So you don't have to poll everyone on Earth, you
just need to look at what pictures you see online
[Bolding for emphasis mine]
Can you say "sample bias"?
I suspect you meant that as funny, but somehow got modded
insightful. But for those who don't get the joke, "Dewey Wins!"
A lot of those things are bought not because the owners actually
needed an expensive camera, but just to show that they can afford an
expensive camera.
So why didn't soooo many people waste money on expensive
cameras before modern digitals? Or do all-things-digital
just have inherently higher "bling" value?
Same, if you will, as wannabe "audiophiles" swearing that music
sounds better when they use a 1000$ power cable for their stereo.
...And the "warmth" of low copper digital interconnects. That
one cracks me up every time.;-)
The US media does not present any US military victories, just "how many US soldiers died today."
Define a US military "victory", WRT to the current mess in the Middle East.
Seriously.
"Democratic" elections (while we ignore a theocratic monarchy next door)?
Power/water restored (still at a SHARP negative to 2000)?
Oil flowing (ditto)?
About the best we can do involves minimizing the body count. So hearing that "only"
a handful of people died counts as a good day, while hearing that 100 died in a mosque or
crowded market counts as a bad day.
The only "victory" we can ever possibly hear about takes the form of getting the fuck out of
dodge.
if you walk in asking to get a copy made, they'll recognize it as one of theirs and confiscate it
Two questions...
First, can they legally do that? Depriving someone of their posessions without permission or a court order
generally counts as "theft".
And second, how do you get new keys made, if you can't get them copied?
A machinist would also have to duplicate the wards and angle cuts if duplicating Medeco keys.
Has this Medeco company ever heard of "clay" and "casting resin"? It wouldn't live up to heavy
use, but anyone, with $10 in supplies and willing to wait overnight, can duplicate an
arbitrary solid 3d object. Hollow 3d objects take more work, but still doable with multiple
molds and the magic of superglue.
As an aside (slightly different issue, but related), I've had plenty of "normal" keys
engraved with "do not copy" copied - The clerks at Home Depot wouldn't care if the thing
said "Missile Silo B Launch Control" on it.
He has found an amazingly effective way to destroy his own reputation.
Same here. But can you sue yourself in Canada?
I do have to wonder, though, if this suit (suits?) actually has any real merit... I though
"the truth" generally counted as a solid defense against claims of defamation.
True, as a company, giving them $100 is giving them $100 (or $20, or whatever,
I don't know exactly how much they get per copy from Dell).
You misunderestimate MS's real motive in releasing Vista...
Right now, the whole world basically runs XP. I work for a fairly small company, on
the big scheme of things, and we have somewhere around 100 XP VLK licenses. When we
get a new machine or recycle an old one, we just make sure we haven't passed that magic
near-100 number, and throw XP on it. No money goes to MS, and we have no reason to
upgrade (in fact, we have several mission-critical apps that absolutely do not run on
Vista).
Now, look at that from MS's perspective. How do you get companies that have no reason
to upgrade, to fork over tens of thousands of dollars in new licenses that they don't
even need?
Simple, you poison the employees. Get them all used to having Vista at home. Home users
don't want it either, but with the average consumer PC having a lifespan under two
years, if you can get the OEMs to play ball, you can have significant market penetration in
six months' time.
So a quarter of your employees use Vista at home. They initially hate it compared to XP, but
they get used to it. They start to view XP as old-and-busted. After Vista SP1 comes out in a
few months, it might even support most existing software without too many problems.
Suddenly employees start asking, with ever-increasing volume, why they don't
have Vista at work. Then you have it - The perception of obsolescence that triggers
most unneccessary corporate policies. "We can't get left behind", everyone
says.
And so another round of sheep willingly walk up to the slaughterhouse in the name of
progress.
PS - everyone say "hi" to my
personalSlashStalkerTroll,
who should come along momentarily to tell me (as an AC, of course) how much I suck...
Hi troll! Whosagoodlittletroll, hmm? Have a cookie.
Let's go back to the ink efficient days of the DeskJet 400C and
fuck these contract based service packages.
You actually can get inkjets that don't cost a fortune in ink
to run. The catch? You pay a bit more up-front (but you also get a
much better quality of device than the $49 wallyworld inkjet
special).
First thing to look for - separate CMYK cartridges, possibly with separately
replaceable printheads. That alone will save a fortune over tri/quadcolor
cartridges. I don't, however, recommend the ones that take more than four
colors - very, very few people need that level of color accuracy, and
they tend to cost more yet hold even less ink than the el cheapo tricolor
ones.
Second, look for a printer that takes ink cartridge holding significantly
more than 7ml. Most printers may take seemingly large ink tanks, but it
has no correlation with the actual quantity of ink inside.
As one that meets both criteria that I can personally recommend (no, I don't
work for HP or make anything off you buying one of these), the HP Business
Inkjet 1200 line (C8154A). It costs $150 up front, but that includes a
complete set of inks and printheads. Under normal use, you'll probably
never need to replace the printheads; The inks hold 28ml for CMY and 69ml
for black (although as usually, the set that comes with it only comes half
full, but even those will last a decent time). And the cost the same
as the pathetic 3-7ml and tricolor ink cartridges, for 4-9x as
much ink. Oh, and it has a built-in duplexer at that price, too (it comes
as a separate part, but I've never seen that printer sold without
the duplexing unit)
As an aside, with all inkjet printers (especially those with
printheads built into the ink cartridges), you can also improve printhead
life (for those who seem to have trouble with that - Personally, I do not)
by wasting a test page at least once a week (if you haven't used the
printer otherwise), to keep them from getting clogged with dried ink.
It sounds wasteful, but will cost you less in the long run.
high school student Read that until you understand it.
Okay, so instead of his money, this wastes my money as
a taxpayer. Thank you for pointing that out, I do indeed consider it
quite a lot more offensive.
and forcing them to either work on a weekend or wait
until he's on vacation is stretching things.
THEY want his deposition. Not the other way around.
Why should he suffer an inconvenience to suit their schedule?
In the same situation, if I had to lose a day's pay to humor the RIAA,
I'd feel mightily pissed off. OTOH, I have very little doubt
that some hungry young lawyer would work OT on the RIAA's dollar to
take the deposition on Saturday or some weeknight.
Well, it has a similar pricetag but 10x the length as Boston's "Big Dig", so which one
counts as pork?
But really, aside from that, is the infrastructure in Alaska and Canada and eastern
Russia up there really of the sort that could take advantage of a big project like this?
Russia, like most of its neighbors, actually has a useable, efficient rail system. If you think
of this in terms of a random collection of very-long-haul trucks, no, it makes no sense.
Have a steady stream of freight trains going through it on the way to Seattle or LA, and suddenly
the payback time probably beats the expected 20 years.
And of the line losses. That's a thought.
Already a solved problem, and it turns out, not that bad when using nice fat 0.1 gauge "wires".
What exactly bad happens if you owe the IRS money and file a week late? I'm guessing nothing.
I tend to agree, though considering how miserable the IRS can make our lives, I don't think I'd want to
push that one.
Now, if I used TurboTax (which I don't - A trained chimp could copy-and-paste the correct numbers from a
W2 and a few 1099s onto a 1040, for a typical no-frills middle-class-or-below taxpayer) and the situation
described in the FP occurred - I'd probaby say "screw it" and drop a printout in a mailbox on the way to
work the next day rather than rush off to the post office at midnight.;-)
What difference does a day's worth of interest
make on the average IRS tax bill?
Just for those who never thought about this, what you suggest
works the other way, as well... As long as they owe
you a refund, nothing bad happens if you file a day late.
The IRS bases all its penalties on how much you owe. Don't owe
anything? No penalties for filing a day late.
The government cares that it gets your money. It doesn't
care so much if you don't get your money.
Perhaps you could explain to us why you care so much that you have set up your
browser to delete cookies when you close your browser?
Simple, real example.
I do most of my holiday shopping online, largely from Amazon.
Every year, once I log in, Amazon innundates me with front-page
crap related to what I bought for other people. I have zero
interest in golf, for example, but buy a particular Ping driver for a
relative, and suddenly I start seeing all the greatest new books from
guys I've never heard of explaining why I suck compared to them (apparently
Amazon considers golf a more lucrative topic than the sort of things I
normally buy, for myself).
But that just illustrates one specific example of the overarching issue - Privacy.
I like mine. Clearing cookies gives me quite a lot more of it as opposed to (potentially)
letting every site I visit track my every online step.
And now we're replacing it with ethanol, which doesn't
Great example, though not how you meant it - Rather than carefully
looking into the available options and choosing a better one such
as ethanol (or even higher-quality gasoline, which doesn't need
oxygenates or antiknock additives) right from the get-go, we banned
lead and got something almost as bad (yes, MTBE does eventually
decay - but it can take over a decade).
Seldom are there ever only two choices.
Very true - But on this particular topic, banning the currently
most popular product means industry will go with the next cheapest
legal solution, regardless of actual safety.
I don't do it because it is a pain to constantly log back in everywhere.
As someone who has cookies automatically deleted when I close my browser...
You don't actually need to log in to every site you visit - Only if
you want to buy or post something, in general (in fact, I prefer they
can't track me while "just looking").
And not only do I get a somewhat increased level of privacy, I get
massively increased security as well - Someone needs to actually know
my passwords, not just sit at my computer, to use one of my accounts.
It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we
won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children."
...She then went on to describe the huge new civil fines Washington state
plans to impose on manufacturers of furniture, televisions, and computers
that burst into flames.
Seriously, they need to think these things throught just a wee bit
more - Whether requiring a given level of flame-resistance and then bitching
about the toxicity of most flame retardants, or banning leaded gasoline in
the '70s, only to replace it with MTBE that behaves exactly like lead in
the environment.
Sometimes "bad" still counts as the lesser of two evils.
But every time you delete cookies, many of the sites you've
visited count you as a new visitor next time.
I have Firefox clear my cookies on browser close... So I
look like a new visitor every time I visit a site.
Perhaps someone would explain to me why I should care
about this? The only use I can see for unique visitor counts
(other than the trivia value) involves ad revenue - And I
aggressively block almost all adverts, so don't care about
that, either.
So it's fine if you're reactionary, but if a government is that's bad?
Reactionary? As opposed to what, exactly - Bending over and tacking it
complacently, like a "good" citizen?
But anyway... Yes, actually, although I'd prefer to call it "civilly disobedient".
The individual people can do a lot that we absolutely must not ever
let the government get away with. I do not have the power to oppress
the populace.
The proposed laws are aimed to target material such as a DVD by Feiz Mohammad
Wow - Who does this guy know in government to do him such a favor?
If the US government did this, I'd own his complete works a week later. Hell, I've
never even heard of him, and even the threat of another supposedly-1st-world government
banning him makes me at least curious.
Good job, guys - Someday, you'll learn that for some problems, ignoring them
will do a whole lot more to make them go away than active intervention ever could.
Would such a front-end be able to circumvent things like DRM?
Depends on what that means and how they implement it.
For example, the Real and QT Alternatives let you save clips
locally, regardless of what the file says it allows. You could
call that a form of DRM, but (AFAIK) it depends on the actually
player to honor the "don't save" flag in the files.
OTOH, if they actually use some form of "real" encryption keyed to
the player itself (rather than just the codec), that could take
some serious effort to crack (thereby restoring our right to
"time-shift" the content to play before the commercial).
But then, the harder they make it, the more likely that some
bored genius out there will take it as a personal challenge, and we'll
get the same end result either way.;-)
I suspect that "pretty soon" is wildly optimistic.
RealAlternative and QuickTimeAlternative don't exist as standalone
open source implementations. They just have less annoying frontends
to the official codecs for standard Real and QT content.
By virtue of being "extensible", EFI is vastly better than the BIOS
Yeah... Why, that nasty ol' standard BIOS makes hardware-level DRM just
so pesky. And vendor lock-in for replacement hardware? Almost
impossible! Why, how will Dell ever survive if it can't force you to
use Dell-branded video cards as your only upgrade option? And of course,
WGA worked so well, why not include it at the firmware level? Bought a
"OS-less" PC, did we? No soup for you!
Sorry, EFI has some great potential, but it has far too much potential
for vendor abuse. The (somewhat) standardized PC BIOS has made the
modern era of ubiquitous computers possible. Don't take a "step forward"
too quickly without first looking to see if it will send you over a cliff.
Slashdot Mirror
So you don't have to poll everyone on Earth, you just need to look at what pictures you see online
...And the "warmth" of low copper digital interconnects. That
one cracks me up every time. ;-)
[Bolding for emphasis mine]
Can you say "sample bias"?
I suspect you meant that as funny, but somehow got modded insightful. But for those who don't get the joke, "Dewey Wins!"
A lot of those things are bought not because the owners actually needed an expensive camera, but just to show that they can afford an expensive camera.
So why didn't soooo many people waste money on expensive cameras before modern digitals? Or do all-things-digital just have inherently higher "bling" value?
Same, if you will, as wannabe "audiophiles" swearing that music sounds better when they use a 1000$ power cable for their stereo.
The US media does not present any US military victories, just "how many US soldiers died today."
Define a US military "victory", WRT to the current mess in the Middle East.
Seriously.
"Democratic" elections (while we ignore a theocratic monarchy next door)?
Power/water restored (still at a SHARP negative to 2000)?
Oil flowing (ditto)?
About the best we can do involves minimizing the body count. So hearing that "only" a handful of people died counts as a good day, while hearing that 100 died in a mosque or crowded market counts as a bad day.
The only "victory" we can ever possibly hear about takes the form of getting the fuck out of dodge.
if you walk in asking to get a copy made, they'll recognize it as one of theirs and confiscate it
Two questions...
First, can they legally do that? Depriving someone of their posessions without permission or a court order generally counts as "theft".
And second, how do you get new keys made, if you can't get them copied?
A machinist would also have to duplicate the wards and angle cuts if duplicating Medeco keys.
Has this Medeco company ever heard of "clay" and "casting resin"? It wouldn't live up to heavy use, but anyone, with $10 in supplies and willing to wait overnight, can duplicate an arbitrary solid 3d object. Hollow 3d objects take more work, but still doable with multiple molds and the magic of superglue.
As an aside (slightly different issue, but related), I've had plenty of "normal" keys engraved with "do not copy" copied - The clerks at Home Depot wouldn't care if the thing said "Missile Silo B Launch Control" on it.
He has found an amazingly effective way to destroy his own reputation.
Same here. But can you sue yourself in Canada?
I do have to wonder, though, if this suit (suits?) actually has any real merit... I though "the truth" generally counted as a solid defense against claims of defamation.
True, as a company, giving them $100 is giving them $100 (or $20, or whatever, I don't know exactly how much they get per copy from Dell).
You misunderestimate MS's real motive in releasing Vista...
Right now, the whole world basically runs XP. I work for a fairly small company, on the big scheme of things, and we have somewhere around 100 XP VLK licenses. When we get a new machine or recycle an old one, we just make sure we haven't passed that magic near-100 number, and throw XP on it. No money goes to MS, and we have no reason to upgrade (in fact, we have several mission-critical apps that absolutely do not run on Vista).
Now, look at that from MS's perspective. How do you get companies that have no reason to upgrade, to fork over tens of thousands of dollars in new licenses that they don't even need?
Simple, you poison the employees. Get them all used to having Vista at home. Home users don't want it either, but with the average consumer PC having a lifespan under two years, if you can get the OEMs to play ball, you can have significant market penetration in six months' time.
So a quarter of your employees use Vista at home. They initially hate it compared to XP, but they get used to it. They start to view XP as old-and-busted. After Vista SP1 comes out in a few months, it might even support most existing software without too many problems.
Suddenly employees start asking, with ever-increasing volume, why they don't have Vista at work. Then you have it - The perception of obsolescence that triggers most unneccessary corporate policies. "We can't get left behind", everyone says.
And so another round of sheep willingly walk up to the slaughterhouse in the name of progress.
PS - everyone say "hi" to my personal SlashStalkerTroll, who should come along momentarily to tell me (as an AC, of course) how much I suck... Hi troll! Whosagoodlittletroll, hmm? Have a cookie.
Let's go back to the ink efficient days of the DeskJet 400C and fuck these contract based service packages.
You actually can get inkjets that don't cost a fortune in ink to run. The catch? You pay a bit more up-front (but you also get a much better quality of device than the $49 wallyworld inkjet special).
First thing to look for - separate CMYK cartridges, possibly with separately replaceable printheads. That alone will save a fortune over tri/quadcolor cartridges. I don't, however, recommend the ones that take more than four colors - very, very few people need that level of color accuracy, and they tend to cost more yet hold even less ink than the el cheapo tricolor ones.
Second, look for a printer that takes ink cartridge holding significantly more than 7ml. Most printers may take seemingly large ink tanks, but it has no correlation with the actual quantity of ink inside.
As one that meets both criteria that I can personally recommend (no, I don't work for HP or make anything off you buying one of these), the HP Business Inkjet 1200 line (C8154A). It costs $150 up front, but that includes a complete set of inks and printheads. Under normal use, you'll probably never need to replace the printheads; The inks hold 28ml for CMY and 69ml for black (although as usually, the set that comes with it only comes half full, but even those will last a decent time). And the cost the same as the pathetic 3-7ml and tricolor ink cartridges, for 4-9x as much ink. Oh, and it has a built-in duplexer at that price, too (it comes as a separate part, but I've never seen that printer sold without the duplexing unit)
As an aside, with all inkjet printers (especially those with printheads built into the ink cartridges), you can also improve printhead life (for those who seem to have trouble with that - Personally, I do not) by wasting a test page at least once a week (if you haven't used the printer otherwise), to keep them from getting clogged with dried ink. It sounds wasteful, but will cost you less in the long run.
high school student
Read that until you understand it.
Okay, so instead of his money, this wastes my money as a taxpayer. Thank you for pointing that out, I do indeed consider it quite a lot more offensive.
Then never post again.
Dear Mr. Kettle...
and forcing them to either work on a weekend or wait until he's on vacation is stretching things.
THEY want his deposition. Not the other way around.
Why should he suffer an inconvenience to suit their schedule?
In the same situation, if I had to lose a day's pay to humor the RIAA, I'd feel mightily pissed off. OTOH, I have very little doubt that some hungry young lawyer would work OT on the RIAA's dollar to take the deposition on Saturday or some weeknight.
and removing features that are almost unused in their target market is a good way to do it.
I don't have a single one of my home PCs booting from SATA yet, and three of them have MBs less than 2 years old.
That gives (IMO) "Almost unused" a rather strange definition...
oink oink oink oink is that the smell of PORK? :)
Well, it has a similar pricetag but 10x the length as Boston's "Big Dig", so which one counts as pork?
But really, aside from that, is the infrastructure in Alaska and Canada and eastern Russia up there really of the sort that could take advantage of a big project like this?
Russia, like most of its neighbors, actually has a useable, efficient rail system. If you think of this in terms of a random collection of very-long-haul trucks, no, it makes no sense. Have a steady stream of freight trains going through it on the way to Seattle or LA, and suddenly the payback time probably beats the expected 20 years.
And of the line losses. That's a thought.
Already a solved problem, and it turns out, not that bad when using nice fat 0.1 gauge "wires".
What exactly bad happens if you owe the IRS money and file a week late? I'm guessing nothing.
;-)
I tend to agree, though considering how miserable the IRS can make our lives, I don't think I'd want to push that one.
Now, if I used TurboTax (which I don't - A trained chimp could copy-and-paste the correct numbers from a W2 and a few 1099s onto a 1040, for a typical no-frills middle-class-or-below taxpayer) and the situation described in the FP occurred - I'd probaby say "screw it" and drop a printout in a mailbox on the way to work the next day rather than rush off to the post office at midnight.
What difference does a day's worth of interest make on the average IRS tax bill?
Just for those who never thought about this, what you suggest works the other way, as well... As long as they owe you a refund, nothing bad happens if you file a day late.
The IRS bases all its penalties on how much you owe. Don't owe anything? No penalties for filing a day late.
The government cares that it gets your money. It doesn't care so much if you don't get your money.
Perhaps you could explain to us why you care so much that you have set up your browser to delete cookies when you close your browser?
Simple, real example.
I do most of my holiday shopping online, largely from Amazon.
Every year, once I log in, Amazon innundates me with front-page crap related to what I bought for other people. I have zero interest in golf, for example, but buy a particular Ping driver for a relative, and suddenly I start seeing all the greatest new books from guys I've never heard of explaining why I suck compared to them (apparently Amazon considers golf a more lucrative topic than the sort of things I normally buy, for myself).
But that just illustrates one specific example of the overarching issue - Privacy. I like mine. Clearing cookies gives me quite a lot more of it as opposed to (potentially) letting every site I visit track my every online step.
In short, you're an ignorant douchelord
I bow before your superior eloquence.
And now we're replacing it with ethanol, which doesn't
Great example, though not how you meant it - Rather than carefully looking into the available options and choosing a better one such as ethanol (or even higher-quality gasoline, which doesn't need oxygenates or antiknock additives) right from the get-go, we banned lead and got something almost as bad (yes, MTBE does eventually decay - but it can take over a decade).
Seldom are there ever only two choices.
Very true - But on this particular topic, banning the currently most popular product means industry will go with the next cheapest legal solution, regardless of actual safety.
I don't do it because it is a pain to constantly log back in everywhere.
As someone who has cookies automatically deleted when I close my browser...
You don't actually need to log in to every site you visit - Only if you want to buy or post something, in general (in fact, I prefer they can't track me while "just looking").
And not only do I get a somewhat increased level of privacy, I get massively increased security as well - Someone needs to actually know my passwords, not just sit at my computer, to use one of my accounts.
... does this mean that work on Vista will have to be moved out of state?
Nah, it goes down in flames at the drop of a hat.
It really is a message from Washington state and policymakers that we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children."
...She then went on to describe the huge new civil fines Washington state
plans to impose on manufacturers of furniture, televisions, and computers
that burst into flames.
Seriously, they need to think these things throught just a wee bit more - Whether requiring a given level of flame-resistance and then bitching about the toxicity of most flame retardants, or banning leaded gasoline in the '70s, only to replace it with MTBE that behaves exactly like lead in the environment.
Sometimes "bad" still counts as the lesser of two evils.
But every time you delete cookies, many of the sites you've visited count you as a new visitor next time.
I have Firefox clear my cookies on browser close... So I look like a new visitor every time I visit a site.
Perhaps someone would explain to me why I should care about this? The only use I can see for unique visitor counts (other than the trivia value) involves ad revenue - And I aggressively block almost all adverts, so don't care about that, either.
So it's fine if you're reactionary, but if a government is that's bad?
Reactionary? As opposed to what, exactly - Bending over and tacking it complacently, like a "good" citizen?
But anyway... Yes, actually, although I'd prefer to call it "civilly disobedient". The individual people can do a lot that we absolutely must not ever let the government get away with. I do not have the power to oppress the populace.
The proposed laws are aimed to target material such as a DVD by Feiz Mohammad
Wow - Who does this guy know in government to do him such a favor?
If the US government did this, I'd own his complete works a week later. Hell, I've never even heard of him, and even the threat of another supposedly-1st-world government banning him makes me at least curious.
Good job, guys - Someday, you'll learn that for some problems, ignoring them will do a whole lot more to make them go away than active intervention ever could.
Would such a front-end be able to circumvent things like DRM?
;-)
Depends on what that means and how they implement it.
For example, the Real and QT Alternatives let you save clips locally, regardless of what the file says it allows. You could call that a form of DRM, but (AFAIK) it depends on the actually player to honor the "don't save" flag in the files.
OTOH, if they actually use some form of "real" encryption keyed to the player itself (rather than just the codec), that could take some serious effort to crack (thereby restoring our right to "time-shift" the content to play before the commercial).
But then, the harder they make it, the more likely that some bored genius out there will take it as a personal challenge, and we'll get the same end result either way.
I suspect that "pretty soon" is wildly optimistic.
RealAlternative and QuickTimeAlternative don't exist as standalone open source implementations. They just have less annoying frontends to the official codecs for standard Real and QT content.
allowing copyright holders to require the viewing of adverts
Coming soon, to a codec pack near you:
FlashAlternative.
By virtue of being "extensible", EFI is vastly better than the BIOS
Yeah... Why, that nasty ol' standard BIOS makes hardware-level DRM just so pesky. And vendor lock-in for replacement hardware? Almost impossible! Why, how will Dell ever survive if it can't force you to use Dell-branded video cards as your only upgrade option? And of course, WGA worked so well, why not include it at the firmware level? Bought a "OS-less" PC, did we? No soup for you!
Sorry, EFI has some great potential, but it has far too much potential for vendor abuse. The (somewhat) standardized PC BIOS has made the modern era of ubiquitous computers possible. Don't take a "step forward" too quickly without first looking to see if it will send you over a cliff.