How are you going to get the kiddie porn to the disconnected box, without first downloading them on the connected box (where you can be tracked)? Or were you planning to film your own kiddie porn?
By the way, I want some of your Scientologists-eating-babies flyers, and when you finish reverse-engineering Jesus, could you e-mail me the code for the cvt_water2wine subroutine? That would be handy at parties.
I have thought about this before. If I was to really stick to my guns i would have to boycott all products from damn near every company.
You talk like that would be a bad thing! Honestly, how much stuff could you not live without? Besides, there are still a few companies who aren't such heinous offenders as Sony. There are a bunch of companies I won't buy from (Sony and Disney come to mind), but I still manage to live from day to day, and have plenty of toys to choose from.
The bottom line is that one or two people from slashdot each boycotting their most loathed org (mine is RIAA) is completely ineffective....
Unfortunately that's true, too bad we can't convince the masses of sheeple to do what's good for them (did you see the ending of this week's South Park?). I don't think of what I'm doing as boycotting anyway; that implies some kind of organized effort to get a company to do or not to do something. I just won't patronize companies that I feel are going to use my money for "bad" things. I know I'm not going to change them, but that doesn't mean I should support them.
One of the problems with this whole "digital tuner" thing is that "content protection" is built into the standard.. there is a flag (part of the broadcast) which (if set) will tell your VCR/PVR/whateVeR that it's not allowed to record this particular program....
Exactly. It's in the broadcast standard, so whether the tuner is built into the TV or is an external unit doesn't really make a difference.
As far as time-shifting goes, I can see broadcasters turning the protection on for movies and such, and consumers just accepting it. Since they're all used to seeing the FBI warning at the beginning of every tape they watch, they'll understand that new technical stuff has happened and now they're physically unable to record movies off TV instead of just being threatened.
They've never been threatened about recording sitcoms, though, so they'll get pissed off if they can't tape Everybody Loves Raymond and watch it later. I would think the broadcasters will avoid shooting themselves in the foot and be judicious with the no-copy flag. I could be wrong though - no one has ever gone wrong overestimating the stupidity of TV executives.
"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical. But, then, I read this: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I'm never reading again!" -- Officer Barbrady, South Park Police Department
I recently heard a figure of 18% penetration for DBS systems (sorry, can't remember the source, but it was most likely on NPR), which would put homes that receive signals over-the-air around 12%. Also, it's quite likely that the folks which have neither cable nor satellite are not chomping at the bit to buy an HDTV, tuner or no.
Actually, I don't see anything about content protection in this. What is happening, is that the broadcasters want to force all HD sets to have the digital tuner for over-the-air broadcasters. Since tuners increase the set prices to the tune of several hundred dollars right now, this is actually going to slow down adoption of HDTV by making the sets overly expensive. Also, folks who intend to get their channels via cable or satellite will be forced to spend money on a tuner they won't use. The only beneficiaries of this move will be the electronics manufacturers, who will have higher revenues. Perhaps the retailers will get a bit more markup as well. The broadcasters aren't going to benefit from this move until they turn on their %@$#! DTV signals. If they'd get on the ball, they'd create demand for the digital tuners.
Unfortunately, that still isn't going to change the fact that broadcasters are rapidly becoming irrelevant, with most homes opting for cable or satellite signal delivery. Heck, a lot of folks are buying big HD-ready RPTVs just to have a higher quality (widescreen, progressive-scan) monitor for their DVD collection. With mandatory tuners adding to the price, this market might dry up quickly.
On the "glass is half full" side, maybe the tuners will get cheaper once they're in all the TVs.
First of all, according to relativity there is no such thing as speed "in absolute terms". Second, all observers, regardless of motion, measure the same value for the speed of light. That is why time and distance will appear differently to two observers in relative motion.
Actually a good bit of geothermal is probably nuclear (radioactive decay). And of course solar power is nuclear. So all our energy is really nuclear power, mostly from the plant 93 million miles away. Pity we can't get a more efficient power transfer mechanism going though.
Presumably you have an idea for a way Congress can make up the difference between what tax money they`ll get from sales of HDTV, and what they`ll get if this doesnt go ahead.
Yeah, I'll give them a nickel, which is $0.05 more than they will receive from sales of HDTV. Sales taxes are collected by state and local governments, not Federal.
The real monetary issue is all the soft money and bribes that they are getting to pass whatever laws the entertainment industry wants. That part I can't match without a few million more nickels.
Don't try this in Alabama. First off, I don't know if anyone has succesfully gotten Alabama Power to do net metering. Second, at $0.079/kWh you'd have to generate roughly 3.8MWh of electricity. Assuming 5 hours of full sun per day, you'd have to have 25kW worth of panels, which even at a cheap price of $4/W would be a cool $100k. And that's not counting the power you need for yourself. Thanks to our low electric prices, many houses here are heated and cooled by electric heat pumps, which can easily use 1MWh in a month during summer and winter (all 10 days of it).
Well, a lot of homes that run mostly on solar power already have a lot of 12VDC wiring in the house, since 12VDC is what typically comes from the panels and/or the batteries. There are of course 12V lights, both incandescent and fluorescent (oh, and LED too), 12V refrigerators and other appliances, and 12V can easily be used for anything that was designed to be plugged into a car cigarette lighter.
The parallels between The Matrix and modern farming are intriguing:
"There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown." Female animals in factory farms are kept in an almost perpetual state of pregnancy to satisfy our demands for meat.
"I watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living." Better than grinding up the dead and mixing it with the food for the living, like we do with livestock (though not so much anymore, thanks to BSE).
"... in order to change a human being into this (holds up battery)" Or to turn a cow into a Happy Meal. And we don't even give them a fantasy world to keep their mind off what's happening.
Wait, there were two nuclear "tests" in Japan in 1945 also, right?
Do you have any sources for your theory? That is, researh which backs up the statements: 1) Nicotine does not increase cancer risk, and 2) Fallout from nuclear testing was spread over the US heavily enough to affect cancer rates.
Always posting at +2 is like leaving your caps lock on.
The difference is, when I turn on my computer the Caps Lock is off, and I have to make a conscious effort (or accidentally hit it) to turn it on. On Slashdot, the +2 is the default, and you have to turn it off for every post you make (or at least the dumb ones that don't deserve +2). The checkbox needs to say "Score +1 Bonus" and default to off, so users have to think about whether what they're about to say deserves +1 or not.
At least for this post I'm thinking to turn it off since I'm talking about it....
These animals became extinct 50,000 years ago, yet except for scale they are just like the modern animals living in the same area today. I'm not a palentologist, but this just doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It isn't like we have mini-brontosauri wandering around the plains in the central US.
There's a big difference between creatures that died out 50,000 years ago and creatures that died out 65 million years ago. Many of the creatures that lived in the US 50,000 years ago were as similar to our modern animals as these things are to the animals in Australia now.
Incidentally, crocs and alligators have been basically unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, so in a way we do have little dinosaurs - not in the central US, but in the southeast.
It could possibly still indicate an extended period of heavy bombardment, even if the impacts were a million years apart. I imagine that's the sort of thing that gets proponents of any sort of "Nemesis" theory all hot and bothered.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I'm sure there are still microscopic bits of Mir floating in the atmosphere somewhere.
"Excuse me, but what do these toxins look like? Have you ever actually seen a toxin?" -- Stanley Marsh, 3rd grade, South Park Elementary
Just like Jail in Monopoly. Except Jail's hockey team didn't lose the East Conference championship to the Hartford Whalers.
How are you going to get the kiddie porn to the disconnected box, without first downloading them on the connected box (where you can be tracked)? Or were you planning to film your own kiddie porn?
By the way, I want some of your Scientologists-eating-babies flyers, and when you finish reverse-engineering Jesus, could you e-mail me the code for the cvt_water2wine subroutine? That would be handy at parties.
I have thought about this before. If I was to really stick to my guns i would have to boycott all products from damn near every company.
You talk like that would be a bad thing! Honestly, how much stuff could you not live without? Besides, there are still a few companies who aren't such heinous offenders as Sony. There are a bunch of companies I won't buy from (Sony and Disney come to mind), but I still manage to live from day to day, and have plenty of toys to choose from.
The bottom line is that one or two people from slashdot each boycotting their most loathed org (mine is RIAA) is completely ineffective....
Unfortunately that's true, too bad we can't convince the masses of sheeple to do what's good for them (did you see the ending of this week's South Park?). I don't think of what I'm doing as boycotting anyway; that implies some kind of organized effort to get a company to do or not to do something. I just won't patronize companies that I feel are going to use my money for "bad" things. I know I'm not going to change them, but that doesn't mean I should support them.
One of the problems with this whole "digital tuner" thing is that "content protection" is built into the standard.. there is a flag (part of the broadcast) which (if set) will tell your VCR/PVR/whateVeR that it's not allowed to record this particular program....
Exactly. It's in the broadcast standard, so whether the tuner is built into the TV or is an external unit doesn't really make a difference.
As far as time-shifting goes, I can see broadcasters turning the protection on for movies and such, and consumers just accepting it. Since they're all used to seeing the FBI warning at the beginning of every tape they watch, they'll understand that new technical stuff has happened and now they're physically unable to record movies off TV instead of just being threatened.
They've never been threatened about recording sitcoms, though, so they'll get pissed off if they can't tape Everybody Loves Raymond and watch it later. I would think the broadcasters will avoid shooting themselves in the foot and be judicious with the no-copy flag. I could be wrong though - no one has ever gone wrong overestimating the stupidity of TV executives.
"Yes, at first I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical. But, then, I read this: Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage, and because of this piece of shit, I'm never reading again!" -- Officer Barbrady, South Park Police Department
I recently heard a figure of 18% penetration for DBS systems (sorry, can't remember the source, but it was most likely on NPR), which would put homes that receive signals over-the-air around 12%. Also, it's quite likely that the folks which have neither cable nor satellite are not chomping at the bit to buy an HDTV, tuner or no.
Actually, I don't see anything about content protection in this. What is happening, is that the broadcasters want to force all HD sets to have the digital tuner for over-the-air broadcasters. Since tuners increase the set prices to the tune of several hundred dollars right now, this is actually going to slow down adoption of HDTV by making the sets overly expensive. Also, folks who intend to get their channels via cable or satellite will be forced to spend money on a tuner they won't use. The only beneficiaries of this move will be the electronics manufacturers, who will have higher revenues. Perhaps the retailers will get a bit more markup as well. The broadcasters aren't going to benefit from this move until they turn on their %@$#! DTV signals. If they'd get on the ball, they'd create demand for the digital tuners.
Unfortunately, that still isn't going to change the fact that broadcasters are rapidly becoming irrelevant, with most homes opting for cable or satellite signal delivery. Heck, a lot of folks are buying big HD-ready RPTVs just to have a higher quality (widescreen, progressive-scan) monitor for their DVD collection. With mandatory tuners adding to the price, this market might dry up quickly.
On the "glass is half full" side, maybe the tuners will get cheaper once they're in all the TVs.
First of all, according to relativity there is no such thing as speed "in absolute terms". Second, all observers, regardless of motion, measure the same value for the speed of light. That is why time and distance will appear differently to two observers in relative motion.
Actually a good bit of geothermal is probably nuclear (radioactive decay). And of course solar power is nuclear. So all our energy is really nuclear power, mostly from the plant 93 million miles away. Pity we can't get a more efficient power transfer mechanism going though.
But you have a right for others not to profit from your work.
So are you saying that if someone copies your work without profiting from it, that's OK? That's definitely not the view of the MPAA or RIAA.
Presumably you have an idea for a way Congress can make up the difference between what tax money they`ll get from sales of HDTV, and what they`ll get if this doesnt go ahead.
Yeah, I'll give them a nickel, which is $0.05 more than they will receive from sales of HDTV. Sales taxes are collected by state and local governments, not Federal.
The real monetary issue is all the soft money and bribes that they are getting to pass whatever laws the entertainment industry wants. That part I can't match without a few million more nickels.
Don't try this in Alabama. First off, I don't know if anyone has succesfully gotten Alabama Power to do net metering. Second, at $0.079/kWh you'd have to generate roughly 3.8MWh of electricity. Assuming 5 hours of full sun per day, you'd have to have 25kW worth of panels, which even at a cheap price of $4/W would be a cool $100k. And that's not counting the power you need for yourself. Thanks to our low electric prices, many houses here are heated and cooled by electric heat pumps, which can easily use 1MWh in a month during summer and winter (all 10 days of it).
Energy from nuclear powerplants is much cheaper overall.
;)
Solar energy is from a nuclear powerplant!
Besides, the residents of Nevada might disagree with your cost assessments.
Well, a lot of homes that run mostly on solar power already have a lot of 12VDC wiring in the house, since 12VDC is what typically comes from the panels and/or the batteries. There are of course 12V lights, both incandescent and fluorescent (oh, and LED too), 12V refrigerators and other appliances, and 12V can easily be used for anything that was designed to be plugged into a car cigarette lighter.
I thought the whole "start-your-acronyms-with-x-for-extreme" died out awhile ago.
I suppose next you'll tell me that the XFL isn't coming back next season.
Oh, wait... oops.
The parent post might not have been all that Funny, but it wasn't Offtopic.
The parallels between The Matrix and modern farming are intriguing:
"There are fields, endless fields, where human beings are no longer born, we are grown."
Female animals in factory farms are kept in an almost perpetual state of pregnancy to satisfy our demands for meat.
"I watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living."
Better than grinding up the dead and mixing it with the food for the living, like we do with livestock (though not so much anymore, thanks to BSE).
"... in order to change a human being into this (holds up battery)"
Or to turn a cow into a Happy Meal. And we don't even give them a fantasy world to keep their mind off what's happening.
Just some 'food' for thought....
There are Australian midgets?!? That'll revolutionize the humor industry!
I have this mental image of a 3'2" version of Steve Irwin chasing a small lizard through the outback saying "Crikey, look at the size of 'im!"
Wait, there were two nuclear "tests" in Japan in 1945 also, right?
Do you have any sources for your theory? That is, researh which backs up the statements:
1) Nicotine does not increase cancer risk, and
2) Fallout from nuclear testing was spread over the US heavily enough to affect cancer rates.
I know as well as anyone the southern NJ can be as hickish & rural as Alabama.
Oh, I doubt that. You'd be surprised how hickish and rural Alabama can be. Ever stopped in Cullman? or Ozark?
Always posting at +2 is like leaving your caps lock on.
The difference is, when I turn on my computer the Caps Lock is off, and I have to make a conscious effort (or accidentally hit it) to turn it on. On Slashdot, the +2 is the default, and you have to turn it off for every post you make (or at least the dumb ones that don't deserve +2). The checkbox needs to say "Score +1 Bonus" and default to off, so users have to think about whether what they're about to say deserves +1 or not.
At least for this post I'm thinking to turn it off since I'm talking about it....
These animals became extinct 50,000 years ago, yet except for scale they are just like the modern animals living in the same area today. I'm not a palentologist, but this just doesn't exist anywhere else in the world. It isn't like we have mini-brontosauri wandering around the plains in the central US.
There's a big difference between creatures that died out 50,000 years ago and creatures that died out 65 million years ago. Many of the creatures that lived in the US 50,000 years ago were as similar to our modern animals as these things are to the animals in Australia now.
Incidentally, crocs and alligators have been basically unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, so in a way we do have little dinosaurs - not in the central US, but in the southeast.
It could possibly still indicate an extended period of heavy bombardment, even if the impacts were a million years apart. I imagine that's the sort of thing that gets proponents of any sort of "Nemesis" theory all hot and bothered.