Actually, with the tech implosion back in 2001, this affects technology companies less than we would expect. It was put in place to catch companies that were writing off massive amounts of tax through the issuance of options. However, with fewer companies doling them out, and employees less enthused about receiving them, this new regulation affects the old bricks and mortar companies more than those in the tech sector.
Think about how much information you actually need. Really. How much information do you use, actively or passively in a given day?
How does having a photographic detail of your state help you? Are you planning on hiking into a certain area soon? Are you making a map to sell? Did your dog run away and you think it might be halfway across the state?
The FOIA as it is currently implemented is ridiculous. (If you're a moderator, your knee is probably jerking like crazy, so go ahead and hit that -1 moderation.) For what possible reason would you need random bits of information? Most FOIA requests are fishing expeditions that turn up with nothing. Occasionally something turns up, but it is usually out of context and doesn't make sense except to conspiracy loons without the surrounding material.
The FOIA grants any information requested to the requester, given that such information exists and isn't vital to national security. Why should this be so? Why isn't it a requirement that the requester provide a valid reason and specific need for that information. Requesting the FBI file on yourself is clearly a right, but requesting the file on someone else? Not a right, IMO. Trying to finagle documents regarding the Kennedy assassination? Not a right, IMO.
The U.S. government has a lot of work to do and needless FOIA requests just add to that pile of stuff.
Personally, I'd rather see the roads fixed and utilities made more efficient than see a bunch of fat, sweaty geeks get their jollies by harrassing the government.
I gotta tell you, this more "realistic" style of cartooning is much more interesting than the anime style of Miyazaki. For one, the 3 dimensional depth aspect is added through the use of very well thought out shading, so the characters seem more alive than most other cartoons.
With the exception of Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka), which succeeded because of the power of the story more than anything else, Miyazaki's work pales in comparison to the screenshots shown here.
The leading reason behind amputation is diabetes, a wholly preventable disease brought about by sedentary lifestyle and excessive intake of insulin-promoting foods.
The second is the current war in Iraq. Personally, I'd rather see those boys come home in one piece, and not just because they couldn't find the other pieces.
But back to Diabetes, I was actually borderline diabetic. While I experienced some numbness in my extremities, I was able to control it with my diet. I am (as the nick suggests) very overweight and finally, a year ago, did something about it. I went on the Atkins diet and have literally become the opposite of what I was back then. My diabetes has cleared up, my waistline is becoming a respectable 36 inches, and I can see my toes again for the first time in years.
Now the Holidays did a number on me (all those cookies and milk! oof) and I had to climb back on the Atkins wagon again, but my doctors say that I am not in any danger of becoming diabetic again while I am on this diet. Also, with the weight off, Mrs. Claus is a happy lady again (wink wink).
The amount of structural support built into a Lego piece is pretty astounding. Each piece has not only the outer rectangular area, but inside it also has round surfaces as well as straight surfaces. The upper surfaces also have round nubs which can double as fins to dissipate heat. Each Lego piece is a heat sink in and of itself.
Obviously they are pretty heavy and difficult to carry around to LAN parties, but a set of aluminum Lego pieces could be the answer to our desire for a quieter computer.
Go take a look at blogger some time. Seriously. There are a zillion blogs on there now, it updates so fast that you could post your own blog and not make it to the "Latest Updates" page and catch your post before more than 500 new items scrolled it off the screen.
If everyone has a voice, no one really has a voice. Any single voice will be drowned out by many thousands of "Gee, this is my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to start one because my cat is so cute. I'll post pictures of my cat and I love Jesus."
The main thing is that the Iranians have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets. None of those are being squashed, even by the fundamental, right-wing Muslim leadership. They know that having good quality information is key to improving the quality of life in their country.
Dissent is the only thing prohibited, but I doubt there is any country in which real dissent is permitted.
They don't produce any hardware that isn't available from another manufacturer at a fraction of Apple's MSRP. Their software and hardware architecture are not compatible with more than 90% of the existing personal computer market. And most of all, their treatment of people who dare take them to task for faulty hardware is horrendous (remember the dead battery fiasco?).
Apple is an also-ran that is kept alive by a very small band of fanatics.
By unplugging these fanatics from their daily dose of Steve-love, I wonder what the negative impact will be in the long run. If I know Jobs, though, he will see the negative effect and make a 180 degree turn to put Apple back in the minds and hearts and video streams of the faithful./MacAddict
But who cares? I don't want this to degenerate into some sort of "my tv show is the greatest" rah rah session, but what could possibly be on tv that is so good that it warrants recording?
It's not like tv became garbage overnight. It's been pretty bad for a while. What shows are there today that in 10 or 15 years people will be reminiscing about? Where are the Knight Riders, the Happy Days, the Sledge Hammers?
I look at the spring lineup and can't find a single thing that warrants shelling out the cash for something to record this trash. Am I watching the wrong channels?
1) If you think that the RIAA is sitting on its hands and just letting the largescale music pirates get away with ripping them off while only targetting "Susie and grandma" for litigation, you're quite mistaken. They spend quite a bit of money to seek out and take down these largescale pirates. Unfortunately, some Asian countries are more hospitable to the pirates than others, so policing it is a difficult job.
2) It seems to me that the year-long push by the RIAA to associate P2P filesharing with stealing is paying off, though only to the tune of 2% or so. If they can convince enough people that piracy is a crime, then it is guaranteed to boost actual sales of CDs at the expense of filesharing.
People are generally good and are willing to follow the law. The RIAA's push to make people aware of copyright law has finally made some progress, but also consider that music artists have also become generally better lately than they were in say the mid-late 90's. Of course, the increase in sales corresponds more to the anti-piracy push than to the improvement in music quality (Good music can still be pirated as easily as bad music).
The good thing about Knoppix updates
on
Knoppix 3.7 Released
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If you need to roll back the latest distro because of some bug, you can just pop the old CD back in the drive.
I use Knoppix on several of my main database servers.
While I believe that fusion will likely be the only sustainable energy source as our current supplies of oil and uranium eventually run out, nuclear fission is about the only 'safe' alternative in the meantime. Generating many orders of magnitude less radioactive waste than current fossil fuel plants, they are inherently better for the environment on a purely objective level.
What I object to, though, is the insinuation that we are the ones splitting the nuclei of the radioactive elements. These things are radioactive precisely because of their tendency to decay and in fact split themselves. They don't even split into other elements. You can't turn uranium into gold, for example, even though it ought to be a straightforward process of splitting off the required number of protons from each atom (if the "we're splitting atoms" camp claims are correct).
We use the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements to fuel our generators. We do nothing like smashing atoms into smaller bits.
Just a pet peeve of mine whenever I see a nuclear power article.
The problem with living in microgravity is that the lack of acceleration results in the decalcification of bones and the atrophy of muscle tissue. Some exercise (like the much-mocked Soloflex) can help stave off this atrophy, but the real key to the whole solution is to keep calcium and protein levels in the body high.
Restricting food intake will result in some very serious physical damage to the astronauts. If you've ever seen footage of astronauts who have just returned to Earth after a long mission, they are hardly able to stand. That is with full nutrition. The poor astronauts up there now will have to deal with much lowered calcium and protein reserves in their blood and will likely suffer from advanced osteoporosis as well as general muscular atrophy.
I'd go ahead and blame Windows programmers for this mistake. But in all seriousness, this is probably a result of the reliance on the cooperation of multiple nations to do the right thing according to the schedule. It's hard enough getting cats into a pen, it's that much harder to get countries known for 'cutting corners' (like Russia) to do their job correctly.
Like Netmeeting?
on
The Other VoIP
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Is this like a fancy version of Netmeeting? Wasn't that released in Win98?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but I can't be the only one who sees the connection between this ability and psychic "vibrations".
If we are able to detect and monitor energy waves that are emitted from our brains merely by thinking about things, how much more difficult is it to believe that there are people who are physically tuned to be able to "pick up" those brain waves?
People who oppose paranormal research are always claiming that they want quantifiable, reproducible data. Well, here it is.
You'd think that "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" would rule out spamming for a Christian college. Then again, Christianity never was a very large attractor of the virtuous among us.
People have been making structures for themselves for a long time. From the towering A-frame lodges of the Pacific Islands to the mud-brick adobe dwellings of the American plains, eco-friendly housing has been around for literally all time.
These designs all require some kind of special material or parts that aren't so easily available in many areas. Fortunately, the dwellings these indigenous people have been using since the beginning of their civilization will work just fine.
It's only great if you deal with English-only mail. Just about any other language introduces some pretty serious problems that prevent the widespread adoption of this outside of the US and Canada.
The biggest issues is the inability of the mail reader to adequately auto-detect foreign character sets, so you end up with a huge jumble of garbage instead of the expected text.
The only difference between the two countries is currency, and since the payment method requires a credit card anyway, that is not really an issue.
What is the benefit of having a separate website for Canadians when the Internet is designed to be international? It isn't like there is some giant firewall at the Canadian border that blocks Canadian users from accessing the regular iTunes page. The media is also fully digital, can be downloaded, and doesn't have to come wrapped in cardboard.
This is international commerce without the problems of nationalities getting in the way. I don't understand the point of having a separate website for a group of people who speak the same language as the original group.
Unless you consider that kids still have access to the pornography and no amount of "education" is really going to block them or persuade them from accessing it.
It's like those billboards that tell you that "God is Protecting You". It only reaches those who want to be reached.
To think that a massive group like Slashdotters with the combined IQ of a flea has enough power to influence the Government of the United States at the departmental level, I'm floored.
But then I see who is the President there, and suddenly I'm a lot more worried. It's not just dumb Slashdotters making the important decisions in that country.
But the main point of all this is that it is good that the government uses open standards when disseminating information. Even PDF is a little too proprietary for me, I'd prefer releases in plain text or even RTF. But PDF and HTML work great for this kind of thing and enough freely-available software exists to decode those formats, so I'm temporarily satisfied.
Done in by the people who would buy this stuff
on
Buy a Piece of Acclaim
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· Score: 1, Insightful
You'd buy this, but you wouldn't pay for their games. Any quick search of Google turns up loads of cracks and warez for their games. It's been that way for a long time.
It's hard for a company to make money selling games, when perfect duplication is possible and people are willing to break the law to circumvent copy protection systems.
I don't care what you may think about their games, but you have to admit that it takes some seriously warped thinking to believe that destroying companies like this actually helps the software industry. Pay for the stuff you value. This isn't a zero-sum game we are playing, it is actually a game in which everyone is better off when we treat creators with the respect they deserve.
Slashdot Mirror
That's so 1998, man.
Actually, with the tech implosion back in 2001, this affects technology companies less than we would expect. It was put in place to catch companies that were writing off massive amounts of tax through the issuance of options. However, with fewer companies doling them out, and employees less enthused about receiving them, this new regulation affects the old bricks and mortar companies more than those in the tech sector.
They've also posted a test site.
No, you click it first.
The information is available on a fee basis. In fact, it is available as a subscription, if you would prefer the annual updates.
This is a fee, not unlike fees to use parks or fees to use roads (taxes).
The government already provides a means of obtaining this information but is not obligated to provide multiple ways of getting it.
Think about how much information you actually need. Really. How much information do you use, actively or passively in a given day?
How does having a photographic detail of your state help you? Are you planning on hiking into a certain area soon? Are you making a map to sell? Did your dog run away and you think it might be halfway across the state?
The FOIA as it is currently implemented is ridiculous. (If you're a moderator, your knee is probably jerking like crazy, so go ahead and hit that -1 moderation.) For what possible reason would you need random bits of information? Most FOIA requests are fishing expeditions that turn up with nothing. Occasionally something turns up, but it is usually out of context and doesn't make sense except to conspiracy loons without the surrounding material.
The FOIA grants any information requested to the requester, given that such information exists and isn't vital to national security. Why should this be so? Why isn't it a requirement that the requester provide a valid reason and specific need for that information. Requesting the FBI file on yourself is clearly a right, but requesting the file on someone else? Not a right, IMO. Trying to finagle documents regarding the Kennedy assassination? Not a right, IMO.
The U.S. government has a lot of work to do and needless FOIA requests just add to that pile of stuff.
Personally, I'd rather see the roads fixed and utilities made more efficient than see a bunch of fat, sweaty geeks get their jollies by harrassing the government.
I gotta tell you, this more "realistic" style of cartooning is much more interesting than the anime style of Miyazaki. For one, the 3 dimensional depth aspect is added through the use of very well thought out shading, so the characters seem more alive than most other cartoons.
With the exception of Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka), which succeeded because of the power of the story more than anything else, Miyazaki's work pales in comparison to the screenshots shown here.
The leading reason behind amputation is diabetes, a wholly preventable disease brought about by sedentary lifestyle and excessive intake of insulin-promoting foods.
The second is the current war in Iraq. Personally, I'd rather see those boys come home in one piece, and not just because they couldn't find the other pieces.
But back to Diabetes, I was actually borderline diabetic. While I experienced some numbness in my extremities, I was able to control it with my diet. I am (as the nick suggests) very overweight and finally, a year ago, did something about it. I went on the Atkins diet and have literally become the opposite of what I was back then. My diabetes has cleared up, my waistline is becoming a respectable 36 inches, and I can see my toes again for the first time in years.
Now the Holidays did a number on me (all those cookies and milk! oof) and I had to climb back on the Atkins wagon again, but my doctors say that I am not in any danger of becoming diabetic again while I am on this diet. Also, with the weight off, Mrs. Claus is a happy lady again (wink wink).
The amount of structural support built into a Lego piece is pretty astounding. Each piece has not only the outer rectangular area, but inside it also has round surfaces as well as straight surfaces. The upper surfaces also have round nubs which can double as fins to dissipate heat. Each Lego piece is a heat sink in and of itself.
Obviously they are pretty heavy and difficult to carry around to LAN parties, but a set of aluminum Lego pieces could be the answer to our desire for a quieter computer.
Go take a look at blogger some time. Seriously. There are a zillion blogs on there now, it updates so fast that you could post your own blog and not make it to the "Latest Updates" page and catch your post before more than 500 new items scrolled it off the screen.
If everyone has a voice, no one really has a voice. Any single voice will be drowned out by many thousands of "Gee, this is my blog, I thought it would be a good idea to start one because my cat is so cute. I'll post pictures of my cat and I love Jesus."
The main thing is that the Iranians have access to medical information, educational information, and worldwide news outlets. None of those are being squashed, even by the fundamental, right-wing Muslim leadership. They know that having good quality information is key to improving the quality of life in their country.
Dissent is the only thing prohibited, but I doubt there is any country in which real dissent is permitted.
I'll siliconize your photonic devices, if you integrate my electronics
They don't produce any hardware that isn't available from another manufacturer at a fraction of Apple's MSRP. Their software and hardware architecture are not compatible with more than 90% of the existing personal computer market. And most of all, their treatment of people who dare take them to task for faulty hardware is horrendous (remember the dead battery fiasco?).
/MacAddict
Apple is an also-ran that is kept alive by a very small band of fanatics.
By unplugging these fanatics from their daily dose of Steve-love, I wonder what the negative impact will be in the long run. If I know Jobs, though, he will see the negative effect and make a 180 degree turn to put Apple back in the minds and hearts and video streams of the faithful.
I can listen to what I want anywhere.
Dancin_Santa > Bruce Perens
Ham radio users are quite a bit less technically savvy than they used to be.
Old school Ham Dancin_Santa > Bruce Perens
Doesn't mean anything, but these are all just bits on the Internet.
But who cares? I don't want this to degenerate into some sort of "my tv show is the greatest" rah rah session, but what could possibly be on tv that is so good that it warrants recording?
It's not like tv became garbage overnight. It's been pretty bad for a while. What shows are there today that in 10 or 15 years people will be reminiscing about? Where are the Knight Riders, the Happy Days, the Sledge Hammers?
I look at the spring lineup and can't find a single thing that warrants shelling out the cash for something to record this trash. Am I watching the wrong channels?
1) If you think that the RIAA is sitting on its hands and just letting the largescale music pirates get away with ripping them off while only targetting "Susie and grandma" for litigation, you're quite mistaken. They spend quite a bit of money to seek out and take down these largescale pirates. Unfortunately, some Asian countries are more hospitable to the pirates than others, so policing it is a difficult job.
2) It seems to me that the year-long push by the RIAA to associate P2P filesharing with stealing is paying off, though only to the tune of 2% or so. If they can convince enough people that piracy is a crime, then it is guaranteed to boost actual sales of CDs at the expense of filesharing.
People are generally good and are willing to follow the law. The RIAA's push to make people aware of copyright law has finally made some progress, but also consider that music artists have also become generally better lately than they were in say the mid-late 90's. Of course, the increase in sales corresponds more to the anti-piracy push than to the improvement in music quality (Good music can still be pirated as easily as bad music).
If you need to roll back the latest distro because of some bug, you can just pop the old CD back in the drive.
I use Knoppix on several of my main database servers.
While I believe that fusion will likely be the only sustainable energy source as our current supplies of oil and uranium eventually run out, nuclear fission is about the only 'safe' alternative in the meantime. Generating many orders of magnitude less radioactive waste than current fossil fuel plants, they are inherently better for the environment on a purely objective level.
What I object to, though, is the insinuation that we are the ones splitting the nuclei of the radioactive elements. These things are radioactive precisely because of their tendency to decay and in fact split themselves. They don't even split into other elements. You can't turn uranium into gold, for example, even though it ought to be a straightforward process of splitting off the required number of protons from each atom (if the "we're splitting atoms" camp claims are correct).
We use the heat generated by the decay of radioactive elements to fuel our generators. We do nothing like smashing atoms into smaller bits.
Just a pet peeve of mine whenever I see a nuclear power article.
The problem with living in microgravity is that the lack of acceleration results in the decalcification of bones and the atrophy of muscle tissue. Some exercise (like the much-mocked Soloflex) can help stave off this atrophy, but the real key to the whole solution is to keep calcium and protein levels in the body high.
Restricting food intake will result in some very serious physical damage to the astronauts. If you've ever seen footage of astronauts who have just returned to Earth after a long mission, they are hardly able to stand. That is with full nutrition. The poor astronauts up there now will have to deal with much lowered calcium and protein reserves in their blood and will likely suffer from advanced osteoporosis as well as general muscular atrophy.
I'd go ahead and blame Windows programmers for this mistake. But in all seriousness, this is probably a result of the reliance on the cooperation of multiple nations to do the right thing according to the schedule. It's hard enough getting cats into a pen, it's that much harder to get countries known for 'cutting corners' (like Russia) to do their job correctly.
Is this like a fancy version of Netmeeting? Wasn't that released in Win98?
I'll probably get modded down for this, but I can't be the only one who sees the connection between this ability and psychic "vibrations".
If we are able to detect and monitor energy waves that are emitted from our brains merely by thinking about things, how much more difficult is it to believe that there are people who are physically tuned to be able to "pick up" those brain waves?
People who oppose paranormal research are always claiming that they want quantifiable, reproducible data. Well, here it is.
You'd think that "doing unto others as you would have them do unto you" would rule out spamming for a Christian college. Then again, Christianity never was a very large attractor of the virtuous among us.
People have been making structures for themselves for a long time. From the towering A-frame lodges of the Pacific Islands to the mud-brick adobe dwellings of the American plains, eco-friendly housing has been around for literally all time.
These designs all require some kind of special material or parts that aren't so easily available in many areas. Fortunately, the dwellings these indigenous people have been using since the beginning of their civilization will work just fine.
It's only great if you deal with English-only mail. Just about any other language introduces some pretty serious problems that prevent the widespread adoption of this outside of the US and Canada.
The biggest issues is the inability of the mail reader to adequately auto-detect foreign character sets, so you end up with a huge jumble of garbage instead of the expected text.
The only difference between the two countries is currency, and since the payment method requires a credit card anyway, that is not really an issue.
What is the benefit of having a separate website for Canadians when the Internet is designed to be international? It isn't like there is some giant firewall at the Canadian border that blocks Canadian users from accessing the regular iTunes page. The media is also fully digital, can be downloaded, and doesn't have to come wrapped in cardboard.
This is international commerce without the problems of nationalities getting in the way. I don't understand the point of having a separate website for a group of people who speak the same language as the original group.
Unless you consider that kids still have access to the pornography and no amount of "education" is really going to block them or persuade them from accessing it.
It's like those billboards that tell you that "God is Protecting You". It only reaches those who want to be reached.
To think that a massive group like Slashdotters with the combined IQ of a flea has enough power to influence the Government of the United States at the departmental level, I'm floored.
But then I see who is the President there, and suddenly I'm a lot more worried. It's not just dumb Slashdotters making the important decisions in that country.
But the main point of all this is that it is good that the government uses open standards when disseminating information. Even PDF is a little too proprietary for me, I'd prefer releases in plain text or even RTF. But PDF and HTML work great for this kind of thing and enough freely-available software exists to decode those formats, so I'm temporarily satisfied.
You'd buy this, but you wouldn't pay for their games. Any quick search of Google turns up loads of cracks and warez for their games. It's been that way for a long time.
It's hard for a company to make money selling games, when perfect duplication is possible and people are willing to break the law to circumvent copy protection systems.
I don't care what you may think about their games, but you have to admit that it takes some seriously warped thinking to believe that destroying companies like this actually helps the software industry. Pay for the stuff you value. This isn't a zero-sum game we are playing, it is actually a game in which everyone is better off when we treat creators with the respect they deserve.