Google responds to take down requests, sometimes reluctantly if the take down is clearly unfair but nonetheless legal (as with the Scientologists), but they do do it. Google also isn't trying to make it easy for freeloaders to download copyrighted material without authorization.
Well, they can't really be placed on someone's lap (except laying down, I guess), and their battery life is very unimpressive, so I think they're somewhat underspec'd to be classified as laptops...
No, the first presentation is simply too long, and those who are unaware that Palin attacked Obama over Ayers are introduced to information that doesn't pertain to the article.
I also don't understand your objection to the presentation that was used. It does not substitute "opinion for fact", Ayers is accurately described, amongst other things, as Sarah Palin's boogieman. I think both Ayers and Palin would agree on that point.
The purpose of the comment was clearly to identify which Ayers the article was discussing, not introduce new information to people unaware of Ayers role in the last election. To demand it be explained in what way Ayers was Palin's boogieman is to demand irrelevencies and trivialities be introduced into the article. The article is about the school system.
I think you've misunderstood what the GP said. The comment was about spending, not about government spending per-se. Yes, University education is funded through taxation in many countries in Europe, but it's also often done much more efficiently or cheaply (take your pick, probably somewhere in the middle) than it is in the US.
I didn't read the article as Pro-Ayers, merely reporting that the guy was the author of the study in question.
Also I read a lot of the allegations against Ayers during the election campaign, and the guy was obviously somewhat nutty and disingenuous in terms of how he described what he did, but I specifically have not heard any non-discredited allegation that he "intentionally made homemade explosives that killed people", unless you're misusing the term "intentionally" to just mean "he made explosives" rather than "that killed people". Indeed, I'm not even aware of a bomb he made that actually killed people, though bombs made by his collegues certainly did - Ayers' girlfriend Diana Oughton managed to make one, for instance. Unfortunately for Oughton, the victim of her bomb was herself.
As far as apologies go, Richard Elrod, a victim of the Weather Underground, reports receiving a direct apology from William Ayers.
I don't mean to come off as defending the person, but he's neither the bizarre caricature Palin painted him as, nor the largely innocent, never intended to hurt anyone, Vietnam War opponent he paints himself as. If Ayers was posting some of the crap he's posted about himself here, I would be as critical of it as I am of what you've just posted.
William Ayers is chiefly known by most of the country as being "That guy who Palin said was a terrorist that Obama was palling around with". Describing him as "Sarah Palin boogieman William Ayers" is a fairly efficient way of ensuring that readers knew which person was being talked about.
Not entirely sure why the above was moderated "Troll", but given the AC's response, if the issue is the second paragraph, then the false Slashdot story is here, and the debunking is here and here.
We've had one Slashdot story claiming that he does that turned out to be complete bullshit, the words of a Bush-appointee who hasn't left yet being put in President Obama's mouth that themselves didn't say what the story said it did, and that certainly wasn't about bugging the phones of journalists.
I'm not optimistic that Obama is going to haul those who made a mockery of the rule of law and the constitution over the coals, but it's a little too early to be sure he isn't going to, and it's highly improbable he'll follow in Bush's footsteps.
In the context I was talking of, T2 was an OK movie. It was an action movie rather than a thoughtful movie, though it went half way with the latter (at least in the director's cut) in exploring anthropomorphism. That's all I meant.
Yes, patents expire, and in any case Fraunhoffer has actually made it clear they have no intention of enforcing patents against MP2 implementations, something they never did with MP3.
Whether people "believed" it about MP3 is not relevant here. In fact, it's a pretty stupid thing to raise.
Terminator 3 is an entertaining movie, but it's not a particularly intelligent movie, which is what people are referring to when they worry about Blade Runner II being "not good."
The issue with Blade Runner is that Blade Runner itself is, well, staggeringly good. Frighteningly good. There are few films before or since that have tackled the issues Blade Runner did with as much success. T3 followed an OK movie, T2, which kind of touched upon issues of anthropomorphism but (Wait? I spelt that correctly on the first go? That doesn't make sense. Maybe Firefox screwed up. Sometimes the spell checker doesn't work. kdjdjd. Nope, that has a wavey red line underneath it. As does "wavey" and "spelt", interestingly enough. Hmmm. Anthropomorphism. How did I do that? My spelling is attrocious, er, attrocous, atrotious, er really really bad.)
What was I saying? Yeah, T2 touched upon some interesting questions about anthropomorphism but it was almost an afterthought. So T3 following T2 wasn't a giant slap in the face towards those who loved it. Blade Runner goes right into the heart of the debate about collective inhumanity. Following it with an action movie set near the Tannhauser gate would be like making a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird" where Atticus Finch, having moved to Germany, is on the run from Nazis and has to prove himself innocent of a crime he didn't commit.
Re-reading what I wrote, 192kbps was a little optimistic (given the aims of MP3), but I stand by my basic point because 192kbps isn't where the industry is going, it's more like 256kbps, as another reply points out.
The aim with MP3 was to have rough parity at 128kbps with 192kbps MP2. However, that doesn't mean that 192kbps MP3 sounds like 256kbps MP2. The benefits MP3 offers at the lower bit rates aren't scalable, and after a point they actually hamper the audio quality to a point that most studies suggest MP2 ends up ahead (given decent encoders for both formats.)
You might want to compare it to the situation with, say, MPEG 2 video vs early versions of RealPlayer. Using the RV10 codec RealPlayer was able to squeeze a just about discernable image over a fast modem link back in the late nineties, whereas MPEG 2 simply didn't stand a chance at those bitrates. However, those same early codecs didn't suddenly become DVD quality when you ran them at 4Mbps. Perhaps the comparison is unfair 'cos I don't think anyone was happy with either, but in any event, scalability matters, MP3 was designed to be optimal at 128kbps, reflecting its "optimal for ISDN" design requirements. Adding bits brings diminishing returns.
As a side note, I remember eight years ago playing with the dist10 encoder and being surprised with how well 128kbps MP2 streams sounded. Perhaps I would not be so impressed today, but it does surprise me that the free software community never really ran with MP2, instead concentrating on optimizing the hell out of MP3 encoder implementations.
I came into America originally on an H1-B type visa (not an actual H1-B, because my employer's status within the US was different, but the practical differences between the two - no path to citizenship, must be employed under same circumstances as an American, etc) were non-existent. I have many colleagues in the same boat.
Honestly, we have never been treated the way you suggest. I really do think your friend's experience was the exception, not the rule
MP3 is transparent for most people at higher bitrates
The funny thing is that at higher bitrates, MP2 is generally considered higher quality than MP3. And MP2 is backward/forward compatible with MP3 - that is, an MP2 will play on all MP3 players (MP3 ("MPEG Audio Layer 3") is, as the name implies, MP2 with an extra layer grafted on so that lower bitrate audio will sound decent), and oddly enough an MP2 player will play an MP3 but it'll sound like crap.
Why is this funny?
Well, MP2 is essentially patent free. Fraunhoffer has indicated they have no desire to enforce any patents they own against MP2 implementations.
Couple that with the enormous capacity increases you're seeing in regular MP3 players, and there's not much reason to go for Ogg anymore. Encode your stuff as 192kbps MP2, and it's future proof, playable on free players, playable on virtually every portable player, and higher quality than MP3 at the same bitrate. Go figure.
Ok, now do you think your friend was hired specifically so the employer only had to pay him every six months, or do you think he was hired for his skills, and then paid every six months because the employer could get away with it?
And do you think your friend's experience is in any way typical?
It's an easy thing to fix - require that H1B visa holders receive the same pay and benefits for their work as the rest of the workforce
Ok, done (several decades ago, actually), still the same "problem" though ('cos, well, nothing's changed, that's the point, it always was a requirement of an H1B and pretty much all the employment visas that the holder get the same pay and benefits as a citizen for the same job.)
H1Bs are popular amongst employers not because they're easy to abuse (the amount of bureaucracy involved takes care of any "benefits" you might have in having someone for which a firing has worse consequences than an ordinary citizen) but because they make it relatively easy to get very, very, skilled people from overseas.
Being able to hire good people means being able to do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to, which means being able to survive as a business and employ more people, citizens included. What would be good though would be to replace H1Bs with an expanded green card program, so fear of losing one's job does not factor into the equation, and so people who want to work in America because they want to be a part of this country aren't discriminated against over those who just want to take the money and run.
Perhaps because the theory of evolution has had a profound impact on Western thought, far more so than any other scientific theory I can think of.
In what way? And how does this relate to the question?
And because although scientists can explain how they think evolution might have occurred, the scientific method can't be used to actually directly test the "origin of the species" - it isn't repeatable.
The scientific method can be used in a variety of ways, from demonstrating the process, to making predictions about evidence that would have to exist, or could not exist, and then looking for that evidence. There are very few scientific theories that require you repeat the entire process that the theory explains in order to know it works. Relativity, for example, can be proven to work in principle, but when you use it to determine why Mercury rotates around the Sun faster than Newtonian physics suggests you're generally not required to build a huge frickin' ball of fire in the middle of space and a giant, Mercury-sized ball of rock to go with it.
That one's interesting too, actually. The theory of relativity is generally not considered that controversial, but actually it doesn't fully explain why Mercury's orbit around the Sun isn't Newtonian, 'cos it's not entirely consistent with Relativistic physics either. Evolution seems, by and large, to be less controversial within the scientific community than most modern laws of physics, and yet it's the one that's picked on by school boards. Why is that?
And perhaps also because the theory of evolution depends on the pre-existence of DNA, and there is currently no satisfactory explanation for how it originated.
Satisfactory to whom? There are a variety of theories as to how RNA and DNA came into being. Nor does the theory of evolution depend upon the "pre-existence" of DNA, on a wider level, DNA is just another successful development, with other proto-"genetic storage systems" failing to survive in the same chemical soup. Had a different genetic storage system developed in the soup, that was developed earlier and was as effective as DNA, some other living being would be having this discussion right now, but that living being would also have evolved and would recognize the theory of evolution as a theory.
And finally, because many proponents of evolution are every bit as religious about their beliefs as the ID'ers.
Even if this were true, it's also entirely irrelevant. ID is, regardless of its supporters, not a scientific theory. Evolution, regardless of its supporters, most certainly is.
We are apes!. And it is very likely that a fish, likely to be a Sarcopterygii of some type, was one of our ancestors. The Sarcopterygii includes the lungfishes, which as the name implies, were fish that evolved lungs and whose fins developed into stubby "limbs", allowing them to "walk" on land.
If the GP had mentioned a specific ape (like a monkey) or a specific fish (like a trout), then yeah, the objection would have been correct for that, but apes are a superfamily, not a specific species, and fish are similarly not a species but an enormous group of centered around, but not including, the tetrapods. Apes did evolve from something that evolved from fish, and our ancestor was another ape, just like us.
While the digital cable ATSC standard is similar to OTA ATSC, it uses a different modulation scheme. OTA ATSC is 8VSB, cable is either 16VSB or 256QAM.
The converter boxes are for OTA broadcasts only. Digital TVs generally support both standards.
Don't expect to keep your digital channels for much longer, most cable companies are going for a two-way system where only the channels being watched are actually broadcast on any stretch of cable, in order to make better use of their bandwidth. This is called "switched video", and it's not supported by older digital TVs.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you doing reading Slashdot? Why don't you go back to re-installing Windows on that nice new Dell you bought?
I don't know what case you think you're talking about, but the Scientology case had nothing to do with YouTube.
Google responds to take down requests, sometimes reluctantly if the take down is clearly unfair but nonetheless legal (as with the Scientologists), but they do do it. Google also isn't trying to make it easy for freeloaders to download copyrighted material without authorization.
Well, they can't really be placed on someone's lap (except laying down, I guess), and their battery life is very unimpressive, so I think they're somewhat underspec'd to be classified as laptops...
No, the first presentation is simply too long, and those who are unaware that Palin attacked Obama over Ayers are introduced to information that doesn't pertain to the article.
I also don't understand your objection to the presentation that was used. It does not substitute "opinion for fact", Ayers is accurately described, amongst other things, as Sarah Palin's boogieman. I think both Ayers and Palin would agree on that point.
The purpose of the comment was clearly to identify which Ayers the article was discussing, not introduce new information to people unaware of Ayers role in the last election. To demand it be explained in what way Ayers was Palin's boogieman is to demand irrelevencies and trivialities be introduced into the article. The article is about the school system.
I think you've misunderstood what the GP said. The comment was about spending, not about government spending per-se. Yes, University education is funded through taxation in many countries in Europe, but it's also often done much more efficiently or cheaply (take your pick, probably somewhere in the middle) than it is in the US.
I didn't read the article as Pro-Ayers, merely reporting that the guy was the author of the study in question.
Also I read a lot of the allegations against Ayers during the election campaign, and the guy was obviously somewhat nutty and disingenuous in terms of how he described what he did, but I specifically have not heard any non-discredited allegation that he "intentionally made homemade explosives that killed people", unless you're misusing the term "intentionally" to just mean "he made explosives" rather than "that killed people". Indeed, I'm not even aware of a bomb he made that actually killed people, though bombs made by his collegues certainly did - Ayers' girlfriend Diana Oughton managed to make one, for instance. Unfortunately for Oughton, the victim of her bomb was herself.
As far as apologies go, Richard Elrod, a victim of the Weather Underground, reports receiving a direct apology from William Ayers.
I don't mean to come off as defending the person, but he's neither the bizarre caricature Palin painted him as, nor the largely innocent, never intended to hurt anyone, Vietnam War opponent he paints himself as. If Ayers was posting some of the crap he's posted about himself here, I would be as critical of it as I am of what you've just posted.
William Ayers is chiefly known by most of the country as being "That guy who Palin said was a terrorist that Obama was palling around with". Describing him as "Sarah Palin boogieman William Ayers" is a fairly efficient way of ensuring that readers knew which person was being talked about.
Not entirely sure why the above was moderated "Troll", but given the AC's response, if the issue is the second paragraph, then the false Slashdot story is here, and the debunking is here and here.
What makes you think he does?
We've had one Slashdot story claiming that he does that turned out to be complete bullshit, the words of a Bush-appointee who hasn't left yet being put in President Obama's mouth that themselves didn't say what the story said it did, and that certainly wasn't about bugging the phones of journalists.
I'm not optimistic that Obama is going to haul those who made a mockery of the rule of law and the constitution over the coals, but it's a little too early to be sure he isn't going to, and it's highly improbable he'll follow in Bush's footsteps.
Wait and see.
That would be because you're a human being.
Puny human!
Oh, and I had Steven Seagal in mind for Atticus...
In the context I was talking of, T2 was an OK movie. It was an action movie rather than a thoughtful movie, though it went half way with the latter (at least in the director's cut) in exploring anthropomorphism. That's all I meant.
I loved the DC FWIW. One of my favorite HD DVDs.
Because until it was fossilized, it was your best and only friend and always sat there outside of the pizza shop waiting for your return?
Yes, patents expire, and in any case Fraunhoffer has actually made it clear they have no intention of enforcing patents against MP2 implementations, something they never did with MP3.
Whether people "believed" it about MP3 is not relevant here. In fact, it's a pretty stupid thing to raise.
Terminator 3 is an entertaining movie, but it's not a particularly intelligent movie, which is what people are referring to when they worry about Blade Runner II being "not good."
The issue with Blade Runner is that Blade Runner itself is, well, staggeringly good. Frighteningly good. There are few films before or since that have tackled the issues Blade Runner did with as much success. T3 followed an OK movie, T2, which kind of touched upon issues of anthropomorphism but (Wait? I spelt that correctly on the first go? That doesn't make sense. Maybe Firefox screwed up. Sometimes the spell checker doesn't work. kdjdjd. Nope, that has a wavey red line underneath it. As does "wavey" and "spelt", interestingly enough. Hmmm. Anthropomorphism. How did I do that? My spelling is attrocious, er, attrocous, atrotious, er really really bad.)
What was I saying? Yeah, T2 touched upon some interesting questions about anthropomorphism but it was almost an afterthought. So T3 following T2 wasn't a giant slap in the face towards those who loved it. Blade Runner goes right into the heart of the debate about collective inhumanity. Following it with an action movie set near the Tannhauser gate would be like making a sequel to "To Kill a Mockingbird" where Atticus Finch, having moved to Germany, is on the run from Nazis and has to prove himself innocent of a crime he didn't commit.
Re-reading what I wrote, 192kbps was a little optimistic (given the aims of MP3), but I stand by my basic point because 192kbps isn't where the industry is going, it's more like 256kbps, as another reply points out.
The aim with MP3 was to have rough parity at 128kbps with 192kbps MP2. However, that doesn't mean that 192kbps MP3 sounds like 256kbps MP2. The benefits MP3 offers at the lower bit rates aren't scalable, and after a point they actually hamper the audio quality to a point that most studies suggest MP2 ends up ahead (given decent encoders for both formats.)
You might want to compare it to the situation with, say, MPEG 2 video vs early versions of RealPlayer. Using the RV10 codec RealPlayer was able to squeeze a just about discernable image over a fast modem link back in the late nineties, whereas MPEG 2 simply didn't stand a chance at those bitrates. However, those same early codecs didn't suddenly become DVD quality when you ran them at 4Mbps. Perhaps the comparison is unfair 'cos I don't think anyone was happy with either, but in any event, scalability matters, MP3 was designed to be optimal at 128kbps, reflecting its "optimal for ISDN" design requirements. Adding bits brings diminishing returns.
As a side note, I remember eight years ago playing with the dist10 encoder and being surprised with how well 128kbps MP2 streams sounded. Perhaps I would not be so impressed today, but it does surprise me that the free software community never really ran with MP2, instead concentrating on optimizing the hell out of MP3 encoder implementations.
I came into America originally on an H1-B type visa (not an actual H1-B, because my employer's status within the US was different, but the practical differences between the two - no path to citizenship, must be employed under same circumstances as an American, etc) were non-existent. I have many colleagues in the same boat.
Honestly, we have never been treated the way you suggest. I really do think your friend's experience was the exception, not the rule
The funny thing is that at higher bitrates, MP2 is generally considered higher quality than MP3. And MP2 is backward/forward compatible with MP3 - that is, an MP2 will play on all MP3 players (MP3 ("MPEG Audio Layer 3") is, as the name implies, MP2 with an extra layer grafted on so that lower bitrate audio will sound decent), and oddly enough an MP2 player will play an MP3 but it'll sound like crap.
Why is this funny?
Well, MP2 is essentially patent free. Fraunhoffer has indicated they have no desire to enforce any patents they own against MP2 implementations.
Couple that with the enormous capacity increases you're seeing in regular MP3 players, and there's not much reason to go for Ogg anymore. Encode your stuff as 192kbps MP2, and it's future proof, playable on free players, playable on virtually every portable player, and higher quality than MP3 at the same bitrate. Go figure.
Ok, now do you think your friend was hired specifically so the employer only had to pay him every six months, or do you think he was hired for his skills, and then paid every six months because the employer could get away with it?
And do you think your friend's experience is in any way typical?
Ok, done (several decades ago, actually), still the same "problem" though ('cos, well, nothing's changed, that's the point, it always was a requirement of an H1B and pretty much all the employment visas that the holder get the same pay and benefits as a citizen for the same job.)
H1Bs are popular amongst employers not because they're easy to abuse (the amount of bureaucracy involved takes care of any "benefits" you might have in having someone for which a firing has worse consequences than an ordinary citizen) but because they make it relatively easy to get very, very, skilled people from overseas.
Being able to hire good people means being able to do things you otherwise wouldn't be able to, which means being able to survive as a business and employ more people, citizens included. What would be good though would be to replace H1Bs with an expanded green card program, so fear of losing one's job does not factor into the equation, and so people who want to work in America because they want to be a part of this country aren't discriminated against over those who just want to take the money and run.
Hey, I don't make the rules, that's just the generally accept consensus.
In what way? And how does this relate to the question?
The scientific method can be used in a variety of ways, from demonstrating the process, to making predictions about evidence that would have to exist, or could not exist, and then looking for that evidence. There are very few scientific theories that require you repeat the entire process that the theory explains in order to know it works. Relativity, for example, can be proven to work in principle, but when you use it to determine why Mercury rotates around the Sun faster than Newtonian physics suggests you're generally not required to build a huge frickin' ball of fire in the middle of space and a giant, Mercury-sized ball of rock to go with it.
That one's interesting too, actually. The theory of relativity is generally not considered that controversial, but actually it doesn't fully explain why Mercury's orbit around the Sun isn't Newtonian, 'cos it's not entirely consistent with Relativistic physics either. Evolution seems, by and large, to be less controversial within the scientific community than most modern laws of physics, and yet it's the one that's picked on by school boards. Why is that?
Satisfactory to whom? There are a variety of theories as to how RNA and DNA came into being. Nor does the theory of evolution depend upon the "pre-existence" of DNA, on a wider level, DNA is just another successful development, with other proto-"genetic storage systems" failing to survive in the same chemical soup. Had a different genetic storage system developed in the soup, that was developed earlier and was as effective as DNA, some other living being would be having this discussion right now, but that living being would also have evolved and would recognize the theory of evolution as a theory.
Even if this were true, it's also entirely irrelevant. ID is, regardless of its supporters, not a scientific theory. Evolution, regardless of its supporters, most certainly is.
We are apes!. And it is very likely that a fish, likely to be a Sarcopterygii of some type, was one of our ancestors. The Sarcopterygii includes the lungfishes, which as the name implies, were fish that evolved lungs and whose fins developed into stubby "limbs", allowing them to "walk" on land.
If the GP had mentioned a specific ape (like a monkey) or a specific fish (like a trout), then yeah, the objection would have been correct for that, but apes are a superfamily, not a specific species, and fish are similarly not a species but an enormous group of centered around, but not including, the tetrapods. Apes did evolve from something that evolved from fish, and our ancestor was another ape, just like us.
While the digital cable ATSC standard is similar to OTA ATSC, it uses a different modulation scheme. OTA ATSC is 8VSB, cable is either 16VSB or 256QAM.
The converter boxes are for OTA broadcasts only. Digital TVs generally support both standards.
Don't expect to keep your digital channels for much longer, most cable companies are going for a two-way system where only the channels being watched are actually broadcast on any stretch of cable, in order to make better use of their bandwidth. This is called "switched video", and it's not supported by older digital TVs.