I'll admit that this both disturbs me and comforts me at the same time.
I am disturbed by the thought of me being photographed and watched all the time, and it's not because I'm a career criminal. I enjoy having the ability to disappear for a few hours where no one can reach me or find me, but at the rate technology is proliferating soon I won't be able to go anywhere without some record of my movements being kept somewhere.
This same technology comforts me because it makes it easier for criminals and terrorists to be identified and apprehended. It is nice to know that the Super Bowl has a certain degree of security surrounding it.
Of course such thinking starts to breed terrible hypocrisy, if they watch other people that's fine, if they watch me, that's unconstitutional
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Did you actually read the article before spouting this drivel ?!?!
While it is true that the large utilities did not sell all of their plants to other wholesalers, but they did sell many of them to other companies. If you have read anything else about the crisis you would also know that electricity is being brought in from several other states who now are refusing to sell any more power to CA.
Now the CA deregulation scheme forced all electricity to be sold by wholesalers to the electric companies who would then sell to the consumer. Now your theory of PG&E conspiracy would work if they were the only wholesaler of Electricity, but they are not. There are any number of other electricity wholesalers as well as the power companies from other states selling to the utilities and unless they are in on this "price gouging" your 'theory' is bunk.
Why is it that everyone has this strong desdire to make themselves the victim of everything, instead of realizing that the price of electricity is only as high as people are willing to pay for it. They can't force you to leave your lights on and use the microwave, that is your choice, so don't come crying to me about how the mean power company is making it more expensive to microwave your burittos.
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
I know we all love our pet audio compression formats, but guess what? MP3 still rules the day. I know Tompson and Fraunhofer (sp) are still getting their royalty their bite this, but until the vorbis project is completed and in sidespread use the chances of any standalone unit being produced in the near future are slim to nil.
I'm all in favor of new and improved formats but it is very hard to replace de-facto standards (read VHS, M$ Office, etc)
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Speaking as a College Student who has their stereo hooked right to their computer and hasn't played an actual CD in months,.mp3's are far from dead. How else could I have all my music at my fingertips? If I was to convert all my.mp3s to.WAV files I would have somewhere near 100Gigs of music requiring a couple hundred dollarsd for a new HD.
As far as data loss is concerned I think it's acceptable considering the trade off. Is it worth the 5X (.shn over.mp3) expansion in size for that last small bit of audio quality? Most music already has lost most of its subtlety so it will sound good on the radio (now that's low quality, whatever happened to sattelite radio??) now if you are really serious about your sound, you won't be running your stereo from your computer and it's flimsy sound card anyway, so I think quality is mostly a non issue. (as long as you have high quality.mp3s 128kbits/sec)
Network bandwidth may be expanding, but until DVD's get really cheap/ or flash memory is as cheap as RAM,.mp3 will rule the portable audio format. Would anyone honestly trade 10 hours of.mp3 for 2 hours of.shns? (in your mp3cd player) or one hour of.mp3s for 12 minutes of.shn in your Rio player.
So.mp3 is far from dead. In my opinion.shn is the HDTV of audio, sure it's better but who's gonna spend the extra money when TV suits them just fine.
Frosty (Mark Frost)
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
In order for a wireless internet to be as successful and universal as the land-line internet the wireless net must follow the same evolution as the PC, the internet, and LINUX.
The first people to use these technologies were the technically adept who tinkered with stuff and made it work, then improved and developed the systems they had created. Eventually a wider base of technically adept users began to adopt the technology as it became more robust and user friendly. Then finally after years, the technology trickled down to the average consumer.
So the thought of all these nifty web appliances popping up in the near future is somewhat ignorant. there is virtually no wireless internet infrastructure (unless you count cell-phone and pager networks) airlink ethernet systems are attractive, but not nearly as powerful as they need to be. There are few if any products attempting to deliver true internet access (not the AT&T WirelessWeb) at this time.
so in conclusion: Yes wireless internet is feasable, and yes it is coming, but it won't be here overnight nor will it arrive with a sudden roar, but rather it will grow slowlyover the next several years before it really explodes.
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Slashdot Mirror
I'll admit that this both disturbs me and comforts me at the same time.
I am disturbed by the thought of me being photographed and watched all the time, and it's not because I'm a career criminal. I enjoy having the ability to disappear for a few hours where no one can reach me or find me, but at the rate technology is proliferating soon I won't be able to go anywhere without some record of my movements being kept somewhere.
This same technology comforts me because it makes it easier for criminals and terrorists to be identified and apprehended. It is nice to know that the Super Bowl has a certain degree of security surrounding it.
Of course such thinking starts to breed terrible hypocrisy, if they watch other people that's fine, if they watch me, that's unconstitutional
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Did you actually read the article before spouting this drivel ?!?!
While it is true that the large utilities did not sell all of their plants to other wholesalers, but they did sell many of them to other companies. If you have read anything else about the crisis you would also know that electricity is being brought in from several other states who now are refusing to sell any more power to CA.
Now the CA deregulation scheme forced all electricity to be sold by wholesalers to the electric companies who would then sell to the consumer. Now your theory of PG&E conspiracy would work if they were the only wholesaler of Electricity, but they are not. There are any number of other electricity wholesalers as well as the power companies from other states selling to the utilities and unless they are in on this "price gouging" your 'theory' is bunk.
Why is it that everyone has this strong desdire to make themselves the victim of everything, instead of realizing that the price of electricity is only as high as people are willing to pay for it. They can't force you to leave your lights on and use the microwave, that is your choice, so don't come crying to me about how the mean power company is making it more expensive to microwave your burittos.
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
I know we all love our pet audio compression formats, but guess what? MP3 still rules the day. I know Tompson and Fraunhofer (sp) are still getting their royalty their bite this, but until the vorbis project is completed and in sidespread use the chances of any standalone unit being produced in the near future are slim to nil.
I'm all in favor of new and improved formats but it is very hard to replace de-facto standards (read VHS, M$ Office, etc)
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
Speaking as a College Student who has their stereo hooked right to their computer and hasn't played an actual CD in months, .mp3's are far from dead. How else could I have all my music at my fingertips? If I was to convert all my .mp3s to .WAV files I would have somewhere near 100Gigs of music requiring a couple hundred dollarsd for a new HD.
.mp3) expansion in size for that last small bit of audio quality? Most music already has lost most of its subtlety so it will sound good on the radio (now that's low quality, whatever happened to sattelite radio??) now if you are really serious about your sound, you won't be running your stereo from your computer and it's flimsy sound card anyway, so I think quality is mostly a non issue. (as long as you have high quality .mp3s 128kbits/sec)
.mp3 will rule the portable audio format. Would anyone honestly trade 10 hours of .mp3 for 2 hours of .shns? (in your mp3cd player) or one hour of .mp3s for 12 minutes of .shn in your Rio player.
.mp3 is far from dead. In my opinion .shn is the HDTV of audio, sure it's better but who's gonna spend the extra money when TV suits them just fine.
As far as data loss is concerned I think it's acceptable considering the trade off. Is it worth the 5X (.shn over
Network bandwidth may be expanding, but until DVD's get really cheap/ or flash memory is as cheap as RAM,
So
Frosty (Mark Frost)
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random
In order for a wireless internet to be as successful and universal as the land-line internet the wireless net must follow the same evolution as the PC, the internet, and LINUX.
The first people to use these technologies were the technically adept who tinkered with stuff and made it work, then improved and developed the systems they had created. Eventually a wider base of technically adept users began to adopt the technology as it became more robust and user friendly. Then finally after years, the technology trickled down to the average consumer.
So the thought of all these nifty web appliances popping up in the near future is somewhat ignorant. there is virtually no wireless internet infrastructure (unless you count cell-phone and pager networks) airlink ethernet systems are attractive, but not nearly as powerful as they need to be. There are few if any products attempting to deliver true internet access (not the AT&T WirelessWeb) at this time.
so in conclusion:
Yes wireless internet is feasable, and yes it is coming, but it won't be here overnight nor will it arrive with a sudden roar, but rather it will grow slowlyover the next several years before it really explodes.
The simplest act of surrealism is to walk out into the street, gun in hand, and shoot at random