Having Bush remain in office will give him a lot more fresh recruits, especially from the newly-occu^H^H^H^Hliberated countries.
Remember, America is not ObL's primary target. Israel is.
So basically he's getting a bunch of recruits to use against Israel if Bush stays in power. Sounds like a perfectly logical thing to strive for, considering that neither Bush nor Kerry are likely to change anything about the US' support for Israel. (What is it, giving the Israel like $3B of weapons a year?)
In Sweden, the TV license is mandatory if you are in possession of any sort of TV tuner, owned, rented or loaned. This includes tuners in TV sets (duh), VCRs, and - ta-daah - TV tuner cards for computers.
I don't have a TV set. I basically don't feel it's a sensible way to spend my time. However, I do spend a lot of time on the Net -- dialog, not monolog.
So this would upset me somewhat if introduced in Sweden. But I don't see it coming, as Swedes are already obliged to pay the TV license for TV-capable computers...
The latest new DSL offering in Sweden was 26Mbps, and that came last summer.
The most common upgrade these days in Sweden is 10Mbit full duplex to 100Mbit full duplex.
When are you US guys going to realize you're being shafted? The phone companies have no interest in promoting broadband beyond the lowest rate the market will bearably tolerate; it threatens their existing cash cow.
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public
This isn't necessary. All you have to do to accomplish this is to publish the information. In a paper, on the net, wherever, as long as it's dated.
The US doesn't get that broadband is an enabler for so much else, yet. It's considered an unnecessary luxury, and possibly something vaguely suspicious and associated with software and media piracy.
To illustrate, I live in Sweden. My parents have a summer resort; a cottage on an island. They have no running water, an outhouse, and recently had a telephone installed.
But they do have broadband, even if a measly one megabit per second, which we use to chat in the evenings using simple videoconferencing tools.
Read that again. Broadband is more important than running water to other people. Now do you see while the US is lagging behind?
Also, please stop confusing "cable/DSL" with the flavor of broadband that generally exists in Sweden, Japan, and South Korea. Most homes are simply wired; they have RJ45 jacks next to the TV antenna jack and the phone jack. Direct connection to the local router (serviced by some company) using at least 10 megabit full duplex, often 100. Not some piggyback "over-television" or "over-telephone" technology.
I frequently play PlanetSide, a MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer On-line First Person Shooter), quite possibly still the only of its kind.
When the game loads, there's an nVidia commercial.
While in transit between continents, there's a small blurb saying "Runs great on Pentium 4".
This is already here, folks. And you know what? As long as it doesn't interfere with the game itself, I'm all for it. (OTOH, if it comes to the point of TV-style interrupting commercials, then somebody deserves a big fat punch in the face.)
"Broadband" has diluted to the point where it means "not connecting over the telephone line". It doesn't even mean connecting at speeds higher than 56k (real connection speed, when shared) anymore.
In Korea, most households have 100 Mbit/s bidirectional. In Scandinavia, 10-20 Mbit/s bidirectional is the norm. In the US, 2 Mbit/s download and less upload is considered much. Yet all of these go under the bland moniker "broadband".
A much better meter would be, say, "average household bandwidth".
Over a hundred comments so far, and I can't find a SINGLE comment raving about the tremendous amount of pr0n that this device can store!
This should have been the FIRST expected topic. And the third, and the sixth or so, and so on with reasonable frequency.
What has Slashdot come to? Are we at the dusk of Slashdot culture?
Shame on y'all!
(Oh, and just to make the picture complete: "w00t, imagine how much pr0n you can store with a beowulf cluster of these! In Soviet Russia, pr0n hoards YOU!")
"The manual emergency stop must be easy to identify and activate safely, even if the vehicle is moving at a walking pace. The operation instructions for manual emergency stop actuators must be clearly labeled in English and Spanish."
Who'd have thunk it, government organizations requiring instructions in English and Spanish, bilingually, for vital instructions on the vehicles. Is this a sign of the U.S. going bilingual (adopting Spanish) at snail's pace?
Since nobody answering has bothered to respond factually to the question, I'll do:
Every male is drafted around age 18, after high school but before college. However, not all are selected to actually do military service - I think the numbers are down to about 30-35% at this point.
And I have to disagree strongly as to whether it teaches a "sense a weaponry". It doesn't. It does, however, teach how to think creatively in a group to solve an immediate problem.
(The American military, by comparison, considers its chain of command as holy. The Scandinavian militaries rely a lot more on the intelligence of the individual soldier.)
/ CrystalFalcon
(15 months of geeking around with military-grade radio hardware ain't that bad)
Copyrights are always owned by the artists. By law. By definition.
The are the creator of the work, and therefore automatically assigned the copyright, which cannot be given away.
(The RIAA once tried to change this by changing the law to allow "work for hire"-type music contracts, which would make the studios the copyright holders. Thankfully, it didn't pass.)
What you are thinking of is the DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS to specific copyrights. Such distribution rights are typically owned by publishers, by form of a contract with the copyright holder, the artist.
And it is exactly these distribution rights that, with the advent of the Internet and P2P, suddenly don't add nearly as much value to the music as they used to do, yet the products (albums) are still being charged for as much as they were in the old days.
The vote passed in May with the almost the minimum possible margin; only two votes above what was required. The Netherlands hold more than two votes.
Changing the Dutch vote from an Aye to an Abstain (effectively a Nay, since it's the Ayes that count) should reverse the decision, withdrawing more than the two votes of margin. Something here just isn't factually correct.
Perhaps someone from the FFII can shed light on the matter?
Peppercoin's website indicates that version 2.0 pays merchants exactly what they charged, instead of [...] which may or may not sum out to exactly the expected charges.
NEWSFLASH: New payment method actually pays the charged amount!
How on God's green earth can this be news? Much less, how can this be presented as revolutionary and patentable?
Exactly what are these people smoking?
Did I suddenly wake up in 1999 without anyone telling me?
Ok, reading the guy's linked page with lots of confused conversion numbers, now hear this:
An inch is defined from the meter these days. It is exactly 25.4 millimeters.
This definition dates back to when Europe was more precise in measurements than American counterparts about the 1800s, and the American and Canadian inches were slightly different from each other.
A European factory - I forget which - made industrial pieces to fit exactly one inch, and exported to North America. For all practical purposes, they had a monopoly on the market. Of course, they needed different pieces for the US and Canada.
They undertook an experiment and started to make the American and Canadian pieces equally large (probably for profit reasons but htfc), deviating slightly from the standards for the respective cultures, and using an effectively home-made inch of 25.4 millimeters. After having been in production with this piece for a couple of years, with this piece being used for measurements in industrial production all over North America, the factory proclaimed that the US and Canada didn't have the tools to know the difference between the new-inch and their respective old-inches, and therefore, they shall henceforth use the same inch: 25.4 millimeters.
Fairly recently, there was a worm ("Witty") exploiting a hole in BlackIce Defender (a server-grade firewall and intrusion detection system). A damn nasty specimen, too -- it randomly wrote bogus data to random sectors of the hard drives, slowly destroying the server (and immediately rendering it untrustable).
One article on the worm can be found here; I'm sure the usual gang has advisories out for Witty as well.
games with realistic three-dimensional graphics rivaling those on PC's and game consoles
I just came out of PlanetSide. This baby gives me about 60fps on my 19-inch monitor, with full keyboard controls, a force-feedback joystick, 5.1 surround sound of thunderous explosions, and frantic squad radio chatter in my headset.
When I look at my phone, I don't think I'll be holding my breath for it to catch up with that experience.
I've met and spoken with this guy in the story (Mike Nash), in an elevator. I was wearing my full motorcycle suit, and he noticed a few tears in the fabric.
He asked if it wasn't dangerous going at those speeds (like 100-150 mph). I explained that the suit protects me, but it takes a few tears in the process when accidents happen.
Funny he should now be the security guy at Microsoft, given his concern for motorcycle safety:-)
Accidentally, Mike Nash was also the guy who closed the department I worked at and laid me off... (though, I have to add, it was done with all the dignity one could reasonably ask for).
Slashdot Mirror
The shuttle is on ITS way.
The shuttle is on ITS way.
The shuttle is on ITS way.
No damn apostrophe.
Why are they called editors when they don't proofread and don't edit?
Having Bush remain in office will give him a lot more fresh recruits, especially from the newly-occu^H^H^H^Hliberated countries.
Remember, America is not ObL's primary target. Israel is.
So basically he's getting a bunch of recruits to use against Israel if Bush stays in power. Sounds like a perfectly logical thing to strive for, considering that neither Bush nor Kerry are likely to change anything about the US' support for Israel. (What is it, giving the Israel like $3B of weapons a year?)
In Sweden, the TV license is mandatory if you are in possession of any sort of TV tuner, owned, rented or loaned. This includes tuners in TV sets (duh), VCRs, and - ta-daah - TV tuner cards for computers.
I don't have a TV set. I basically don't feel it's a sensible way to spend my time. However, I do spend a lot of time on the Net -- dialog, not monolog.
So this would upset me somewhat if introduced in Sweden. But I don't see it coming, as Swedes are already obliged to pay the TV license for TV-capable computers...
The latest new DSL offering in Sweden was 26Mbps, and that came last summer.
The most common upgrade these days in Sweden is 10Mbit full duplex to 100Mbit full duplex.
When are you US guys going to realize you're being shafted? The phone companies have no interest in promoting broadband beyond the lowest rate the market will bearably tolerate; it threatens their existing cash cow.
For example, a public foundation dedicated to holding patents in the public interest. Anyone with an idea could submit it to them; they would then obtain a patent on it, and license it freely to the public
This isn't necessary. All you have to do to accomplish this is to publish the information. In a paper, on the net, wherever, as long as it's dated.
Once published, something can never be patented.
Now let's all watch the big signs:
FBI takes site offline in 3... 2... 1...
(...or was it just the Slashdot Effect?)
Wally, is that you?
The US doesn't get that broadband is an enabler for so much else, yet. It's considered an unnecessary luxury, and possibly something vaguely suspicious and associated with software and media piracy.
To illustrate, I live in Sweden. My parents have a summer resort; a cottage on an island. They have no running water, an outhouse, and recently had a telephone installed.
But they do have broadband, even if a measly one megabit per second, which we use to chat in the evenings using simple videoconferencing tools.
Read that again. Broadband is more important than running water to other people. Now do you see while the US is lagging behind?
Also, please stop confusing "cable/DSL" with the flavor of broadband that generally exists in Sweden, Japan, and South Korea. Most homes are simply wired; they have RJ45 jacks next to the TV antenna jack and the phone jack. Direct connection to the local router (serviced by some company) using at least 10 megabit full duplex, often 100. Not some piggyback "over-television" or "over-telephone" technology.
...dupe of Earl, Earl, Earl.
I frequently play PlanetSide, a MMOFPS (Massively Multiplayer On-line First Person Shooter), quite possibly still the only of its kind.
When the game loads, there's an nVidia commercial.
While in transit between continents, there's a small blurb saying "Runs great on Pentium 4".
This is already here, folks. And you know what? As long as it doesn't interfere with the game itself, I'm all for it. (OTOH, if it comes to the point of TV-style interrupting commercials, then somebody deserves a big fat punch in the face.)
"Broadband" has diluted to the point where it means "not connecting over the telephone line". It doesn't even mean connecting at speeds higher than 56k (real connection speed, when shared) anymore.
In Korea, most households have 100 Mbit/s bidirectional. In Scandinavia, 10-20 Mbit/s bidirectional is the norm. In the US, 2 Mbit/s download and less upload is considered much. Yet all of these go under the bland moniker "broadband".
A much better meter would be, say, "average household bandwidth".
Over a hundred comments so far, and I can't find a SINGLE comment raving about the tremendous amount of pr0n that this device can store!
This should have been the FIRST expected topic. And the third, and the sixth or so, and so on with reasonable frequency.
What has Slashdot come to? Are we at the dusk of Slashdot culture?
Shame on y'all!
(Oh, and just to make the picture complete: "w00t, imagine how much pr0n you can store with a beowulf cluster of these! In Soviet Russia, pr0n hoards YOU!")
Quoth the competition rules;
"The manual emergency stop must be easy to identify and activate safely, even if the vehicle is moving at a walking pace. The operation instructions for manual emergency stop actuators must be clearly labeled in English and Spanish."
Who'd have thunk it, government organizations requiring instructions in English and Spanish, bilingually, for vital instructions on the vehicles. Is this a sign of the U.S. going bilingual (adopting Spanish) at snail's pace?
Since nobody answering has bothered to respond factually to the question, I'll do:
Every male is drafted around age 18, after high school but before college. However, not all are selected to actually do military service - I think the numbers are down to about 30-35% at this point.
And I have to disagree strongly as to whether it teaches a "sense a weaponry". It doesn't. It does, however, teach how to think creatively in a group to solve an immediate problem.
(The American military, by comparison, considers its chain of command as holy. The Scandinavian militaries rely a lot more on the intelligence of the individual soldier.)
/ CrystalFalcon
(15 months of geeking around with military-grade radio hardware ain't that bad)
Copyrights are always owned by the artists. By law. By definition.
The are the creator of the work, and therefore automatically assigned the copyright, which cannot be given away.
(The RIAA once tried to change this by changing the law to allow "work for hire"-type music contracts, which would make the studios the copyright holders. Thankfully, it didn't pass.)
What you are thinking of is the DISTRIBUTION RIGHTS to specific copyrights. Such distribution rights are typically owned by publishers, by form of a contract with the copyright holder, the artist.
And it is exactly these distribution rights that, with the advent of the Internet and P2P, suddenly don't add nearly as much value to the music as they used to do, yet the products (albums) are still being charged for as much as they were in the old days.
Something's gotta give.
Wait, maybe I'm thinking of something else...
Yes, you're thinking of 88 miles per hour.
Now give me back the keys to my DeLorean, please.
Okay, how is the loss of a software patent a Good Thing(tm) in a free-market economy?
Short version:
Patents are government-granted monopolies.
Monopolies are bad for capitalism and the free market. Has been proven again and again and again.
I can elaborate if you want, but that's what it boils down to.
The vote passed in May with the almost the minimum possible margin; only two votes above what was required. The Netherlands hold more than two votes.
Changing the Dutch vote from an Aye to an Abstain (effectively a Nay, since it's the Ayes that count) should reverse the decision, withdrawing more than the two votes of margin. Something here just isn't factually correct.
Perhaps someone from the FFII can shed light on the matter?
Peppercoin's website indicates that version 2.0 pays merchants exactly what they charged, instead of [...] which may or may not sum out to exactly the expected charges.
NEWSFLASH: New payment method actually pays the charged amount!
How on God's green earth can this be news? Much less, how can this be presented as revolutionary and patentable?
Exactly what are these people smoking?
Did I suddenly wake up in 1999 without anyone telling me?
Ok, reading the guy's linked page with lots of confused conversion numbers, now hear this:
An inch is defined from the meter these days. It is exactly 25.4 millimeters.
This definition dates back to when Europe was more precise in measurements than American counterparts about the 1800s, and the American and Canadian inches were slightly different from each other.
A European factory - I forget which - made industrial pieces to fit exactly one inch, and exported to North America. For all practical purposes, they had a monopoly on the market. Of course, they needed different pieces for the US and Canada.
They undertook an experiment and started to make the American and Canadian pieces equally large (probably for profit reasons but htfc), deviating slightly from the standards for the respective cultures, and using an effectively home-made inch of 25.4 millimeters. After having been in production with this piece for a couple of years, with this piece being used for measurements in industrial production all over North America, the factory proclaimed that the US and Canada didn't have the tools to know the difference between the new-inch and their respective old-inches, and therefore, they shall henceforth use the same inch: 25.4 millimeters.
The proclamation stands to this day.
Fairly recently, there was a worm ("Witty") exploiting a hole in BlackIce Defender (a server-grade firewall and intrusion detection system). A damn nasty specimen, too -- it randomly wrote bogus data to random sectors of the hard drives, slowly destroying the server (and immediately rendering it untrustable).
One article on the worm can be found here; I'm sure the usual gang has advisories out for Witty as well.
The latest RFC don't deal with broadband over power lines any more. It's been tried, and power companies have folded over this bet.
My own power company gave up and found it more efficient to simply lay TCP/IP fiber along the new power lines instead.
No, the new thing is not TCP/IP over electricity lines, but electricity over TCP/IP lines, as detailed in RFC3251.
games with realistic three-dimensional graphics rivaling those on PC's and game consoles
I just came out of PlanetSide. This baby gives me about 60fps on my 19-inch monitor, with full keyboard controls, a force-feedback joystick, 5.1 surround sound of thunderous explosions, and frantic squad radio chatter in my headset.
When I look at my phone, I don't think I'll be holding my breath for it to catch up with that experience.
I've met and spoken with this guy in the story (Mike Nash), in an elevator. I was wearing my full motorcycle suit, and he noticed a few tears in the fabric.
:-)
He asked if it wasn't dangerous going at those speeds (like 100-150 mph). I explained that the suit protects me, but it takes a few tears in the process when accidents happen.
Funny he should now be the security guy at Microsoft, given his concern for motorcycle safety
Accidentally, Mike Nash was also the guy who closed the department I worked at and laid me off... (though, I have to add, it was done with all the dignity one could reasonably ask for).
There is a Wikipedia article on karma whoring here.