OK, so children today are overmedicated. How to you jump from that to this unfounded claim that they're causing cancer?
I'll easily grant you that bacterial immunity of antibiotics is a very bad thing, but to make the audacious claim that it causes cancer is going a bit overboard, no?
please don't talk about RMS like he's a prophet. he's scary enough as it is.
as much as I hate draconian DRM, I find it virtually impossible to agree with stallman's extremeist-far-left views.
if you want to ask him about privacy, you should ask him why he didn't password-protect his publically available UNIX account until the 90's, and yet argues continuously about privacy. something in that ideology just doesn't make sense....
The clerk for the second store, after receiving my request, spoke into a walkie-talkie in his native language and then quoted me the same price. Now, perhaps it was coincidental, but both clerks appeared to be Indian. I didn't buy the VCR from either store.
Just a little bit racist, no? Just because someone speaks a foreign language, they're immeidately suspect? Isn't it possible that both dealers quoted you MSRP minux 10% or something to that effect? It's not extremely likely, but definitely not out of the realm of probability either.
Oh, and go use that new VCR to watch Crash while you're at it.
That's nice and all for a film camera, but for a DSLR, there are several very distinct advantages for me, multilens support being only one of them.
I actually *like* having a real viewfinder. A low-resolution EVF or LCD screen just doesn't cut it for me, especially when taking shots that utilize a very shallow or very deep depth of field.
Secondly, the fact that there is virtually no power-on lag, and that there is absolutely no shutter lag is a big plus. Likewise, my canon DSLR dumps images (even RAW) to the CF card at a rate that is fast enough to let me shoot more or less continuously. Because of the huge benefits of RAW processing, I always shoot in RAW, and the fact that the sony requires a 9 second lag to save a RAW image makes the fature virutally worthless.
The single biggest feature of the DSLR however, is the ability to shoot in ISO 1600 or 3200 mode with very little visible noise. Imagine being able to take pictures in low light and indoors without a flash... It's that good. Fortunately, according to DPReview, ISO1600 performance is indeed above that of a normal compact camera, but not quite up to par with a real DSLR. This, in my mind, is the camera's ONLY saving grace. Unfortunately, they aren't the first to do this, and Fuji's approach doesn't require an expensive full-sized APS-C sensor (and lens to match) to do so which means they can implement it in a compact camera.
(in short, fuji's SuperCCD sensor has a bunch of extra photosensors that are normally used to extrapolate a little additional resolution, but in the case of the F10, these sensors are used to reduce noise in the surrounding sensors, resulting in fully-usable ISO1600 images. Sony's approach simply uses a larger sensor like in a DSLR, where the density of the photosensors is much lower, resulting in less electrical noise overall. The innovation here is that sony's camera has no real shutter/mirror mechanism which means that the sensor is exposed to light whenever the camera is on, allowing residual charges (noise) to build up on the CCD that have to be somehow 'cleared' before the photo is taken, hence the shutter lag.)
Egh. Maybe I just had a bad batch, but the Whole Foods 365 brand cola tasted awful, and was barely carbonated.
I've had european coke, and must say that it's without a doubt better than its american counterpart (and also a lot more expensive). The whole foods cola did not give me that same experience.
(That said, Whole Foods is an awesome place. It's hard to argue with food that not only tastes better, but is better for you.)
We're not talking about 'pretty' here. The main gripe the mac community has with programs like this is that they do not follow the conventions of a normal OS X user interface. A 'pretty' media player would have the same problem.
The strength of the Cocoa and Carbon windowing toolkits has allowed many first-rate applications to be developed without requiring the developers to resort to creating their own (ugly) controls. Windows has been guilty of this on many accounts, and microsoft's only beginning to make up for it with.NET. It's not uncommon to see custom UIs in Windows such as Winamp, GEarth, iTunes, Trillian, etc.... because the standard UI controls available are simply not sufficent to create a usable, streamlined application that's also visually appealing.
In contrast, GEarth could operate just fine using standard OS X controls and conforming to the OS X UI Guidelines. Using a standardized toolkit also has many nice perks like that drag-and-drop *always* works.
yes. somewhere on the drivecase, there's a teeny-tiny little hole for the purpose of allowing interior pressure to stay equal to the outside atmospheric pressure. (Look for a label saying 'do not cover this hole' or something to that extent. most older drives have one)
Microsoft's oneNote (the new notetaking app bundled with office) has no 'save' function to speak of. It looks like the industry is taking the hint, and it's already being phased out where it can.
many RAW image editing apps also do not have a save function for the simple reason that all RAW manipulations are nondestructive, and thus, nothing is potentially lost by saving every step along the way.
You look like a windows user, and I feel your pain. Apple's ports to Windows have a reputation for sucking. I should point out that iTunes and Quicktime don't suck anywhere nearly as much in OS X -- I know this will sound somewhat fanboy-ish, but it's definitely true that the GUI conventions used in iTunes make a whole lot more sense when compared to the rest of OS X.
Likewise, on the mac, quicktime is an excellent application, and is really more of a framework than a media player. It supports virtually every format, or can do so with the proper codecs. Virtually every program that needs to interact with some sort of multimedia content will simply use the Quicktime framework, because it just works. iTunes and Final Cut Pro are little more then complicated interfaces to quicktime (final cut especially. it's really a testament to the power of the quicktime format once you understand how little work final cut itself actually does). More importantly, it's fast (optimized for OSX/PPC), and very stable compared to its Windows counterpart.
iTunes is about to get some real competition from SongBirg, a new OSS media player built on the Mozilla platform from the same people that made Winamp and Muse.net. I'm excited to see if any real competition ensues.
Also, apple does not skin its apps. That's a microsoft and linux thing. OS X has never had official skinning support.
I certainly hope this gets expanded to other cities, as it will almost definitely be a boon to public transportation if implemented correctly.
One of the biggest problems with public transportation nowindays is the general lack of consolidated information about bus/train schedules.
I particularly like the cost comparison to driving. That said, this makes it *really* easy to see how poorly the mass transit system works in certain areas. In one of the examples listed on the front page, a route that would normally take 34 minutes by driving takes 1 hour 16 minutes by public transit.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing service that I hope continues. I wouldn't be surprised at all if tihs received federal funding to continue.
The ESA has tenatively decided not to fund the project for now citing political concerns that may be addressed by Russia in the future in order to gain much-needed financial support.
Nothing has been decided. Russia will probably try to sweeten the deal if the ESA flat out decides not to support the project.
On the scientific side of things, I hear that Kliper is very promising, and has already progressed further along than the CEV, and is technically superior. This is on top of the fact that Russia already has a suitable lifting body (and has another in development nearing completion). (I'm no rocket scientist -- can anybody here elaborate on the advantages/disadvantages of the two designs?)
It is patented, easy to manufacture in large quantities, and even increases the effectiveness of conventional chemo and radiation therapy.
Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
But seriously. If it's 'naturally occuring' and easy to manufacture, how the hell do they have a patent on this? I'm a hardcore capitalist, but being as how this could be the holy grail of modern medicine, I think the government definitely needs to step in to make sure us mere mortals can afford it (no pun intended).
On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price gouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.
Seriously. Microsoft actually could economically use the insane demand levels to their advantage, and I'm actually surprised that they aren't. From a business/economic standpoint, considering that they do have a real shortage (as opposed to a fake one which they're being accused of) on their hands, it's completely nuts that they're still intentionally selling at a loss in a market where they are the only supplier.
Personally, I think Microsoft simply hired all of the Argintinean Economists who have been out of work since 2002.
Microsoft's not making any money off of artificial demand here. They're selling the systems at a loss at a fixed price, and they're certainly not the ones selling on ebay.
What they should be doing is selling as many of these things as possible (network effect), and getting people to buy as many games as possible so they might actually make a profit. Coincidentally, the lack of Halo 3 at launch time should actually help this, as many people brought XBox just for Halo because the rest of the catalog was somewhat lacking.
In order for them to make any profit at all in this crazy scheme, they should ideally be pumping out as many XBoxes as possible and have had a solid game catalogue at launch time. They have neither.
I think this is simply a case where they f**ed up big time, but launched anyway for the holiday season.
Apple's depreciated ADC because it created more inconveniences than it solved, ie. no powerbook compatibility, hence the necessity for an DVI -> ADC adaptor which you would also need if you had 2 displays. If you wanted to connect 2 non-apple displays, you needed a ADC -> DVI adaptor. If you wanted to connect a VGA display, you needed another (and somewhat rare/expensive) adaptor.
Oh, and it created all hell if you wanted to use one of apple's (very nice) LCD panels on a PC (not to mention that the early cinema displays & DVI adaptors didn't conform to the proper DVI spec)
And thus, I think all current-model macs ship with DVI ports instead. Creating a new ADC device would be completely pointless
"As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle"
A lot. OK Go is a reasonably popular indie band. I don't think any radio stations played their music until very recently.
How do you think they got their popularity? Chances are that it's the same way I heard of them. A friend emailed me a few mp3s from their most recent album. I liked it a lot, and brought a few of their tracks off of iTunes.
When I heard that they were playing in town, I went down to see them, brought their older CD, met up with and chatted with the guys from the band afterward, and they saw us holding our CDs, and offered to sign them. They're really good guys (and funny too).
THIS is the future of music. It's much more personable and community-oriented. I know for a fact that for the same amount of money as it would have cost to go out and buy all their music on CD, I got to see them live, share a few laughs with the members of the band, and still wind up with one of their CDs (signed) --- and the artists without a doubt received a bigger portion of that money this way.
The record companies are scared shitless because their illusion that there are very few talented musicians is beginning to fail. Granted, musical talent IS a rare gift, but it is certainly not limited to the Top 40 signed artists.
The first process you describe sounds a heck of a lot like democracy, while the second sounds closer to the process that would be used by a dictatorship.
After all, on an individual level, aren't we all whiny irrelevant jackasses?
possibly... although I don't think there would be a 'Mario's Pizza' sign outside. Art is more often than not, a reflection of the times, and although I'm sure there was blatant commericalism back in DaVinci's day, I don't think it would appear as such today...
For instance, Andy Warhol's Campbell'sSoup Cans are considered by many to be among the greatest pieces of 20th-century art.
Actually, there are two new RMBK-1000 reactors under construction / recently completed at the Russian Kursk Power Station.
It really begs the question of WHY anybody would be thick-headed enough to build one of these things.
Even if you don't go for one of the new experimental 'safe' designs (such as the Pebble-Bed design), Russia has access to safer reactor designs than the RBMK...
My *deli* has unique UPC codes on each sandwich it sells. It's not that hard to implement if you've got the drive to do it. The system easily pays for itself in the increased efficency of the store, and probably helps reduce theft -- you can't pick up your sandiwch until you've paid.
You place your order on a touchscreen kiosk, get a receipt with the UPC printed on it, shop around for your other items, check out and pay, get the receipt stamped PAID, and then pick up your sandwich.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so children today are overmedicated. How to you jump from that to this unfounded claim that they're causing cancer?
I'll easily grant you that bacterial immunity of antibiotics is a very bad thing, but to make the audacious claim that it causes cancer is going a bit overboard, no?
Dude. That's what the AC option's for...
please don't talk about RMS like he's a prophet. he's scary enough as it is.
as much as I hate draconian DRM, I find it virtually impossible to agree with stallman's extremeist-far-left views.
if you want to ask him about privacy, you should ask him why he didn't password-protect his publically available UNIX account until the 90's, and yet argues continuously about privacy. something in that ideology just doesn't make sense....
The clerk for the second store, after receiving my request, spoke into a walkie-talkie in his native language and then quoted me the same price. Now, perhaps it was coincidental, but both clerks appeared to be Indian. I didn't buy the VCR from either store.
Just a little bit racist, no? Just because someone speaks a foreign language, they're immeidately suspect? Isn't it possible that both dealers quoted you MSRP minux 10% or something to that effect? It's not extremely likely, but definitely not out of the realm of probability either.
Oh, and go use that new VCR to watch Crash while you're at it.
Really?
That's nice and all for a film camera, but for a DSLR, there are several very distinct advantages for me, multilens support being only one of them.
I actually *like* having a real viewfinder. A low-resolution EVF or LCD screen just doesn't cut it for me, especially when taking shots that utilize a very shallow or very deep depth of field.
Secondly, the fact that there is virtually no power-on lag, and that there is absolutely no shutter lag is a big plus. Likewise, my canon DSLR dumps images (even RAW) to the CF card at a rate that is fast enough to let me shoot more or less continuously. Because of the huge benefits of RAW processing, I always shoot in RAW, and the fact that the sony requires a 9 second lag to save a RAW image makes the fature virutally worthless.
The single biggest feature of the DSLR however, is the ability to shoot in ISO 1600 or 3200 mode with very little visible noise. Imagine being able to take pictures in low light and indoors without a flash... It's that good. Fortunately, according to DPReview, ISO1600 performance is indeed above that of a normal compact camera, but not quite up to par with a real DSLR. This, in my mind, is the camera's ONLY saving grace. Unfortunately, they aren't the first to do this, and Fuji's approach doesn't require an expensive full-sized APS-C sensor (and lens to match) to do so which means they can implement it in a compact camera.
(in short, fuji's SuperCCD sensor has a bunch of extra photosensors that are normally used to extrapolate a little additional resolution, but in the case of the F10, these sensors are used to reduce noise in the surrounding sensors, resulting in fully-usable ISO1600 images. Sony's approach simply uses a larger sensor like in a DSLR, where the density of the photosensors is much lower, resulting in less electrical noise overall. The innovation here is that sony's camera has no real shutter/mirror mechanism which means that the sensor is exposed to light whenever the camera is on, allowing residual charges (noise) to build up on the CCD that have to be somehow 'cleared' before the photo is taken, hence the shutter lag.)
Egh. Maybe I just had a bad batch, but the Whole Foods 365 brand cola tasted awful, and was barely carbonated.
I've had european coke, and must say that it's without a doubt better than its american counterpart (and also a lot more expensive). The whole foods cola did not give me that same experience.
(That said, Whole Foods is an awesome place. It's hard to argue with food that not only tastes better, but is better for you.)
i'm pretty sure google caches most RSS feeds. there seems to be a slight lag
We're not talking about 'pretty' here. The main gripe the mac community has with programs like this is that they do not follow the conventions of a normal OS X user interface. A 'pretty' media player would have the same problem.
.NET. It's not uncommon to see custom UIs in Windows such as Winamp, GEarth, iTunes, Trillian, etc.... because the standard UI controls available are simply not sufficent to create a usable, streamlined application that's also visually appealing.
The strength of the Cocoa and Carbon windowing toolkits has allowed many first-rate applications to be developed without requiring the developers to resort to creating their own (ugly) controls. Windows has been guilty of this on many accounts, and microsoft's only beginning to make up for it with
In contrast, GEarth could operate just fine using standard OS X controls and conforming to the OS X UI Guidelines. Using a standardized toolkit also has many nice perks like that drag-and-drop *always* works.
that was supposed to be posted AC for comedic effect. opps. :-)
how many of us computer-savvy are guilty of doing this for our login accounts, web banking, Email, etc? I know i am.
we already know.
thanks anyway.
yes. somewhere on the drivecase, there's a teeny-tiny little hole for the purpose of allowing interior pressure to stay equal to the outside atmospheric pressure. (Look for a label saying 'do not cover this hole' or something to that extent. most older drives have one)
Microsoft's oneNote (the new notetaking app bundled with office) has no 'save' function to speak of. It looks like the industry is taking the hint, and it's already being phased out where it can.
many RAW image editing apps also do not have a save function for the simple reason that all RAW manipulations are nondestructive, and thus, nothing is potentially lost by saving every step along the way.
You look like a windows user, and I feel your pain. Apple's ports to Windows have a reputation for sucking. I should point out that iTunes and Quicktime don't suck anywhere nearly as much in OS X -- I know this will sound somewhat fanboy-ish, but it's definitely true that the GUI conventions used in iTunes make a whole lot more sense when compared to the rest of OS X.
Likewise, on the mac, quicktime is an excellent application, and is really more of a framework than a media player. It supports virtually every format, or can do so with the proper codecs. Virtually every program that needs to interact with some sort of multimedia content will simply use the Quicktime framework, because it just works. iTunes and Final Cut Pro are little more then complicated interfaces to quicktime (final cut especially. it's really a testament to the power of the quicktime format once you understand how little work final cut itself actually does). More importantly, it's fast (optimized for OSX/PPC), and very stable compared to its Windows counterpart.
iTunes is about to get some real competition from SongBirg, a new OSS media player built on the Mozilla platform from the same people that made Winamp and Muse.net. I'm excited to see if any real competition ensues.
Also, apple does not skin its apps. That's a microsoft and linux thing. OS X has never had official skinning support.
I certainly hope this gets expanded to other cities, as it will almost definitely be a boon to public transportation if implemented correctly.
One of the biggest problems with public transportation nowindays is the general lack of consolidated information about bus/train schedules.
I particularly like the cost comparison to driving. That said, this makes it *really* easy to see how poorly the mass transit system works in certain areas. In one of the examples listed on the front page, a route that would normally take 34 minutes by driving takes 1 hour 16 minutes by public transit.
Nevertheless, this is an amazing service that I hope continues. I wouldn't be surprised at all if tihs received federal funding to continue.
RTFA.
The ESA has tenatively decided not to fund the project for now citing political concerns that may be addressed by Russia in the future in order to gain much-needed financial support.
Nothing has been decided. Russia will probably try to sweeten the deal if the ESA flat out decides not to support the project.
On the scientific side of things, I hear that Kliper is very promising, and has already progressed further along than the CEV, and is technically superior. This is on top of the fact that Russia already has a suitable lifting body (and has another in development nearing completion). (I'm no rocket scientist -- can anybody here elaborate on the advantages/disadvantages of the two designs?)
It is patented, easy to manufacture in large quantities, and even increases the effectiveness of conventional chemo and radiation therapy.
Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad.
But seriously. If it's 'naturally occuring' and easy to manufacture, how the hell do they have a patent on this? I'm a hardcore capitalist, but being as how this could be the holy grail of modern medicine, I think the government definitely needs to step in to make sure us mere mortals can afford it (no pun intended).
On EBay, which currently accounts for 10% of all 360 sales. Looks like prices from $550 to $1000. I kept wondering why the XBox was being manufactured for shortages, when M$ wasn't taking advantage of shortage pricing, but instead pricing under cost*. One article raises the speculation that the secondary market might be intentional.** Maybe M$ decided it prefers an auction economy, perhaps to dodge allegations of price gouging, which are apparently all the rage, for better or worse.
Seriously. Microsoft actually could economically use the insane demand levels to their advantage, and I'm actually surprised that they aren't. From a business/economic standpoint, considering that they do have a real shortage (as opposed to a fake one which they're being accused of) on their hands, it's completely nuts that they're still intentionally selling at a loss in a market where they are the only supplier.
Personally, I think Microsoft simply hired all of the Argintinean Economists who have been out of work since 2002.
Microsoft's not making any money off of artificial demand here. They're selling the systems at a loss at a fixed price, and they're certainly not the ones selling on ebay.
What they should be doing is selling as many of these things as possible (network effect), and getting people to buy as many games as possible so they might actually make a profit. Coincidentally, the lack of Halo 3 at launch time should actually help this, as many people brought XBox just for Halo because the rest of the catalog was somewhat lacking.
In order for them to make any profit at all in this crazy scheme, they should ideally be pumping out as many XBoxes as possible and have had a solid game catalogue at launch time. They have neither.
I think this is simply a case where they f**ed up big time, but launched anyway for the holiday season.
Apple's depreciated ADC because it created more inconveniences than it solved, ie. no powerbook compatibility, hence the necessity for an DVI -> ADC adaptor which you would also need if you had 2 displays. If you wanted to connect 2 non-apple displays, you needed a ADC -> DVI adaptor. If you wanted to connect a VGA display, you needed another (and somewhat rare/expensive) adaptor.
Oh, and it created all hell if you wanted to use one of apple's (very nice) LCD panels on a PC (not to mention that the early cinema displays & DVI adaptors didn't conform to the proper DVI spec)
And thus, I think all current-model macs ship with DVI ports instead. Creating a new ADC device would be completely pointless
"As for musicians, we are left to wonder how many more people could be listening to our music if it weren't such a hassle"
A lot. OK Go is a reasonably popular indie band. I don't think any radio stations played their music until very recently.
How do you think they got their popularity? Chances are that it's the same way I heard of them. A friend emailed me a few mp3s from their most recent album. I liked it a lot, and brought a few of their tracks off of iTunes.
When I heard that they were playing in town, I went down to see them, brought their older CD, met up with and chatted with the guys from the band afterward, and they saw us holding our CDs, and offered to sign them. They're really good guys (and funny too).
THIS is the future of music. It's much more personable and community-oriented. I know for a fact that for the same amount of money as it would have cost to go out and buy all their music on CD, I got to see them live, share a few laughs with the members of the band, and still wind up with one of their CDs (signed) --- and the artists without a doubt received a bigger portion of that money this way.
The record companies are scared shitless because their illusion that there are very few talented musicians is beginning to fail. Granted, musical talent IS a rare gift, but it is certainly not limited to the Top 40 signed artists.
The first process you describe sounds a heck of a lot like democracy, while the second sounds closer to the process that would be used by a dictatorship.
After all, on an individual level, aren't we all whiny irrelevant jackasses?
possibly... although I don't think there would be a 'Mario's Pizza' sign outside. Art is more often than not, a reflection of the times, and although I'm sure there was blatant commericalism back in DaVinci's day, I don't think it would appear as such today...
For instance, Andy Warhol's Campbell'sSoup Cans are considered by many to be among the greatest pieces of 20th-century art.
How many lines contain expletives?
for your reading pleasure.... the linux kernel fuck count
Actually, there are two new RMBK-1000 reactors under construction / recently completed at the Russian Kursk Power Station.
It really begs the question of WHY anybody would be thick-headed enough to build one of these things.
Even if you don't go for one of the new experimental 'safe' designs (such as the Pebble-Bed design), Russia has access to safer reactor designs than the RBMK...
Agreed!
My *deli* has unique UPC codes on each sandwich it sells. It's not that hard to implement if you've got the drive to do it. The system easily pays for itself in the increased efficency of the store, and probably helps reduce theft -- you can't pick up your sandiwch until you've paid.
You place your order on a touchscreen kiosk, get a receipt with the UPC printed on it, shop around for your other items, check out and pay, get the receipt stamped PAID, and then pick up your sandwich.