Metric A is fairly misleading. It's quite possible for one side to be more frequently on the wrong side of issues than the other if it is presently controlled by interests more ideological than practical.
Well, the whole point of breaking the law to overturn a bad law is that you're challenging it by standing up and saying "I'm prepared to be punished for this, because I don't believe it's just that others should be." So if your purpose in telling people to break the law is to encourage civil disobedience, but you yourself have no plans to be punished, then you're not doing it right.
A more important principle is that people shouldn't be denied their rights to participate in the democratic process because they've broken the law. That those convicted of crimes are permanently barred from voting in the majority of states is essentially a gateway to legalized vote-rigging (look at the lifestyles of your opponents and criminalize it), and a barrier to overturning unjust laws that affect large numbers of people.
(Original post has disappeared for some reason, reposted so people can read it. This is an important issue to me, people like the parent are, despite their protestations to the contrary, very much following the well-travelled path of "There's no difference between the candidates" that were how we got into this mess in the first place. Just because my comments offend a handful of right-wingers does not in any way mean they shouldn't be made - this is more important than ever, we're up against a candidate that is preparing the ground for more unnecessary wars, does not appear to have any idea of the effects the likely oncoming economic collapse will have on ordinary people and America's future if not stopped, and who has a trigger-personality that's actively frightening for someone whose finger will be on the bomb. We can't afford to let him win.)
The 100 more years quote isn't quoted because we're trying to make McCain look bad by somehow quoting him out of context, it's because it's a legitimate summary of his position on the occupation of Iraq. I'm sure Republican nit-pickers and Clinton haters love the fact it's possible to come up with an apologia for the original comment, but the fact is we're using that quote because that's his position. McCain wants us to stay in Iraq, no matter what the costs, without regard to an objective, without regard to the damage it does to this country, without regard to the value of the lives lost and the hatred and resentment the deaths on both sides will cause.
That's a fact. It's fair to object to a quote being out of context when the purpose of the quote is to mislead. This is not the case. McCain really is that dangerous, and the sooner the "I'll vote for McCain rather than vote for my party's nominee because my party's nominee called my prefer candidate a poopy-head" Democrats GROW UP and face reality, and face the fact that your little tantrum is going to help destroy this country, the better.
I don't like Clinton either. I don't like many of her positions, such as her views on censorship. I'll still support her ahead of McCain, because McCain really is that bad.
You know, you'd have thought after losing two Presidential elections because you thought your guy wasn't any different to their guy, you'd have learned this by now. "Gore and Bush are exactly the same, I'm going to stay home", "Kerry voted for the war, so even though he has a history of liberalism, and now opposes the war, I'm going to pretend he's exactly the same and stay home." Clinton is not McCain. She's not going to keep us in Iraq indefinitely. She's not going to propose anti-privacy and anti-human rights judges to SCOTUS. She's not the enemy here. Don't fuck up for a third time.
And where did I say that I'll vote for John McCain?
You didn't, and I didn't say you did. But apparently you do identify yourself as one of those Democrats, because the next thing you quote is this:
and face the fact that your little tantrum is going to help destroy this country
"My little tantrum"? That's the way to convince me that your point of view is the correct one.
The bottom line here is that there's a large body of Democrats who intend to support, either directly by voting for him, or indirectly by staying home or voting for a spoiler candidate like Nader, if their preferred candidate doesn't get the nomination, and are doing so on the basis of what I summarize as "They called my candidate a poopy-head".
To answer your next question: No, I didn't accept that there's a bit more of a difference between Hillary and Obama then one calling the other one a 'poopy-head' in terms of the arguments you and the other hypersupports are giving. The 3am election ad is hardly evidence that Hillary's "just like Bush", it's actually a perfectly legitimate ad asking perfectly legitimate questions, promoting the concept that you should be looking for a President who can deal with a crisis. And, you know, personally I think Obama wins that test actually, so Hillary asking the question doesn't bother me.
You know who I think wouldn't pass that test? The candidate you're happy to see win if Obama doesn't get the nomination, you know, John McCain. I think a guy who throws tantrums and lacks the judgment to even recognize that the war is harming our security, economy, and even our cause as a nation, would be a disastrous choice to answer the phone at 3am.
But obviously Hillary is asking about our view of Obama, because that's who she's running against right now, and it's a legitimate question, and I personally think Obama has proven time and time again he has the judgment to pass that test.
Had he been through the wringer when Clinton started asking about the Republican attack machine and how well he'd been vetted? Well, no, he hadn't, and it was also perfectly legitimate for Clinton to ask those kinds of questions then too. And then we got our answer. The Republicans started a little early on the attack ads and pieced together some largely out-of-context quotes from Obama's family preacher. And there are a hundred ways in which Obama could have screwed up dealing with that scenario, including many that most of us would have thought were the right things to do. But he didn't, and so again the questions Clinton asked were legitimate, and they were answered, and Obama passed the test again.
Your final comments appear to be directed at the concept that we should support a man of principle, no matter what those principles are, above a woman whose principles on many key issues appear to be absent. I don't believe Clinton is without principles, I believe that she's unable to work out how to do the right things when they're unpopular. She believes, as many politicians do, that stay in power is part of the battle, and that you can't win any battles if you're out of power. Part of Obama's appeal is that he's figured out how to deal with that, the man is a solid unapologetic liberal who can communicate and frame liberal concepts and end up being obviously stronger, smarter, and more approachable than his opponents. Clinton lacks those abilities so she will not appear to be out of step with the public on issues she's being scrutinized on.
And that's sad, but she's at least going to do many of the things that she has to do, and she'll keep steering the good-ship in the right direction even if she occasionally makes a stupid detour.
We know McCain isn't going to do that. He's not going to try. Beyond, perhaps, reducing the reliance of certain government departments on torture, he's going to be steering the country in a less liberal direction whether he's being examined o
First, John McCain is not the enemy. America has many enemies. Osama Bin Laden would be a fine example of one. John McCain is not an enemy of America. For that matter, he's a true American hero. I'm not saying that qualifies him to president any more than it did John Kerry, but don't take an American hero and call him the "enemy". That's just hateful, partisan rhetoric. Enough of the hate speech already.
This is an election. Osama Bin Laden is not running, despite the excitement a religious fundamentalist who believes in kicking ass would generate for the Republican Party. Therefore, the Republican candidate for election this year is John McCain. And he's a disaster in waiting, for all the reasons I described and more. He's the enemy of Democrats at this election. Oh sure, we have many enemies outside of this election, but in this election we have one serious enemy, and that man is John McCain.
Typical of the left. Lying about their opponent and declaring them the "enemy". HERE is a video of what he said.
Notice he didn't say that he WANTED to be in Iraq for 100 years. He said he would do what it takes to protect America.
He then went on to note that we've had soldiers in Germany, Italy, Britain, Japan, South Korea and other places for over 50 years. If you are going to bitch about American soldiers being station over seas, you should start with these places where US forces have been stationed over 10X longer.
I didn't lie about him. McCain has made it clear he's not going to pull out of Iraq. The "100 years" quote is great because it nearly and succinctly describes McCain's actual position on Iraq. Not only does he not want to pull out, he wants to expand the war. He's talking seriously about us invading Iran.
Iran. We've lost how many lives in Iraq? We've killed how many innocents (an inevitable consequence of war, which is one of the reasons why war needs to be considered a last resort, something you fuckers have serious problems understanding)? And we're losing how many trillions of dollars on this at a time when the economy is on the brink of complete collapse? And here we are, with McCain saying we should hang in there, that he thinks it's just like Britain (did we ever invade Britain?), Germany, and Japan (because those are somehow comparable situations), and we should continue to shove troops that way, keep them in a hostile country surrounded by even more hostile countries, for a century or more, while considering invading a few other countries that we don't like much.
Yeah, damn straight he's the enemy at this election. And as I said to Democrats considering staying home because poor little Hillary or liddle Obama didn't get the nomination: McCain is a terrible choice, and to pull down the imperfect candidate that opposes him because that candidate dared speak ill of your candidate is, ultimately, an act of treason, a betrayal of a nation of people, of your neighbors and friends and family and yourself.
The 100 more years quote isn't quoted because we're trying to make McCain look bad by somehow quoting him out of context, it's because it's a legitimate summary of his position on the occupation of Iraq. I'm sure Republican nit-pickers and Clinton haters love the fact it's possible to come up with an apologia for the original comment, but the fact is we're using that quote because that's his position. McCain wants us to stay in Iraq, no matter what the costs, without regard to an objective, without regard to the damage it does to this country, without regard to the value of the lives lost and the hatred and resentment the deaths on both sides will cause.
That's a fact. It's fair to object to a quote being out of context when the purpose of the quote is to mislead. This is not the case. McCain really is that dangerous, and the sooner the "I'll vote for McCain rather than vote for my party's nominee because my party's nominee called my prefer candidate a poopy-head" Democrats GROW UP and face reality, and face the fact that your little tantrum is going to help destroy this country, the better.
I don't like Clinton either. I don't like many of her positions, such as her views on censorship. I'll still support her ahead of McCain, because McCain really is that bad.
You know, you'd have thought after losing two Presidential elections because you thought your guy wasn't any different to their guy, you'd have learned this by now. "Gore and Bush are exactly the same, I'm going to stay home", "Kerry voted for the war, so even though he has a history of liberalism, and now opposes the war, I'm going to pretend he's exactly the same and stay home." Clinton is not McCain. She's not going to keep us in Iraq indefinitely. She's not going to propose anti-privacy and anti-human rights judges to SCOTUS. She's not the enemy here. Don't fuck up for a third time.
This is true, but it's still worth being careful. The word "Cretin", for instance, is (ultimately, via a level of indirection) derived from the word "Christian"; for those who know the etymology it's generally wise to be careful about whose company you use the word in.
You know, the 1992 election was the first US Presidential Election I actually followed, and followed at a lower level than most elections I'd followed even in Britain, where I lived at the time. I was at University, and was getting seriously involved in Usenet at the time.
And trust me, it was just as vicious then. Which, in retrospect, is ironic because the stakes were somewhat lower. George Bush Sr was never as incompetent or dangerous as his son and McCain, the country had not suffered any major disasters beyond a single earthquake (I don't want to understate the importance of the Earthquake, but it was one of those things you had limited ability to plan for, and it wasn't man made. Bush's response to it was criticized, but it wasn't dealt with with the exact wrong response of 9/11 or the paralysis that directly followed Katrina), the economy wasn't great but it wasn't on the apparent verge of collapse, and Bush Sr - who was the Republican candidate at the time - wasn't promising 100 more years of the worst policies of his administration.
Right now it's kind of dirty in the Democratic camp, but with good reason.
Both candidates are pretty good. One knows how to fight, and she'll do a pretty decent job standing up for the US without isolating our friends if she gets elected. The other is extraordinary in his ability to inspire people and the rest of the world, and has better judgment when it comes to judging what is right for this country. For those reasons and more, the supporters of both are increasingly sharp in their support and terrified of their candidate losing.
Both candidates are convinced the other can't win the actual election. Clinton's camp thinks Obama has won the wrong constituencies. Obama's camp believes Clinton is too divisive to genuinely pull over independents.
McCain is becoming increasingly scary for those following what he's saying and doing. He has no idea what the situation is in the Middle East with no real idea about the actions and viewpoints of the major players, yet is pushing war with Iran. He's said he's comfortable with the occupation of Iraq lasting "100 more years". Outside of the narrow band of war cheerleaders and defensive right-wingers, it's apparent this country is facing a meltdown because of the Iraq war, with billions wasted there despite our economy being on the verge of collapse and with few friends out there to prop us up or help us. And this is ignoring traditional domestic issues that have always been a concern to Democrats. Meanwhile, the media continues its love-in with McCain, and the media continues to describe him as centrist and a maverick, with the latter term being used as an apologia for the fact McCain has a temper, itself another dangerous attribute.
The stakes are unbelievably high. The candidates are unbelievably good (and I say this despite opposing much of what Clinton stands for.) Needless to say, those who have made up their minds about which to support feel very, very, strongly about the issue.
I'd like to repeat a comment I made in my journal a few days ago, because I think it applies here especially to those who are tempted to ignore the election or politics simply because it's vicious at the moment:
Obama supporters: Clinton isn't ideal, but she's not the enemy, y'know Bill wasn't ideologically that great either but somehow the government didn't turn to crap under his Presidency.
Clinton supporters: Obama's going to be a great President, honestly, he is, he's an inspiring leader, his heart is in the right place, he's smart, and what he lacks in experience he can make up for in his choices of colleagues: he isn't the enemy.
John McCain is the enemy. John McCain wants us to stay in Iraq for 100 more years. John McCain wants us to invade more countries, already preparing the ground for an invasion of Iran. John McCain will inject judges into SCOTUS who reject the constitutional protections, explicit and implied,
It's somewhat obsolete today (hell, it was obsolete when it came out, no GPRS) but my 9290 generally managed to keep charged for a week with moderate use.
This wouldn't be Slashdot without a minor nit-pick: Apple went with Motorola chips later in their life, but until the late eighties most of their CPU choices were from Commodore (specifically their MOSTEK subdivision), with variants of the 6502 used for the Apple I, II, III, and the various successors to the Apple II (IIe, IIc, GS, etc.) Only the Lisa and Apple Macintosh had Motorola CPUs.
I "learned" assembler on a Z80A and then learned assembler on a 6809 via the Dragon 32 CoCo clone. Amazing chip, an 8-bit CPU you could write elegant, structured, code on. The 68000 continued in that tradition: it was clean, well designed, elegant, and absolutely what the world should have switched to: so the world went with the x86 design instead. Because the world sucks.
There is a world of difference between allowing someone slightly dodgy to endorse you and you endorsing them.
There is, but some would say that actively seeking the endorsement of someone who regularly spews hatred is endorsing them. After all, why seek their endorsement if you don't actually consider their support a compliment?
Obama's preacher has said some unfortunate things over his lifetime, but he's the man who introduced Obama to Christianity and has been supportive of Obama's family for many decades. Obama is also a man who is trying to heal the divide, and that means bringing people together that currently are not exactly speaking tolerance and respect. As such, Obama throwing Wright under the bus would have been morally repugnant and ultimately destructive to his known public aims.
McCain has never needed the endorsement of agents of intolerance like Hagee, but he actively sought their endorsements anyway. He has not condemned the bad in what Hagee has said, unlike Obama. And our beloved media has given him a free pass on it.
Not in the same ballpark, I'm afraid, not in the same ballpark.
Do you really think Wright "spews it every day and with clear design"? Many of the most damning quotes attributed to him have turned out to be taken out of context.
I'm not saying he hasn't said some bad things, but Wright's views have been heavily exaggerated for political reasons.
Well, not really. You know full well that Obama is looking to heal the divisions that people like Wright have been a part of. You know that when McCain actively seeks out two hate-mongering priests and asks for their support, he's not planning to tackle their views.
Obama made a very brave speech in which he explained that he repudiates the viewpoints but doesn't reject the people who have them, and that he absolutely can't reject the people who have these views if he's going to bring the country back together and tackle racism head-on. Anyone voting against Obama on the grounds that they somehow believe Wright's views to be representative of Obama's, or in some way that he's promoting those views or relying upon people having those views to vote for him, isn't in sync with what Obama is - very publicly - trying to do.
If he'd hung Wright out to dry, then yeah, I think the criticisms of Obama would actually have had some validity and it would have been questionable that he'd make a good President. A great President, one who is capable of fixing this country, not only putting it back together after the last eight, dark, years, but also of healing the wounds of old battles that still haunt the country in the present day, is one who repudiates the wrong while giving a hand-up to those who have fallen into that gutter. Wright isn't a valid reason to criticize Obama, it's a reason to support him.
Being in favour of States rights ("rights" being a dubious term, "powers" is more appropriate. Rights belong to people, not governments) is by definition not libertarian, and I'm surprised by the number of big-L Libertarians who believe otherwise.
If you're in favour of handing powers to a government, then you're not exactly in favour of liberty, even if your main aim is to move existing powers from a central government to a less central one. I really don't care if it's the Federal Government or the Government of Florida that throws me in jail for four years for watching a DVD on my computer with an "unauthorized DVD player". Both are instances where a government has power it shouldn't have.
I find it interesting that Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is utterly detested by the right given it's probably the strongest work on the subject of making Mars habitable in fiction.
Nope, but the two situations aren't comparable. If your electricity was provided by a company that chose to prevent power surges by having a (well insulated) three year old frequently swing at the overhead wires with a pole, the other end of which was earthed, essentially earthing the power every few seconds, and if power was supplied in your area by a variety of organizations, rather than only one company, and if you actually live in an mud-hut village in the middle of the third world that's only been using power for a few years and which nobody is completely reliant or trusting of it, then yeah, I'd be in favor of that (now grown up) ex-three year old using his key to go into the "earthing room" and leaving the pole up there, denying power to the people who were subscribing to this incompetent organization.
Of course, that's a completely unrealistic scenario, which is why your analogy doesn't really work. In this case:
e-mail is too unreliable for anyone to consider it critical
The use of an innuendo-based filtering system has already contributed to the above. It is simply implausible that anyone who lost email as a result of ORDB's actions has come to rely upon it.
There are a choice of email administrators to the end users. They will be able to chose someone else.
I am sympathetic to the end users, but I think the end users were suffering before this, and for the most part, all this has done is show the users what the real cause of their long time woes are.
And the end users will learn what admins do, complain, and admins who subscribe to third party "anti-spam" solutions that use innuendo based logic to remove spam will get a well deserved roasting from their users.
No, I'm not happy the innocent users are suffering either, but I'd argue that they already were, just less aware of what was going on (probably suffering occasional emails removed due to false positives without realizing it was due to deliberate administrator decisions, blaming instead "unreliable email" (clue: it really isn't unreliable any more, except for the effects of some of the more incompetent anti-spam solutions)
Let's be clear here: the fact is these admins not only subscribed to an innuendo-based filtering system, but also didn't bother doing their job, monitoring the services they subscribe to and ensuring their system used it correctly. It's safe to say the users were suffering anyway, both because of the decisions the admins had made directly, and because of the general skill level of the admin whose services the users are relying upon. Hopefully for many of those users, this is a lesson in why not to trust the people they're currently relying upon.
HD downloads are offered by Microsoft and Apple, together with several smaller players, plus major cable and satellite operators. There's also PPV and HD movie channels. All of these deliver movies in HD to people's homes. Blu-ray is, relatively speaking, a tiny proportion of that.
Blu-ray is still a trivially small market, bought largely by early adopters. The technology is expensive. The players are expensive - more so than in a while indeed (the PS3 is the "cheapest one"? You mean "best value", presumably. Which it is largely because most Blu-ray players are obsolete, the PS3 being one of the few that's upgradeable.) The discs are expensive. It's not hard to see it being beaten in the market by online downloads.
If you're going to push online downloads and beat out Blu-ray before it has a chance to take hold, now's a good time to do it. And, of course, Microsoft has little reason to actually adopt Blu-ray at all (except possibly as a storage format for the next generation of consoles.) Microsoft little money from Blu-ray (royalties on the VC-1 codec are pretty much it), and the system only competes with what they do offer and adds to the console cost. Why bother? What's the benefit to Microsoft for being able to provide both downloads and Blu-ray playability?
I wonder if it was the result of confusion, with someone saying "They're trying to make money off of 911", and the submitter thinking "They're trying to make money from September 11th" rather than "They're trying to make money off of the emergency services."
Perhaps it's time we moved the entire country to 112. It already works on GSM cellphones, and it's rapidly becoming an international standard. So far as I'm aware, no major disasters that have lingered in the public consciousness happened on either November 2nd or January 12th.
The only way to make a Blu-ray player for GNU/Linux (at least, GNU/Linux in terms of a distributable operating system) is to violate the GPL and close the source of the Linux kernel (together, arguably, with the source of X.org.) So it is 100% illegal, and always will be (unless the AACS people lighten up) to produce a workable Blu-ray player for GNU/Linux.
AACS, which is a mandatory part of the Blu-ray Disc specification (ie, studios aren't even allowed to press BD discs with content unencumbered by AACS) requires support for a "secure path" between the code reading the disc and the actual monitor. This is impossible to implement on an open operating system - the same source code that can reassure a player application that the path is secure can be modified on an open operating system to lie.
DVD playback was always slightly easier in that it didn't require that crap be implemented, but it certainly was illegal for the Linux "community" to "create" a DVD player inside of the US, because once you start going closed source, you're certainly not part of that community any more. In practice, development fell into two camps
Free software players that were made legally outside of the US that used the reverse engineered specification for CSS (and known workarounds) to decrypt discs. These are illegal for use in the US except in crippled forms that play unencumbered DVDs only, with people who dare import the code and compile it to watch the DVDs they own risking up to four years of imprisonment. An example is the popular VLC Videolan project. So far as I'm aware, the only reason the law hasn't been enforced against those to run VLC in the US is because that would pretty much guarantee the repeal of the DMCA.
Closed players that run on a fraction of GNU/Linux systems and which have never actually been offered for sale.
So the answer is: because it's illegal. Because anyone trying to make a player will not be able to agree to the stipulations set out by the AACS LA. And as such, anyone producing a Blu-ray player for GNU/Linux today is risking four years of imprisonment plus fines and penalties for violating the contract with the AACS should they have signed it if they ever, ever, so much as have it play a single disc.
HD DVD was fractionally better - the possibility of unencumbered discs existed with HD DVD (as it does with DVD), but to my knowledge nobody ever produced a single open HD DVD so this distinction is, today, meaningless.
I think part of the argument is legitimate, in that we're stuck in the unlicensed bands, where there is significant opportunities for interference both within those bands and from licensed bands sitting on the borders at each side.
This is WiMax, not Wi-fi. Despite the first two letters, and the fact they're both 802.x standards, these are completely unrelated technologies, which for some reason geeks in particular tend to get overly excited and confused about conflating the features of one with the other. WiMax is generally run on licensed spectrum, and is about as useful as Wi-fi on unlicensed spectrum, if you can even get certified equipment. So far as I'm aware there are no commercial operators trying to run it on unlicensed spectrum: there's no point, Wifi is cheaper and just as effective for non-LoS use.
2.4ghz and 5.6ghz/5.8ghz are good bands for line of sight transmission. Unfortunately, these frequencies are increasingly noisy and all of the fancy algorithms in the world can't help you when some of son-of-bitch with a home-made outfit is spewing out at obscene power levels.
Again, you're assuming WiMax is generally run on unlicensed frequencies. But your point is worth addressing because the bands WiMax is generally licensed in to tend to be greater than 2GHz, though it is being considered by a number of operators for use on the 700MHz spectrum recently auctioned.
Anyway: 2-3GHz has roughly the same characteristics as PCS, the 1900MHz spectrum used by Sprint PCS and T-Mobile USA, and it's in this area that WiMax is usually offered - though I have heard of it being deployed in the 3.5GHz range. It's generally pretty strong outside, while indoor coverage generally deteriorates relatively quickly, though not to the point of unusability.
WiMax is an interesting technology but it suffers from being "first" and from being designed by the computer industry with almost no input from the telecoms industry. The latter may be a bunch of Luddites but they do put a premium on reliability, something our industry is absolutely abysmal at. Which is partially why I'm betting on LTE being the path forward to universal internet connectivity.
Well, I sort of disagree with some of what you're saying, but you shouldn't really have written:
The fact that Vista is an almost total failure is pretty much proof positive that Microsoft has lost most if not all of their monopoly power
Vista is highly unpopular and generally unwelcome, yet pretty much every major PC manufacturer except Apple is bundling it with their mainstream PCs. And when their mainstream PCs are offered with an option that isn't Vista, it's XP. So Microsoft is still dominating the desktop.
When Dell, HP, etc, start bundling Ubuntu or Mac OS X or Syllable, or AmigaOS, or OpenVMS, etc (heh) with most of their mainstream, as in "you can walk into Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Wal Mart, etc, and see these PCs on display running that OS", PCs then we can reasonably say Microsoft has lost its monopoly power. At this stage though, no it hasn't. It's just not doing well persuading people to like its newest product.
Aside from when they were implemented, most of those features also exist on BD.
Nope.
Blu-ray isn't "more affordable", the comparison was actually with Blu-ray.
BD doesn't support combo-discs and so far as I'm aware there are no plans to support that.
BD does not support unencrypted blue-laser discs - a smaller studio or free content provider wanting to avoid AACS fees would have to go BD9, trading storage capacity for resolution or quality (or both) to try to fit the entire thing on a disc, and also suffering the fact that as a feature that wasn't standardized until a month or two ago, the majority of Blu-ray players currently on the market or in people's homes are unable to play the format
Yes, BD Live will support the features of HD DVD's HDi, but that was what I actually said.
Managed copy is not present on early Blu-ray discs. It isn't practical at this stage for a hardware manufacturer to produce a Blu-ray juke box or format shifter under the assumption that all customers will be able to transfer all their content
BD+ has not been removed from the Blu-ray spec and probably never will be
So only one of the six involves features that "already exist" (rather, will exist) on BD, and that point actually made that clear.
For the record BD has two MOVIE related feature advantages over HD-DVD -- space and bandwidth. Disc transfer data rate is higher on BD, which allows for more complex scenes encoded at higher bitrates. That's not a minor difference.
I mentioned capacity, actually. The disk transfer rate argument is bunk: Blu-ray was built for MPEG2, and the specs set accordingly. Most movies are encoding using the considerably more efficient VC-1 and MPEG4 codecs, and transfer rates never get anywhere close to even HD DVD's maximum theoretical speed, let alone Blu-ray's. You're talking about an advantage that only applies if an old, obsolete, video storage codec is used - not exactly an advantage.
In real terms, HD DVD was better in most respects from a consumer point of view. Quality was equal, but HD DVD was the more capable, trouble free, easier to migrate to, format. Unfortunately the studios were fooled by BD+, and so we have the less capable, less reliable, format that requires the greatest amount of expense and upheaval to upgrade to. Well, so much for that. Let's hope uploads will provide us with the promise of HD, because Blu-ray sure as hell will not.
If they're getting "No service", then the area isn't covered, and thus the network provider is not fulfilling their mandate. I said the operator doesn't have to worry about providing full capacity (as in, enough to cover every yakking SUV driver) to certain areas, that's not the same thing as failing to provide a usable signal.
Slashdot Mirror
Metric A is fairly misleading. It's quite possible for one side to be more frequently on the wrong side of issues than the other if it is presently controlled by interests more ideological than practical.
Well, the whole point of breaking the law to overturn a bad law is that you're challenging it by standing up and saying "I'm prepared to be punished for this, because I don't believe it's just that others should be." So if your purpose in telling people to break the law is to encourage civil disobedience, but you yourself have no plans to be punished, then you're not doing it right.
A more important principle is that people shouldn't be denied their rights to participate in the democratic process because they've broken the law. That those convicted of crimes are permanently barred from voting in the majority of states is essentially a gateway to legalized vote-rigging (look at the lifestyles of your opponents and criminalize it), and a barrier to overturning unjust laws that affect large numbers of people.
(Original post has disappeared for some reason, reposted so people can read it. This is an important issue to me, people like the parent are, despite their protestations to the contrary, very much following the well-travelled path of "There's no difference between the candidates" that were how we got into this mess in the first place. Just because my comments offend a handful of right-wingers does not in any way mean they shouldn't be made - this is more important than ever, we're up against a candidate that is preparing the ground for more unnecessary wars, does not appear to have any idea of the effects the likely oncoming economic collapse will have on ordinary people and America's future if not stopped, and who has a trigger-personality that's actively frightening for someone whose finger will be on the bomb. We can't afford to let him win.)
The 100 more years quote isn't quoted because we're trying to make McCain look bad by somehow quoting him out of context, it's because it's a legitimate summary of his position on the occupation of Iraq. I'm sure Republican nit-pickers and Clinton haters love the fact it's possible to come up with an apologia for the original comment, but the fact is we're using that quote because that's his position. McCain wants us to stay in Iraq, no matter what the costs, without regard to an objective, without regard to the damage it does to this country, without regard to the value of the lives lost and the hatred and resentment the deaths on both sides will cause.
That's a fact. It's fair to object to a quote being out of context when the purpose of the quote is to mislead. This is not the case. McCain really is that dangerous, and the sooner the "I'll vote for McCain rather than vote for my party's nominee because my party's nominee called my prefer candidate a poopy-head" Democrats GROW UP and face reality, and face the fact that your little tantrum is going to help destroy this country, the better.
I don't like Clinton either. I don't like many of her positions, such as her views on censorship. I'll still support her ahead of McCain, because McCain really is that bad.
You know, you'd have thought after losing two Presidential elections because you thought your guy wasn't any different to their guy, you'd have learned this by now. "Gore and Bush are exactly the same, I'm going to stay home", "Kerry voted for the war, so even though he has a history of liberalism, and now opposes the war, I'm going to pretend he's exactly the same and stay home." Clinton is not McCain. She's not going to keep us in Iraq indefinitely. She's not going to propose anti-privacy and anti-human rights judges to SCOTUS. She's not the enemy here. Don't fuck up for a third time.
You didn't, and I didn't say you did. But apparently you do identify yourself as one of those Democrats, because the next thing you quote is this:
The bottom line here is that there's a large body of Democrats who intend to support, either directly by voting for him, or indirectly by staying home or voting for a spoiler candidate like Nader, if their preferred candidate doesn't get the nomination, and are doing so on the basis of what I summarize as "They called my candidate a poopy-head".
To answer your next question: No, I didn't accept that there's a bit more of a difference between Hillary and Obama then one calling the other one a 'poopy-head' in terms of the arguments you and the other hypersupports are giving. The 3am election ad is hardly evidence that Hillary's "just like Bush", it's actually a perfectly legitimate ad asking perfectly legitimate questions, promoting the concept that you should be looking for a President who can deal with a crisis. And, you know, personally I think Obama wins that test actually, so Hillary asking the question doesn't bother me.
You know who I think wouldn't pass that test? The candidate you're happy to see win if Obama doesn't get the nomination, you know, John McCain. I think a guy who throws tantrums and lacks the judgment to even recognize that the war is harming our security, economy, and even our cause as a nation, would be a disastrous choice to answer the phone at 3am.
But obviously Hillary is asking about our view of Obama, because that's who she's running against right now, and it's a legitimate question, and I personally think Obama has proven time and time again he has the judgment to pass that test.
Had he been through the wringer when Clinton started asking about the Republican attack machine and how well he'd been vetted? Well, no, he hadn't, and it was also perfectly legitimate for Clinton to ask those kinds of questions then too. And then we got our answer. The Republicans started a little early on the attack ads and pieced together some largely out-of-context quotes from Obama's family preacher. And there are a hundred ways in which Obama could have screwed up dealing with that scenario, including many that most of us would have thought were the right things to do. But he didn't, and so again the questions Clinton asked were legitimate, and they were answered, and Obama passed the test again.
Your final comments appear to be directed at the concept that we should support a man of principle, no matter what those principles are, above a woman whose principles on many key issues appear to be absent. I don't believe Clinton is without principles, I believe that she's unable to work out how to do the right things when they're unpopular. She believes, as many politicians do, that stay in power is part of the battle, and that you can't win any battles if you're out of power. Part of Obama's appeal is that he's figured out how to deal with that, the man is a solid unapologetic liberal who can communicate and frame liberal concepts and end up being obviously stronger, smarter, and more approachable than his opponents. Clinton lacks those abilities so she will not appear to be out of step with the public on issues she's being scrutinized on.
And that's sad, but she's at least going to do many of the things that she has to do, and she'll keep steering the good-ship in the right direction even if she occasionally makes a stupid detour.
We know McCain isn't going to do that. He's not going to try. Beyond, perhaps, reducing the reliance of certain government departments on torture, he's going to be steering the country in a less liberal direction whether he's being examined o
This is an election. Osama Bin Laden is not running, despite the excitement a religious fundamentalist who believes in kicking ass would generate for the Republican Party. Therefore, the Republican candidate for election this year is John McCain. And he's a disaster in waiting, for all the reasons I described and more. He's the enemy of Democrats at this election. Oh sure, we have many enemies outside of this election, but in this election we have one serious enemy, and that man is John McCain.
I didn't lie about him. McCain has made it clear he's not going to pull out of Iraq. The "100 years" quote is great because it nearly and succinctly describes McCain's actual position on Iraq. Not only does he not want to pull out, he wants to expand the war. He's talking seriously about us invading Iran.
Iran. We've lost how many lives in Iraq? We've killed how many innocents (an inevitable consequence of war, which is one of the reasons why war needs to be considered a last resort, something you fuckers have serious problems understanding)? And we're losing how many trillions of dollars on this at a time when the economy is on the brink of complete collapse? And here we are, with McCain saying we should hang in there, that he thinks it's just like Britain (did we ever invade Britain?), Germany, and Japan (because those are somehow comparable situations), and we should continue to shove troops that way, keep them in a hostile country surrounded by even more hostile countries, for a century or more, while considering invading a few other countries that we don't like much.
Yeah, damn straight he's the enemy at this election. And as I said to Democrats considering staying home because poor little Hillary or liddle Obama didn't get the nomination: McCain is a terrible choice, and to pull down the imperfect candidate that opposes him because that candidate dared speak ill of your candidate is, ultimately, an act of treason, a betrayal of a nation of people, of your neighbors and friends and family and yourself.
The 100 more years quote isn't quoted because we're trying to make McCain look bad by somehow quoting him out of context, it's because it's a legitimate summary of his position on the occupation of Iraq. I'm sure Republican nit-pickers and Clinton haters love the fact it's possible to come up with an apologia for the original comment, but the fact is we're using that quote because that's his position. McCain wants us to stay in Iraq, no matter what the costs, without regard to an objective, without regard to the damage it does to this country, without regard to the value of the lives lost and the hatred and resentment the deaths on both sides will cause.
That's a fact. It's fair to object to a quote being out of context when the purpose of the quote is to mislead. This is not the case. McCain really is that dangerous, and the sooner the "I'll vote for McCain rather than vote for my party's nominee because my party's nominee called my prefer candidate a poopy-head" Democrats GROW UP and face reality, and face the fact that your little tantrum is going to help destroy this country, the better.
I don't like Clinton either. I don't like many of her positions, such as her views on censorship. I'll still support her ahead of McCain, because McCain really is that bad.
You know, you'd have thought after losing two Presidential elections because you thought your guy wasn't any different to their guy, you'd have learned this by now. "Gore and Bush are exactly the same, I'm going to stay home", "Kerry voted for the war, so even though he has a history of liberalism, and now opposes the war, I'm going to pretend he's exactly the same and stay home." Clinton is not McCain. She's not going to keep us in Iraq indefinitely. She's not going to propose anti-privacy and anti-human rights judges to SCOTUS. She's not the enemy here. Don't fuck up for a third time.
This is true, but it's still worth being careful. The word "Cretin", for instance, is (ultimately, via a level of indirection) derived from the word "Christian"; for those who know the etymology it's generally wise to be careful about whose company you use the word in.
You know, the 1992 election was the first US Presidential Election I actually followed, and followed at a lower level than most elections I'd followed even in Britain, where I lived at the time. I was at University, and was getting seriously involved in Usenet at the time.
And trust me, it was just as vicious then. Which, in retrospect, is ironic because the stakes were somewhat lower. George Bush Sr was never as incompetent or dangerous as his son and McCain, the country had not suffered any major disasters beyond a single earthquake (I don't want to understate the importance of the Earthquake, but it was one of those things you had limited ability to plan for, and it wasn't man made. Bush's response to it was criticized, but it wasn't dealt with with the exact wrong response of 9/11 or the paralysis that directly followed Katrina), the economy wasn't great but it wasn't on the apparent verge of collapse, and Bush Sr - who was the Republican candidate at the time - wasn't promising 100 more years of the worst policies of his administration.
Right now it's kind of dirty in the Democratic camp, but with good reason.
The stakes are unbelievably high. The candidates are unbelievably good (and I say this despite opposing much of what Clinton stands for.) Needless to say, those who have made up their minds about which to support feel very, very, strongly about the issue.
I'd like to repeat a comment I made in my journal a few days ago, because I think it applies here especially to those who are tempted to ignore the election or politics simply because it's vicious at the moment:
It's somewhat obsolete today (hell, it was obsolete when it came out, no GPRS) but my 9290 generally managed to keep charged for a week with moderate use.
He probably means this type of bazooka: "Hand over the cash, or I'll pop this bubble-gum and you'll get gum and saliva all over you."
It's a very Canadian problem.
This wouldn't be Slashdot without a minor nit-pick: Apple went with Motorola chips later in their life, but until the late eighties most of their CPU choices were from Commodore (specifically their MOSTEK subdivision), with variants of the 6502 used for the Apple I, II, III, and the various successors to the Apple II (IIe, IIc, GS, etc.) Only the Lisa and Apple Macintosh had Motorola CPUs.
I "learned" assembler on a Z80A and then learned assembler on a 6809 via the Dragon 32 CoCo clone. Amazing chip, an 8-bit CPU you could write elegant, structured, code on. The 68000 continued in that tradition: it was clean, well designed, elegant, and absolutely what the world should have switched to: so the world went with the x86 design instead. Because the world sucks.
There is, but some would say that actively seeking the endorsement of someone who regularly spews hatred is endorsing them. After all, why seek their endorsement if you don't actually consider their support a compliment?
Obama's preacher has said some unfortunate things over his lifetime, but he's the man who introduced Obama to Christianity and has been supportive of Obama's family for many decades. Obama is also a man who is trying to heal the divide, and that means bringing people together that currently are not exactly speaking tolerance and respect. As such, Obama throwing Wright under the bus would have been morally repugnant and ultimately destructive to his known public aims.
McCain has never needed the endorsement of agents of intolerance like Hagee, but he actively sought their endorsements anyway. He has not condemned the bad in what Hagee has said, unlike Obama. And our beloved media has given him a free pass on it.
Not in the same ballpark, I'm afraid, not in the same ballpark.
Do you really think Wright "spews it every day and with clear design"? Many of the most damning quotes attributed to him have turned out to be taken out of context.
I'm not saying he hasn't said some bad things, but Wright's views have been heavily exaggerated for political reasons.
Well, not really. You know full well that Obama is looking to heal the divisions that people like Wright have been a part of. You know that when McCain actively seeks out two hate-mongering priests and asks for their support, he's not planning to tackle their views.
Obama made a very brave speech in which he explained that he repudiates the viewpoints but doesn't reject the people who have them, and that he absolutely can't reject the people who have these views if he's going to bring the country back together and tackle racism head-on. Anyone voting against Obama on the grounds that they somehow believe Wright's views to be representative of Obama's, or in some way that he's promoting those views or relying upon people having those views to vote for him, isn't in sync with what Obama is - very publicly - trying to do.
If he'd hung Wright out to dry, then yeah, I think the criticisms of Obama would actually have had some validity and it would have been questionable that he'd make a good President. A great President, one who is capable of fixing this country, not only putting it back together after the last eight, dark, years, but also of healing the wounds of old battles that still haunt the country in the present day, is one who repudiates the wrong while giving a hand-up to those who have fallen into that gutter. Wright isn't a valid reason to criticize Obama, it's a reason to support him.
Being in favour of States rights ("rights" being a dubious term, "powers" is more appropriate. Rights belong to people, not governments) is by definition not libertarian, and I'm surprised by the number of big-L Libertarians who believe otherwise.
If you're in favour of handing powers to a government, then you're not exactly in favour of liberty, even if your main aim is to move existing powers from a central government to a less central one. I really don't care if it's the Federal Government or the Government of Florida that throws me in jail for four years for watching a DVD on my computer with an "unauthorized DVD player". Both are instances where a government has power it shouldn't have.
I find it interesting that Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is utterly detested by the right given it's probably the strongest work on the subject of making Mars habitable in fiction.
Nope, but the two situations aren't comparable. If your electricity was provided by a company that chose to prevent power surges by having a (well insulated) three year old frequently swing at the overhead wires with a pole, the other end of which was earthed, essentially earthing the power every few seconds, and if power was supplied in your area by a variety of organizations, rather than only one company, and if you actually live in an mud-hut village in the middle of the third world that's only been using power for a few years and which nobody is completely reliant or trusting of it, then yeah, I'd be in favor of that (now grown up) ex-three year old using his key to go into the "earthing room" and leaving the pole up there, denying power to the people who were subscribing to this incompetent organization.
Of course, that's a completely unrealistic scenario, which is why your analogy doesn't really work. In this case:
I am sympathetic to the end users, but I think the end users were suffering before this, and for the most part, all this has done is show the users what the real cause of their long time woes are.
And the end users will learn what admins do, complain, and admins who subscribe to third party "anti-spam" solutions that use innuendo based logic to remove spam will get a well deserved roasting from their users.
No, I'm not happy the innocent users are suffering either, but I'd argue that they already were, just less aware of what was going on (probably suffering occasional emails removed due to false positives without realizing it was due to deliberate administrator decisions, blaming instead "unreliable email" (clue: it really isn't unreliable any more, except for the effects of some of the more incompetent anti-spam solutions)
Let's be clear here: the fact is these admins not only subscribed to an innuendo-based filtering system, but also didn't bother doing their job, monitoring the services they subscribe to and ensuring their system used it correctly. It's safe to say the users were suffering anyway, both because of the decisions the admins had made directly, and because of the general skill level of the admin whose services the users are relying upon. Hopefully for many of those users, this is a lesson in why not to trust the people they're currently relying upon.
How is Blu-ray 100% of the HD movie market?
HD downloads are offered by Microsoft and Apple, together with several smaller players, plus major cable and satellite operators. There's also PPV and HD movie channels. All of these deliver movies in HD to people's homes. Blu-ray is, relatively speaking, a tiny proportion of that.
Blu-ray is still a trivially small market, bought largely by early adopters. The technology is expensive. The players are expensive - more so than in a while indeed (the PS3 is the "cheapest one"? You mean "best value", presumably. Which it is largely because most Blu-ray players are obsolete, the PS3 being one of the few that's upgradeable.) The discs are expensive. It's not hard to see it being beaten in the market by online downloads.
If you're going to push online downloads and beat out Blu-ray before it has a chance to take hold, now's a good time to do it. And, of course, Microsoft has little reason to actually adopt Blu-ray at all (except possibly as a storage format for the next generation of consoles.) Microsoft little money from Blu-ray (royalties on the VC-1 codec are pretty much it), and the system only competes with what they do offer and adds to the console cost. Why bother? What's the benefit to Microsoft for being able to provide both downloads and Blu-ray playability?
I wonder if it was the result of confusion, with someone saying "They're trying to make money off of 911", and the submitter thinking "They're trying to make money from September 11th" rather than "They're trying to make money off of the emergency services."
Perhaps it's time we moved the entire country to 112. It already works on GSM cellphones, and it's rapidly becoming an international standard. So far as I'm aware, no major disasters that have lingered in the public consciousness happened on either November 2nd or January 12th.
The only way to make a Blu-ray player for GNU/Linux (at least, GNU/Linux in terms of a distributable operating system) is to violate the GPL and close the source of the Linux kernel (together, arguably, with the source of X.org.) So it is 100% illegal, and always will be (unless the AACS people lighten up) to produce a workable Blu-ray player for GNU/Linux.
AACS, which is a mandatory part of the Blu-ray Disc specification (ie, studios aren't even allowed to press BD discs with content unencumbered by AACS) requires support for a "secure path" between the code reading the disc and the actual monitor. This is impossible to implement on an open operating system - the same source code that can reassure a player application that the path is secure can be modified on an open operating system to lie.
DVD playback was always slightly easier in that it didn't require that crap be implemented, but it certainly was illegal for the Linux "community" to "create" a DVD player inside of the US, because once you start going closed source, you're certainly not part of that community any more. In practice, development fell into two camps
So the answer is: because it's illegal. Because anyone trying to make a player will not be able to agree to the stipulations set out by the AACS LA. And as such, anyone producing a Blu-ray player for GNU/Linux today is risking four years of imprisonment plus fines and penalties for violating the contract with the AACS should they have signed it if they ever, ever, so much as have it play a single disc.
HD DVD was fractionally better - the possibility of unencumbered discs existed with HD DVD (as it does with DVD), but to my knowledge nobody ever produced a single open HD DVD so this distinction is, today, meaningless.
This is WiMax, not Wi-fi. Despite the first two letters, and the fact they're both 802.x standards, these are completely unrelated technologies, which for some reason geeks in particular tend to get overly excited and confused about conflating the features of one with the other. WiMax is generally run on licensed spectrum, and is about as useful as Wi-fi on unlicensed spectrum, if you can even get certified equipment. So far as I'm aware there are no commercial operators trying to run it on unlicensed spectrum: there's no point, Wifi is cheaper and just as effective for non-LoS use.
Again, you're assuming WiMax is generally run on unlicensed frequencies. But your point is worth addressing because the bands WiMax is generally licensed in to tend to be greater than 2GHz, though it is being considered by a number of operators for use on the 700MHz spectrum recently auctioned.
Anyway: 2-3GHz has roughly the same characteristics as PCS, the 1900MHz spectrum used by Sprint PCS and T-Mobile USA, and it's in this area that WiMax is usually offered - though I have heard of it being deployed in the 3.5GHz range. It's generally pretty strong outside, while indoor coverage generally deteriorates relatively quickly, though not to the point of unusability.
WiMax is an interesting technology but it suffers from being "first" and from being designed by the computer industry with almost no input from the telecoms industry. The latter may be a bunch of Luddites but they do put a premium on reliability, something our industry is absolutely abysmal at. Which is partially why I'm betting on LTE being the path forward to universal internet connectivity.
Well, I sort of disagree with some of what you're saying, but you shouldn't really have written:
Vista is highly unpopular and generally unwelcome, yet pretty much every major PC manufacturer except Apple is bundling it with their mainstream PCs. And when their mainstream PCs are offered with an option that isn't Vista, it's XP. So Microsoft is still dominating the desktop.
When Dell, HP, etc, start bundling Ubuntu or Mac OS X or Syllable, or AmigaOS, or OpenVMS, etc (heh) with most of their mainstream, as in "you can walk into Circuit City, Best Buy, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Wal Mart, etc, and see these PCs on display running that OS", PCs then we can reasonably say Microsoft has lost its monopoly power. At this stage though, no it hasn't. It's just not doing well persuading people to like its newest product.
Nope.
So only one of the six involves features that "already exist" (rather, will exist) on BD, and that point actually made that clear.
I mentioned capacity, actually. The disk transfer rate argument is bunk: Blu-ray was built for MPEG2, and the specs set accordingly. Most movies are encoding using the considerably more efficient VC-1 and MPEG4 codecs, and transfer rates never get anywhere close to even HD DVD's maximum theoretical speed, let alone Blu-ray's. You're talking about an advantage that only applies if an old, obsolete, video storage codec is used - not exactly an advantage.
In real terms, HD DVD was better in most respects from a consumer point of view. Quality was equal, but HD DVD was the more capable, trouble free, easier to migrate to, format. Unfortunately the studios were fooled by BD+, and so we have the less capable, less reliable, format that requires the greatest amount of expense and upheaval to upgrade to. Well, so much for that. Let's hope uploads will provide us with the promise of HD, because Blu-ray sure as hell will not.
If they're getting "No service", then the area isn't covered, and thus the network provider is not fulfilling their mandate. I said the operator doesn't have to worry about providing full capacity (as in, enough to cover every yakking SUV driver) to certain areas, that's not the same thing as failing to provide a usable signal.