Uh, I'm sorry for having a girlfriend who watches TV and for enjoying the time we spend together snuggled up on the couch. Silly me! There was I thinking it was a relaxing way to chill out after a stressful day!
I'm also sorry for having a life and daring to venture out of my house frequently enough to merit wanting to record something once in a while. There I go again, enjoying myself when I could be doing something "productive".
And, lastly, I'm sorry for not liking the things that you do. Apparently, that's a mortal sin nowadays. I'll just sit hit waiting for my personal stoning squad, shall I?
The last Slashdot article on this topic had a post that contained the various lengths of time within which you could view a HDTV recording. After "forever" the next longest length of time was "one week".
One measly week.
Well, one week might be fine if you record something becasue you know you're going out for the night, but what the hell do you do if you're going away on a two-week vacation? What choice do you have except to miss out?
Can you imagine missing the last two weeks of 24, The West Wing, ER or whatever you're hooked on because some silly timestamped restriction is set to one week (or less)?
How do you tell your young kids that the show that you promised they could watch when they got back home from a long car journey to visit the grandparents can't be watched anymore because you exceeded the time limit? Ever tried explaining silly things like that to a screaming three year old?
Let's face it, for a lot of people, life is more hectic now than it was ten years ago. Ten years from now, it'll probably be more hectic still. What good is a timeshifting device like a VCR or a PVR if you can't timeshift with it?
Accuracy is for salesmen and bean counters. In the field, it's smarts that count.
The USAF bombed a Red Cross compound in Afghanistan. Twice. Poor intelligence meant that US missiles hit a Chinese embassy in the Balkans. Friendly fire incidents are far too common.
Well, just exactly what were you expecting from a Mark Wahlberg/Charlize Theron movie? Or, for that matter, a Hollywood "lets use the name and the basic premise but change all the details" movie?
I knew that but the story seemed like just as good a place as any other to mention what might be a godsend for UK astronomers who are interested in the visible wavelengths of the spectrum.
Of course, what you failed to notice is that UKIRT wouldn't be too effected by light pollution as it's an infrared telescope (UKIRT = United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope). D'oh!
In fact, all the telescopes mentioned by the article are UK operated but not UK sited. For example, the Liverpool Telescope is acutally in Spain, where it enjoys better observing conditions than it would in the UK. The other telescopes are in Hawaii and Australia. Again, they're situated there to take advantage of the better weather, etc that those environments offer.
Of course, this means if you're an Astronomy postgrad in the UK, you've potentially got some great places to do some research work and surf and ski at the same time.
You know, there's a reason why you're posting as an AC. It's because you know how moronic you sound and you don't have the balls to stand up and say "this is me, this is how dumb I am".
I wonder if ROW (rest of world) realizes that its irrelevant for them to hold opinions. America can buy, sell, destroy, or reconstruct any nation, any group of nations, or any other policital or geographical entity many times over. For all practical purposes, you don't exist. You are ants to our godhood
Empires rise, empires fall. History's full of examples.
America won't always be the world's only superpower. And when that change happens it won't be as obvious as you'd imagine.
Until that time, I'm sure you and others like you will happily live in ignorance thinking that other nations are just pawns on your chessboard. Just try to remember that, in the endgame, pawns are often the deadliest pieces.
Think about trade tariffs, duty and taxes. They likely just didn't want the headache. I am sure there are a dozen laws that are archaic that could be used against them if they did an international site. Or maybe they didn't want to compete with an american store that was launching?
The Canadian and American music industries are kinda odd. They are seperate entities with totally different takes on RIAA crap. I'm guessing the cost was prohibitive to sell to the states.
Nice to see that you think that by "international" I meant "USA". Wow. To quote The Shawshank Redemption, how can you be so obtuse?
Go get a map of the world. Look at the large green blobs of land that aren't North America. Those are "continents". On these quirky little continents are "other countries". Sometimes, when people say "international", they're talking about those "other countries" too.
(Is this flamebait. Perhaps. Is the parent poster dumb? Well, let's just say that I thought his comment was.)
"Puretracks.com is available to Canadian residents only."
And there was me thinking that the internet was international. Yeah, yeah, IP boundaries and all that but is it that hard to set up an international online music store?
The article also contains some interesting links, to the Internet Watch Foundation, ACLU, etc.
There are huge freedom of speech implications here. I'm not condoning pornographic content where it's likely to be seen by young, impressionable kids but it seems to me that you can't truly have freedom of speech unless you recognise everyone's freedom of speech, and not just freedom for those you deem morally or politically acceptable.
Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too. This looks like one of those times.
Hmmm. There is a practical reason why this is a good thing.
Suppose you've got telescope time booked for observing a particular galactic cluster. But, for some reason or another, observations in that direction are being hindered (cloud cover, a nearby bonfire throwing off excessive heat, etc). Well the sooner you learn about it, the sooner you can offer that time to somebody else who's interested in a different area of the night sky.
(Plus, if you're not already there, you can save yourself a pointless round trip to the observatory/university/office/whatever.)
Telescope time is valuable. If you can't use it, somebody else will always be grateful for it.
It looks like the UK government is about to propose legislation that would combat light pollution. This would be great for all UK astronomers, especially those of us that live in urban areas.
When I was an undergraduate at University College London, we had to trek up tok to the university's observatory at Mill Hill (as featured in the Omen movies), to do our Practical Astronomy classes and to use the telescopes. Previously though, although how far back in time I'm not certain, the classes were taught using two telescopes housed in domes in the university's front quad, which is practically in the middle of London.
The difference in light pollution between the two sites is amazing. Making observations of Delta Cephi (as required for one assignment, to calculate it's period) was impossible from central London but acheivable even with the naked eye at Mill Hill. Even so, the light pollution there (Mill Hill being a part of London, albeit one that's a few miles out from the centre) was still appreciable.
It would be nice to see the stars from London again, to be able to pick out more than just a few constellations. However, I don't expect the situation to improve any time soon, if at all. I have a sneaky suspicion that the legislation will be more concerned about people who leave their garden lights shining brightly into their neighbours properties than anything else.
Uhh, no, not quite accurate. I tried looking at the archive after reading this story on the BBC yesterday. It was down then, so I'm not surprised it's still down now. More a case of BBCed than slashdotted.
Give them a few days to realise that their press releases were a bit more effective than they originally anticipated and I'm sure that the site will be alright.
Apple had gotten lost in the future OS dealings with Taligent, Pink, Starttrek and the miserable Copland effort.
Copland wasn't that bad. OK, so it wasn't the second coming of Christ but it's probably Sylvester Stallone's best movie since Rocky and it's got some great performances by an awesome cast - Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, John Spencer, etc.
Definitely worth two hours of your time.
Huh? Whatcha mean that's not what you meant? You did say Copland, didn't you? D'oh!
Oh, and by the way, how is it you can say that Apple is all about the brand and not realise that Pepsi (where Jobs hired Sculley from)is too? What the hell are colas and other soft drinks all about then?
Heck, if there's one industry where branding is the only thing that matters to the marketing guys and the execs it's soft drinks! D'oh again!
The MT-32 was the heart of the Roland LAPC1 sound card. Most older PC gamers will remember it, as the Roland LAPC1 was the sound card, back in the days of Wing Commander, X-Wing, etc.
Combined with a SoundBlaster, the LAPC1 was all the sound you needed. Ahh, those were the days, fighting the Kilrathi and the Empire with nothing but the stars as your audience...
Of course, it didn't come cheap. My LAPC1 cost 300 pounds, which was/is around $450 US. Heck, I've still got it lying around, intact with its original packaging and documentation. I wonder what this baby's worth on eBay?
User Friendly isn't fit to sniff Penny Arcade's shit.
Translation: User Friendly isn't as 1337/pretentious * as Penny Arcade.
(* Delete as applicable.)
I'll leave it to the individual to decide which statement is true. Frankly, I think they're both pretty good but if I had to pick one I'd pick User Friendly, because at least my other half can get the jokes without first having to do a degree in hardcore gaming.
"I don't want to be the guy that gets laughed out of court for trying to stop users from hitting the SHIFT key".
Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to work out that:
a) the "protection" mechanism was going to be easy to circumvent; and b) once the circumvention was common knowledge, the "protection" mechanism was going to be useless.
Now if the circumvention method involved something a little more difficult than pressing one single key (or disabling autorun) then he might have something to go to court about. As it stands, their "protection" is useless vs anyone who knows the first thing about how to use a PC - and that subset includes the very people who are most likely to rip a CD and upload it to P2P networks.
You're either a troll or a moron, I can't decide which.
Nokia has been making mobiles for years, and they are no "also ran" in the field, they're practically market leaders, both in terms of technology and sales.
I've owned three handsets in my time and two of them have been Nokias. The things are so damn good from all viewpoints - ergonomics, software, etc - that I'd never even consider anything else if I was recommending a dedicated mobile phone. (And, before you ask, I've played around with virtually every other brand out there that you care to mention - Ericsson, LG, Motorola, Sagem, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony, etc, so I'm no novice.)
As many other posters have pointed out, all batteries are potential "bombs", even brand new disposable AAs. And damaged batteries (those that have been dropped, etc) are potentially more dangerous still. To single out Nokia when you don't know all the facts is just stupid, but to suggest that perhaps the best if not the biggest mobile phone manufacturer doesn't concentrate on their phones enough is definitely obtuse.
By the way, I should point out that you're flat out wrong, that Nokia has recently focussed on intensification rather than diversification. It has sold off some of its other businesses, such as its monitor division, which was sold off about 4 years ago.
Aah, but the RIAA, etc has the US government on its side, doesn't it? DCMA, copyright extensions, etc, etc. Do you really need further proof that your government is run by bought-off politicians for special interests rather than for public interest?
OK, so setting 20 sets of questions for 20 people is a bit over the top but set four sets of questions that test the same knowledge.
If there are two or more people who you suspect of cheating/copying, give them both a zero (of course, it helps if you've previously warned the students that copying will be rewarded with a zero mark) and have them complete different sets of questions the next time around.
If there's still copying going on with the second homework assignment then it should be easier to detect who did the work and who did the copying, as you've already know who your likely cheats are. Again, give the cheat a zero, and the person they copied from a provisional zero too. Make it clear to both that any other instance of suspected copying will result in zero for the whole set of homework assignments. (Or, if that sounds like too much of a discouragement for them to actually bother learning anything, threaten to halve their marks for the year.)
What you want to get is a situation where there's not only no reward for the copiers but an actual disincentive for people to let others copy their work. If you make it clear that cheating will harm rather than help their grades and if you punish the people who allow the copying to go on as much as the copiers then the problem will soon disappear.
It's a bit like fighting a disease. You can either let the disease spread and treat the symptoms every time they occur, or you can save yourself a lot of work by curing it at the source and not ever have to worry about it again.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, I'm sorry for having a girlfriend who watches TV and for enjoying the time we spend together snuggled up on the couch. Silly me! There was I thinking it was a relaxing way to chill out after a stressful day!
I'm also sorry for having a life and daring to venture out of my house frequently enough to merit wanting to record something once in a while. There I go again, enjoying myself when I could be doing something "productive".
And, lastly, I'm sorry for not liking the things that you do. Apparently, that's a mortal sin nowadays. I'll just sit hit waiting for my personal stoning squad, shall I?
The last Slashdot article on this topic had a post that contained the various lengths of time within which you could view a HDTV recording. After "forever" the next longest length of time was "one week".
One measly week.
Well, one week might be fine if you record something becasue you know you're going out for the night, but what the hell do you do if you're going away on a two-week vacation? What choice do you have except to miss out?
Can you imagine missing the last two weeks of 24, The West Wing, ER or whatever you're hooked on because some silly timestamped restriction is set to one week (or less)?
How do you tell your young kids that the show that you promised they could watch when they got back home from a long car journey to visit the grandparents can't be watched anymore because you exceeded the time limit? Ever tried explaining silly things like that to a screaming three year old?
Let's face it, for a lot of people, life is more hectic now than it was ten years ago. Ten years from now, it'll probably be more hectic still. What good is a timeshifting device like a VCR or a PVR if you can't timeshift with it?
Accuracy is for salesmen and bean counters. In the field, it's smarts that count.
The USAF bombed a Red Cross compound in Afghanistan. Twice. Poor intelligence meant that US missiles hit a Chinese embassy in the Balkans. Friendly fire incidents are far too common.
Pinpoint precision is only half the equation.
Well, just exactly what were you expecting from a Mark Wahlberg/Charlize Theron movie? Or, for that matter, a Hollywood "lets use the name and the basic premise but change all the details" movie?
Didn't any of you watch The Italian Job ?
Seth Green/Lyle is the real Napster!
I knew that but the story seemed like just as good a place as any other to mention what might be a godsend for UK astronomers who are interested in the visible wavelengths of the spectrum.
Of course, what you failed to notice is that UKIRT wouldn't be too effected by light pollution as it's an infrared telescope (UKIRT = United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope). D'oh!
In fact, all the telescopes mentioned by the article are UK operated but not UK sited. For example, the Liverpool Telescope is acutally in Spain, where it enjoys better observing conditions than it would in the UK. The other telescopes are in Hawaii and Australia. Again, they're situated there to take advantage of the better weather, etc that those environments offer.
Of course, this means if you're an Astronomy postgrad in the UK, you've potentially got some great places to do some research work and surf and ski at the same time.
You think the pawns move themselves?
There's a player moving the pawns.
Just keep that in mind, pawn.
You know, there's a reason why you're posting as an AC. It's because you know how moronic you sound and you don't have the balls to stand up and say "this is me, this is how dumb I am".
I wonder if ROW (rest of world) realizes that its irrelevant for them to hold opinions. America can buy, sell, destroy, or reconstruct any nation, any group of nations, or any other policital or geographical entity many times over. For all practical purposes, you don't exist. You are ants to our godhood
Empires rise, empires fall. History's full of examples.
America won't always be the world's only superpower. And when that change happens it won't be as obvious as you'd imagine.
Until that time, I'm sure you and others like you will happily live in ignorance thinking that other nations are just pawns on your chessboard. Just try to remember that, in the endgame, pawns are often the deadliest pieces.
Think about trade tariffs, duty and taxes. They likely just didn't want the headache. I am sure there are a dozen laws that are archaic that could be used against them if they did an international site. Or maybe they didn't want to compete with an american store that was launching?
The Canadian and American music industries are kinda odd. They are seperate entities with totally different takes on RIAA crap. I'm guessing the cost was prohibitive to sell to the states.
Nice to see that you think that by "international" I meant "USA". Wow. To quote The Shawshank Redemption, how can you be so obtuse?
Go get a map of the world. Look at the large green blobs of land that aren't North America. Those are "continents". On these quirky little continents are "other countries". Sometimes, when people say "international", they're talking about those "other countries" too.
(Is this flamebait. Perhaps. Is the parent poster dumb? Well, let's just say that I thought his comment was.)
You can convert Canadian dollars to US dollars???
I always thought you could only convert Canadian dollars to whale blubber and beer.
Now if you had seal flipper pie you'd at least come off as cultural and perhaps even funny. But, instead, you've just come off as stupid.
From their Help page, linked to on the home page:
"Puretracks.com is available to Canadian residents only."
And there was me thinking that the internet was international. Yeah, yeah, IP boundaries and all that but is it that hard to set up an international online music store?
Here's the BBC's story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3191676.stm.
The article also contains some interesting links, to the Internet Watch Foundation, ACLU, etc.
There are huge freedom of speech implications here. I'm not condoning pornographic content where it's likely to be seen by young, impressionable kids but it seems to me that you can't truly have freedom of speech unless you recognise everyone's freedom of speech, and not just freedom for those you deem morally or politically acceptable.
Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too. This looks like one of those times.
Hmmm. There is a practical reason why this is a good thing.
Suppose you've got telescope time booked for observing a particular galactic cluster. But, for some reason or another, observations in that direction are being hindered (cloud cover, a nearby bonfire throwing off excessive heat, etc). Well the sooner you learn about it, the sooner you can offer that time to somebody else who's interested in a different area of the night sky.
(Plus, if you're not already there, you can save yourself a pointless round trip to the observatory/university/office/whatever.)
Telescope time is valuable. If you can't use it, somebody else will always be grateful for it.
It looks like the UK government is about to propose legislation that would combat light pollution. This would be great for all UK astronomers, especially those of us that live in urban areas.
When I was an undergraduate at University College London, we had to trek up tok to the university's observatory at Mill Hill (as featured in the Omen movies), to do our Practical Astronomy classes and to use the telescopes. Previously though, although how far back in time I'm not certain, the classes were taught using two telescopes housed in domes in the university's front quad, which is practically in the middle of London.
The difference in light pollution between the two sites is amazing. Making observations of Delta Cephi (as required for one assignment, to calculate it's period) was impossible from central London but acheivable even with the naked eye at Mill Hill. Even so, the light pollution there (Mill Hill being a part of London, albeit one that's a few miles out from the centre) was still appreciable.
It would be nice to see the stars from London again, to be able to pick out more than just a few constellations. However, I don't expect the situation to improve any time soon, if at all. I have a sneaky suspicion that the legislation will be more concerned about people who leave their garden lights shining brightly into their neighbours properties than anything else.
Uhh, no, not quite accurate. I tried looking at the archive after reading this story on the BBC yesterday. It was down then, so I'm not surprised it's still down now. More a case of BBCed than slashdotted.
Give them a few days to realise that their press releases were a bit more effective than they originally anticipated and I'm sure that the site will be alright.
...it's Foghorn Leghorn, boy!
I wonder who gets to dress up in the chicken suit for the launch party. Steve Ballmer perhaps? He's got all the right dance moves for the part...
Apple had gotten lost in the future OS dealings with Taligent, Pink, Starttrek and the miserable Copland effort.
Copland wasn't that bad. OK, so it wasn't the second coming of Christ but it's probably Sylvester Stallone's best movie since Rocky and it's got some great performances by an awesome cast - Harvey Keitel, Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, John Spencer, etc.
Definitely worth two hours of your time.
Huh? Whatcha mean that's not what you meant? You did say Copland, didn't you? D'oh!
Oh, and by the way, how is it you can say that Apple is all about the brand and not realise that Pepsi (where Jobs hired Sculley from)is too? What the hell are colas and other soft drinks all about then?
Heck, if there's one industry where branding is the only thing that matters to the marketing guys and the execs it's soft drinks! D'oh again!
The MT-32 was the heart of the Roland LAPC1 sound card. Most older PC gamers will remember it, as the Roland LAPC1 was the sound card, back in the days of Wing Commander, X-Wing, etc.
Combined with a SoundBlaster, the LAPC1 was all the sound you needed. Ahh, those were the days, fighting the Kilrathi and the Empire with nothing but the stars as your audience...
Of course, it didn't come cheap. My LAPC1 cost 300 pounds, which was/is around $450 US. Heck, I've still got it lying around, intact with its original packaging and documentation. I wonder what this baby's worth on eBay?
User Friendly isn't fit to sniff Penny Arcade's shit.
Translation: User Friendly isn't as 1337/pretentious * as Penny Arcade.
(* Delete as applicable.)
I'll leave it to the individual to decide which statement is true. Frankly, I think they're both pretty good but if I had to pick one I'd pick User Friendly, because at least my other half can get the jokes without first having to do a degree in hardcore gaming.
...and he lives (well, wanders) here, as any fool can plainly see.
"I don't want to be the guy that gets laughed out of court for trying to stop users from hitting the SHIFT key".
Seriously, it doesn't take a genius to work out that:
a) the "protection" mechanism was going to be easy to circumvent; and
b) once the circumvention was common knowledge, the "protection" mechanism was going to be useless.
Now if the circumvention method involved something a little more difficult than pressing one single key (or disabling autorun) then he might have something to go to court about. As it stands, their "protection" is useless vs anyone who knows the first thing about how to use a PC - and that subset includes the very people who are most likely to rip a CD and upload it to P2P networks.
He seemed less than stunned by the notion that a product advertised via spam might not be all that it was claimed to be.
Any orders that I take for the Brooklyn Bridge will be honoured. Just make sure that $5,000 is in my PayPal account and you're good to go.
You're either a troll or a moron, I can't decide which.
Nokia has been making mobiles for years, and they are no "also ran" in the field, they're practically market leaders, both in terms of technology and sales.
I've owned three handsets in my time and two of them have been Nokias. The things are so damn good from all viewpoints - ergonomics, software, etc - that I'd never even consider anything else if I was recommending a dedicated mobile phone. (And, before you ask, I've played around with virtually every other brand out there that you care to mention - Ericsson, LG, Motorola, Sagem, Samsung, Sharp, Siemens, Sony, etc, so I'm no novice.)
As many other posters have pointed out, all batteries are potential "bombs", even brand new disposable AAs. And damaged batteries (those that have been dropped, etc) are potentially more dangerous still. To single out Nokia when you don't know all the facts is just stupid, but to suggest that perhaps the best if not the biggest mobile phone manufacturer doesn't concentrate on their phones enough is definitely obtuse.
By the way, I should point out that you're flat out wrong, that Nokia has recently focussed on intensification rather than diversification. It has sold off some of its other businesses, such as its monitor division, which was sold off about 4 years ago.
Next time, get youre facts straight please.
Aah, but the RIAA, etc has the US government on its side, doesn't it? DCMA, copyright extensions, etc, etc. Do you really need further proof that your government is run by bought-off politicians for special interests rather than for public interest?
OK, so setting 20 sets of questions for 20 people is a bit over the top but set four sets of questions that test the same knowledge.
If there are two or more people who you suspect of cheating/copying, give them both a zero (of course, it helps if you've previously warned the students that copying will be rewarded with a zero mark) and have them complete different sets of questions the next time around.
If there's still copying going on with the second homework assignment then it should be easier to detect who did the work and who did the copying, as you've already know who your likely cheats are. Again, give the cheat a zero, and the person they copied from a provisional zero too. Make it clear to both that any other instance of suspected copying will result in zero for the whole set of homework assignments. (Or, if that sounds like too much of a discouragement for them to actually bother learning anything, threaten to halve their marks for the year.)
What you want to get is a situation where there's not only no reward for the copiers but an actual disincentive for people to let others copy their work. If you make it clear that cheating will harm rather than help their grades and if you punish the people who allow the copying to go on as much as the copiers then the problem will soon disappear.
It's a bit like fighting a disease. You can either let the disease spread and treat the symptoms every time they occur, or you can save yourself a lot of work by curing it at the source and not ever have to worry about it again.
Regardless of what approach you take, good luck.