You'd most likely have died in infancy from improperly pasteurized milk. Pretty freaking cool, huh?
And yet, somehow they got by. People exercised their own judgment, self control and personal responsibility. No government body was looking out for them; they simply smelled the milk before they drank.
I suppose this is probably one of those "happy-days" fantasies, but how cool would it be to live back in an age where regulation didn't exist. Where danger was all around. Where you could invent, and wow people. Where accidents happened. Where imagination was your only limit.
... do the actions of a few motivated individuals become "intellectual terrorism?" Excuse the hyperbole, but every time a patent lawsuit is filed, a lot of people are harmed. How long will we allow this to go on?
Nothing gets mindless people enraged like sex. Especially sex that's "wrong"; the wronger it is, the more mindless people are enraged by it.
The reality of the situation is that women, then gays fought for their sexual rights. Young people won't, because legally they can't. It's a sad situation. But a very lucrative one, if you're a politician.
I for one am deeply disturbed by the fact people are more offended/shocked/disgusted by images of young people having sex than images of young people who are victims of war. One represents (in most situations) pleasure, happiness and intimacy, and the other always represents horrific suffering, trauma, and misery.
Firstly, I want to say that for the entire 2-year period I owned a Treo, I desperately wanted it to be the perfect device. It was so close.
But, what happened to Palm is simple: their flagship device was simply not something you could rely on.
Because "franken" garnet (palmos 5) had no form of memory protection or scheduling, a million little hacks were needed to make it seem like a modern, functional OS. Users were demanding advanced functionality (like background processing for MP3 players), and instead of introducing a modern OS core (ie. cobalt or palm's UI on linux), they chose to hack in feature after feature to the ancient palmos 5. It was cheaper (in the short-term).
The treo 650 was somewhat stable if you didn't do anything with it. If you simply used it as a phone, never installed any software, and rebooted it regularly, you could usually count on it to function when you needed it.
If, however, you installed any software (particularly that which runs in the background), within a month or two the phone would start crashing randomly. It didn't matter which software you installed; eventually, one or two apps would cause device instability, and you could spend days and days trying to figure out what was wrong. I'm saying this a 24/7 debian user, sysadmin, with 10 years C/perl/java experience (and having even written several palmos apps); I truly can't imagine trying to debug a treo as a business user.
In the end, a phone/PDA must be reliable. It cannot drop calls, forget to notify you of an appointment, or lose data. The treo failed on all three fronts.
Compounding this fundamental flaw was the fact that Palm (the company) was so arrogantly silent on the issue, slow to release patches (most of which didn't work anyway), and often in denial that the problem even existed. When confronted, often their line was "it's your 3rd party applications." Wrong answer. This is a modern computing device. If the OS crashes, it is not the fault of the applications. What is this, 1992?
This was the major problem, but not the only. Lack of automated background sync, simple over-the-network sync, true multitasking (or even context-saving task switching), sufficient workspace memory, and wifi made it even less attractive. The sudden rush towards Windows Mobile alienated the remaining Palm supporters, who were hoping for Cobalt (palmos 6), not WM5.
The border patrol has been known to force-feed powerful laxatives to pregnant women and shackle them to a hospital bed for two days while they watch them shit into a bucket. And that just for the War on Drugs. Now that there's a War on Terror run by a government that's willing to torture, do you really think hiding something up your ass will do a bit of good?
If that story is true, every single principle actor who was involved should be tried, and hanged. Behaving this way under the colour of authority should be punishable by death.
Switch to teksavvy.com. I did so after Bell started crippling bittorrent (about 3 months ago). While they have also started tampering with teksavvy's users' traffic (surely illegal; we'll see), at least the spare change at teksavvy is going to something useful: they're leading a charge for Net Neutrality, and supporting them is my way of fighting back.
Aside from that, their customer service, performance, competence and business processes are second to none.
Bell management, if you're reading this: go to hell. Seriously. I was your dedicated customer for seven years, and this outrage has prompted me to terminate my business relationship with you (phone, cell, and Internet). It will be a very long time before you profit from me again.
I would suggest that probably none, or at most very few are terrorists. "Terrorist" has a very specific meaning, and killing American militants in a time of war (in their own country!) most certainly isn't it.
Why is it every time you buy a new piece of hardware, the next day something cooler is announced?:)
I've owned various thinkpads since '98, and they have never let me down. I'm currently running a t21 (850mhz, 14.1" 1400x1050, 512mb) that's suffering from case fatigue. I bought it almost 7 years ago, and it's been running the same Debian/sid install the entire time. I use it for at least 6-8 hours a day (home machine) in all kinds of awkward positions (laying down, on the easy chair, etc)... it's travelled around the world, and to many a datacenter.
I did have to deal with IBM service once. At one point in 2003, I sent it to IBM (their cost) with what I believed to be a bad hard disk (I/O errors). After they ripped it open, they told that I'd spilled coffee in it.... I was quite upset at this as I didn't believe them, so they sent me pictures. At some point, probably while it was on the floor (I really abuse my machines), I must have kicked over a mostly empty cup of coffee or something.
After apologizing to them in a phone call, they explained to me that they didn't find anything immediately wrong with it at that point (it was booting), except the coffee spill. I told them about the I/O errors, and they ran a thorough scan, confirming the problem. Because the coffee was unlikely to have caused a disk failure, they offered to replace the drive, but after doing so, found that the problem persisted. It was the controller (or connector)... and, to my astonishment, I received an email later that day along the lines of: "Sir, we just need to get you back up and running. You're a long-time valued customer, so we're going to replace whatever parts need to be replaced."
3 days later, an express shipped package arrived with what used to be my laptop - 90% of the components had been replaced (except, amazingly, the original hard drive, which was fine). I was floored, and wrote a quick thank you note to the CSR's boss.
Here I am, 5 years later, with the same machine chugging away. I can't even hazard a guess to how many hours it has on it. It's starting to make funny noises, and 850mhz just ain't cuttin it anymore.:) Time for a new box.
While I did take a good look at various others (dell, hp, acer) - some of which less than half the price - I eventually settled on a refurbished t43p (2.13ghz, 2gb ram, 1400x1050). I want the trackpoint, and 3 mouse buttons. I want the rigid case. I want the support (we'll see how Lenovo does) and I want the well tested, mature components (particularly for Linux). Can't wait!
Most phone designers have become so preoccupied with trying to turn good phones into crappy laptops they forgot to actually make them usable as phones
Ack... sorry. I am the reason these phones are being made.:)
I see things from a completely opposite perspective. I've been slowly getting closer and closer to my ultimate phone (following from Kyocera 65-something or other, to a treo 650, and now an E-Ten Glofiish X500+). My ultimate phone has everything - so much, that I don't need to lug my laptop around. I'm glad to sacrifice some usability if it means my phone does it all. My current phone has:
- a 640x480 screen
- an FM radio
- a microSD slot
- an onboard GPS (yes.. actual GPS - sirfstar-III)
- bluetooth, wifi, quad band GSM
- a camera
- a mostly open SDK (wm6)
..onto which I've install star charting software, the usual assortment of media players, an SSH client, a VNC client, google maps, tomtom navigator, keepass, an all-in-one IM client, skype, and plenty more.
My day goes something like this: on the way to work, I listen to CBC radio (FM). If calls/SMSes/emails come in, it interrupts the music to let me know. Makes my walk much more pleasant. While I'm at work, it syncs up (bluetooth) with everything work related, so I have my meeting schedule for the day with me. I can leave it syncing all day, but prefer not to be that reachable.
At a restaurant or coffee shop, I occasionally hop on wifi to make skype calls to the US offices for 1/10 the ridiculous price our carriers charge for LD.
On the weekends, I use it to drive my car stereo via bluetooth (a2dp) for tunes. If I'm going somewhere I've never been, I fire up tomtom to get me there, and the sound runs through my stereo. It never fails.
Onboard camera uploads directly to my server at home and posts to my blog. I'm into astronomy, so when I have a telescope out on a dark night, I turn the contrast way down and fire up pocket stars. It logs on the net via GPRS to download pictures, star data, etc...which I can match against what I'm seeing in the sky.
I could go on and on, but suffice to say, for me, an all-in-one device is a dream come true. No more carrying a pager, cell phone, iPod, laptop, etc. Just one device. One battery to charge, one thing to remember, and one thing to use.
The only thing I'm waiting for now is the I-Mate Ultimate 9502: 128mb ram (instead of 64, which is a problem), and a keyboard (which is another problem). I guarentee you would despise it.:)
What I'd say to you is that you'd know differently if you had children. Acting from an authority position is just as important as acting with respect -- and the two are not mutually exclusive. While it is important for kids to learn to act on their own initiative, it is also important that they learn that respect for authority when respect is due is a necessary life skill. It takes a variety of tactics to encourage and develop good behavior patterns in kids.
I think a better way of look at it is like this:
Tolerance of authority figures is necessary, but not the needed skill. The skill is in weighing costs and benefits of rejecting/accepting commands from authority.
I agree with you in principle, but I think it's extremely important to focus on critical thinking, mutual respect and common sense, over "respect for authority." The vast majority of people in the "real world" who appeal to authority are simply those who seek personal gain through exploitation of others; learning to respect directives out of fear for the consequences is far more important than learning unconditional respect for the authoritarian figure.
The point of using 96Khz or 192Khz isn't to have a higher max freq (due to Nyquist), but having a better resolution in the audible range to avoid aliasing.
There is no such thing as an "aliased wave." All audio signals said to be at 12,000hz are sinusoidal; any blockiness would create harmonics which exceed the nyquist frequency and are filtered by the low-pass filter present in all digital playback equipment.
It's hard to explain, but the supersonic noise/harmonics created by the transition of voltages in the DAC will be filtered. The only reason for having higher sampling rates is to move the low-pass filter to a higher frequency because it is less likely to have an effect on audible frequencies; the higher the filter frequency, generally the lower order required.
One of the big problems with digital equipment these days is the quality of the clock which drives the DAC. Even tiny variations in timing can create slight phase errors which are audible. It's especially noticeable when you drive a DAC via S/PDIF as the DAC must guess when the data will arrive.
.. about granting the state the right to keep secrets from taxpayers.
Can you imagine if your employees were allowed (and encouraged) to keep business secrets from you, their boss? Imagine if you hired a contractor and he refused to give you a breakdown, line by line, of his expenses. You'd fire him in a heartbeat, right?
40 Years would be completely ridiculous even if it was intentional, rape and manslaughter convicts can get less time than that.
Any amount of prison time would be completely ridiculous even if it was intentional. It's sex. It's normal. It's healthy. They'll be having it in a few years regardless. It's how they were made. It's how our species exists and propagates. It's irrational to fear, hate or chastise it. Write it 1,000 times on a blackboard, if you have to.
Should she be fired if it was intentional? Sure. Code of conduct, and all that. But jailed? Not in a rational, just society (and certainly not in Canada, most of Europe, Japan, Russia, Brazil, or most other nations. Maybe in Iran or Saudi Arabia, though..)
Jail time is devastating to people and the economy and should be reserved for dangerous people. Not those who offend the moral majority.
You know, this may not be a popular viewpoint, but there's a good argument to be made for the following:
When one can be jailed for 40 years for showing young people the very process that brought them into existence, you are living in an irrational theocracy. Make me a scientific argument to the contrary.
Accident or no, one should never be punished by the legal system for talking about or educating about sex. It's healthy, it's normal, it's natural, and it's inevitable. Suggesting that it injures minors is asinine and offensive.
Perhaps it is the very same leaders who seek to control our reproductive rights that it injures?
I mean there are some truly heinous sex crimes, and some really scary people. However, theres also some really pretty innocuous stuff too. I am not sure I can support lumping them all together.
You know, this is a problem we "liberals" have; in general our arguments against the absurd are usually a little too polite and reasonable. All the while, right wing pundits and talkshow hosts yell inflametory bullshit at their viewers; we find it difficult to take a strong position on anything (for fear we may be wrong).
But how about this (not directed at you; I know you're just trying to be polite):
If you think lumping violent rapists in with public pissers is anything less than offensively absurd, idiotic, and a demonstration of your malevolence towards others then you are part of the problem.
In the interest of returning the nation to rationality, I think we need to stop being so polite!
Slashdot Mirror
You'd most likely have died in infancy from improperly pasteurized milk. Pretty freaking cool, huh?
And yet, somehow they got by. People exercised their own judgment, self control and personal responsibility. No government body was looking out for them; they simply smelled the milk before they drank.
I suppose this is probably one of those "happy-days" fantasies, but how cool would it be to live back in an age where regulation didn't exist. Where danger was all around. Where you could invent, and wow people. Where accidents happened. Where imagination was your only limit.
The lawyer has replaced the priest.
The comments on that page are as depressing as the pictures are beautiful and impressive. :(
... do the actions of a few motivated individuals become "intellectual terrorism?" Excuse the hyperbole, but every time a patent lawsuit is filed, a lot of people are harmed. How long will we allow this to go on?
Nothing gets mindless people enraged like sex. Especially sex that's "wrong"; the wronger it is, the more mindless people are enraged by it.
The reality of the situation is that women, then gays fought for their sexual rights. Young people won't, because legally they can't. It's a sad situation. But a very lucrative one, if you're a politician.
I for one am deeply disturbed by the fact people are more offended/shocked/disgusted by images of young people having sex than images of young people who are victims of war. One represents (in most situations) pleasure, happiness and intimacy, and the other always represents horrific suffering, trauma, and misery.
Sigh.
Is totally outgunned.. :)
Firstly, I want to say that for the entire 2-year period I owned a Treo, I desperately wanted it to be the perfect device. It was so close.
But, what happened to Palm is simple: their flagship device was simply not something you could rely on.
Because "franken" garnet (palmos 5) had no form of memory protection or scheduling, a million little hacks were needed to make it seem like a modern, functional OS. Users were demanding advanced functionality (like background processing for MP3 players), and instead of introducing a modern OS core (ie. cobalt or palm's UI on linux), they chose to hack in feature after feature to the ancient palmos 5. It was cheaper (in the short-term).
The treo 650 was somewhat stable if you didn't do anything with it. If you simply used it as a phone, never installed any software, and rebooted it regularly, you could usually count on it to function when you needed it.
If, however, you installed any software (particularly that which runs in the background), within a month or two the phone would start crashing randomly. It didn't matter which software you installed; eventually, one or two apps would cause device instability, and you could spend days and days trying to figure out what was wrong. I'm saying this a 24/7 debian user, sysadmin, with 10 years C/perl/java experience (and having even written several palmos apps); I truly can't imagine trying to debug a treo as a business user.
In the end, a phone/PDA must be reliable. It cannot drop calls, forget to notify you of an appointment, or lose data. The treo failed on all three fronts.
Compounding this fundamental flaw was the fact that Palm (the company) was so arrogantly silent on the issue, slow to release patches (most of which didn't work anyway), and often in denial that the problem even existed. When confronted, often their line was "it's your 3rd party applications." Wrong answer. This is a modern computing device. If the OS crashes, it is not the fault of the applications. What is this, 1992?
This was the major problem, but not the only. Lack of automated background sync, simple over-the-network sync, true multitasking (or even context-saving task switching), sufficient workspace memory, and wifi made it even less attractive. The sudden rush towards Windows Mobile alienated the remaining Palm supporters, who were hoping for Cobalt (palmos 6), not WM5.
The border patrol has been known to force-feed powerful laxatives to pregnant women and shackle them to a hospital bed for two days while they watch them shit into a bucket. And that just for the War on Drugs. Now that there's a War on Terror run by a government that's willing to torture, do you really think hiding something up your ass will do a bit of good?
If that story is true, every single principle actor who was involved should be tried, and hanged. Behaving this way under the colour of authority should be punishable by death.
Switch to teksavvy.com. I did so after Bell started crippling bittorrent (about 3 months ago). While they have also started tampering with teksavvy's users' traffic (surely illegal; we'll see), at least the spare change at teksavvy is going to something useful: they're leading a charge for Net Neutrality, and supporting them is my way of fighting back.
Aside from that, their customer service, performance, competence and business processes are second to none.
Bell management, if you're reading this: go to hell. Seriously. I was your dedicated customer for seven years, and this outrage has prompted me to terminate my business relationship with you (phone, cell, and Internet). It will be a very long time before you profit from me again.
I would suggest that probably none, or at most very few are terrorists. "Terrorist" has a very specific meaning, and killing American militants in a time of war (in their own country!) most certainly isn't it.
Miss, are you telling us absolutely everything?!
Not exactly. We're also out of coffee.
[Ok, PANIC!]They beat us to physics, but if we can finish the space elevator we still have a chance! :p
Troll? Yikes. :(
This person is lying.
Think. It's like in chess. First you strategically position your pieces. Then, when the timing's right. You strike.
Why is it every time you buy a new piece of hardware, the next day something cooler is announced? :)
I've owned various thinkpads since '98, and they have never let me down. I'm currently running a t21 (850mhz, 14.1" 1400x1050, 512mb) that's suffering from case fatigue. I bought it almost 7 years ago, and it's been running the same Debian/sid install the entire time. I use it for at least 6-8 hours a day (home machine) in all kinds of awkward positions (laying down, on the easy chair, etc)... it's travelled around the world, and to many a datacenter.
I did have to deal with IBM service once. At one point in 2003, I sent it to IBM (their cost) with what I believed to be a bad hard disk (I/O errors). After they ripped it open, they told that I'd spilled coffee in it.... I was quite upset at this as I didn't believe them, so they sent me pictures. At some point, probably while it was on the floor (I really abuse my machines), I must have kicked over a mostly empty cup of coffee or something.
After apologizing to them in a phone call, they explained to me that they didn't find anything immediately wrong with it at that point (it was booting), except the coffee spill. I told them about the I/O errors, and they ran a thorough scan, confirming the problem. Because the coffee was unlikely to have caused a disk failure, they offered to replace the drive, but after doing so, found that the problem persisted. It was the controller (or connector)... and, to my astonishment, I received an email later that day along the lines of: "Sir, we just need to get you back up and running. You're a long-time valued customer, so we're going to replace whatever parts need to be replaced."
3 days later, an express shipped package arrived with what used to be my laptop - 90% of the components had been replaced (except, amazingly, the original hard drive, which was fine). I was floored, and wrote a quick thank you note to the CSR's boss.
Here I am, 5 years later, with the same machine chugging away. I can't even hazard a guess to how many hours it has on it. It's starting to make funny noises, and 850mhz just ain't cuttin it anymore. :) Time for a new box.
While I did take a good look at various others (dell, hp, acer) - some of which less than half the price - I eventually settled on a refurbished t43p (2.13ghz, 2gb ram, 1400x1050). I want the trackpoint, and 3 mouse buttons. I want the rigid case. I want the support (we'll see how Lenovo does) and I want the well tested, mature components (particularly for Linux). Can't wait!
Ack... sorry. I am the reason these phones are being made. :)
I see things from a completely opposite perspective. I've been slowly getting closer and closer to my ultimate phone (following from Kyocera 65-something or other, to a treo 650, and now an E-Ten Glofiish X500+). My ultimate phone has everything - so much, that I don't need to lug my laptop around. I'm glad to sacrifice some usability if it means my phone does it all. My current phone has:
- a 640x480 screen- an FM radio
- a microSD slot
- an onboard GPS (yes.. actual GPS - sirfstar-III)
- bluetooth, wifi, quad band GSM
- a camera
- a mostly open SDK (wm6)
..onto which I've install star charting software, the usual assortment of media players, an SSH client, a VNC client, google maps, tomtom navigator, keepass, an all-in-one IM client, skype, and plenty more.
My day goes something like this: on the way to work, I listen to CBC radio (FM). If calls/SMSes/emails come in, it interrupts the music to let me know. Makes my walk much more pleasant. While I'm at work, it syncs up (bluetooth) with everything work related, so I have my meeting schedule for the day with me. I can leave it syncing all day, but prefer not to be that reachable.
At a restaurant or coffee shop, I occasionally hop on wifi to make skype calls to the US offices for 1/10 the ridiculous price our carriers charge for LD.
On the weekends, I use it to drive my car stereo via bluetooth (a2dp) for tunes. If I'm going somewhere I've never been, I fire up tomtom to get me there, and the sound runs through my stereo. It never fails.
Onboard camera uploads directly to my server at home and posts to my blog. I'm into astronomy, so when I have a telescope out on a dark night, I turn the contrast way down and fire up pocket stars. It logs on the net via GPRS to download pictures, star data, etc...which I can match against what I'm seeing in the sky.
I could go on and on, but suffice to say, for me, an all-in-one device is a dream come true. No more carrying a pager, cell phone, iPod, laptop, etc. Just one device. One battery to charge, one thing to remember, and one thing to use.
The only thing I'm waiting for now is the I-Mate Ultimate 9502: 128mb ram (instead of 64, which is a problem), and a keyboard (which is another problem). I guarentee you would despise it. :)
What I'd say to you is that you'd know differently if you had children. Acting from an authority position is just as important as acting with respect -- and the two are not mutually exclusive. While it is important for kids to learn to act on their own initiative, it is also important that they learn that respect for authority when respect is due is a necessary life skill. It takes a variety of tactics to encourage and develop good behavior patterns in kids.
I think a better way of look at it is like this:
Tolerance of authority figures is necessary, but not the needed skill. The skill is in weighing costs and benefits of rejecting/accepting commands from authority.
I agree with you in principle, but I think it's extremely important to focus on critical thinking, mutual respect and common sense, over "respect for authority." The vast majority of people in the "real world" who appeal to authority are simply those who seek personal gain through exploitation of others; learning to respect directives out of fear for the consequences is far more important than learning unconditional respect for the authoritarian figure.
I agree with you 100.0%. Please have kids. :) We're being outnumbered....
lol.. c'est vrai. I always get funny looks when I go to Ontario and speak to people there. :)
The point of using 96Khz or 192Khz isn't to have a higher max freq (due to Nyquist), but having a better resolution in the audible range to avoid aliasing.
There is no such thing as an "aliased wave." All audio signals said to be at 12,000hz are sinusoidal; any blockiness would create harmonics which exceed the nyquist frequency and are filtered by the low-pass filter present in all digital playback equipment.
It's hard to explain, but the supersonic noise/harmonics created by the transition of voltages in the DAC will be filtered. The only reason for having higher sampling rates is to move the low-pass filter to a higher frequency because it is less likely to have an effect on audible frequencies; the higher the filter frequency, generally the lower order required.
One of the big problems with digital equipment these days is the quality of the clock which drives the DAC. Even tiny variations in timing can create slight phase errors which are audible. It's especially noticeable when you drive a DAC via S/PDIF as the DAC must guess when the data will arrive.
.. about granting the state the right to keep secrets from taxpayers.
Can you imagine if your employees were allowed (and encouraged) to keep business secrets from you, their boss? Imagine if you hired a contractor and he refused to give you a breakdown, line by line, of his expenses. You'd fire him in a heartbeat, right?
40 Years would be completely ridiculous even if it was intentional, rape and manslaughter convicts can get less time than that.
Any amount of prison time would be completely ridiculous even if it was intentional. It's sex. It's normal. It's healthy. They'll be having it in a few years regardless. It's how they were made. It's how our species exists and propagates. It's irrational to fear, hate or chastise it. Write it 1,000 times on a blackboard, if you have to.
Should she be fired if it was intentional? Sure. Code of conduct, and all that. But jailed? Not in a rational, just society (and certainly not in Canada, most of Europe, Japan, Russia, Brazil, or most other nations. Maybe in Iran or Saudi Arabia, though..)
Jail time is devastating to people and the economy and should be reserved for dangerous people. Not those who offend the moral majority.
You know, this may not be a popular viewpoint, but there's a good argument to be made for the following:
When one can be jailed for 40 years for showing young people the very process that brought them into existence, you are living in an irrational theocracy. Make me a scientific argument to the contrary.
Accident or no, one should never be punished by the legal system for talking about or educating about sex. It's healthy, it's normal, it's natural, and it's inevitable. Suggesting that it injures minors is asinine and offensive.
Perhaps it is the very same leaders who seek to control our reproductive rights that it injures?
I mean there are some truly heinous sex crimes, and some really scary people. However, theres also some really pretty innocuous stuff too. I am not sure I can support lumping them all together.
You know, this is a problem we "liberals" have; in general our arguments against the absurd are usually a little too polite and reasonable. All the while, right wing pundits and talkshow hosts yell inflametory bullshit at their viewers; we find it difficult to take a strong position on anything (for fear we may be wrong).
But how about this (not directed at you; I know you're just trying to be polite):
If you think lumping violent rapists in with public pissers is anything less than offensively absurd, idiotic, and a demonstration of your malevolence towards others then you are part of the problem.
In the interest of returning the nation to rationality, I think we need to stop being so polite!