Actually, of that list, I would only consider one as
actually useful (mow the lawn). Another two (make lunch,
carry bag) you can at least call marginally convenient
(though personally I like my lunch made just so).
Fully six of them I'd rather not have,
thankyouverymuch.
And laughing and smiling, well, I wouldn't complain, but
I'd certainly much rather have a nice laptop...
And for those keeping count from the original list - "hugging"
and "holding hands" (and a variety of other "well-intended
physical contact" activities), when done by children,
singlehandedly takes the credit for spreading most modern
flus.
...sort of sounds like "I'll let those chickens handle that fox problem".
Close, but I'd phrase it a tad differently...
"I'll let those foxes handle that chicken problem".
And W(here)TF does the linked author get off suggesting the use of
eminent domain to solve the problem? "Hey, I've got a great idea...
The telecomms love screwing the consumers - So let's encourage
them to just steal physical property from the consumers to
facilitate their normal rape and robbery".
Riiiiiiight... That worked well with yuppie scum on the
Connecticut beachfront. Let 'em try it in Northern New
England, or the Deep South, or parts of the midwest - They
want a civil war, we'll give it to 'em. They can take the
front 6' of my yard (over and over until I no longer have a
yard and oh gee they turned down my variance, gotta sell to
Wallyworld) when my body, and my neighbors bodies, and their
neighbors bodies, and so on, ROT in that 6' ditch they want to
steal.
We don't need fuckwads like Andy Kessler giving them any
more ideas. Andy, You betrayed your real motives quite
nicely with one sentence - "Because without the ability to
extract money from the webbies for the use of their not-so-fast
Alexander Graham Bell-era wires (forget that you and I
already overpay for this)". Forget we already overpay...
No, Andy, I don't think I will forget that niggling
little factoid. We already pay! So does Google,
and I'd bet they pay boatloads more than most of us. Even
the terrible evil dark-side of Microsoft pays through the
nose for their bandwidth, and I see no need for any of us
to pay again. Yeah, so you finally lost the
tax "for" the goddamned SPANISH AMERICAN WAR. Suck it up,
Andy, and whichever baby-bell bought your soul - I just
can't hear the violins.
It's interesting how Windows on Slashdot always tends to be 10 times worse than when I ever use it.
Well, as the most obvious question - Do you get your numbers from Windows Task Manager, or from something
a bit more accurate such as Sysinternals' Process Explorer? I used the latter, with an update speed of 5s (for both
the longer sampling window and to reduce its own CPU use). And I find that it does indeed disagree with
Task manager. I'll trust procexp over taskman any day, though.
Now you've got me curious, though - I tend to tighten XP to an extreme so probably don't make the best
example (though ironically, I manke a good example in Microsoft's favor) Tomorrow I'll try a
clean install on a machine at work and see how bad it looks with things like themes, indexing, and
system restore left on. I'll give MS a break and not install SQL personal/desktop edition, however (with
which Vista will ship enabled, sucking an ungodly amount of CPU and memory).
Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU.
Welcome to the Windows world. XP, sitting doing nothing, on a native PC install, uses
between 4% and 11% of the CPU on an Athlon 64 3000.
it's under 5%...and QEMU is emulating
QEMU (and most any emulator) actually optimizes out XP's OCD-like behavior, resulting in
lower idle CPU use than the real thing. Add a moderate load, though, and watch the
difference reverse itself drastically. Virtualization should see that 20% vanish into the
actual load, while an emulator will grind to a crawl under load.
Well sure sounds like that'll BLOW AWAY 35mm film and definitely be about comprable to 4x5 film.
ISO100 film has a grain size of approximately 5 microns, which corresponds to a resolution of 36MP. Standard
4k scanning (12.5MP) captures all the detail in anthing short of the pro-est of the pro, and 8k scanning (54MP)
all but guarantees that even future advances in scanner technology won't have the ability to extract any further
detail from a 35mm negative.
You would need godlike optics, bright light, and a perfectly still subject and camera to come anywhere near that
36MP with ISO100 35mm film, but it represents a sort of upper limit at that speed. 4x5in film therefore has an
effective resolution (at something comparable to ISO100) of 500MP.
So, this can effectively replace 35mm film in terms of resolution. It falls a bit short of replacing
truly professional-quality film, however. But then, how often do you need to print out your personal
pics at literally bilboard size?
Traffic light cameras in the United States have been playing games
with people who have been modifying their plates with additional
paints and plastic covers that either impose polarizing refraction
or light scattering techniques.
I don't recall the link, but one of the belief/product debunking
sites did a study a few months ago comparing every one of those
license plate paints/covers/laminates on the market. Under
perfect conditions, a few of the polarizing laminates
actually did obscure the plate enough to make it unreadable. Under
99.9% of real-world conditions, nothing on the market had any
noticeable effect on plate readability. And the page included
pictures from the test to prove it.
Of course, rather than putting up with having your rights stripped
away, you could push for sane legislation (or move to a state that
already has it, such as my own), where only actual human
officers have the power to give you a ticket (we have a few cameras,
but they can only result in warnings rather than tickets).
Brought to you by your local police and proection
agency: To Serve - and Collect.
Hey, just because accident rates at known-photographed intersections
go up drastically, doesn't mean Officer Friendly doesn't
have your best interest at heart. Why, just think how much those
cameras will save you on insurance when they show conclusively that
the other guy, the one who plastered your brains across the
road, caused the accident! The very thought makes me shiver with the warm
'n fuzzies.
Here's a bookmarklet that gives you the full-size original photo: "Get Flickr Original."
Holy Batman, Batman!
And here I thought myself clever for the suggestion to use "Nuke Anything" to remove the
transparent div.
Best javascript trick I've seen this month... Even if it just sticks an "_o"
on the end, I didn't realize Flickr kept the original, I thought they downsampled
everything to 400x500 (or 500x400) for the sake of space.
yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting.
Umm...
Right-click. "Save As".
For those images that use "protection", I recommed the wonderful "Nuke Anything" plugin
for FireFox... Just right-click the image, "Remove this object" to get rid of the
transparent image over it, then you can save it.
And yes, for the "didn't read the FP" Nazis, I realize that the API does not
equal the actual webpage - I just consider the distinction irrelevant.
I don't see the merit of comparing consoles from different generations for their power
comsumption. Of course they need more juice... but they're doing a lot more with it
I know, right? Just like cars... You compare a Model T with a Prius, and it
went from 25mpg to over 50mpg! Twice as high! But modern cars can go quite
a lot faster and have far more weight-adding safety features, of course, as well air
conditioning and an ever increasing number of electronic devices on-board.
Oh, gee, waitasec... Higher mpg means it uses less fuel. Funny, that...
The merit of comparing different generations comes from the fact that the price of
electricity has basically remained constant (adjusted up a bit for inflation), while
the power consumption has gone up drastically. Yes, they have far more powerful CPUs...
They might even get better MIPS per Watt. But their core purpose, playing video games,
remains the same. A 6W PS1 provides me just as much entertainment as a 165W Xbox360.
Now - I would agree that $20/year in electricity won't break the bank. But continuing the
trend, will the next gen use a kilowatt? Will the one after that require a dedicated
circuit because it would trip a "mere" 20A breaker? When what amounts to a way to waste
time starts costing half its purchase price in electricity every year, then would
you consider an inter-generational comparison relevant?
Why would anybody want to use a linux distro based on an old developers version of the kernel?
Well, the FP did read: "included benefiting the stability and overall experience opposed to recent
Linux kernel releases.' The question is, is anyone listening?"...
Let's face it - Since the pre-1.2 line, 2.6 has some of the worst stability ever seen.
Yes, it also supports quite a few nice things (like massively better USB support than
its predecessors), but anyone using it on critical systems needs a lobotomy.
Of course, I wouldn't give SCO anywhere near so much credit as to go
back to what amounts to 2.4 with a few backports of the best of the 2.6 line...
So their motivation? I'd put my money on either "ignorance" or "more
legal BS".
DRM the technology is not evil, BAD uses of DRM are
Agreed. At the moment, however, all uses of DRM count as "bad".
And I use that universal quantifier deliberately, not sloppily.
If you are too slow to catch on, the same rhetoric
Interesting choice of words... Starting a comment about effective
speaking/writing ability with an ad hominem.
the same rhetoric that you, and every other anti-drm the technology
people spew, can be said about ANY technology.
Can it?
"All uses of [computers] count as bad". Hmm, no, that doesn't hold.
"All uses of [digital media] count as bad". Nope.
"All uses of [Slashdot] count as bad". Well, perhaps time-wasting, but...;-)
"All uses of [technology] count as bad"? Evidently you have a false premise.
Yes, all technology can lead to change, whether social, legal, economic, medical,
or what-have-you. Some change we may consider "good", some change "bad". How
do you divide the two, though? Personally, I would say that change leading
to increased personal freedom; to better health; to mutual financial benefit;
to generally increased happyness among the largest group possible - we should call
"good". Change that decreases our freedoms; that makes us less healthy; that benefits
one at the expense of another; that decreases overall happyness - we should call "bad".
DRM, as its very reason for existing, reduces our available choices. It profits the
few at the expense of the many. It makes no one happy, as even those who benefit from
it use it only out of a paranoid fear of those out to infringe on "their" intellectual property.
For those reasons, as well as the more obvious slippery slope, I consider DRM "bad".
YMMV.
just because you can't think of any use for them NOW, or the implementations
NOW are bad, does not mean that in 5-10 years that situation will still exist.
In 5-10 years perhaps I'll agree with you.
Of course, if I have it right, in 5-10 years we'll have to scrawl
conversations like this on a subway wall because the new Verizon(tm)
Slashdot(R) Forums(C) won't allow me to post words like "DRM", "democracy",
or "falun gong".
Document dissemination by governments/companies where you want
to absolutely verify that either they sent it to you
That doesn't take DRM, it just takes a digital signature
or you are the only one who can manipulate/read it are one case
where well implemented DRM would be beneficial.
...Until you need to show that document in court to prove your innocense in
some matter, but thanks to the chip in your head, no one but you can see it.
But that couldn't happen, because of course we'd always let the
government have master decryption keys, and the government would never
engage in any wrongdoing of a nature where they might block the decryption
of politically damaging evidence... Right?
Or, any place that the artist(not the publisher) wants to protect their work.
Protect it from what? You've just described one of the biggest
problems with DRM, not a good reason for it. Even ignoring our
fair use "rights", how will you feel when you go to show your grandkids
your favorite (but obscure) childhood book, only to find it no longer
in print, and the only copy you have uses your own retinal static (encoded
at the time of purchase) as the decryption key? Does that "protect" the
artist, or just condemn him to historical oblivion?
Companies internal documents, to aid in ensuring that they don't get "leaked".
Yeah, real pity we plebes learned about the NSA spying on us; about Enron and Worldcom,
about Israel's nuclear program (which, incidentally, broke international law no less
than Iran's); And let's not forget the recently unmasked "Deep Throat", who ruined the
career of a nice friendly honest guy like Nixon.
DRM will not fix all the problems in the above senarios
Yes, actually, it can - The problem here comes from those scenarios having
a far more obvious dark side than a bright side.
I don't think you work as an industry shill, because you sound sincere.
But you need to realize that every application of DRM, even
the ones you might contextually call "good", can and will come back
to bite us.
I just hope they allow eventually you to roll
your own rulebooks with the elements of individual
PDFs. That would be especially handy.
Psst - You can break the rules!
Really!
If everyone in your gaming group agrees a particular
rule sucks - ignore it. If you hate using
spell memorization rather than per-level MP (my own
biggest peeve), just use MP and to hell with memorization.
If you think a fixed exp per kill leads to mindless
killing sprees and dungeon crawling, make better use
of roleplaying-based advancement.
Cool, so the DRM comes pre-cracked, and these should appear
online within a month or so.;-)
On a more seriously note - I think RPG rulebooks work better
in physical form. Granted, you can't drag an entire shelf
of books around with you, but the players guide, DMs guide,
and whatever setting-specific guide applies to your campaign,
doesn't really take that much effort - The Dew and snacks
for the evening probably weigh more than the books you
need.
And as for looking up a particular rule... C'mon, admit it
folks - you have the rulebooks all but memorized, and
just need to check whether half-ogre gets a 15% or 20%
racial modifier to damage with a double-handed flail...
Sigh... And after writing the above, guess what captcha I
get? "losers". Not so subtle hint, oh Gods of Slashdot?
Artificially simulating higher quality or sharper images is detrimental to the
whole idea of experiencing what the filmmakers originally intended for you to see.
Ah, I see you work as some form of self-proclaimed "artist", horribly offended
when we plebes "corrupt your vision"...
if a film's supposed to be dark, don't crank the brightness up to 5000%.
Stories that take place in the dark work well in books. I've enjoyed quite a few
where the absence of light played a key role in the story.
Movies, however, use light to convey information to our light-receptive sensory organs,
the "eyes".
If you want to write a book, do so. If you want to make a movie, do so. But don't
pretend that 90 minutes of swirly-blackness-with-sound counts as the latter.
In any case, upscaling is a stupid feature to tout
I agree, but for a completely different reason.
"Why?", you might ask?
Because every 1080p TV on the market can already do the job (I can
safely make that statement an absolute - You only have a half dozen choices
to pick from, the rest either only do 1080i or advertise themselves as
monitors rather than TVs).
especially juxtaposed to such a high price for a presumably intelligent bleeding-edge prosumer market.
Juxtaposed to such a high price? Ummm... You might want to look that
word up in the near future.
As for the bleeding-edge buyers - They make toys cheap for the rest of us a
year or two later. Yeah, you and I would never blow a grand on an unnecessary
first-gen product; but in a few years, when the price drops by 3/4ths and even
cheesy daytime soaps have such clarity that you can see the ageing actors' wrinkles,
we'll thank those suckers who paid the R&D costs for us.:-)
The donations they are inviting (free labor), that aim
at obtaining biodiversity, look like a biopiracy effort,
wherein the idea of appropriation and "exploitation" with
lack of due compensantion is the main point - through
patenting including.
Patents expire.
The dirt I walk on has no value to me beyond its ability to
grow plants. These guys don't want enough that it reduces
my ability to have a nice perennial garden.
If some company can grant me immorality (even at a steep price)
in exchange for something I have zero ability to use, good for
them.
The whole "stealing from the natives" biopiracy argument
really pisses me off. Those people have nothing not because we
take their dirt, but because they lack the technology to do
anything with their dirt, and exotic plants, and creepy insects, and
the like. And when we leave them alone, what happens? Gee, they
cut down the plants, kill the insects, and then complain that we
exploited them when they discover that rainforests form the single
most efficient organic recycling system known to man (ie, the dirt
sucks and you can't grow anything in it for more than a few years).
I hate "Corporate America" as much as the next sane fellow... But
let's give them credit where they deserve it. Literally in exchange
for something worthless, they give the entire world the opportunity
to live longer and better.
Anyone care to shed some light on how rebuilding
arrays compares when using intelligent vs host-based
controllers?
Sure.
All the BIOS RAID interfaces I've seen (mostly MegaRaid
and Adaptec) suck hard. About as friendly as a cobra,
and slightly more dangerous if you do the wrong thing.
Software RAID interfaces can do better - But few
actually do.
However, I wouldn't suggest choosing one or the other based
on the friendlyness of rebuilding - Whichever you choose, when
you eventually need to replace a drive in the array, you go
step-by-painful-step following the manual, and calling tech
support if you see any ambiguity at all. You don't trust
Clippy to tell you "So it looks like you need to rebuild
your RAID..."
I personally choose BIOS managed over software managed for one
simple reason - You don't need to screw with drivers, and
while the host OS can still wipe out your data, it at least
has to do so at the filesystem level rather than by breaking
the underlying RAID.
His institutional affiliation engages in torture,
genocide, overt bigotry, and refuses to allow open
elections for its board of directors.
He mentions (at least) three co-researchers with hundreds of
assistants, yet has no other credited authors and not even a
bibliography on his only work.
He didn't include a "methods" section to allow independant
verification of his results.
He admits destroying unsuccessful samples via aqueous immersion.
In the second half, he switches midstream from his primary subject
to some poor bastard that, in an ethical lapse no IRB would ever
authorize, he dispassionately allows the natives to torture and kill.
C'mon, the guy makes Hwang Woo Suk look credible. Good luck getting
that grant renewal, God... Hope you can get by with unpaid undergrads.
First - Although I sound negative here, I mostly agree with you. Just
wanted to point out some matters of opinion that I think need exploring...
The problem isn't native-code vs interpretive code. It's that our native
code languages are terribly flawed. Programming backed itself into a corner
with C and C++. They're useful languages, but they're not safe.
Some things take work to do correctly. Every point you've made about
C, I would also make - in its defense. Every "improvement" in C++, I would
point to as a step in the wrong direction... OO sounds great in theory - "Imagine
a CPU with object-level parallelism!", they all said - But those CPUs never
came. Why? Because "object level parallelism" means nothing more than
massive multithreading of proceedural code, separated by nothing
more special than a pointer. GC sounds great in theory - Except that the
exact same programming flaws that used to lead to glaringly obvious null
pointer exceptions now lead to impossible-to-find memory leaks whereby an
app's working set grows without bounds until it eventually crashes.
You can give a monkey better tools, but they still need to understand that
those funny "spirally ribbed" nails don't go in via a hammer.
In practice, programmers in those languages seldom have to think
about memory allocation issues.
And, unfortunately - It shows!
For two years now, I've found myself doing C#, now under.NET 2.0. And
damn me if even toy apps don't eventually grow to eat dozens of megs,
with anything serious all but impossible in under a hundred megs. "But
your PC has what, two gigs of RAM these days?" Yeah, two gigs I'd rather
use than wipe MS's ass with.
but we on the software side should have the understanding and grace
to be embarassed by it.
Consider me suitably embarrassed.
Every time someone asks me what I do for a living, and I debate
whether or not the answer will lead to the obvious followups "why
does my three month old computer run so slow" or "why does Windows
crash on me every time I..." - I feel properly ashamed at what
our universities turn out as CS grads. Every time I have to work
around a crippling "safety" device in.NET, I curse the morons that
make such absurdities a necessary part of a programming language
("Warning! Do not remove foam packing from the hammer! Severe
injury or death may result!").
But merely having the capacity is not controlling; it may be taken as a threat if
there is already a bad, untrusting relationship, but that has nothing to do with the technology.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was
guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any
rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live,
from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was
overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Slashdot Mirror
Because in a "Feeding Homeless Children Act," the broadcast flag provision wouldn't be the line veto'd.
Plus-fucking-five insightful!
Don't hide behind AC for comments like that, take the credit you deserve!
Laptops can't...
;-)
But Mexicans can.
Actually, of that list, I would only consider one as actually useful (mow the lawn). Another two (make lunch, carry bag) you can at least call marginally convenient (though personally I like my lunch made just so).
Fully six of them I'd rather not have, thankyouverymuch.
And laughing and smiling, well, I wouldn't complain, but I'd certainly much rather have a nice laptop...
And for those keeping count from the original list - "hugging" and "holding hands" (and a variety of other "well-intended physical contact" activities), when done by children, singlehandedly takes the credit for spreading most modern flus.
It's from the Gamasutra article
D'oh!
Okay, I admit only skimming (okay, really just scrolling quite fast and looking at the pretty pictures) TFM. My bad.
Thanks.
DITOMOBAG - Do you recognize this acronym?
Actually, I'll admit it - No, I do not.
Nor does Google, nor Wikipedia, nor the Urban Dictionary.
Would you kindly expand it for me?
...sort of sounds like "I'll let those chickens handle that fox problem".
Close, but I'd phrase it a tad differently...
"I'll let those foxes handle that chicken problem".
And W(here)TF does the linked author get off suggesting the use of eminent domain to solve the problem? "Hey, I've got a great idea... The telecomms love screwing the consumers - So let's encourage them to just steal physical property from the consumers to facilitate their normal rape and robbery".
Riiiiiiight... That worked well with yuppie scum on the Connecticut beachfront. Let 'em try it in Northern New England, or the Deep South, or parts of the midwest - They want a civil war, we'll give it to 'em. They can take the front 6' of my yard (over and over until I no longer have a yard and oh gee they turned down my variance, gotta sell to Wallyworld) when my body, and my neighbors bodies, and their neighbors bodies, and so on, ROT in that 6' ditch they want to steal.
We don't need fuckwads like Andy Kessler giving them any more ideas. Andy, You betrayed your real motives quite nicely with one sentence - "Because without the ability to extract money from the webbies for the use of their not-so-fast Alexander Graham Bell-era wires (forget that you and I already overpay for this)". Forget we already overpay... No, Andy, I don't think I will forget that niggling little factoid. We already pay! So does Google, and I'd bet they pay boatloads more than most of us. Even the terrible evil dark-side of Microsoft pays through the nose for their bandwidth, and I see no need for any of us to pay again. Yeah, so you finally lost the tax "for" the goddamned SPANISH AMERICAN WAR. Suck it up, Andy, and whichever baby-bell bought your soul - I just can't hear the violins.
It's interesting how Windows on Slashdot always tends to be 10 times worse than when I ever use it.
Well, as the most obvious question - Do you get your numbers from Windows Task Manager, or from something a bit more accurate such as Sysinternals' Process Explorer? I used the latter, with an update speed of 5s (for both the longer sampling window and to reduce its own CPU use). And I find that it does indeed disagree with Task manager. I'll trust procexp over taskman any day, though.
Now you've got me curious, though - I tend to tighten XP to an extreme so probably don't make the best example (though ironically, I manke a good example in Microsoft's favor) Tomorrow I'll try a clean install on a machine at work and see how bad it looks with things like themes, indexing, and system restore left on. I'll give MS a break and not install SQL personal/desktop edition, however (with which Vista will ship enabled, sucking an ungodly amount of CPU and memory).
Seriously- XP, sitting doing nothing, nothing open- uses 20% of my Macbook's CPU.
Welcome to the Windows world. XP, sitting doing nothing, on a native PC install, uses between 4% and 11% of the CPU on an Athlon 64 3000.
it's under 5%...and QEMU is emulating
QEMU (and most any emulator) actually optimizes out XP's OCD-like behavior, resulting in lower idle CPU use than the real thing. Add a moderate load, though, and watch the difference reverse itself drastically. Virtualization should see that 20% vanish into the actual load, while an emulator will grind to a crawl under load.
Well sure sounds like that'll BLOW AWAY 35mm film and definitely be about comprable to 4x5 film.
ISO100 film has a grain size of approximately 5 microns, which corresponds to a resolution of 36MP. Standard 4k scanning (12.5MP) captures all the detail in anthing short of the pro-est of the pro, and 8k scanning (54MP) all but guarantees that even future advances in scanner technology won't have the ability to extract any further detail from a 35mm negative.
You would need godlike optics, bright light, and a perfectly still subject and camera to come anywhere near that 36MP with ISO100 35mm film, but it represents a sort of upper limit at that speed. 4x5in film therefore has an effective resolution (at something comparable to ISO100) of 500MP.
So, this can effectively replace 35mm film in terms of resolution. It falls a bit short of replacing truly professional-quality film, however. But then, how often do you need to print out your personal pics at literally bilboard size?
Traffic light cameras in the United States have been playing games with people who have been modifying their plates with additional paints and plastic covers that either impose polarizing refraction or light scattering techniques.
I don't recall the link, but one of the belief/product debunking sites did a study a few months ago comparing every one of those license plate paints/covers/laminates on the market. Under perfect conditions, a few of the polarizing laminates actually did obscure the plate enough to make it unreadable. Under 99.9% of real-world conditions, nothing on the market had any noticeable effect on plate readability. And the page included pictures from the test to prove it.
Of course, rather than putting up with having your rights stripped away, you could push for sane legislation (or move to a state that already has it, such as my own), where only actual human officers have the power to give you a ticket (we have a few cameras, but they can only result in warnings rather than tickets).
Brought to you by your local police and proection agency: To Serve - and Collect.
Hey, just because accident rates at known-photographed intersections go up drastically, doesn't mean Officer Friendly doesn't have your best interest at heart. Why, just think how much those cameras will save you on insurance when they show conclusively that the other guy, the one who plastered your brains across the road, caused the accident! The very thought makes me shiver with the warm 'n fuzzies.
Here's a bookmarklet that gives you the full-size original photo: "Get Flickr Original."
Holy Batman, Batman!
And here I thought myself clever for the suggestion to use "Nuke Anything" to remove the transparent div.
Best javascript trick I've seen this month... Even if it just sticks an "_o" on the end, I didn't realize Flickr kept the original, I thought they downsampled everything to 400x500 (or 500x400) for the sake of space.
Thank you!
yet Flickr's API only allows uploading, not exporting.
Umm...
Right-click. "Save As".
For those images that use "protection", I recommed the wonderful "Nuke Anything" plugin for FireFox... Just right-click the image, "Remove this object" to get rid of the transparent image over it, then you can save it.
And yes, for the "didn't read the FP" Nazis, I realize that the API does not equal the actual webpage - I just consider the distinction irrelevant.
I don't see the merit of comparing consoles from different generations for their power comsumption. Of course they need more juice... but they're doing a lot more with it
I know, right? Just like cars... You compare a Model T with a Prius, and it went from 25mpg to over 50mpg! Twice as high! But modern cars can go quite a lot faster and have far more weight-adding safety features, of course, as well air conditioning and an ever increasing number of electronic devices on-board.
Oh, gee, waitasec... Higher mpg means it uses less fuel. Funny, that...
The merit of comparing different generations comes from the fact that the price of electricity has basically remained constant (adjusted up a bit for inflation), while the power consumption has gone up drastically. Yes, they have far more powerful CPUs... They might even get better MIPS per Watt. But their core purpose, playing video games, remains the same. A 6W PS1 provides me just as much entertainment as a 165W Xbox360.
Now - I would agree that $20/year in electricity won't break the bank. But continuing the trend, will the next gen use a kilowatt? Will the one after that require a dedicated circuit because it would trip a "mere" 20A breaker? When what amounts to a way to waste time starts costing half its purchase price in electricity every year, then would you consider an inter-generational comparison relevant?
Why would anybody want to use a linux distro based on an old developers version of the kernel?
Well, the FP did read: "included benefiting the stability and overall experience opposed to recent Linux kernel releases.' The question is, is anyone listening?"...
Let's face it - Since the pre-1.2 line, 2.6 has some of the worst stability ever seen. Yes, it also supports quite a few nice things (like massively better USB support than its predecessors), but anyone using it on critical systems needs a lobotomy.
Of course, I wouldn't give SCO anywhere near so much credit as to go back to what amounts to 2.4 with a few backports of the best of the 2.6 line... So their motivation? I'd put my money on either "ignorance" or "more legal BS".
DRM the technology is not evil, BAD uses of DRM are
;-)
Agreed. At the moment, however, all uses of DRM count as "bad". And I use that universal quantifier deliberately, not sloppily.
If you are too slow to catch on, the same rhetoric
Interesting choice of words... Starting a comment about effective speaking/writing ability with an ad hominem.
the same rhetoric that you, and every other anti-drm the technology people spew, can be said about ANY technology.
Can it?
"All uses of [computers] count as bad". Hmm, no, that doesn't hold.
"All uses of [digital media] count as bad". Nope.
"All uses of [Slashdot] count as bad". Well, perhaps time-wasting, but...
"All uses of [technology] count as bad"? Evidently you have a false premise.
Yes, all technology can lead to change, whether social, legal, economic, medical, or what-have-you. Some change we may consider "good", some change "bad". How do you divide the two, though? Personally, I would say that change leading to increased personal freedom; to better health; to mutual financial benefit; to generally increased happyness among the largest group possible - we should call "good". Change that decreases our freedoms; that makes us less healthy; that benefits one at the expense of another; that decreases overall happyness - we should call "bad".
DRM, as its very reason for existing, reduces our available choices. It profits the few at the expense of the many. It makes no one happy, as even those who benefit from it use it only out of a paranoid fear of those out to infringe on "their" intellectual property. For those reasons, as well as the more obvious slippery slope, I consider DRM "bad".
YMMV.
just because you can't think of any use for them NOW, or the implementations NOW are bad, does not mean that in 5-10 years that situation will still exist.
In 5-10 years perhaps I'll agree with you.
Of course, if I have it right, in 5-10 years we'll have to scrawl conversations like this on a subway wall because the new Verizon(tm) Slashdot(R) Forums(C) won't allow me to post words like "DRM", "democracy", or "falun gong".
Document dissemination by governments/companies where you want to absolutely verify that either they sent it to you
...Until you need to show that document in court to prove your innocense in
some matter, but thanks to the chip in your head, no one but you can see it.
But that couldn't happen, because of course we'd always let the
government have master decryption keys, and the government would never
engage in any wrongdoing of a nature where they might block the decryption
of politically damaging evidence... Right?
That doesn't take DRM, it just takes a digital signature
or you are the only one who can manipulate/read it are one case where well implemented DRM would be beneficial.
Or, any place that the artist(not the publisher) wants to protect their work.
Protect it from what? You've just described one of the biggest problems with DRM, not a good reason for it. Even ignoring our fair use "rights", how will you feel when you go to show your grandkids your favorite (but obscure) childhood book, only to find it no longer in print, and the only copy you have uses your own retinal static (encoded at the time of purchase) as the decryption key? Does that "protect" the artist, or just condemn him to historical oblivion?
Companies internal documents, to aid in ensuring that they don't get "leaked".
Yeah, real pity we plebes learned about the NSA spying on us; about Enron and Worldcom, about Israel's nuclear program (which, incidentally, broke international law no less than Iran's); And let's not forget the recently unmasked "Deep Throat", who ruined the career of a nice friendly honest guy like Nixon.
DRM will not fix all the problems in the above senarios
Yes, actually, it can - The problem here comes from those scenarios having a far more obvious dark side than a bright side.
I don't think you work as an industry shill, because you sound sincere. But you need to realize that every application of DRM, even the ones you might contextually call "good", can and will come back to bite us.
Why did you get a captcha? I never get that when logged in.
I usually don't log in until ready to post... So, for my first post of the current browsing session, I get a captcha.
I just hope they allow eventually you to roll your own rulebooks with the elements of individual PDFs. That would be especially handy.
Psst - You can break the rules!
Really!
If everyone in your gaming group agrees a particular rule sucks - ignore it. If you hate using spell memorization rather than per-level MP (my own biggest peeve), just use MP and to hell with memorization. If you think a fixed exp per kill leads to mindless killing sprees and dungeon crawling, make better use of roleplaying-based advancement.
Cool, so the DRM comes pre-cracked, and these should appear online within a month or so. ;-)
On a more seriously note - I think RPG rulebooks work better in physical form. Granted, you can't drag an entire shelf of books around with you, but the players guide, DMs guide, and whatever setting-specific guide applies to your campaign, doesn't really take that much effort - The Dew and snacks for the evening probably weigh more than the books you need.
And as for looking up a particular rule... C'mon, admit it folks - you have the rulebooks all but memorized, and just need to check whether half-ogre gets a 15% or 20% racial modifier to damage with a double-handed flail...
Sigh... And after writing the above, guess what captcha I get? "losers". Not so subtle hint, oh Gods of Slashdot?
Artificially simulating higher quality or sharper images is detrimental to the whole idea of experiencing what the filmmakers originally intended for you to see.
:-)
Ah, I see you work as some form of self-proclaimed "artist", horribly offended when we plebes "corrupt your vision"...
if a film's supposed to be dark, don't crank the brightness up to 5000%.
Stories that take place in the dark work well in books. I've enjoyed quite a few where the absence of light played a key role in the story.
Movies, however, use light to convey information to our light-receptive sensory organs, the "eyes".
If you want to write a book, do so. If you want to make a movie, do so. But don't pretend that 90 minutes of swirly-blackness-with-sound counts as the latter.
In any case, upscaling is a stupid feature to tout
I agree, but for a completely different reason.
"Why?", you might ask?
Because every 1080p TV on the market can already do the job (I can safely make that statement an absolute - You only have a half dozen choices to pick from, the rest either only do 1080i or advertise themselves as monitors rather than TVs).
especially juxtaposed to such a high price for a presumably intelligent bleeding-edge prosumer market.
Juxtaposed to such a high price? Ummm... You might want to look that word up in the near future.
As for the bleeding-edge buyers - They make toys cheap for the rest of us a year or two later. Yeah, you and I would never blow a grand on an unnecessary first-gen product; but in a few years, when the price drops by 3/4ths and even cheesy daytime soaps have such clarity that you can see the ageing actors' wrinkles, we'll thank those suckers who paid the R&D costs for us.
The donations they are inviting (free labor), that aim at obtaining biodiversity, look like a biopiracy effort, wherein the idea of appropriation and "exploitation" with lack of due compensantion is the main point - through patenting including.
Patents expire.
The dirt I walk on has no value to me beyond its ability to grow plants. These guys don't want enough that it reduces my ability to have a nice perennial garden.
If some company can grant me immorality (even at a steep price) in exchange for something I have zero ability to use, good for them.
The whole "stealing from the natives" biopiracy argument really pisses me off. Those people have nothing not because we take their dirt, but because they lack the technology to do anything with their dirt, and exotic plants, and creepy insects, and the like. And when we leave them alone, what happens? Gee, they cut down the plants, kill the insects, and then complain that we exploited them when they discover that rainforests form the single most efficient organic recycling system known to man (ie, the dirt sucks and you can't grow anything in it for more than a few years).
I hate "Corporate America" as much as the next sane fellow... But let's give them credit where they deserve it. Literally in exchange for something worthless, they give the entire world the opportunity to live longer and better.
Anyone care to shed some light on how rebuilding arrays compares when using intelligent vs host-based controllers?
Sure.
All the BIOS RAID interfaces I've seen (mostly MegaRaid and Adaptec) suck hard. About as friendly as a cobra, and slightly more dangerous if you do the wrong thing.
Software RAID interfaces can do better - But few actually do.
However, I wouldn't suggest choosing one or the other based on the friendlyness of rebuilding - Whichever you choose, when you eventually need to replace a drive in the array, you go step-by-painful-step following the manual, and calling tech support if you see any ambiguity at all. You don't trust Clippy to tell you "So it looks like you need to rebuild your RAID..."
I personally choose BIOS managed over software managed for one simple reason - You don't need to screw with drivers, and while the host OS can still wipe out your data, it at least has to do so at the filesystem level rather than by breaking the underlying RAID.
If you love God, why not read up on his work?
His institutional affiliation engages in torture, genocide, overt bigotry, and refuses to allow open elections for its board of directors.
He mentions (at least) three co-researchers with hundreds of assistants, yet has no other credited authors and not even a bibliography on his only work.
He didn't include a "methods" section to allow independant verification of his results.
He admits destroying unsuccessful samples via aqueous immersion.
In the second half, he switches midstream from his primary subject to some poor bastard that, in an ethical lapse no IRB would ever authorize, he dispassionately allows the natives to torture and kill.
C'mon, the guy makes Hwang Woo Suk look credible. Good luck getting that grant renewal, God... Hope you can get by with unpaid undergrads.
First - Although I sound negative here, I mostly agree with you. Just wanted to point out some matters of opinion that I think need exploring...
.NET 2.0. And
damn me if even toy apps don't eventually grow to eat dozens of megs,
with anything serious all but impossible in under a hundred megs. "But
your PC has what, two gigs of RAM these days?" Yeah, two gigs I'd rather
use than wipe MS's ass with.
.NET, I curse the morons that
make such absurdities a necessary part of a programming language
("Warning! Do not remove foam packing from the hammer! Severe
injury or death may result!").
The problem isn't native-code vs interpretive code. It's that our native code languages are terribly flawed. Programming backed itself into a corner with C and C++. They're useful languages, but they're not safe.
Some things take work to do correctly. Every point you've made about C, I would also make - in its defense. Every "improvement" in C++, I would point to as a step in the wrong direction... OO sounds great in theory - "Imagine a CPU with object-level parallelism!", they all said - But those CPUs never came. Why? Because "object level parallelism" means nothing more than massive multithreading of proceedural code, separated by nothing more special than a pointer. GC sounds great in theory - Except that the exact same programming flaws that used to lead to glaringly obvious null pointer exceptions now lead to impossible-to-find memory leaks whereby an app's working set grows without bounds until it eventually crashes.
You can give a monkey better tools, but they still need to understand that those funny "spirally ribbed" nails don't go in via a hammer.
In practice, programmers in those languages seldom have to think about memory allocation issues.
And, unfortunately - It shows!
For two years now, I've found myself doing C#, now under
but we on the software side should have the understanding and grace to be embarassed by it.
Consider me suitably embarrassed.
Every time someone asks me what I do for a living, and I debate whether or not the answer will lead to the obvious followups "why does my three month old computer run so slow" or "why does Windows crash on me every time I..." - I feel properly ashamed at what our universities turn out as CS grads. Every time I have to work around a crippling "safety" device in
But merely having the capacity is not controlling; it may be taken as a threat if there is already a bad, untrusting relationship, but that has nothing to do with the technology.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
If only I could sell this theory to my wife.
You won't need to - Women have understood this principle for far longer than we mere males...
"Anything wrong, hon?"
"Nothing."