At least half their experiments have been organized so poorly that they failed when its well documented something works, and that was a prime example.
Its entertainment, not science. Don't watch it to learn anything about the reality of the "myths", watch it because its freakin' hot to see Kari bound up in the water torture episode.
Thats rediculous. If I pick up my stapler and shout 911 at it, I won't get the police. If I type 911 on my keyboard (911 911 911 911 911 911 911) the police don't show up. If I use my Yaesu HT radio, I can punch 911 on it and the police don't show up.
Hell, if I dial 911 on my cell phone I haven't gotten useful emergency service any time I've had to do it.
Unlike every example I listed above, Vonage EXPLICITLY told me during setup that I have to MANUALLY SET UP 911 service on my phone and was explicit about it NOT being the same as normal 911.
Thats a tradeoff I accepted, just like everyone who dumps their landline for a cell phone accepts. Difference is there is NO way to use Vonage without being aware of it. These people didn't pay attention to what they are doing, and never set it up.
Its their own damn fault, and this country needs to stop passing the blame for an individuals mistakes onto other people and companies. Take some responsibility for your actions, and if that means you can't reach the police, or worse die? So be it. Its no ones fault but your own.
Your TV can't cause interferance, and you have to accept what interferance your TV picks up, but he/she is a licensed user of that spectrum and you're not.
I did pay for legal advice that said it absolutely was true.
I'd trust the lawyer over a one-liner on/.
For what its worth, thats why Bill Gates can own the electronic rights to most of the great works of art in the world -- because republished images of a work themselves have a copyright... so the only way you can legally get an image of the Mona Lisa in digital form is to take it yourself... you can't scan someone else's image and claim its legal because the painting is hundreds of years old.
You're right, I didn't notice that. The whole text is there and searchable, but I found that by searching, not browsing.
I don't think its intended to be a readable source, its for finding stuff in a library quickly.
I mentioned in another reply on this story that people are getting the scope of copyrights mixed up. This is a scan of a copyrighted book, not a text search of the public domain text. Its not the same thing. This is handy if you want to find that the info you want is on page 200 of the book, not to read it online.
Google would've had to have scanned an original edition or something from that era to use the images of the pages whose copyright had expired as a source material.
The text is not copyrighted... but when someone takes a public domain text and publishes it, the resulting book IS copyrighted. If you scan that version, you are showing copyrighted material even if the contents aren't. You either have to reset the text yourself, or you have to find a book that was published long enough ago that the book itself is out of copyright.
Ages ago a friend of mine had a VERY old book of mechanical line drawings (nearly 100 years old). We planned for a while to scan all of them and put out a clipart CD. The content itself had been republished back in the 80's, and we were told very specifically that if we did it we *had* to do the scans from the old book, not a newer printing of it.
We decided that unbinding the book wasn't worth it...
Thats what application frameworks are for. A web engineer will develop the widgets for the toolkits a framework team will develop, and application monkies write to those frameworks.
Thats the whole benefit of using XMLHttpRequest and DOM for those applications -- UI logic stays on the client, and business logic can stay on the server.
GMail is only the most visible application working that way these days. Tax software and a very large number of enterprise software applications are moving rapidly in that direction, as are the toolkits used by enterprise application developers.
I suspect those reports are inaccurate. I've watched both shows in question, both time delayed and had no problems fast forwarding in them.
I suspect someone ran into one of the "UI-freezing" issues, and it coincidentally happened during a commercial and they got whipped up about it. There are definitely times the UI becomes unresponsive, and obviously you're more likely to notice it when its a commercial than during the five minutes you're just watching the TV.
The freezing problem is annoying, if you want to reduce the chances of it happening, set the tuner you're not using to a digital channel instead of an analog channel.
Since I've started doing that, I haven't had my box freeze except for the 10-20 second UI freezes periodically.
Freezes or not, its still better than my Tivo. At least I can watch HD programming on it.
They're no longer in partnership with Tivo, they are using another provider for DVR functionality, and they're moving to MPEG4.
Do some Google searching, or go read avsforums. There's TONS of info out there about it.
Its great they're actually giving a decent credit to the people who bought those units, but people who like the "Tivo" software itself are going to be very disappointed when they realize they paid $999 for a paperweight.
I hope the understanding of why people are moving away from Tivo is more widespread within the company. If not, perhaps being out of touch with thet customer is the problem.
I cancelled my Tivo service about a month ago. I was an early adopter -- I had a unit within a month or so of their release, and by my best estimates somewhere around 40 people have Tivos right now because of firsthand contact with seeing mine. Who knows how many people got them by seeing those people's Tivos.
Why did I cancel? Tivo is inexcusably late to the market with an HD box, and inexcusably late to the market with a CableCard unit, even ignoring the one-tuner problem. They missed the adoption curve with HD by two years, and they've lost as a result. Dime late, dollar short as they say. I have two HD sets, a cable company that provides HD content, and a half dozen OTA HD channels I can get, and its all a waste with the Tivo. That issue was such a big factor for me, I gave up my Tivo for a Motorola PVR that rarely goes for more than a day without hanging, causing me to lose stuff. I have much higher hopes they'll fix their software than I do Tivo actually making it to market with an HD CableCard unit.
Here's what I see Tivo's problem is: they forgot about their core market -- the early adopters. We're the people who are going to spend our money on new technology, and demonstrate that to everyone else. We're the ones who needed hardware to track the rest of our technology, not lag it by years. Tivo clearly thought the mass market was more important, and clearly targeted their feature development at that (nearly useless things like Music and Photo sharing which seemed cool to everyone for a few weeks, never to be used again, even ignoring them screwing the early adopters again who paid for it, only to have it given away weeks later). Tivo didn't realize the risk to the mass market that cable companies represent. That mass market doesn't care in the slightest about the "tivo" features... they want to record stuff, pause stuff and play it back. Wishlists, suggestions, all of that means nothing to them.
So now Tivo has two markets -- one that doesn't care about the things that differentiate their product, and one who can't use their product with their newer equipment.
If people at Tivo think most people would be much happier with a Tivo, thats precisely why Tivo will not last. Thats such an incorrect reading of the situation, it amazes me your product management staff could actually believe that.
To reiterate: People do not care in the slightest about the features Tivo brings to the table. Those of us who do, wish we could have them, but being able to actually watch HD programming, and record it is more important to us. Thankfully for us, its going to be easier for Motorola to address the things we don't like than it will be for a struggling Tivo to get to market with a box we can use.
When I cancelled, the support representative told me she hoped I'd come back again in 18-24 months when the new CableCard units are available. Thats a LONG time for Comcast and the rest of the cable card companies to leapfrog you all again.
You need to shop around. Hell, get your free phone and pay the $150 cancellation fee if your money management skills are so bad its somehow going to cost you $2000.
If you buy a car telling the sales guy "I want a payment of $x a month" or "I want the zero percent financing" you've already broadcast "sucker who can't manage his money" to the sales guy in blazing lights. Last car I bought I took the 0% financing, knowing exactly what the alternate discount was if I didn't take it. And the dealer made $400 on the vehicle, after their holdback (it was $600 under dealer *cost*, after all the incentives, almost $7000 off MSRP.
Its easy to get all those deals and not get screwed if you take some time and do your research. I went in knowing the exact (to the dollar) cost the truck I bought cost the dealer, exactly what the suggest prices for all the hundred different options on it cost, and precisely what incentives to the dealer and the buyer were available at the time, as well as checking what a five-star dealer's holdback was.
No conventional design test ever failed. The only failures were in designs attempting to push the lower boundary of sizes, shaped detonations, and tests involving non-standard yield distributions (low radiation, high radiation).
Not a single "lets make a big explosion" test ever failed.
Its important to note that no conventional design test has ever failed. US worked on the first try, Soviet bombs worked on the first try and every indication is every other nuclear power's tests worked on the first try.
And those were built without the help of computers.
Making a bomb work is simple if you have the nuclear material. Making it make a HUGE bang is hard. Making the bomb itself tiny is hard. But making a bomb is easy.
The thing that is really keeping it from happening, I think, isn't the fact that making a bomb is hard, but making a bomb that can go supercritical with a small amount of fuel is very hard. The Ted Taylor book talks about that issue in some detail. (He made both the largest and smallest fission devices).
Slashdot Mirror
It pains me to say it, but mine clearly wasn't big enough either.
At least half their experiments have been organized so poorly that they failed when its well documented something works, and that was a prime example.
Its entertainment, not science. Don't watch it to learn anything about the reality of the "myths", watch it because its freakin' hot to see Kari bound up in the water torture episode.
(Oops, did I just say too much?)
Thats rediculous. If I pick up my stapler and shout 911 at it, I won't get the police. If I type 911 on my keyboard (911 911 911 911 911 911 911) the police don't show up. If I use my Yaesu HT radio, I can punch 911 on it and the police don't show up.
Hell, if I dial 911 on my cell phone I haven't gotten useful emergency service any time I've had to do it.
Unlike every example I listed above, Vonage EXPLICITLY told me during setup that I have to MANUALLY SET UP 911 service on my phone and was explicit about it NOT being the same as normal 911.
Thats a tradeoff I accepted, just like everyone who dumps their landline for a cell phone accepts. Difference is there is NO way to use Vonage without being aware of it. These people didn't pay attention to what they are doing, and never set it up.
Its their own damn fault, and this country needs to stop passing the blame for an individuals mistakes onto other people and companies. Take some responsibility for your actions, and if that means you can't reach the police, or worse die? So be it. Its no ones fault but your own.
Your TV can't cause interferance, and you have to accept what interferance your TV picks up, but he/she is a licensed user of that spectrum and you're not.
He's got all the rights and you've got none.
I did pay for legal advice that said it absolutely was true.
/.
I'd trust the lawyer over a one-liner on
For what its worth, thats why Bill Gates can own the electronic rights to most of the great works of art in the world -- because republished images of a work themselves have a copyright... so the only way you can legally get an image of the Mona Lisa in digital form is to take it yourself... you can't scan someone else's image and claim its legal because the painting is hundreds of years old.
You're right, I didn't notice that. The whole text is there and searchable, but I found that by searching, not browsing.
I don't think its intended to be a readable source, its for finding stuff in a library quickly.
I mentioned in another reply on this story that people are getting the scope of copyrights mixed up. This is a scan of a copyrighted book, not a text search of the public domain text. Its not the same thing. This is handy if you want to find that the info you want is on page 200 of the book, not to read it online.
Google would've had to have scanned an original edition or something from that era to use the images of the pages whose copyright had expired as a source material.
My point was the whole book is there.
The text is not copyrighted... but when someone takes a public domain text and publishes it, the resulting book IS copyrighted. If you scan that version, you are showing copyrighted material even if the contents aren't. You either have to reset the text yourself, or you have to find a book that was published long enough ago that the book itself is out of copyright.
Ages ago a friend of mine had a VERY old book of mechanical line drawings (nearly 100 years old). We planned for a while to scan all of them and put out a clipart CD. The content itself had been republished back in the 80's, and we were told very specifically that if we did it we *had* to do the scans from the old book, not a newer printing of it.
We decided that unbinding the book wasn't worth it...
Yeah. You're missing the fact that the entire book is there for you to read, aparently.
The books links are to the book, not to books you can buy. You're clicking the wrong link or reading the page you get to wrong.
Those are clearly scanned images.
I think its pretty nifty how they are able to highlight search terms within text pages they've clearly OCRed or something.
I both love to think about and hate to think about how the women will log in.
Thats what application frameworks are for. A web engineer will develop the widgets for the toolkits a framework team will develop, and application monkies write to those frameworks.
Thats the whole benefit of using XMLHttpRequest and DOM for those applications -- UI logic stays on the client, and business logic can stay on the server.
GMail is only the most visible application working that way these days. Tax software and a very large number of enterprise software applications are moving rapidly in that direction, as are the toolkits used by enterprise application developers.
Didn't know my ex read /.
Hey babe, you left some crap of yours in my basement.
You mean like dubbing Mel Gibson in Mad Max?
It happens already.
At the risk of being modded down, I'd have to say 40,000 engineers there might disagree with you.
*makes airplane sound, with hand gesture over head*
I suspect those reports are inaccurate. I've watched both shows in question, both time delayed and had no problems fast forwarding in them.
I suspect someone ran into one of the "UI-freezing" issues, and it coincidentally happened during a commercial and they got whipped up about it. There are definitely times the UI becomes unresponsive, and obviously you're more likely to notice it when its a commercial than during the five minutes you're just watching the TV.
The freezing problem is annoying, if you want to reduce the chances of it happening, set the tuner you're not using to a digital channel instead of an analog channel.
Since I've started doing that, I haven't had my box freeze except for the 10-20 second UI freezes periodically.
Freezes or not, its still better than my Tivo. At least I can watch HD programming on it.
Don't anger the Massholes.
We are dangerous when angered.
A really low user ID, and that makes me cool.
Mail room, or something, at DHLS. Last place anyone would find him, it seems.
Um. DirectTV?
They're no longer in partnership with Tivo, they are using another provider for DVR functionality, and they're moving to MPEG4.
Do some Google searching, or go read avsforums. There's TONS of info out there about it.
Its great they're actually giving a decent credit to the people who bought those units, but people who like the "Tivo" software itself are going to be very disappointed when they realize they paid $999 for a paperweight.
You've got a limited satellite HD PVR that will cease working in six months when DirectTV goes MPEG4 for all their HD broadcasts.
They'll replace it with a nice non-Tivo HD unit for you, however.
I hope the understanding of why people are moving away from Tivo is more widespread within the company. If not, perhaps being out of touch with thet customer is the problem.
I cancelled my Tivo service about a month ago. I was an early adopter -- I had a unit within a month or so of their release, and by my best estimates somewhere around 40 people have Tivos right now because of firsthand contact with seeing mine. Who knows how many people got them by seeing those people's Tivos.
Why did I cancel? Tivo is inexcusably late to the market with an HD box, and inexcusably late to the market with a CableCard unit, even ignoring the one-tuner problem. They missed the adoption curve with HD by two years, and they've lost as a result. Dime late, dollar short as they say. I have two HD sets, a cable company that provides HD content, and a half dozen OTA HD channels I can get, and its all a waste with the Tivo. That issue was such a big factor for me, I gave up my Tivo for a Motorola PVR that rarely goes for more than a day without hanging, causing me to lose stuff. I have much higher hopes they'll fix their software than I do Tivo actually making it to market with an HD CableCard unit.
Here's what I see Tivo's problem is: they forgot about their core market -- the early adopters. We're the people who are going to spend our money on new technology, and demonstrate that to everyone else. We're the ones who needed hardware to track the rest of our technology, not lag it by years. Tivo clearly thought the mass market was more important, and clearly targeted their feature development at that (nearly useless things like Music and Photo sharing which seemed cool to everyone for a few weeks, never to be used again, even ignoring them screwing the early adopters again who paid for it, only to have it given away weeks later). Tivo didn't realize the risk to the mass market that cable companies represent. That mass market doesn't care in the slightest about the "tivo" features... they want to record stuff, pause stuff and play it back. Wishlists, suggestions, all of that means nothing to them.
So now Tivo has two markets -- one that doesn't care about the things that differentiate their product, and one who can't use their product with their newer equipment.
If people at Tivo think most people would be much happier with a Tivo, thats precisely why Tivo will not last. Thats such an incorrect reading of the situation, it amazes me your product management staff could actually believe that.
To reiterate: People do not care in the slightest about the features Tivo brings to the table. Those of us who do, wish we could have them, but being able to actually watch HD programming, and record it is more important to us. Thankfully for us, its going to be easier for Motorola to address the things we don't like than it will be for a struggling Tivo to get to market with a box we can use.
When I cancelled, the support representative told me she hoped I'd come back again in 18-24 months when the new CableCard units are available. Thats a LONG time for Comcast and the rest of the cable card companies to leapfrog you all again.
Its a shame, I loved my Tivo.
You need to shop around. Hell, get your free phone and pay the $150 cancellation fee if your money management skills are so bad its somehow going to cost you $2000.
If you buy a car telling the sales guy "I want a payment of $x a month" or "I want the zero percent financing" you've already broadcast "sucker who can't manage his money" to the sales guy in blazing lights. Last car I bought I took the 0% financing, knowing exactly what the alternate discount was if I didn't take it. And the dealer made $400 on the vehicle, after their holdback (it was $600 under dealer *cost*, after all the incentives, almost $7000 off MSRP.
Its easy to get all those deals and not get screwed if you take some time and do your research. I went in knowing the exact (to the dollar) cost the truck I bought cost the dealer, exactly what the suggest prices for all the hundred different options on it cost, and precisely what incentives to the dealer and the buyer were available at the time, as well as checking what a five-star dealer's holdback was.
Reading comprehension: its good for everyone.
No conventional design test ever failed. The only failures were in designs attempting to push the lower boundary of sizes, shaped detonations, and tests involving non-standard yield distributions (low radiation, high radiation).
Not a single "lets make a big explosion" test ever failed.
Its important to note that no conventional design test has ever failed. US worked on the first try, Soviet bombs worked on the first try and every indication is every other nuclear power's tests worked on the first try.
And those were built without the help of computers.
Making a bomb work is simple if you have the nuclear material. Making it make a HUGE bang is hard. Making the bomb itself tiny is hard. But making a bomb is easy.
The thing that is really keeping it from happening, I think, isn't the fact that making a bomb is hard, but making a bomb that can go supercritical with a small amount of fuel is very hard. The Ted Taylor book talks about that issue in some detail. (He made both the largest and smallest fission devices).