Sure, $74/month may seem a little steep, but isn't it worth it to get a FREE phone?
Though sarcastic, you might not realize how accurately you've hit the nail...
In the US, we pretty much don't buy phones by themselves. The vast majority
of people get them for "free" (or a penny, or $19.99-after-rebate, or some apparent
pittance like that) bundled with a 2-year contract for service.
So, while Apple prohibited AT&T from giving the iPhone away with service, Google
allowing T-Mobile and the like to bundle them means regular everyday people, rather
than just Apple fans, may actually get one of these.
If they get a whole lot of false positives, then they're going to be
worth squat when it actually comes down to hard evidence.
You apparently forget that the DHS doesn't care about such details as "probably cause",
"evidence", or "due process".
This will have a 100% "success" rate, because they will define everyone it flags as
a potential threat. Can you prove that you didn't plan to blow something up,
citizen? If not, prepare yourself for deportation/rendition.
Not as a method of proof, but just a way of optimising the job of certain
DHS officials.
Since security theater accomplishes nothing, we can best optimize their jobs by
firing them all.
"Beside which, I quite like some of the yelling. I'm quite good at that,
you know!"
Yeah, what do the hardware engineers know who designed and tested the servers?
They know what the servers will survive, not what it could survive.
When designing a machine to work from 10C to 50C and from 20% to 70% humidity,
they don't deliberately design it to fail just outside that range. They just make
damned sure it won't fail within those ranges (at least, not because of
temperature or humidity).
Microsoft's software engineers can show them what the servers are really capable
of, without even testing them out for all four seasons./sarcasm
Sarcasm ignored, yes, Microsoft (or any of us willing to sacrifice a server for the
cause) can indeed demonstrate that a server can live in a more harsh environment
than intended. Because, as mentioned above, the hardware engineers didn't design the
systems to fail just outside their spec'd range.
We (as a whole) tend to baby servers because they cost a lot... But the cost of
maintaining a perfect environment for them far outweighs the price for the
actual hardware; If you can chop that expense out of the budget for the 99% of
your servers that don't strictly require five-9s uptime, the savings in TCO could
potentially far outweigh the increased cost of more frequent hardware replacement.
(x) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses - How do digital signatures allow easy harvesting of email addresses?
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money - If the signature doesn't validate, the message never even gets to your inbox. Yeah,
people can still send bogus-signature messages, but they wouldn't get to anyone.
(x) It is defenseless against brute force attacks - Of what nature? Few organizations on this planet have the resources to brute force a
valid bogus digital signature, and no one can do it on the sort of scale you'd
need to send spam.
(x) Microsoft will not put up with it - Microsoft actually suggested a variant of that approach, except server-signed rather than
user-signed.
(x) The police will not put up with it - 100% traceability of every message? They've wanted that for years. Now, if
enough people realize it takes no more effort to actually send encrypted mail over
merely signed mail, we could have a problem, but the GP didn't go that far.
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers - How? It depends on the fact that spammers can't cooperate.
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once - Easy to obtain, in that we really only need the mail server admins to cooperate,
then everyone (who wants to get their email) will play along pretty damned quick.
(x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers - So they would cooperate even quicker.
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business - How do you anonymously send a signed message?
(x) Laws expressly prohibiting it - Clinton actually made digital signatures legally binding under US law... So quite
the opposite.
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email - There, we agree. This would require a community rather than central effort.
(x) Asshats - Simply wouldn't get (or receive) mail.
(x) Jurisdictional problems - The GP didn't suggest a legislative solution, so not applicable.
(x) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email - No one can save those who lick plugged-in lamp cords.
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes - Can spam as much as they want, it will never get read.
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches - Unless someone finds a trivial crack to RSA, not applicable.
(x) Extreme profitability of spam - Irrelevant.
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft - Would require either knowing their private key, or even in the easiest case, physical access to their machine.
(x) Technically illiterate politicians - Have IT staff paid to make sure the bits flow.
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves - Once again, irrelevant, this does not require any cooperation on their part.
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering - We already get tons of spam, that wouldn't really matter, but it would
get better as the spammers eventually give up.
(x) Outlook - To repeat, MS already proposed something similar.
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have
ever been shown practical - Because of naysayers, not because of any real barriers to implementation.
(x) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck (x) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored - Which all have what to do with signed mail???
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually - Like IPV6 or changes to daylight savings time?
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? - You shouldn't - So block me, you'll know with 100% certainty who you've blocked.
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
Why do people say a single speaker will have distortion when it plays too many sounds
at once, but my ear, a single microphone, doesn't have that sort of trouble when the
sounds are all crammed together into a single input.
Because we don't hear in the time domain, we hear in the frequency domain.
Each of the stereocilia in your cochlea responds to a specific frequency determined by
its length and depth within the cochlea. That very effectively performs a
time-to-frequency domain transform, feeding our brains with raw frequency data.
So, to answer your question, recorded sound quality matters because we have
thousands of microphones inside our ears, each tuned to a very narrow
frequency.
You need the emotional stability that comes with age to not get pissed off and try to get even with him.
Y'know, I just don't understand that one. I have a rather long commute, and on a typical morning, I have to pass at least
a few people going painfully slow. I don't do so "rather angrily", I don't do so aggressively, I simply do it to get in front
of them. I wait for a good clear spot with a legal passing zone, and get past them as quickly as possible and back into
the proper lane.
Yet many people take that very, very personally. They speed up to try to block me passing them, they swerve into the
middle of the road endangering both of us, they honk or flash their lights... And on the few occasions I've passed
coworkers, they later make a point of "jokingly" calling me a speed freak (I rarely go 10 over, and don't pass anyone
at least doing the speed limit).
I just don't get it. When someone clearly wants to pass me, at the first open section of road, I make a point of hugging the
right edge of the lane and slow down a bit to make it easier. Why do people get upset at the "threat" of having someone who
wants to go faster than them, not remain trapped behind them?
And if those videos commit a real crime (as in, an actual murder rather than some twit mangling a perfectly
good side of beef), they at least provide evidence to use against the attacker.
If not? Well, I fail to see the problem with some twit mangling a side of beef, as long as he owns it.
Might that be because mainstream programming languages
don't support infinite data structures?
Mainstream programming languages run on mainstream hardware - Which
does not support infinite data structures natively. Thus, any
code (C or Haskell, doesn't matter) must necessarily reduce to simple
imperative/procedural code at (or before) runtime.
So this study is not actually useful for people who need to build data centers
in more humid places then new mexico
Humidity only really matters for two reason - If too low, you get a lot of static
buildup, and if too high, you get condensation.
Condensation only tends to happen on objects cooler than ambient, which
doesn't really apply to running servers. Static matters a lot more, but you can
raise humidity a lot cheaper than you can lower it, so, not as much of
an issue there.
And as a bonus, more humid air can carry away more heat than the same volume of less
humid air.
All someone needs to do is correlate your ID# with you
Like, say, the many clubs that already scan your license (barcode and/or magstripe) and
add you to their database. One more type of scan, and your "meaningless" ID becomes as
good as a filled-out-then-thrown-away credit card application to an identity thief.
Speaking of useless, what is the difference between:
* basically useless
* useless
The first expresses a generalization, the second expresses an absolute. I try
to avoid speaking in absolutes, as they rarely hold true.
It is never needed, helpful, or useful. Watch how it's used and you'll
see it never modifies meaning.
I used it in a way that modifies meaning. A literally useless word may as well
not exist, as you could never use it in any context but verbal diarrhea. A
basically (would you prefer "mostly"?) useless word, however, still has some
uses, just not many.
In this case, they still have meaning, they still have uses, and any of us could
describe a context for their correct (if not "polite") use. They don't, however,
retain their original sense of racially-charged oomph any longer. You could
probably goad someone into a barroom fight with them, if you really tried (but could
do the same without resorting to slurs), but most people would simply ignore their
use.
Now, if you want to join me in a rant against "very unique", I'll hop on the
bandwagon right next to you.:)
Care to name the book you are referring to as "entirely new crap"?
Although we could debate CRT's level of input into evenThe Silmarillion,
I'd say that Húrin has about as much of JRR in it as The Illiad does.
Anyone can come up with a plot derivative of the classic adventure stories; JRR's skill
involved the storytelling itself. Having someone else do that part of the job (even
starting from an amazingly detailed plot outline, even starting from a short story version
of the same tale) does not make the work a product of JRR, but of his "editor".
Not so much "hate" as "complete and total disregard".
Without his work, we would have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - nothing else at all.
Acting as the executor of JRR's literary estate to publish basically-complete but unpublished
works, not a problem. Writing entirely new crap "inspired" by his father, I'd rather
"have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - nothing else at all."
but they want to replace her with somebody who wants to take away their
rights rather than limit the government's power?
Nothing tinfoil-hat about it. Most people simply count as idiots and should
not have the right to vote.
I can't find the link at the moment, but a few years ago a group of (Stanford?)
students caused quite a furor over a mock petition drive to revoke a few dangerous
"new" laws "recently" passed - The US Bill of Rights reworded into plain English.
They had around a 70% positive response rate (ie, people who supported revoking the
Bill of Rights).
Most people don't want freedom. They want TV and McDonalds.
Yes, they stole your money and used it to build roads, build hospitals, maintain
and strengthen a military, provide protection from criminals, educate the young,
stop threats against the country, and help out those who have run into misfortune
...Kill Iraqis and depose their sovereign government that had nothing to do with 9/11,
fund international terrorism up until the late 1990s, control the world drug trade
through the mid 1980s, go to war with our own states over medical marijuana, "render"
American citizens without due process or even filing charges.
Yes, they stole your money and you will never get it back in any form.
Yes, they did. And we should all want their heads on a stake for that.
Oh, look, the sun came up again! Everyone run to the other side of the field!
But it sure is bigoted, arrogant, and insulting to people who have mental problems.
Presuming, of course, that you believe the moon causes those mental problems.
Otherwise, words like that just don't carry the same sting they once did, making them
basically useless.
Now racial epithets, there we have the real "punch" words in modern society. Of
course, not just any racial epithets... Call someone a mick or a wetback, and
no one bats an eyelash. Spick, chink, kike, pretty much the same, but generally not good
to drop in polite company. But use any of the assorted names for black people, and watch
the brains of everyone in the room reboot as they look around in a panic to see if any
of "them" heard you.
Thus, the GP chose the powerful (if incorrect) term "racist" over the far weaker "insulting to
people who have mental problems".
It's a gigantic sphere of single socks, nonworking ball point pens,
car keys, reading glasses, coffee mugs....
Of course, that does lead one to ask about the annual deposit of 60,000
Altarian dollars into the account of the lone inhabitant of a small asteroid,
as well as the sudden inexplicable success of the Beeblebrox 2nd-hand ball point
pen corporation...
And the complete and utter loss of any semblance of privacy and quite possibly
freedom - Do you really think the world's governments would let a real
psychic just wander around potentially knowing their secrets?
Also, we can't necessarily presume a real psychic would want a mere million
dollars. Perhaps they can do much better at the casinos or lottery (or can just
directly acquire whatever they want, whenever they want it, avoiding the need for
large sums of cash).
That said, the world has plenty of attention whores who would still probably
show off their talents, if they could. The smart ones, however, would do their
best to hide their skills rather than out themselves to Randi.
it's in Ubuntu's interests to provide a browser that people have heard about, rather than "Iceweasel"
Why? Consider the target audience here...
1) Not-Joe-Sixpack using Ubuntu as an informed decision on a Linux distro won't get confused by Iceweasel.
2) Grandma, not wanting to pay for the Windows tax, will use whatever the "web browser" button does and not know or care what actually launches.
Mozilla has done the world a great service in the creation of Firefox and Thunderbird, but needs to get over itself.
Pissing on their fans... Well, it may work for Apple, but John Lilly != Steve Jobs.
Not really... The sneakers have nothing to do with the electronics, except
that Nike made a special pocket to hold the (entirely separate from the shoe) sensor.
I honestly have no clue why Nike has anything at all to do with this setup, except
in the same sense as needing to use AT&T if you want an iPhone (ie, a completely
arbitrary business agreement designed to benefit Apple and screw their customers).
There are tons of fake Nikes coming from Asia that are honestly way worse in quality, durability, and comfort.
Believe it or not, most "counterfeit" products of this nature come from the same factories as the real ones,
made by the same people, using the same design and same raw materials. They just work an extra hour or two
off the books and sell the product directly (or rather, not through Nike) for MUCH higher profit than their
official output brings them.
Strangely enough, if you oppose sweatshop labor, ethically you should only buy counterfeit products.
I would so dearly love to have the ability to deep-six the link-farmers that still seem to pervade some searches
Nevermind link farmers, I'd like to get rid of the million and one storefronts that top the list when searching for any sort of
product information (whether or not they actually carry that product, oddly enough).
Once upon a time, you could add a few keywords to filter them out (like "review -buy -price"), but the stores seem to have caught
on and always have a (usually blank) review section, as well as frequently disguising their "buy" link (often having it as
an image). Not quite spam, but the same idea applies - Do these stores really think that if they can just trick me into visiting them,
I'll buy something there?
While results of the FITD experiment revealed no racial bias, the effect
of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the experimenter took
the form of a dark-skinned avatar.
Okay, black vs white. Easy enough. It makes sense that people's IRL biases would
carry over to the online world - You can see that clearly enough with gender, where
having an even remotely female-sounding name results in far more attention
(sometimes unwanted) and deferential behavior than a neutral or male name.
But what about anthropomorphic animal avatars (furries)? What about blue-skinned
humanoids? What about amorphous purple blobs? This study had the potential to
reveal so much more, yet they limited it to merely demonstrating online what we
already knew from the real world. Pity.
science and peer review are are flawed because humans aren't good at detecting what is true from what is not in their own thought processes, concepts and philosophies.
The peer review process doesn't establish truth, it just provides a basic sanity check on the methodology used.
The (potential) "truth" of a concept only comes about after several successful repetitions of the experimental conditions
leading to the same result.
... but I didn't see the word "iTunes" anywhere in that article.
iTunes doesn't come close to what MP3.com wanted to do.
I don't want to start a debate about how much they had available or how lax their DRM;
Put simply, they do have DRM, and they don't offer everything, therefore
fall woefully short of the ideal.
That said, you make a good point... iTunes has done quite well, and I would call it a
good start. Even so, keep in mind that every few months we hear rumblings about
how the major labels want to "renegotiate" with Apple to charge more and use more
restrictive DRM - They just don't "get" it, even when offered a viable model on a
silver platter.
The root cause is not the labels -- chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it.
Irrelevant, whether or not the law "allows" it.
As various legacy-media industries (and I don't mean just the RIAA here) slowly waste away to nothing, they have two choices - Find a way
to make their product available on terms we can all agree to (and do so knowing how easily we can choose to simply pirate their content)...
Or cease to exist.
The right to "past damages" doesn't matter if you have no future. These industries have a wide assortment of 3rd parties all but
begging to solve their current problems for them with various forms of modern online distribution; Only stubbornness, and a
near-suicidal insistance on maintaining some mythical "control" they lost over a decade ago, have kept such ventures from any chance
of success.
So before you absolve the labels of blame in this matter - Ask yourself, would you, starving in the gutter, turn down a lifetime supply
of Big Macs because you think the world "owes" you a home-cooked steak dinner?
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, $74/month may seem a little steep, but isn't it worth it to get a FREE phone?
Though sarcastic, you might not realize how accurately you've hit the nail...
In the US, we pretty much don't buy phones by themselves. The vast majority of people get them for "free" (or a penny, or $19.99-after-rebate, or some apparent pittance like that) bundled with a 2-year contract for service.
So, while Apple prohibited AT&T from giving the iPhone away with service, Google allowing T-Mobile and the like to bundle them means regular everyday people, rather than just Apple fans, may actually get one of these.
If they get a whole lot of false positives, then they're going to be worth squat when it actually comes down to hard evidence.
You apparently forget that the DHS doesn't care about such details as "probably cause", "evidence", or "due process".
This will have a 100% "success" rate, because they will define everyone it flags as a potential threat. Can you prove that you didn't plan to blow something up, citizen? If not, prepare yourself for deportation/rendition.
Not as a method of proof, but just a way of optimising the job of certain DHS officials.
Since security theater accomplishes nothing, we can best optimize their jobs by firing them all.
"Beside which, I quite like some of the yelling. I'm quite good at that, you know!"
Yeah, what do the hardware engineers know who designed and tested the servers?
/sarcasm
They know what the servers will survive, not what it could survive.
When designing a machine to work from 10C to 50C and from 20% to 70% humidity, they don't deliberately design it to fail just outside that range. They just make damned sure it won't fail within those ranges (at least, not because of temperature or humidity).
Microsoft's software engineers can show them what the servers are really capable of, without even testing them out for all four seasons.
Sarcasm ignored, yes, Microsoft (or any of us willing to sacrifice a server for the cause) can indeed demonstrate that a server can live in a more harsh environment than intended. Because, as mentioned above, the hardware engineers didn't design the systems to fail just outside their spec'd range.
We (as a whole) tend to baby servers because they cost a lot... But the cost of maintaining a perfect environment for them far outweighs the price for the actual hardware; If you can chop that expense out of the budget for the 99% of your servers that don't strictly require five-9s uptime, the savings in TCO could potentially far outweigh the increased cost of more frequent hardware replacement.
(x) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses - How do digital signatures allow easy harvesting of email addresses?
(x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money - If the signature doesn't validate, the message never even gets to your inbox. Yeah, people can still send bogus-signature messages, but they wouldn't get to anyone.
(x) It is defenseless against brute force attacks - Of what nature? Few organizations on this planet have the resources to brute force a valid bogus digital signature, and no one can do it on the sort of scale you'd need to send spam.
(x) Microsoft will not put up with it - Microsoft actually suggested a variant of that approach, except server-signed rather than user-signed.
(x) The police will not put up with it - 100% traceability of every message? They've wanted that for years. Now, if enough people realize it takes no more effort to actually send encrypted mail over merely signed mail, we could have a problem, but the GP didn't go that far.
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers - How? It depends on the fact that spammers can't cooperate.
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once - Easy to obtain, in that we really only need the mail server admins to cooperate, then everyone (who wants to get their email) will play along pretty damned quick.
(x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers - So they would cooperate even quicker.
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business - How do you anonymously send a signed message?
(x) Laws expressly prohibiting it - Clinton actually made digital signatures legally binding under US law... So quite the opposite.
(x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email - There, we agree. This would require a community rather than central effort.
(x) Asshats - Simply wouldn't get (or receive) mail.
(x) Jurisdictional problems - The GP didn't suggest a legislative solution, so not applicable.
(x) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email - No one can save those who lick plugged-in lamp cords.
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes - Can spam as much as they want, it will never get read.
(x) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches - Unless someone finds a trivial crack to RSA, not applicable.
(x) Extreme profitability of spam - Irrelevant.
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft - Would require either knowing their private key, or even in the easiest case, physical access to their machine.
(x) Technically illiterate politicians - Have IT staff paid to make sure the bits flow.
(x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves - Once again, irrelevant, this does not require any cooperation on their part.
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering - We already get tons of spam, that wouldn't really matter, but it would get better as the spammers eventually give up.
(x) Outlook - To repeat, MS already proposed something similar.
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical - Because of naysayers, not because of any real barriers to implementation.
(x) Blacklists suck (x) Whitelists suck (x) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored - Which all have what to do with signed mail???
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually - Like IPV6 or changes to daylight savings time?
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? - You shouldn't - So block me, you'll know with 100% certainty who you've blocked.
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
Why do people say a single speaker will have distortion when it plays too many sounds at once, but my ear, a single microphone, doesn't have that sort of trouble when the sounds are all crammed together into a single input.
Because we don't hear in the time domain, we hear in the frequency domain.
Each of the stereocilia in your cochlea responds to a specific frequency determined by its length and depth within the cochlea. That very effectively performs a time-to-frequency domain transform, feeding our brains with raw frequency data.
So, to answer your question, recorded sound quality matters because we have thousands of microphones inside our ears, each tuned to a very narrow frequency.
You need the emotional stability that comes with age to not get pissed off and try to get even with him.
Y'know, I just don't understand that one. I have a rather long commute, and on a typical morning, I have to pass at least a few people going painfully slow. I don't do so "rather angrily", I don't do so aggressively, I simply do it to get in front of them. I wait for a good clear spot with a legal passing zone, and get past them as quickly as possible and back into the proper lane.
Yet many people take that very, very personally. They speed up to try to block me passing them, they swerve into the middle of the road endangering both of us, they honk or flash their lights... And on the few occasions I've passed coworkers, they later make a point of "jokingly" calling me a speed freak (I rarely go 10 over, and don't pass anyone at least doing the speed limit).
I just don't get it. When someone clearly wants to pass me, at the first open section of road, I make a point of hugging the right edge of the lane and slow down a bit to make it easier. Why do people get upset at the "threat" of having someone who wants to go faster than them, not remain trapped behind them?
the internet is NOT a ticket to do as you please.
True.
And if those videos commit a real crime (as in, an actual murder rather than some twit mangling a perfectly good side of beef), they at least provide evidence to use against the attacker.
If not? Well, I fail to see the problem with some twit mangling a side of beef, as long as he owns it.
Might that be because mainstream programming languages don't support infinite data structures?
Mainstream programming languages run on mainstream hardware - Which does not support infinite data structures natively. Thus, any code (C or Haskell, doesn't matter) must necessarily reduce to simple imperative/procedural code at (or before) runtime.
So this study is not actually useful for people who need to build data centers in more humid places then new mexico
Humidity only really matters for two reason - If too low, you get a lot of static buildup, and if too high, you get condensation.
Condensation only tends to happen on objects cooler than ambient, which doesn't really apply to running servers. Static matters a lot more, but you can raise humidity a lot cheaper than you can lower it, so, not as much of an issue there.
And as a bonus, more humid air can carry away more heat than the same volume of less humid air.
All someone needs to do is correlate your ID# with you
Like, say, the many clubs that already scan your license (barcode and/or magstripe) and add you to their database. One more type of scan, and your "meaningless" ID becomes as good as a filled-out-then-thrown-away credit card application to an identity thief.
Speaking of useless, what is the difference between:
:)
* basically useless
* useless
The first expresses a generalization, the second expresses an absolute. I try to avoid speaking in absolutes, as they rarely hold true.
It is never needed, helpful, or useful. Watch how it's used and you'll see it never modifies meaning.
I used it in a way that modifies meaning. A literally useless word may as well not exist, as you could never use it in any context but verbal diarrhea. A basically (would you prefer "mostly"?) useless word, however, still has some uses, just not many.
In this case, they still have meaning, they still have uses, and any of us could describe a context for their correct (if not "polite") use. They don't, however, retain their original sense of racially-charged oomph any longer. You could probably goad someone into a barroom fight with them, if you really tried (but could do the same without resorting to slurs), but most people would simply ignore their use.
Now, if you want to join me in a rant against "very unique", I'll hop on the bandwagon right next to you.
Care to name the book you are referring to as "entirely new crap"?
Although we could debate CRT's level of input into evenThe Silmarillion, I'd say that Húrin has about as much of JRR in it as The Illiad does.
Anyone can come up with a plot derivative of the classic adventure stories; JRR's skill involved the storytelling itself. Having someone else do that part of the job (even starting from an amazingly detailed plot outline, even starting from a short story version of the same tale) does not make the work a product of JRR, but of his "editor".
I don't get the hate for Christopher Tolkien.
Not so much "hate" as "complete and total disregard".
Without his work, we would have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - nothing else at all.
Acting as the executor of JRR's literary estate to publish basically-complete but unpublished works, not a problem. Writing entirely new crap "inspired" by his father, I'd rather "have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - nothing else at all."
but they want to replace her with somebody who wants to take away their rights rather than limit the government's power?
Nothing tinfoil-hat about it. Most people simply count as idiots and should not have the right to vote.
I can't find the link at the moment, but a few years ago a group of (Stanford?) students caused quite a furor over a mock petition drive to revoke a few dangerous "new" laws "recently" passed - The US Bill of Rights reworded into plain English. They had around a 70% positive response rate (ie, people who supported revoking the Bill of Rights).
Most people don't want freedom. They want TV and McDonalds.
Yes, they stole your money and used it to build roads, build hospitals, maintain and strengthen a military, provide protection from criminals, educate the young, stop threats against the country, and help out those who have run into misfortune
...Kill Iraqis and depose their sovereign government that had nothing to do with 9/11,
fund international terrorism up until the late 1990s, control the world drug trade
through the mid 1980s, go to war with our own states over medical marijuana, "render"
American citizens without due process or even filing charges.
Yes, they stole your money and you will never get it back in any form.
Yes, they did. And we should all want their heads on a stake for that. Oh, look, the sun came up again! Everyone run to the other side of the field!
But it sure is bigoted, arrogant, and insulting to people who have mental problems.
Presuming, of course, that you believe the moon causes those mental problems.
Otherwise, words like that just don't carry the same sting they once did, making them basically useless.
Now racial epithets, there we have the real "punch" words in modern society. Of course, not just any racial epithets... Call someone a mick or a wetback, and no one bats an eyelash. Spick, chink, kike, pretty much the same, but generally not good to drop in polite company. But use any of the assorted names for black people, and watch the brains of everyone in the room reboot as they look around in a panic to see if any of "them" heard you.
Thus, the GP chose the powerful (if incorrect) term "racist" over the far weaker "insulting to people who have mental problems".
It's a gigantic sphere of single socks, nonworking ball point pens, car keys, reading glasses, coffee mugs....
Of course, that does lead one to ask about the annual deposit of 60,000 Altarian dollars into the account of the lone inhabitant of a small asteroid, as well as the sudden inexplicable success of the Beeblebrox 2nd-hand ball point pen corporation...
Under the Randi Challenge? A million dollars.
And the complete and utter loss of any semblance of privacy and quite possibly freedom - Do you really think the world's governments would let a real psychic just wander around potentially knowing their secrets?
Also, we can't necessarily presume a real psychic would want a mere million dollars. Perhaps they can do much better at the casinos or lottery (or can just directly acquire whatever they want, whenever they want it, avoiding the need for large sums of cash).
That said, the world has plenty of attention whores who would still probably show off their talents, if they could. The smart ones, however, would do their best to hide their skills rather than out themselves to Randi.
it's in Ubuntu's interests to provide a browser that people have heard about, rather than "Iceweasel"
Why? Consider the target audience here...
1) Not-Joe-Sixpack using Ubuntu as an informed decision on a Linux distro won't get confused by Iceweasel.
2) Grandma, not wanting to pay for the Windows tax, will use whatever the "web browser" button does and not know or care what actually launches.
Mozilla has done the world a great service in the creation of Firefox and Thunderbird, but needs to get over itself. Pissing on their fans... Well, it may work for Apple, but John Lilly != Steve Jobs.
I think it's more of a counterfeiting thing.
Not really... The sneakers have nothing to do with the electronics, except that Nike made a special pocket to hold the (entirely separate from the shoe) sensor.
I honestly have no clue why Nike has anything at all to do with this setup, except in the same sense as needing to use AT&T if you want an iPhone (ie, a completely arbitrary business agreement designed to benefit Apple and screw their customers).
There are tons of fake Nikes coming from Asia that are honestly way worse in quality, durability, and comfort.
Believe it or not, most "counterfeit" products of this nature come from the same factories as the real ones, made by the same people, using the same design and same raw materials. They just work an extra hour or two off the books and sell the product directly (or rather, not through Nike) for MUCH higher profit than their official output brings them.
Strangely enough, if you oppose sweatshop labor, ethically you should only buy counterfeit products.
I would so dearly love to have the ability to deep-six the link-farmers that still seem to pervade some searches
Nevermind link farmers, I'd like to get rid of the million and one storefronts that top the list when searching for any sort of product information (whether or not they actually carry that product, oddly enough).
Once upon a time, you could add a few keywords to filter them out (like "review -buy -price"), but the stores seem to have caught on and always have a (usually blank) review section, as well as frequently disguising their "buy" link (often having it as an image). Not quite spam, but the same idea applies - Do these stores really think that if they can just trick me into visiting them, I'll buy something there?
While results of the FITD experiment revealed no racial bias, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the experimenter took the form of a dark-skinned avatar.
Okay, black vs white. Easy enough. It makes sense that people's IRL biases would carry over to the online world - You can see that clearly enough with gender, where having an even remotely female-sounding name results in far more attention (sometimes unwanted) and deferential behavior than a neutral or male name.
But what about anthropomorphic animal avatars (furries)? What about blue-skinned humanoids? What about amorphous purple blobs? This study had the potential to reveal so much more, yet they limited it to merely demonstrating online what we already knew from the real world. Pity.
science and peer review are are flawed because humans aren't good at detecting what is true from what is not in their own thought processes, concepts and philosophies.
The peer review process doesn't establish truth, it just provides a basic sanity check on the methodology used.
The (potential) "truth" of a concept only comes about after several successful repetitions of the experimental conditions leading to the same result.
... but I didn't see the word "iTunes" anywhere in that article.
iTunes doesn't come close to what MP3.com wanted to do.
I don't want to start a debate about how much they had available or how lax their DRM; Put simply, they do have DRM, and they don't offer everything, therefore fall woefully short of the ideal.
That said, you make a good point... iTunes has done quite well, and I would call it a good start. Even so, keep in mind that every few months we hear rumblings about how the major labels want to "renegotiate" with Apple to charge more and use more restrictive DRM - They just don't "get" it, even when offered a viable model on a silver platter.
The root cause is not the labels -- chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it.
Irrelevant, whether or not the law "allows" it.
As various legacy-media industries (and I don't mean just the RIAA here) slowly waste away to nothing, they have two choices - Find a way to make their product available on terms we can all agree to (and do so knowing how easily we can choose to simply pirate their content)... Or cease to exist.
The right to "past damages" doesn't matter if you have no future. These industries have a wide assortment of 3rd parties all but begging to solve their current problems for them with various forms of modern online distribution; Only stubbornness, and a near-suicidal insistance on maintaining some mythical "control" they lost over a decade ago, have kept such ventures from any chance of success.
So before you absolve the labels of blame in this matter - Ask yourself, would you, starving in the gutter, turn down a lifetime supply of Big Macs because you think the world "owes" you a home-cooked steak dinner?