhz, you get it nation-wide. Mod parent down. Post is misleading, not insightful.
AFAIK the FCC has some limited say in terrestrial cable. For example, no pr0n at certain hours of the day (unless it's an adult channel). To put it another way, TNT can't air Debbie Does Dallas at 3:00pm. If I am mistaken, then you can disregard my previous comment. You are mistaken. FCC has no power of cable, as it is, by definition, not broadcast.
Why isnt anyone involved in this case pointing out that a patent has to be non-obvious? Is there something I am missing here? Legally that patent shouldnt be worth poop. At least in theory. As I understand it, the "non-obvious" part applies only to prior art, i.e. if someone skilled in the art would also seize upon the same solution naturally, given the starting point of prior art upon which the patent has been built. The trouble we have is that the USPTO only considers it "prior art" if it has been previously patented. This causes trouble when you're dealing with crap like this that has no patented prior art because it shouldn't have been patented in the first place.
Just an FYI, it's up to your local city government what company is allowed to operate cable in your town. Your city gives out the licenses and permits and contracts. If you want your local cable company to bite the dust (which it sounds like you do), then talk to your local government, and ask them consider other companies rather than the one you don't like. Go to your local city council meeting and give them your opinion about your cable company's DVR service. Heck, tell your local BBB too! Please. There's no more chance of getting a municipality to switch to a different cable company than there is of getting a different local phone company. Cable companies sign franchise agreements which give them access to public rights-of-way to lay cable. The city doesn't own the actual cable lines, so it has little power over them. The minimum threshold of service is so low that they really only need to throw a length of coax down the street to be in compliance with the franchise agreement. The only way cable companies change is when they are bought out by other companies. Adelphia cable consistently had consumer satisfaction ratings in the low 40th percentile, and cities who had awarded them the franchise generally told citizens "we have no power to make them provide better service; you have to complain to Adelphia". And complaining to the BBB? What's the point? You have no other alternative for cable TV. The BBB is only good where there's competition and an open market allowing one to avoid companies with bad BBB ratings.
I highly doubt that the crew members responsible for controlling the shuttle were plastered. If they were, then that's a problem. Given that the crew members responsible for controlling the shuttle are multiple redundant computers, I'm fairly certain they don't drink at all. The STS is a damn self-driving bus. The only problems it's ever had were major structural failures that no amount of "piloting" could have avoided. I say give everyone a valium and a shot of tequila before loading 'em in the shuttle, so if something horrifyingly bad happens again, they can just lie back, relax, and wait for the end in comfort.
The reason they can't fly the shuttle drunk is because they didn't learn to fly the shuttle drunk. I say get them plastered and put them in the simulator. They don't actually fly the shuttle at all, so what's the difference?
> I did banquets for them and never really saw any of them drink so much they were out of control or drunk.""
You don't have to be that intoxicated to pose a safety risk. If you can't perform a task flawlessly on cue People have this strange idea that being an astronaut in the space shuttle is the same thing as being an astronaut in the 60's. With the exception of the landing gear lowering, space shuttle flights are entirely automated. There's a lot of "what if" talk bandied about, but the systems are refined enough that the only problems we see are catastrophic and inescapable. We don't have malfunctioning attitude thrusters that have to be countered manually the keep the capsule from spinning out of control (Gemini 8), or wonky abort switches that have to be disabled by reprogramming the LM computer on the fly, while landing on the moon (Apollo 14). Those guys had to be sharp, calm, and well trained. The space shuttle is a freakin' self-driving bus. Just like modern airline pilots aren't all Chuck Yeager in the X-1, likewise modern astronauts aren't Lovell, Swigert, and Haise bringing Apollo 13 back largely under manual control.
Really? then why will I be slapped with a DMCA violation if I create a whole new TiVO OS tht bypasses all tivo services and uses xmlTV and does the same thing? First, Tivo has never invoked the DMCA for anything. Second, if you wiped all Tivo's "intellectual property" from the hardware, where's the DMCA violation? No wonder you posted AC. You're an ignorant fucktard.
TiVo will smack me down hard if I try that. Really? Like they've "smacked down" all these folks?
Also look at the EULA. it states that you do NOT own the hardware.
Shut your pie-hole, moron, it says no such thing. Furthermore, even if it did, the doctrine of First Sale would invalidate any such statement.
I criticized the TiVidiots for passively accepting push-ads on a product they've paid good money for. Please. The "push-ad" consists of a single plain-text menu item at the bottom of the main menu screen. Hardly even relevant.
But lets look at your new argument anyway. First of all, TiVos can't record from both digital sources simultaneously, so having two digital tuners is less valuable than they would have you believe. WTF are you talking about? Two channels, record two channels at once. Go ahead, produce a link to any tivo spec that shows "two tuners, record from only one or the other". The MPEG encoding is the least complicated/expensive part of the process. Once you have the second tuner, there's no logical reason not to encode it.
But then again, if you're a TiVidiot, you don't care because they've told you it's great. And if you're a regular idiot like you, you think it's terrible based upon a fiction in your mind only loosly based on reality.
Second, satellite DVRs (from DirecTV, for example) do come with two digital tuners and can simultaneously record from both. Look it up. Funny, my 3 year old DirecTivo does just that.
I buy all my phones from Australia or Hong Kong -- unlocked and ready to roll. I currently run the HTC Trinity with a cooked WM6 rom, and I love it. $600 from Hong Kong.
My friends can't believe I shelled out $600 for a phone I'll use for a year. Same here. I've had my Mitac Mio A701 for over a year. It lacks some of the polish of the iPhone, but it basically has all the same features. OK, so it's only GPRS, and only does 802.11g with an add on SD card, but it does have a SirfstarIII GPS system and it's WM5 based and has an active hacking community so there's a shitload of software for it. When the A702 comes out next month (WM6, WiFi, HSPDA), it'll be that much better. But do we get these nifty items here? No, we get the damn cutesy-name phones like the crackberry, sidekick, RAZR, and "chocolate".
Thank you. This claim in the Reuters article blows me away: "They said the finding casts doubt on theories that babies are born knowing all the possible sounds in all of the world's languages."
What modern linguist / cognitive linguist actually thinks this???. None, of course. It's a straw man argument to justify their grant.
The "intelligent" recording is rarely that. Frequently TiVo fills its drive with a bunch of stuff that is largely uninteresting - that then needs to be deleted. Great more work to make room for shows I *do* want to watch. Of course there is the auto delete feature but it doesn't make room if you want to record something. Sorry, I gotta call either "Troll" or "Idiot" here. Tivo doesn't keep shows unless you specifically tell it to. In the absence of those specific orders, when it needs space it will first delete the "suggestions", then start deleting the oldest programs you've recorded. What you describe is impossible, unless you are repeatedly actively flagging stuff "save until I delete".
Thomas Jefferson didn't like black people either.. so, um, does that make him right? Your point might have had merit if not for the fact that a) Jefferson was against slavery, and b) very likely fathered children by one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. So instead, you just look like an ignorant moron.
One of his main points was that malleability destroys any chance of the work being art.
I guess that rules out jazz as art, along with any other music involving improvisation. Indeed. I believe you've hit upon the ultimate rejoinder to his ignorant assertion. But what do you expect? He's a freakin' film critic. In his mind, if it's not film, it's probably crap. He's a dunce.
Google won't bid if evil business models are allowed, so I guess they are tacitly admitting that their open access business model has no hope of competing against the telcos' "lock 'em in, and then lock 'em in some more" business model. It'll be interesting to see how this one plays out. No, you've got it exactly wrong. What they're saying is that their open access model can compete effectively against the locked-in model. The problem is that there currently isn't any spectrum available for open access. They are requesting that this change.
I've been using PDAs forever -- starting with my original Newton MessagePad (I do miss it). Over the years, I've become accustomed to the tiny on-screen keyboards with no tactile feedback. I grow my right hand thumbnail long, file it down so I have a bit of an edge leaning left, and I can type VERY fast with it -- probably faster than the average layperson on a regular PC keyboard.. Cool. Very Scanners Live in Vain (for those who have read it).
The mark is kept unaware of the passing of time by artificial lighting.
Near misses manipulate the player's sense of odds
Manipulation of payout odd placement These are all well known to experienced gamblers. It's idiotic to call them tactics against a "mark" when the "mark" knows full well they're being used.
Drugging patrons. Here is where I have first hand experience that shows you're on crack.
It has even been reported that casinos have attempted to manipulate the air circulation in order to affect the behavior of gamblers. They may add extra oxygen to the circulation to keep gamblers more alert, As an electrician I worked closely with the guys maintaining the heating and AC systems in the casinos. The amount of air blowing out the open doors of your average casino nearly makes it impossible to keep it cool inside, much less maintain a certain level of any substance in that air. Besides the fact that it's a felony to adulterate the air like that, the fact is that you could not economically add enough oxygen to the air to make a difference. You get better results keeping people alert by turning the thermostat down a couple degrees.
or even add pheromones that make people feel more relaxed and at ease. You know that no scientific study has every identified any human pheromone, much less a specific one that makes people "feel more relaxed and at ease", right? Well no, of course not. You're a nut case. If it doesn't support your theories, it's a lie or a conspiracy.
Casinos vehemently deny these allegations; Of course they do, just like they deny that they're spiking the drinks with methamphetamine and using hypnotic eye blasts to make people keep gambling.
however, companies marketing these technologies do exist and do make sales to casinos. If you have evidence these companies are selling to specific casinos, why have neither you nor anyone else gone to the gaming commission and had them shut down? Because all you have is claims by the companies that they've sold to unnamed casinos, right? Huh. Sounds more like typical deceptive marketing for products that don't work because, as noted earlier, adding oxygen does nothing and human pheromones are a lie.
"Free" drinks and ordinary odds are not deceptive like the above is. The mark is unaware of the powerful emotional manipulation at work. This is not a friendly game of cards, it's fraud.
Seriously, you're nuts. Casinos don't need any of those tricks. The gambling industry is pretty darned transparent. It has to be. It's tightly regulated and closely watched. It doesn't need to engage in deceptive practices to make money. Face it, they don't have to trick people into gambling. People like to gamble already. They need only stand there and and take their 3%.
What in the world are you doing driving an RV with only one person? An RV is mass transit. No, a 60 passenger bus is mass transit. An RV is mobile living accommodations for 1-6 people. You don't drive one to move a lot of people around efficiently, you drive one to have a place to dwell when you arrive. It's a special purpose vehicle the same way a semi is.
Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different.
.87 deaths per billion passenger-miles for airplane vs 11.7 for automobile. Still more than an order of magnitude greater, and people normally cover far more miles by car than by air in their lives.
But even at that, statistics are largely irrelevant on an individual scale. Statistically, you can say that every time someone flies on a plane, they lose 15 minutes off their life. This is, however, only true in the aggregate, as the loss is not spread across all passengers, but rather concentrated in those rare instances when 150 people lose an average of 30-odd years each all at once because they died in a plane crash.
Interestingly enough, it was the editors, not I, who added the part about the watt hours, which in turn comes from the NASA press release I was referencing. Well then, allow me to formally apologize for the barb, and redirect it jointly to NASA, for saying it, and to the editors, for thinking it bore repeating.
Not to heap any more crap on the editors -- I think they do a reasonably good job considering they have people like you to contend with. Please. They don't "contend" with me or any other user (with the possible exception of occasionally secretly mod-bombing). They sit around scratching their collective asses and once in a while apparently randomly choosing an article submission and posting it (mis-quotation, false headlines, stupidly inflammatory editorial opinions optional). They can't spell, they can't vet simple facts, they can't even be bothered to diligently use their own damn search engine to make a cursory check for dupes. They're trained chimps, and poorly trained ones at that. The presence of obnoxious jackasses like me clearly has no effect on their editorial duties. Are you seriously suggesting that complaints about editorial ineptitude are part of the cause of editorial ineptitude? That's absurd! The reason they suck as editors is because they (or some of them, at least) are lazy and are of mediocre literacy. Personally, I find it offensive to my sensibilities that someone is paying them to be "editors".
Yeah, yeah.... if I don't like it I should go somewhere else. Well, there's only one thing I like nearly as much as "news for nerds" and that's complaining about things. The perpetual idiocy of the editors/janitors at slashdot is something I can apparently complain about forever.
Opportunity's solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. Gee, thanks "Riding with Robots", that in-depth analysis really added a lot. How many Statues-of-Liberty-on-its-side long is that? How many Libraries of Congress? Did you know that if you laid a man's digestive tract out long a straight line, he would die?
Really, it's not fair to blame mediocre writers for writing badly. Ideally, it is the job of the editor to keep crap off the front page. Of course, the quality of the editors/janitors at slashdot needs no more elaboration...
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...I'm payed well though... You are paid well. Only rope or other cordage is payed.You don't have to be that intoxicated to pose a safety risk. If you can't perform a task flawlessly on cue People have this strange idea that being an astronaut in the space shuttle is the same thing as being an astronaut in the 60's. With the exception of the landing gear lowering, space shuttle flights are entirely automated. There's a lot of "what if" talk bandied about, but the systems are refined enough that the only problems we see are catastrophic and inescapable. We don't have malfunctioning attitude thrusters that have to be countered manually the keep the capsule from spinning out of control (Gemini 8), or wonky abort switches that have to be disabled by reprogramming the LM computer on the fly, while landing on the moon (Apollo 14). Those guys had to be sharp, calm, and well trained. The space shuttle is a freakin' self-driving bus. Just like modern airline pilots aren't all Chuck Yeager in the X-1, likewise modern astronauts aren't Lovell, Swigert, and Haise bringing Apollo 13 back largely under manual control.
TiVo will smack me down hard if I try that.
Really? Like they've "smacked down" all these folks? Also look at the EULA. it states that you do NOT own the hardware.
Shut your pie-hole, moron, it says no such thing. Furthermore, even if it did, the doctrine of First Sale would invalidate any such statement.
Please. The "push-ad" consists of a single plain-text menu item at the bottom of the main menu screen. Hardly even relevant.
But lets look at your new argument anyway. First of all, TiVos can't record from both digital sources simultaneously, so having two digital tuners is less valuable than they would have you believe. WTF are you talking about? Two channels, record two channels at once. Go ahead, produce a link to any tivo spec that shows "two tuners, record from only one or the other". The MPEG encoding is the least complicated/expensive part of the process. Once you have the second tuner, there's no logical reason not to encode it.
But then again, if you're a TiVidiot, you don't care because they've told you it's great. And if you're a regular idiot like you, you think it's terrible based upon a fiction in your mind only loosly based on reality.
Second, satellite DVRs (from DirecTV, for example) do come with two digital tuners and can simultaneously record from both. Look it up. Funny, my 3 year old DirecTivo does just that.
What modern linguist / cognitive linguist actually thinks this???. None, of course. It's a straw man argument to justify their grant.
Scanners Live in Vain. Classic stuff.
Near misses manipulate the player's sense of odds
Manipulation of payout odd placement These are all well known to experienced gamblers. It's idiotic to call them tactics against a "mark" when the "mark" knows full well they're being used. Drugging patrons. Here is where I have first hand experience that shows you're on crack.It has even been reported that casinos have attempted to manipulate the air circulation in order to affect the behavior of gamblers. They may add extra oxygen to the circulation to keep gamblers more alert, As an electrician I worked closely with the guys maintaining the heating and AC systems in the casinos. The amount of air blowing out the open doors of your average casino nearly makes it impossible to keep it cool inside, much less maintain a certain level of any substance in that air. Besides the fact that it's a felony to adulterate the air like that, the fact is that you could not economically add enough oxygen to the air to make a difference. You get better results keeping people alert by turning the thermostat down a couple degrees.
or even add pheromones that make people feel more relaxed and at ease. You know that no scientific study has every identified any human pheromone, much less a specific one that makes people "feel more relaxed and at ease", right? Well no, of course not. You're a nut case. If it doesn't support your theories, it's a lie or a conspiracy.
Casinos vehemently deny these allegations; Of course they do, just like they deny that they're spiking the drinks with methamphetamine and using hypnotic eye blasts to make people keep gambling.
however, companies marketing these technologies do exist and do make sales to casinos. If you have evidence these companies are selling to specific casinos, why have neither you nor anyone else gone to the gaming commission and had them shut down? Because all you have is claims by the companies that they've sold to unnamed casinos, right? Huh. Sounds more like typical deceptive marketing for products that don't work because, as noted earlier, adding oxygen does nothing and human pheromones are a lie.
"Free" drinks and ordinary odds are not deceptive like the above is. The mark is unaware of the powerful emotional manipulation at work. This is not a friendly game of cards, it's fraud.
Seriously, you're nuts. Casinos don't need any of those tricks. The gambling industry is pretty darned transparent. It has to be. It's tightly regulated and closely watched. It doesn't need to engage in deceptive practices to make money. Face it, they don't have to trick people into gambling. People like to gamble already. They need only stand there and and take their 3%.Replacing deaths/mile by deaths/hour gives figures far less different.
.87 deaths per billion passenger-miles for airplane vs 11.7 for automobile. Still more than an order of magnitude greater, and people normally cover far more miles by car than by air in their lives.But even at that, statistics are largely irrelevant on an individual scale. Statistically, you can say that every time someone flies on a plane, they lose 15 minutes off their life. This is, however, only true in the aggregate, as the loss is not spread across all passengers, but rather concentrated in those rare instances when 150 people lose an average of 30-odd years each all at once because they died in a plane crash.
Not to heap any more crap on the editors -- I think they do a reasonably good job considering they have people like you to contend with. Please. They don't "contend" with me or any other user (with the possible exception of occasionally secretly mod-bombing). They sit around scratching their collective asses and once in a while apparently randomly choosing an article submission and posting it (mis-quotation, false headlines, stupidly inflammatory editorial opinions optional). They can't spell, they can't vet simple facts, they can't even be bothered to diligently use their own damn search engine to make a cursory check for dupes. They're trained chimps, and poorly trained ones at that. The presence of obnoxious jackasses like me clearly has no effect on their editorial duties. Are you seriously suggesting that complaints about editorial ineptitude are part of the cause of editorial ineptitude? That's absurd! The reason they suck as editors is because they (or some of them, at least) are lazy and are of mediocre literacy. Personally, I find it offensive to my sensibilities that someone is paying them to be "editors".
Yeah, yeah.... if I don't like it I should go somewhere else. Well, there's only one thing I like nearly as much as "news for nerds" and that's complaining about things. The perpetual idiocy of the editors/janitors at slashdot is something I can apparently complain about forever.
Really, it's not fair to blame mediocre writers for writing badly. Ideally, it is the job of the editor to keep crap off the front page. Of course, the quality of the editors/janitors at slashdot needs no more elaboration...
it's POTATOhead, mr Quayle