Are you preaching it's ok to download mp3s or software you don't own cause that's copyright infringement but taking candy from the store is wrong because thats stealing?
I'm not "preaching" anything. If you pirate something in lieu of paying for it (or a competing product), I believe that is unethical because you are depriving someone of revenue. If you download something that you would not, or could not, pay for, you are not harming anyone. In some cases, it's a "good thing" for all involved. For instance, I downloaded MP3s of the Goo Goo Dolls after hearing a song of theirs on the radio that I liked. When I liked what I heard, I went out and bought their CD Dizzy Up The Girl. That's not something I was prepared to do prior to my heinous act of copyright infringement.
If they were really concerned with being ethical, they would use free software and the likes.
So they are supposed to teach students to be proficient in using Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office by using free software? This may come as a shock to you, but there are a lot more jobs for people skilled in the use of commercial software tools than for those who know how to use GIMP and OpenOffice.org. Not every course involving computers is one in which students are being taught to program or design computers.
Digital video is a good example where dumb buses are bad. I often import video while doing other tasks such as applying a filter.
So do you not have enough CPU power to handle both simultaneously, or are you simply assuming that you would not? If you really do not (which I find hard to believe given the speed of modern CPUs), there will be a market for intelligent USB 2.0 controllers much as there is for intelligent drive controllers that have their own CPU, cache, etc. (You will note that, as CPU speeds have increased, the need for such cards has diminished.)
Simply saying "dumb buses are bad" is dumb. Without considering the CPU speed, availability, and loading from the "dumb bus" at its rated speed, such a statement is meaningless.
By the way, I programmed a "dumb" interface. It was a serial port that worked by toggling an I/O line connected to a 2N2222A transistor to create the bits. There was another bit that got read for the incoming data. Not even a UART. That was a "dumb" interface and I hardly think that's comparable to a modern USB 2.0 as interface as implemented in silicon today.
Copyright infringement is not theft. If you steal something from me, you have it and I no longer do. If a school in Malaysia pirates a copy of Photoshop, Adobe has no fewer copies than they did before the school pirated it.
From an ethical standpoint, a more meaningful consideration is whether the school is depriving someone of revenue. In other words, are they pirating the software to avoid paying for it or are they pirating it because they are unable or unwilling to pay for it? If a 14 year old kid that gets a pirated copy of 3D Studio Max -- a $3,500 software package, who is being hurt? The publisher had no reasonable expectation that the kid could have purchased it.
Please keep in mind that the above is a discussion of ethics, not law. The law has made many ethical acts illegal. Just look at the effects of the DMCA, for instance. Or consider that it is illegal for you to exceed the posted speed limit even if you are transporting someone to the emergency room after a serious injury.
Its faster in name only. Especially with as many devices as you have, as USB is a dumb bus and needs to be powered by the CPU, whereas Firewire is host independant.
I'll worry about that if I ever find myself simultaneously scanning images, burning CD-ROMS, scanning barcodes with the wand held in my teeth, and frantically typing with one hand while moving the trackball with the other. As to how involved the CPU is with the bus, I can't say. I seriously doubt that the Firewire bus has a direct connection to the computer's hard drive with no CPU intervention. All interfaces, whether USB, Ethernet, IDE, Firewire, or SCSI, impose some level of CPU loading.
I would like to know why you believe that a modern Athlon XP or P4 would have trouble keeping up with the data transfer on USB 2.0.
Dumb buses are becoming more prevalent as CPU horsepower gets cheaper. Not too many years ago, Hayes introduced a high-spped serial card that had 1K buffers and enough smarts to do the handshaking so that a normal PC could handle high-speed serial data at 230 kilobaud. In a modern system, such a card would be laughable.
Now we have USB2, which is slightly faster, but there's such a large base of IEEE video equipment
I fully understand that. I deal with cards that have 1553 interfaces, GPIB interfaces, etc. in my work because we have equipment that needs those interfaces. But to claim that Linux should focus on the more specialized Firewire interface over the soon-to-be-ubiquitous USB 2.0 is almost as silly as claiming that USB is only good for mice and keyboards.
USB is good for keyboards and mice... that's about all.
USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire at 480mbps (vs. 400mbps for Firewire). Who needs 480mbps for a mouse? I put a 24X Yamaha cutter into a USB 2.0 enclosure and can burn CDs at the full 24X speed, so I'd say that it's good for external CD drives, too. It's also good for flatbed scanners, digital cameras, tape drives, printers, USB-to-Ethernet adapters, and just about any external peripheral which would benefit from a high speed, low cost, hot plug interface. That describes a lot of peripherals.
MS is the only player in the field.
Hardly. As this article states, Linux supports it and, as another poster pointed out, so does NetBSD.
Another reason to support it is that it will soon be standard on every PC motherboard sold while getting Firewire ports will usually require the addition of a PCI card.
Lastly, it uses inexpensive cables and is backwards compatible with USB 1.1 devices and cabling. If I have a USB hub on my desk, USB ports on the front of my computer, and a USB mouse, barcode scanner, and flatbed scanner, why would I want to start buying an incompatible Firewire peripherals? It already looks like there is a bald eagle nesting behind my computer, so I don't need yet another set of cables for Firewire.
If having only one distribution is the only way to make Linux 'succeed', then it's never going to be anything but a failure.
Having multiple compatible distributions is fine, but I should be able to download a program for "Linux" without worrying about what kernel I'm running, what windows manager, what distribution, etc.
or (2) the "average consumer" is capable of learning to use something that's different (not harder; different)
Linux is "harder". That point was driven home to me as I tried to find where Mandrake 8.2 hid the app to change the IP address of the network card (please, oh holier-than-thou Linux geeks, don't try to impress me with your arcane memorization of command line utilities and switches to do same). Take a look at Microsoft's "Control Panel." Nicely thought out. It may not be perfect, but it's a lot better than the seemingly random arrangement of system setup stuff under popular Linux distros.
Great. Now we add different distros into the mix. The average consumer will never have Linux as a desktop OS until he can go into a store, buy a program on CD, put the CD into the tray, and have an automated install walk him through putting it on his system. When he upgrades his OS, the application needs to keep running, not be recompiled, scrapped, or replaced. Vendors need to be able to direct the user to click things and type things to provide support. They can't deal with every distro being different. It drives support costs, and consumer frustration, through the roof.
I have Win2k apps that won't run on WinNT, WinNT apps that won't run on Win2k, nothing worked on WinXP, and don't get me going about all the applications I bought for Win95 (mostly games) where WINE is my only hope of ever using them again.
I have, literally, hundreds of apps and am constantly amazed by the way that Microsoft gets them to work as they move from OS to OS. Sure, if you have an app from 1995 that defrags a FAT16 disk, yes, it won't work on an NTFS disk under Windows XP. But if you have a "normal" application, more often than not, it will run.
If applications support Win95, WinNT, Win2k, WinME and WinXP out of the box it's only because the vendors went through trials that would have made Heracles cringe.
Complete bunk. I have apps that were written for Windows 95 that still work fine in XP. How would a vendor that went out of business in 1997 have made hurculean efforts to make the app run in OSs that weren't even released yet? Why is it that Office 97 still works fine for people that now run 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP?
If anything, I'm more impressed by the Linux camp
That's obvious. You are such an apologist for Linux that you wouldn't complain if Redhat included a fresh dog turd in every box.
Well, someone had to be first to ship with this compiler. I wouldn't worry. Vendors will catch up.
I'm not worried about vendors catching up. I'm more concerned about users. Until Linux gets out of the habit of breaking huge numbers of apps with releases, Microsoft will continue to own the OS market. Recompiling and distributing apps costs money. Users don't expect to have to pay for new apps just because they upgraded from Mandrake 8.2 to Mandrake 9.0. So vendors either eat the costs or piss off the customer base.
Microsoft has a much better understanding of "the real world" than does the Linux community. Microsoft, love it or hate it, understands that you can't expect vendors to support your product and customers to buy it if you regularly break their software with OS upgrades. And this is coming from someone who really wants to see Linux succeed. I find the security bugs, Product Activation, constantly tightening EULA, Gestapo-like software audits, and Digital Rights Management to be a threat to the entire computer industry.
He, as with most of his ilk, threw the Second Amendment out the window with a snide comment about "regulated militias" which shows that either a) he's never bothered to actually READ the fucker, and the debate that went up to its creation, or b) he does, in fact, only care about constitutional rights for people who agree with his politics.
As I said in the other post, I'm a gun owner. And I am well aware of the Second Amendment, it's purported purposes, court decisions, etc. Although I don't want to get into it here, my views on the right to bear arms are fairly moderate. I don't believe that the founding fathers would have wanted mentally unbalanced people to be able to buy machine guns nor do I think that they wanted to prevent a law-abiding citizen from owning a rifle.
Refusing to consider the points made by the ACLU because you dislike, or disagree with, their position on the Second Amendment is intellectually bankrupt. I don't agree with everything that they have done, but it does not mean that I should dismiss, without reading, everything that they publish.
You also failed to note one thing: The person who brought the Second Amendment into this debate was the one who wrote "I'll start taking the ACLU seriously when they start defending ALL of the Bill of Rights." The implication was clear as was the cowardly dismissal of an intelligently written paper that did not agree with the poster's views.
But the debate here is not about the interpretation of the Second Amendment. The debate is about the changes to the Constitutional rights of all citizens. Airport screeners going through your luggage, ISPs turning over your e-mail, and telephone company workers tapping your line without warrants are not based on your party affiliation (yet).
Yes. If you have an article from the NRA that is germane to this discussion, bring it on... After you read the ACLU article that I linked to and comment on it.
By the way, I own two handguns, a rifle, a shotgun, and an air rifle. I've been to the NRA headquarters firearms museum and have shot skeet and targets at pistol ranges. I am not nearly so closed-minded as you apparently assume I am.
Although I wouldn't mind a computer controlled setup with ccd, I think many people who buy the 8" computer driven models would not use them as 1) it is not really good enough aperture, you want 10" or more 2) you need to do the hardyards and learn the night sky. For me finding an object takes around 20-30 minutes.
As a serious amateur with 25+ years of experience, I know the night sky well. But I have an 8" Celestron with computerized setting circles and a 5" Celestron go-to scope.
If I lived in Arizona, I might agree with you, but living near Washington, D.C., the computerized scopes make the hobby feasible. It's fine to star hop when you have a black sky full of stars. When you have 20 visible stars in the sky, the hops become a bit more like leaps of faith. The reality of viewing in an urban area is that many of the objects dim enough to require a 10" or larger scope are simply invisible due to light pollution. A larger scope simply gathers more light pollution.
The ability take the 5" scope out my door, set it up without worrying about polar alignment, and have it track is really nice. The 8" scope, because it is not computer-driven, requires a bit more work. But both perform admirably and have the advantage of providing better seeing than a larger aperture scope when the atmosphere is turbulent -- as it often is in urban areas.
I guess what I'm saying is that every scope has its place. If I lived in an area with good weather and dark skies, I'd probably have an observatory and a 16" or better Dobsonian -- in addition to my Celestron SCTs.
Your analogies are exaggerating somewhat, since whether you see pieces of the sky through your own telescope or pictures taken using somebody else's, they're only distant images...
If anything, I find the analogies less compelling. The "magic" of having photons hit your eyes after starting their journeys years, centuries, or even longer, ago can't be captured by seeing a photo. Neither is their any skill in just viewing a photo. Catching a glimpse of a faint object using averted vision, finding a comet not visible to the naked eye, or watching the changes on the face of Jupiter as the nights go by is something that will never be equaled by viewing a photo.
Ah, yes. Another symptom. Everyone who disagrees with your politics is a "troll".
Fine. I'll argue the point with you. I say that dismissing the ACLU's opinion without consideration, because you disagree with them on some other matter, is intellectually bankrupt. Now answer intelligently.
My idea is that these drives are now marketed more towards people interested in copying audio CDs, rather than archival storage. I just hope recording at what is now a low speed doesn't cause any problems in these new drives.
I tend to look for something in the mid-range of the drive and media. Like a 12X cut in a 24X drive/media. I, too, worry about cutting at a radically different speed than the drives were designed for.
What we really should have had years ago is an archival format for CDRs that gave up about 10-20% of the storage in order to build in better error detection and correction.
It's just a flippin' CDRW, not a seat belt mod or DIY nuclear reactor.
Obviously the data you burn has little value to you. Some of us record important data onto CD/R media. I would not want to save 30 seconds on the recording process only to learn that the software, source code, proposal, etc., that I shipped overnight was unreadable.
32x Lite-On CD-RW is $52.00 on Pricewatch.
And a 48x Lite-On CD burner is $75.00 on Pricewatch. My peace of mind and the integrity of my data is worth $23.
I'm sorry but I've actually done this (the guide is months old) and it works fine
And how did you verify that it "works fine"? Did you test BLER (Block Error Rate), BERL (Burst Error Length), (BEGL) Burst Errors Greater than Limit, Cyclic Redundancy Check for subcode Q-channel, etc. using something like an AudioDev CATS SA-3 or SA-300? Did you use an electron microscope to examine the quality and uniformity of the pits?
You see, there is more to assessing the quality of the recording of digital data onto an optical media than simply counting "coasters."
And the error rates are similar burning at 40x.
So you measured the BLER, BERL, BEGL, etc.? Or did you not know that CD-ROM drives do error correction?
I just love the way you arrogate to yourself the title of "thinking person", thereby smearing anyone who doesn't agree with you as stupid.
Glad you enjoyed it.
I bet you care, too, which is why you voted for Al Gore, who certainly didn't enjoy the priviledge of being part of the "ruling class" like W.
No, I voted for Gore over Bush because of his positions on issues important to me. I did not believe that the economy, environment, consumers, or minorities would have fared well under Bush. I did not believe that Bush had the intelligence or wisdom to lead our country. The intervening time since his appointment to the Presidency has done little to convince me otherwise. Everything from our backing out of the Kyoto treaty to Ashcroft's attack on our Constitutional rights to the funnelling of tax dollars into religious organizations (charities and schools) has convince me that voting for Gore was the right thing to do.
Do you really believe that that boneheaded "escrow" scheme wouldn't be abused within 6 months?
So, the fact that you believe that the Clipper Chip escrow system would have been abused makes it completely analogous to legalized warrantless wiretapping? I don't see things that way at all.
I notice that you didn't respond to that one
Nor did you respond to the ACLU document at the link that I sent to you. If you are going to ignore my postings, don't expect me to answer yours point-by-point.
You're a dupe, my friend. The Republicans have their dupes as well, of course.
You just keep telling yourself that in a few years when the Ashcroft Gestapo demands to see "your papers."
I suppose this will have to do with the media properties rather than the drive.
It has to do with how well the drive burns the media. To oversimplify, how do you know that the 32X drive has adequate power at the laser when overclocked to 48X?
It would be a simple matter to check the md5sums. dd if=/dev/cdrom | md5sum -
That doesn't show error rates. That shows if there were one or more unrecoverable errors. If you get a CD with a lot of raw errors that are recovered, the CD will be much less tolerant of damage, degradation, etc., before it develops unreverable errors. It's also less likely to work as reliably when you read it in multiple drives.
I suggest you get your head out of your ass and stop believing that there's any substantive difference between Republicans and Democrats on civil liberty issues.
Rather than resorting to vulgarities, read the article and come back when you have substantive comments on it.
By the way, comparing the Clipper Chip, which was to have an escrowed key available only after a search warrant was issued, to warrantless wiretapping is absurd.
How do you know that it "works" once you are done? Would you just assume that the ability to burn a CD and then read it proves that everything is fine? Has anyone looked into the error rates of hot-rodded drives vs. those drives sold to operate at the higher speeds? Has anyone examined the long-term data retention of CDs burned at 48X in what was a 32X burner?
This is simply foolish. Unless you work for the factory, you simply don't know if there are hardware or performance differences between the 32X, 40X, and 48X drives. For all you know, they each have a different laser diode. So you're going to burn hundreds of CDs, maybe backing up valuable data and software, without knowing if they can be read a year from now? Great idea.
If your time is so valuable that you need to upgrade from 32X to 48X burning, you can afford a new CD writer.
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Don't argue semantics with me.
Then use the proper terms in your writing.
Are you preaching it's ok to download mp3s or software you don't own cause that's copyright infringement but taking candy from the store is wrong because thats stealing?
I'm not "preaching" anything. If you pirate something in lieu of paying for it (or a competing product), I believe that is unethical because you are depriving someone of revenue. If you download something that you would not, or could not, pay for, you are not harming anyone. In some cases, it's a "good thing" for all involved. For instance, I downloaded MP3s of the Goo Goo Dolls after hearing a song of theirs on the radio that I liked. When I liked what I heard, I went out and bought their CD Dizzy Up The Girl. That's not something I was prepared to do prior to my heinous act of copyright infringement.
If they were really concerned with being ethical, they would use free software and the likes.
So they are supposed to teach students to be proficient in using Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office by using free software? This may come as a shock to you, but there are a lot more jobs for people skilled in the use of commercial software tools than for those who know how to use GIMP and OpenOffice.org. Not every course involving computers is one in which students are being taught to program or design computers.
Digital video is a good example where dumb buses are bad. I often import video while doing other tasks such as applying a filter.
So do you not have enough CPU power to handle both simultaneously, or are you simply assuming that you would not? If you really do not (which I find hard to believe given the speed of modern CPUs), there will be a market for intelligent USB 2.0 controllers much as there is for intelligent drive controllers that have their own CPU, cache, etc. (You will note that, as CPU speeds have increased, the need for such cards has diminished.)
Simply saying "dumb buses are bad" is dumb. Without considering the CPU speed, availability, and loading from the "dumb bus" at its rated speed, such a statement is meaningless.
By the way, I programmed a "dumb" interface. It was a serial port that worked by toggling an I/O line connected to a 2N2222A transistor to create the bits. There was another bit that got read for the incoming data. Not even a UART. That was a "dumb" interface and I hardly think that's comparable to a modern USB 2.0 as interface as implemented in silicon today.
That stealing is ok if the cause is deemed just?
Copyright infringement is not theft. If you steal something from me, you have it and I no longer do. If a school in Malaysia pirates a copy of Photoshop, Adobe has no fewer copies than they did before the school pirated it.
From an ethical standpoint, a more meaningful consideration is whether the school is depriving someone of revenue. In other words, are they pirating the software to avoid paying for it or are they pirating it because they are unable or unwilling to pay for it? If a 14 year old kid that gets a pirated copy of 3D Studio Max -- a $3,500 software package, who is being hurt? The publisher had no reasonable expectation that the kid could have purchased it.
Please keep in mind that the above is a discussion of ethics, not law. The law has made many ethical acts illegal. Just look at the effects of the DMCA, for instance. Or consider that it is illegal for you to exceed the posted speed limit even if you are transporting someone to the emergency room after a serious injury.
Its faster in name only. Especially with as many devices as you have, as USB is a dumb bus and needs to be powered by the CPU, whereas Firewire is host independant.
I'll worry about that if I ever find myself simultaneously scanning images, burning CD-ROMS, scanning barcodes with the wand held in my teeth, and frantically typing with one hand while moving the trackball with the other. As to how involved the CPU is with the bus, I can't say. I seriously doubt that the Firewire bus has a direct connection to the computer's hard drive with no CPU intervention. All interfaces, whether USB, Ethernet, IDE, Firewire, or SCSI, impose some level of CPU loading.
I would like to know why you believe that a modern Athlon XP or P4 would have trouble keeping up with the data transfer on USB 2.0.
Dumb buses are becoming more prevalent as CPU horsepower gets cheaper. Not too many years ago, Hayes introduced a high-spped serial card that had 1K buffers and enough smarts to do the handshaking so that a normal PC could handle high-speed serial data at 230 kilobaud. In a modern system, such a card would be laughable.
Now we have USB2, which is slightly faster, but there's such a large base of IEEE video equipment
I fully understand that. I deal with cards that have 1553 interfaces, GPIB interfaces, etc. in my work because we have equipment that needs those interfaces. But to claim that Linux should focus on the more specialized Firewire interface over the soon-to-be-ubiquitous USB 2.0 is almost as silly as claiming that USB is only good for mice and keyboards.
USB is good for keyboards and mice... that's about all.
USB 2.0 is faster than Firewire at 480mbps (vs. 400mbps for Firewire). Who needs 480mbps for a mouse? I put a 24X Yamaha cutter into a USB 2.0 enclosure and can burn CDs at the full 24X speed, so I'd say that it's good for external CD drives, too. It's also good for flatbed scanners, digital cameras, tape drives, printers, USB-to-Ethernet adapters, and just about any external peripheral which would benefit from a high speed, low cost, hot plug interface. That describes a lot of peripherals.
MS is the only player in the field.
Hardly. As this article states, Linux supports it and, as another poster pointed out, so does NetBSD.
Another reason to support it is that it will soon be standard on every PC motherboard sold while getting Firewire ports will usually require the addition of a PCI card.
Lastly, it uses inexpensive cables and is backwards compatible with USB 1.1 devices and cabling. If I have a USB hub on my desk, USB ports on the front of my computer, and a USB mouse, barcode scanner, and flatbed scanner, why would I want to start buying an incompatible Firewire peripherals? It already looks like there is a bald eagle nesting behind my computer, so I don't need yet another set of cables for Firewire.
If having only one distribution is the only way to make Linux 'succeed', then it's never going to be anything but a failure.
Having multiple compatible distributions is fine, but I should be able to download a program for "Linux" without worrying about what kernel I'm running, what windows manager, what distribution, etc.
or (2) the "average consumer" is capable of learning to use something that's different (not harder; different)
Linux is "harder". That point was driven home to me as I tried to find where Mandrake 8.2 hid the app to change the IP address of the network card (please, oh holier-than-thou Linux geeks, don't try to impress me with your arcane memorization of command line utilities and switches to do same). Take a look at Microsoft's "Control Panel." Nicely thought out. It may not be perfect, but it's a lot better than the seemingly random arrangement of system setup stuff under popular Linux distros.
Maybe you are just using the wrong Linux?
Great. Now we add different distros into the mix. The average consumer will never have Linux as a desktop OS until he can go into a store, buy a program on CD, put the CD into the tray, and have an automated install walk him through putting it on his system. When he upgrades his OS, the application needs to keep running, not be recompiled, scrapped, or replaced. Vendors need to be able to direct the user to click things and type things to provide support. They can't deal with every distro being different. It drives support costs, and consumer frustration, through the roof.
Do you think Microsoft does any differently?
No, I know that they do things differently.
I have Win2k apps that won't run on WinNT, WinNT apps that won't run on Win2k, nothing worked on WinXP, and don't get me going about all the applications I bought for Win95 (mostly games) where WINE is my only hope of ever using them again.
I have, literally, hundreds of apps and am constantly amazed by the way that Microsoft gets them to work as they move from OS to OS. Sure, if you have an app from 1995 that defrags a FAT16 disk, yes, it won't work on an NTFS disk under Windows XP. But if you have a "normal" application, more often than not, it will run.
If applications support Win95, WinNT, Win2k, WinME and WinXP out of the box it's only because the vendors went through trials that would have made Heracles cringe.
Complete bunk. I have apps that were written for Windows 95 that still work fine in XP. How would a vendor that went out of business in 1997 have made hurculean efforts to make the app run in OSs that weren't even released yet? Why is it that Office 97 still works fine for people that now run 98, 98SE, Me, 2000, and XP?
If anything, I'm more impressed by the Linux camp
That's obvious. You are such an apologist for Linux that you wouldn't complain if Redhat included a fresh dog turd in every box.
Well, someone had to be first to ship with this compiler. I wouldn't worry. Vendors will catch up.
I'm not worried about vendors catching up. I'm more concerned about users. Until Linux gets out of the habit of breaking huge numbers of apps with releases, Microsoft will continue to own the OS market. Recompiling and distributing apps costs money. Users don't expect to have to pay for new apps just because they upgraded from Mandrake 8.2 to Mandrake 9.0. So vendors either eat the costs or piss off the customer base.
Microsoft has a much better understanding of "the real world" than does the Linux community. Microsoft, love it or hate it, understands that you can't expect vendors to support your product and customers to buy it if you regularly break their software with OS upgrades. And this is coming from someone who really wants to see Linux succeed. I find the security bugs, Product Activation, constantly tightening EULA, Gestapo-like software audits, and Digital Rights Management to be a threat to the entire computer industry.
He, as with most of his ilk, threw the Second Amendment out the window with a snide comment about "regulated militias" which shows that either a) he's never bothered to actually READ the fucker, and the debate that went up to its creation, or b) he does, in fact, only care about constitutional rights for people who agree with his politics.
As I said in the other post, I'm a gun owner. And I am well aware of the Second Amendment, it's purported purposes, court decisions, etc. Although I don't want to get into it here, my views on the right to bear arms are fairly moderate. I don't believe that the founding fathers would have wanted mentally unbalanced people to be able to buy machine guns nor do I think that they wanted to prevent a law-abiding citizen from owning a rifle.
Refusing to consider the points made by the ACLU because you dislike, or disagree with, their position on the Second Amendment is intellectually bankrupt. I don't agree with everything that they have done, but it does not mean that I should dismiss, without reading, everything that they publish.
You also failed to note one thing: The person who brought the Second Amendment into this debate was the one who wrote "I'll start taking the ACLU seriously when they start defending ALL of the Bill of Rights." The implication was clear as was the cowardly dismissal of an intelligently written paper that did not agree with the poster's views.
But the debate here is not about the interpretation of the Second Amendment. The debate is about the changes to the Constitutional rights of all citizens. Airport screeners going through your luggage, ISPs turning over your e-mail, and telephone company workers tapping your line without warrants are not based on your party affiliation (yet).
Are you willing to do the same for the NRA?
Yes. If you have an article from the NRA that is germane to this discussion, bring it on... After you read the ACLU article that I linked to and comment on it.
By the way, I own two handguns, a rifle, a shotgun, and an air rifle. I've been to the NRA headquarters firearms museum and have shot skeet and targets at pistol ranges. I am not nearly so closed-minded as you apparently assume I am.
Although I wouldn't mind a computer controlled setup with ccd, I think many people who buy the 8" computer driven models would not use them as 1) it is not really good enough aperture, you want 10" or more
2) you need to do the hardyards and learn the night sky. For me finding an object takes around 20-30 minutes.
As a serious amateur with 25+ years of experience, I know the night sky well. But I have an 8" Celestron with computerized setting circles and a 5" Celestron go-to scope.
If I lived in Arizona, I might agree with you, but living near Washington, D.C., the computerized scopes make the hobby feasible. It's fine to star hop when you have a black sky full of stars. When you have 20 visible stars in the sky, the hops become a bit more like leaps of faith. The reality of viewing in an urban area is that many of the objects dim enough to require a 10" or larger scope are simply invisible due to light pollution. A larger scope simply gathers more light pollution.
The ability take the 5" scope out my door, set it up without worrying about polar alignment, and have it track is really nice. The 8" scope, because it is not computer-driven, requires a bit more work. But both perform admirably and have the advantage of providing better seeing than a larger aperture scope when the atmosphere is turbulent -- as it often is in urban areas.
I guess what I'm saying is that every scope has its place. If I lived in an area with good weather and dark skies, I'd probably have an observatory and a 16" or better Dobsonian -- in addition to my Celestron SCTs.
Your analogies are exaggerating somewhat, since whether you see pieces of the sky through your own telescope or pictures taken using somebody else's, they're only distant images...
If anything, I find the analogies less compelling. The "magic" of having photons hit your eyes after starting their journeys years, centuries, or even longer, ago can't be captured by seeing a photo. Neither is their any skill in just viewing a photo. Catching a glimpse of a faint object using averted vision, finding a comet not visible to the naked eye, or watching the changes on the face of Jupiter as the nights go by is something that will never be equaled by viewing a photo.
Ah, yes. Another symptom. Everyone who disagrees with your politics is a "troll".
Fine. I'll argue the point with you. I say that dismissing the ACLU's opinion without consideration, because you disagree with them on some other matter, is intellectually bankrupt. Now answer intelligently.
My idea is that these drives are now marketed more towards people interested in copying audio CDs, rather than archival storage. I just hope recording at what is now a low speed doesn't cause any problems in these new drives.
I tend to look for something in the mid-range of the drive and media. Like a 12X cut in a 24X drive/media. I, too, worry about cutting at a radically different speed than the drives were designed for.
What we really should have had years ago is an archival format for CDRs that gave up about 10-20% of the storage in order to build in better error detection and correction.
You're only interested in the civil liberties of people who agree with your politics.
Nice flamebait, but I'm not biting. Bye bye, AC troll.
I'll start taking the ACLU seriously when they start defending ALL of the Bill of Rights.
Are you talking about your right to be part of a "well regulated Militia?" Yeah. Right.
It's just a flippin' CDRW, not a seat belt mod or DIY nuclear reactor.
Obviously the data you burn has little value to you. Some of us record important data onto CD/R media. I would not want to save 30 seconds on the recording process only to learn that the software, source code, proposal, etc., that I shipped overnight was unreadable.
32x Lite-On CD-RW is $52.00 on Pricewatch.
And a 48x Lite-On CD burner is $75.00 on Pricewatch. My peace of mind and the integrity of my data is worth $23.
I'm sorry but I've actually done this (the guide is months old) and it works fine
And how did you verify that it "works fine"? Did you test BLER (Block Error Rate), BERL (Burst Error Length), (BEGL) Burst Errors Greater than Limit, Cyclic Redundancy Check for subcode Q-channel, etc. using something like an AudioDev CATS SA-3 or SA-300? Did you use an electron microscope to examine the quality and uniformity of the pits?
You see, there is more to assessing the quality of the recording of digital data onto an optical media than simply counting "coasters."
And the error rates are similar burning at 40x.
So you measured the BLER, BERL, BEGL, etc.? Or did you not know that CD-ROM drives do error correction?
I just love the way you arrogate to yourself the title of "thinking person", thereby smearing anyone who doesn't agree with you as stupid.
Glad you enjoyed it.
I bet you care, too, which is why you voted for Al Gore, who certainly didn't enjoy the priviledge of being part of the "ruling class" like W.
No, I voted for Gore over Bush because of his positions on issues important to me. I did not believe that the economy, environment, consumers, or minorities would have fared well under Bush. I did not believe that Bush had the intelligence or wisdom to lead our country. The intervening time since his appointment to the Presidency has done little to convince me otherwise. Everything from our backing out of the Kyoto treaty to Ashcroft's attack on our Constitutional rights to the funnelling of tax dollars into religious organizations (charities and schools) has convince me that voting for Gore was the right thing to do.
Do you really believe that that boneheaded "escrow" scheme wouldn't be abused within 6 months?
So, the fact that you believe that the Clipper Chip escrow system would have been abused makes it completely analogous to legalized warrantless wiretapping? I don't see things that way at all.
I notice that you didn't respond to that one
Nor did you respond to the ACLU document at the link that I sent to you. If you are going to ignore my postings, don't expect me to answer yours point-by-point.
You're a dupe, my friend. The Republicans have their dupes as well, of course.
You just keep telling yourself that in a few years when the Ashcroft Gestapo demands to see "your papers."
I suppose this will have to do with the media properties rather than the drive.
It has to do with how well the drive burns the media. To oversimplify, how do you know that the 32X drive has adequate power at the laser when overclocked to 48X?
It would be a simple matter to check the md5sums. dd if=/dev/cdrom | md5sum -
That doesn't show error rates. That shows if there were one or more unrecoverable errors. If you get a CD with a lot of raw errors that are recovered, the CD will be much less tolerant of damage, degradation, etc., before it develops unreverable errors. It's also less likely to work as reliably when you read it in multiple drives.
You didn't fly much, did you?
Yes, I did.
I suggest you get your head out of your ass and stop believing that there's any substantive difference between Republicans and Democrats on civil liberty issues.
Rather than resorting to vulgarities, read the article and come back when you have substantive comments on it.
By the way, comparing the Clipper Chip, which was to have an escrowed key available only after a search warrant was issued, to warrantless wiretapping is absurd.
How do you know that it "works" once you are done? Would you just assume that the ability to burn a CD and then read it proves that everything is fine? Has anyone looked into the error rates of hot-rodded drives vs. those drives sold to operate at the higher speeds? Has anyone examined the long-term data retention of CDs burned at 48X in what was a 32X burner?
This is simply foolish. Unless you work for the factory, you simply don't know if there are hardware or performance differences between the 32X, 40X, and 48X drives. For all you know, they each have a different laser diode. So you're going to burn hundreds of CDs, maybe backing up valuable data and software, without knowing if they can be read a year from now? Great idea.
If your time is so valuable that you need to upgrade from 32X to 48X burning, you can afford a new CD writer.