Which,the article adds, are considerably more robust (at least in terms of temperature ranges) than what Samsung is shooting for - which might be part of the price difference. On the other hand, if you just took 32 1 GB CF cards you would be paying around $1100, which makes their target price sound very reasonable (although far too expensive to be widely adopted I would think - I could see possibly paying double or even triple the price for the advantages, but not ten times as much for something of questionable utility for most people).
Stackpole was pretty good (the X-Wing/Rogue Squadron series is the best Star Wars I've read aside from Zahn), I tried reading one of Anderson's books and it was pretty bad. Zahn's are definitely the best of the Star Wars books by far (and his other books are pretty damn good, too - try the Conquerors series, or Icarus Hunt). I remember when Heir to the Empire came out, it was just awesome - it was the first non-Lucas Star Wars book out there (that I'm aware of) and it was very well written. Zahn has consistently lived up to it, alhtough I have to say his latest book in the Star Wars universe wasn't nearly as good. Outbound Flight just felt rushed, and a littel bit stilted - but part of that might be due to Zahn trying more to fit in with episodes I-III. The parts where Zahn stays with his own characters (Thrawn, etc.) are much better than the parts where he includes Ben and Anakin et al. That said, it is still a hell of a lot better than most of the Star Wars crap that is out there now. The whole "expanded universe" thing is really, really lame - if there was ever a case of "Too many cooks ruins the soup", it is Star Wars (at least the books - the movies, strangely enough, seem to exhibit the reverse).
On a somewhat related note, Give Me Another Tie Fighter (or X-Wing - I loved those games)!
The point, which should be obvious, was that western media (in this case the BBC) tend to report based on their preconceptions, rather than simply reporting the facts. The most that should have been said based on the information they apparently had is, "A chinese blog was shut down for unknown reasons". The fact that they made the jump to say that the Chinese government was responsible, despite the complete lack of evidence for this, shows that they were not reporting facts but were instead attempting to project their view of the world onto other people.
Yes, the Chinese government has closed down blogs in the past (and most likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future). Yes, this is reprehensible, and a clear restriction of free speech. No, this does not make it okay for western media (or any other media) to make baseless accusations based on their pre-conceived notions - their self-defined job is to report the facts, not to make up stories based on zero information (that's what the op-ed section is for:).
It was worse than that. They basically said, "The mac mini recognized our LCD TV right away, but this one time when we were trying out a Media Center PC we had trouble setting it up (it may or may not have been the same TV, it might have been four years ago, we really don't want to bother you with details or specifics), so obviously the Mini is far superior to Media Center"
They were basically comparing a mac mini to vague recollections of media center PCs they've tried in the past, with no effort whatsoever to compare features or make any meaningful analysis. This was an ad for mac minis, no more and no less (which is not to say the Mini wouldn't have come out ahead in an actual comparison, but this article is completely useless as far as providing information goes).
First, that would be anisotropic. It doesn't seem too surprising that AC power would produce an anisotropic field since the current keeps switching, so the magnetic field should be switching direction also. I suppose this would make the magnetic field from a DC current isotropic (invariant with direction, or I suppose in this context constant orientation), but I don't really see why either would be an issue (since you referred to Maxtor, I assume the issue was something that had to do with hard drives). Although if you have a weak, constantly switching magnetic field it might demagnetize (randomize) low-coercivity magnetic grains (domains, whatever - I work with sediment, dammit!), but unless it is a pretty strong field it shouldn't bother the relatively hard (magnetically) magnetic media in use. I'm too lazy to actually look up what you are referring to, though, so whatever.
No, see, those sharks got smarter. These sharks are going to have the military running the show. Soon we'll have hundreds of sharks knocking themselves out on the hulls of Japanese fishing boats off the coast of Hawaii.
I've seen this technique used for imagery (video and still images) from deep-sea submersibles/ROVs for years (as one example that others are somewhat likely to have seen, watch for the twin red dots in many of the underwater scenes in "Aliens of the Deep" - which, I just realized, was done in cooperation with NASA). It kind of sucks when you see a new formation/organism/whatever, take pictures, then realize you have absolutely no way of telling how big it is when you look at the images later.
Teh article summary is very misleading. Just using land-based seismometers we are quite capable of detecting and locating pretty much every earthquake that occurs, whether it is on land or under sea. But this isn't really even what the article addresses. The whole point of the article is that up until now under-sea seismic observatories have been limited to either boradband recorders which are very sensitive (but can't accurately record high-intensity shaking) or accelerometers that only detect the strongest of shaking. All the article says is that a group from WHOI developed a system that includes both broadband and high-intensity seismometers/accelerometers, which they are going to deploy in a region known to have periodic high-intensity earthquakes (but also many smaller events). It isn't about locating under-sea earthquakes, it is about getting higher-quality information from those earthquakes. While it is relatively straightforward to locate and measure the relative intensity of earthquakes even from a very long distance, the lack of local measurement capabilities makes it very difficult to characterize the movements beyond a very basic level. Things like tsunami detection/prediction (predicting whether an earthquake you detected could/did create a tsunami) require a better characterization of local ground movement than is possible from remote observatories, so that is one area these could potentialy help - but this is obviously not the purpose of this particular project (they are putting them around a transform fault system, which is not the type of fault you would expect to create tsunamis - unless they set off major undersea landslides).
Where can one find info about the Oppo OPV971? I googled it (and tried yahoo and msn), and came up with exactly one hit, to AVS Forum, which had zero information. Does this actually exist, and if so, where might I find one?
They were talking about him being some sort of "business mogul" on NBC last night, my wife and I were wondering what business he was in that he was a millionaire in his teens. Now I know - but really, it has nothing to do with the Olympics. It doesn't make such a nice story (after winning his medal he goes home to his little old Lamborghini, how sweet), but unless he was doing something illegal it really shouldn't matter. Millionaire spyware mogul wins gold skiing moguls. Whatever.
(and now for something completely different) I can't stand NBC's coverage of the olympics. I don't remember ever being exactly thrilled with whoever covers them in a given year, but this year seems especially bad. They do the same old "All the Americans + the top 2-3 other people" for every event, and instead of actually showing us as much of as many events as possible (the reason I want to watch the Olympics), they waste precious hours of their limited coverage with lame feel-good stories that TV reporters seem to love so much. They claimed there would be something like 400 hours of coverage this year, but it seems to be the same stuff three times a day. For the next olympics can we give the rights to someone who actually cares about attempting to cover the Olympics?
I thought the same - it was the only reason I could come up with that someone would call their store Newegg. Maybe one or more of the founders used to work at egghead?
"Major U.S. companies do this and it is regarded as normal," Mr. Liu said. "So why should China not be entitled to do so?"
But he has a point here.
He most certainly does not have a point there. He makes a completely invalid comparison. A U.S. company deciding what it will publish on it's own website (in the form of moderating forums, etc., as alluded to in the article) is the same as the government blocking access to content it disagrees with? It isn't even remotely similar.
Our congressman are editing their own bios in wikipedia... Bush is requesting personal data from Google and the likes... And quite some people are getting fired for blogging...
While these are all distasteful activities, they don't all really directly relate to the "point" the chinese spokesperson was making. In the first case, making a nuisance of ones self by altering information on a website is annoying, but it is far different from throwing someone in prison for saying something you don't like. As for people getting fired for blogging, who are they getting fired by? What for? I can think of lots of valid reasons to fire someone over things they might have published in their blog (corporate secrets, illegal activities they have been engaged in, etc. - a blog is a published, public forum after all). Again, you aren't in danger of being thrown in jail (well, unless it was illegal activities you were posting), at worst you have to find another company to work for that is more accomodating to your published ideas.
In order to avoid this conflict, a different-colored cross is often used.
Out of curiosity, anyone know how different the color has to be for it to be non-infringing? How specific is a trademark in this case? Would it be okay to use orange-red? How about #FF0033? I'm just wondering if there is a well-established standard for how different the color would have to be for someone to use the symbol legally.
Believe it or not, your friend may have a point. When gaming, you are fully occupied by the game you are playing. On the other hand, watching TV doesn't really occupy your hands, and you don't really need to pay close attention most of the time. My wife, for example, likes to playvideo games but rarely does, because if she watches TV or a video instead (something that for her offers equal entertainment value) she can knit or cook or write letters at the same time. The point being, when you are watching TV, you can get other things done at the same time (assuming you aren't completely enthralled by whatever you are watching). When you are playing a video game, you are completely occupied (I am, anyway).
Doesn't change the fact that I spend a lot more time playing video games than watching TV, but I would probably be a little more productive if I was watching TV instead (although, as a broad generalization, I think women tend to be better able to multitask in this way - I tend to concentrate on whatever I am doing to the exclusion of all else, so it really doesn't make much difference for me).
GPLv3 allows DRM that is controlled by the user, it only negates non-user-controlled-DRM.
Okay, first of all, what does this mean? What is user-controlled DRM? Can you point to a clear explanation (preferably with examples) of what user-controlled vs. non-user-controlled DRM are?
Second, and I think this is (part of) the reason Torvalds doesn't seem to want to switch to GPL v3, why would you put something in a general software license governing what type of software someone is allowed to write under it? It seems like this is an example of the GPL trying to do too many things - rather than supporting free and open software development, it is putting arbitrary restrictions on what kind of software you are allowed to write. If someone wants to modify something released under the GPL to implement DRM, what's the problem? If users don't like it, they don't use it.
The proposed language concerning DRM seems to be an encumberance, a limitation on what software developers may do. It seems to run counter to the original purpose of the GPL, which it seems to me was to simply provide a framework in which open source software could be released without fear of it being stolen and used for profit without permission of the developer. Rather than protect the rights and property of the developer, the new version appears to be trying to dictate what kinds of modifications may be made - or, more broadly, it attempts to impose a certain viewpoint on all works released under it.
While I disagree with the idea of using restrictive DRM (is there another kind?), I don't think it is appropriate for a general license like the GPL to say that such things must not be used. I think that such a requirement would narrow the base of support for any software released under the license. Currently open source projects are enjoying generally unprecedented support in the business community largely because businesses are realizing that while they have certain responsibilities if they choose to use and modify open source software, using it does not dictate how they can conduct their business or what types of services/software they are able to offer. Putting something like the DRM restrictions into the license is a blatant attempt to dictate to users and developers of open source software what kinds of services they are allowed to offer and how they do business.
So, while I agree with the sentiment that DRM is evil and unnecessary (but something that content creators have every right to implement, at least in some form), I don't think that putting restrictions on its use into the license is a positive step. It is taking something open and free and encumbering it with a political agenda. You may hate DRM in all its forms, and think that DRM software should be outlawed - I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that the general public license is not the appropriate place to do it.
I think the parent was suggesting that the license be forked, not the kernel. The idea being that if Torvalds doesn't want to switch to the new license because of a particular piece of it he could conceivably simply remove that piece of the license, rename it, and use his new version. The parent wasn't suggesting that the kernel be forked.
Of course, as far as I know Mr. Torvalds is content with the current license the linux kernel is released under, so it seems doubtful that he would do this (why fix it if it ain't broke).
I never encountered Brain (the virus, dammit!). The first (and only!) virus I've had infecting one of my computers was the Ripper virus. Damned annoying, especially being unaware of it for probably a year or more, and this during the time of zipping files across multiple (I think our record was 17 or so) floppy disks. At least one disk out of a set would always be "dead". Made it really annoying to share doom^h^h^h^h ultima7^h^h^h^h^h^h^h data with friends. Ah, the good ol' days. I did finally get rid of it, but I also dumped all my floppies - too much hassle to check each one of them.
Wait, are you trying to say there is a marketing campaign that doesn't come off as contrived and weak? You do realize that all marketing campaigns are contrived, right?
On an almost totally different subject (well, still ads, but a totally different industry), has anyone seen that damn Coke commercial with the penguins and the polar bears? Talk about idio-fucking-otic ads, everything is wrong with that one.
Expensive software is coming with hardware dongles already.
Hardware dongles aren't exactly a new idea. And in the past they haven't been confined to expensive apps. I remember having a golf game on my commodore 64 that required a hardware dongle to be inserted in the back in order to play the game (no, I don't remember the name of hte game - but it had a silver label and a blue script title! God, the random things that stick in one's head...).
Personally, I don't like your idea of compartmentalizing applications to the point of each one residing on it's own cartridge. Solving a problem that exists due to ignorance by further idiot-proofing the system doesn't seem like a good long-term solution, nor does it seem a good precedent to set.
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Which,the article adds, are considerably more robust (at least in terms of temperature ranges) than what Samsung is shooting for - which might be part of the price difference. On the other hand, if you just took 32 1 GB CF cards you would be paying around $1100, which makes their target price sound very reasonable (although far too expensive to be widely adopted I would think - I could see possibly paying double or even triple the price for the advantages, but not ten times as much for something of questionable utility for most people).
Stackpole was pretty good (the X-Wing/Rogue Squadron series is the best Star Wars I've read aside from Zahn), I tried reading one of Anderson's books and it was pretty bad. Zahn's are definitely the best of the Star Wars books by far (and his other books are pretty damn good, too - try the Conquerors series, or Icarus Hunt). I remember when Heir to the Empire came out, it was just awesome - it was the first non-Lucas Star Wars book out there (that I'm aware of) and it was very well written. Zahn has consistently lived up to it, alhtough I have to say his latest book in the Star Wars universe wasn't nearly as good. Outbound Flight just felt rushed, and a littel bit stilted - but part of that might be due to Zahn trying more to fit in with episodes I-III. The parts where Zahn stays with his own characters (Thrawn, etc.) are much better than the parts where he includes Ben and Anakin et al.
That said, it is still a hell of a lot better than most of the Star Wars crap that is out there now. The whole "expanded universe" thing is really, really lame - if there was ever a case of "Too many cooks ruins the soup", it is Star Wars (at least the books - the movies, strangely enough, seem to exhibit the reverse).
On a somewhat related note, Give Me Another Tie Fighter (or X-Wing - I loved those games)!
The point, which should be obvious, was that western media (in this case the BBC) tend to report based on their preconceptions, rather than simply reporting the facts. The most that should have been said based on the information they apparently had is, "A chinese blog was shut down for unknown reasons". The fact that they made the jump to say that the Chinese government was responsible, despite the complete lack of evidence for this, shows that they were not reporting facts but were instead attempting to project their view of the world onto other people.
:).
Yes, the Chinese government has closed down blogs in the past (and most likely will continue to do so for the foreseeable future). Yes, this is reprehensible, and a clear restriction of free speech. No, this does not make it okay for western media (or any other media) to make baseless accusations based on their pre-conceived notions - their self-defined job is to report the facts, not to make up stories based on zero information (that's what the op-ed section is for
It was worse than that. They basically said, "The mac mini recognized our LCD TV right away, but this one time when we were trying out a Media Center PC we had trouble setting it up (it may or may not have been the same TV, it might have been four years ago, we really don't want to bother you with details or specifics), so obviously the Mini is far superior to Media Center"
They were basically comparing a mac mini to vague recollections of media center PCs they've tried in the past, with no effort whatsoever to compare features or make any meaningful analysis. This was an ad for mac minis, no more and no less (which is not to say the Mini wouldn't have come out ahead in an actual comparison, but this article is completely useless as far as providing information goes).
I think you have it a bit out of order. At least for me, yummy-ness clearly comes before Order.
First, that would be anisotropic.
It doesn't seem too surprising that AC power would produce an anisotropic field since the current keeps switching, so the magnetic field should be switching direction also. I suppose this would make the magnetic field from a DC current isotropic (invariant with direction, or I suppose in this context constant orientation), but I don't really see why either would be an issue (since you referred to Maxtor, I assume the issue was something that had to do with hard drives). Although if you have a weak, constantly switching magnetic field it might demagnetize (randomize) low-coercivity magnetic grains (domains, whatever - I work with sediment, dammit!), but unless it is a pretty strong field it shouldn't bother the relatively hard (magnetically) magnetic media in use.
I'm too lazy to actually look up what you are referring to, though, so whatever.
"Umm, why does that shark have frickin laser beams on it's head?"
"For scale, you idiot!"
Can't have our RPS(wflb)'s* eyes too big for their stomachs, now can we?
* Remotely Piloted Shark (with frickin laser beams)
No, see, those sharks got smarter. These sharks are going to have the military running the show. Soon we'll have hundreds of sharks knocking themselves out on the hulls of Japanese fishing boats off the coast of Hawaii.
Military Intelligence, hah!
I've seen this technique used for imagery (video and still images) from deep-sea submersibles/ROVs for years (as one example that others are somewhat likely to have seen, watch for the twin red dots in many of the underwater scenes in "Aliens of the Deep" - which, I just realized, was done in cooperation with NASA). It kind of sucks when you see a new formation/organism/whatever, take pictures, then realize you have absolutely no way of telling how big it is when you look at the images later.
Teh article summary is very misleading. Just using land-based seismometers we are quite capable of detecting and locating pretty much every earthquake that occurs, whether it is on land or under sea. But this isn't really even what the article addresses. The whole point of the article is that up until now under-sea seismic observatories have been limited to either boradband recorders which are very sensitive (but can't accurately record high-intensity shaking) or accelerometers that only detect the strongest of shaking. All the article says is that a group from WHOI developed a system that includes both broadband and high-intensity seismometers/accelerometers, which they are going to deploy in a region known to have periodic high-intensity earthquakes (but also many smaller events). It isn't about locating under-sea earthquakes, it is about getting higher-quality information from those earthquakes. While it is relatively straightforward to locate and measure the relative intensity of earthquakes even from a very long distance, the lack of local measurement capabilities makes it very difficult to characterize the movements beyond a very basic level.
Things like tsunami detection/prediction (predicting whether an earthquake you detected could/did create a tsunami) require a better characterization of local ground movement than is possible from remote observatories, so that is one area these could potentialy help - but this is obviously not the purpose of this particular project (they are putting them around a transform fault system, which is not the type of fault you would expect to create tsunamis - unless they set off major undersea landslides).
Where can one find info about the Oppo OPV971? I googled it (and tried yahoo and msn), and came up with exactly one hit, to AVS Forum, which had zero information. Does this actually exist, and if so, where might I find one?
They were talking about him being some sort of "business mogul" on NBC last night, my wife and I were wondering what business he was in that he was a millionaire in his teens. Now I know - but really, it has nothing to do with the Olympics. It doesn't make such a nice story (after winning his medal he goes home to his little old Lamborghini, how sweet), but unless he was doing something illegal it really shouldn't matter. Millionaire spyware mogul wins gold skiing moguls. Whatever.
(and now for something completely different)
I can't stand NBC's coverage of the olympics. I don't remember ever being exactly thrilled with whoever covers them in a given year, but this year seems especially bad. They do the same old "All the Americans + the top 2-3 other people" for every event, and instead of actually showing us as much of as many events as possible (the reason I want to watch the Olympics), they waste precious hours of their limited coverage with lame feel-good stories that TV reporters seem to love so much. They claimed there would be something like 400 hours of coverage this year, but it seems to be the same stuff three times a day. For the next olympics can we give the rights to someone who actually cares about attempting to cover the Olympics?
I thought the same - it was the only reason I could come up with that someone would call their store Newegg. Maybe one or more of the founders used to work at egghead?
Speaking of duckhunt... did you see the Daily Show's re-enactment of Dick Cheney's "accident"?
He most certainly does not have a point there. He makes a completely invalid comparison. A U.S. company deciding what it will publish on it's own website (in the form of moderating forums, etc., as alluded to in the article) is the same as the government blocking access to content it disagrees with? It isn't even remotely similar.
While these are all distasteful activities, they don't all really directly relate to the "point" the chinese spokesperson was making. In the first case, making a nuisance of ones self by altering information on a website is annoying, but it is far different from throwing someone in prison for saying something you don't like.
As for people getting fired for blogging, who are they getting fired by? What for? I can think of lots of valid reasons to fire someone over things they might have published in their blog (corporate secrets, illegal activities they have been engaged in, etc. - a blog is a published, public forum after all). Again, you aren't in danger of being thrown in jail (well, unless it was illegal activities you were posting), at worst you have to find another company to work for that is more accomodating to your published ideas.
It isn't that difficult to put some magnetic shielding around the processor. MuMetal, for example, could work pretty well.
Out of curiosity, anyone know how different the color has to be for it to be non-infringing? How specific is a trademark in this case? Would it be okay to use orange-red? How about #FF0033? I'm just wondering if there is a well-established standard for how different the color would have to be for someone to use the symbol legally.
Believe it or not, your friend may have a point. When gaming, you are fully occupied by the game you are playing. On the other hand, watching TV doesn't really occupy your hands, and you don't really need to pay close attention most of the time. My wife, for example, likes to playvideo games but rarely does, because if she watches TV or a video instead (something that for her offers equal entertainment value) she can knit or cook or write letters at the same time. The point being, when you are watching TV, you can get other things done at the same time (assuming you aren't completely enthralled by whatever you are watching). When you are playing a video game, you are completely occupied (I am, anyway).
Doesn't change the fact that I spend a lot more time playing video games than watching TV, but I would probably be a little more productive if I was watching TV instead (although, as a broad generalization, I think women tend to be better able to multitask in this way - I tend to concentrate on whatever I am doing to the exclusion of all else, so it really doesn't make much difference for me).
Okay, first of all, what does this mean? What is user-controlled DRM? Can you point to a clear explanation (preferably with examples) of what user-controlled vs. non-user-controlled DRM are?
Second, and I think this is (part of) the reason Torvalds doesn't seem to want to switch to GPL v3, why would you put something in a general software license governing what type of software someone is allowed to write under it? It seems like this is an example of the GPL trying to do too many things - rather than supporting free and open software development, it is putting arbitrary restrictions on what kind of software you are allowed to write. If someone wants to modify something released under the GPL to implement DRM, what's the problem? If users don't like it, they don't use it.
The proposed language concerning DRM seems to be an encumberance, a limitation on what software developers may do. It seems to run counter to the original purpose of the GPL, which it seems to me was to simply provide a framework in which open source software could be released without fear of it being stolen and used for profit without permission of the developer. Rather than protect the rights and property of the developer, the new version appears to be trying to dictate what kinds of modifications may be made - or, more broadly, it attempts to impose a certain viewpoint on all works released under it.
While I disagree with the idea of using restrictive DRM (is there another kind?), I don't think it is appropriate for a general license like the GPL to say that such things must not be used. I think that such a requirement would narrow the base of support for any software released under the license. Currently open source projects are enjoying generally unprecedented support in the business community largely because businesses are realizing that while they have certain responsibilities if they choose to use and modify open source software, using it does not dictate how they can conduct their business or what types of services/software they are able to offer. Putting something like the DRM restrictions into the license is a blatant attempt to dictate to users and developers of open source software what kinds of services they are allowed to offer and how they do business.
So, while I agree with the sentiment that DRM is evil and unnecessary (but something that content creators have every right to implement, at least in some form), I don't think that putting restrictions on its use into the license is a positive step. It is taking something open and free and encumbering it with a political agenda. You may hate DRM in all its forms, and think that DRM software should be outlawed - I'm not disagreeing, I'm just saying that the general public license is not the appropriate place to do it.
I think the parent was suggesting that the license be forked, not the kernel. The idea being that if Torvalds doesn't want to switch to the new license because of a particular piece of it he could conceivably simply remove that piece of the license, rename it, and use his new version. The parent wasn't suggesting that the kernel be forked.
Of course, as far as I know Mr. Torvalds is content with the current license the linux kernel is released under, so it seems doubtful that he would do this (why fix it if it ain't broke).
Knock yourself out.
I never encountered Brain (the virus, dammit!). The first (and only!) virus I've had infecting one of my computers was the Ripper virus. Damned annoying, especially being unaware of it for probably a year or more, and this during the time of zipping files across multiple (I think our record was 17 or so) floppy disks. At least one disk out of a set would always be "dead". Made it really annoying to share doom^h^h^h^h ultima7^h^h^h^h^h^h^h data with friends. Ah, the good ol' days. I did finally get rid of it, but I also dumped all my floppies - too much hassle to check each one of them.
Wait, are you trying to say there is a marketing campaign that doesn't come off as contrived and weak? You do realize that all marketing campaigns are contrived, right?
On an almost totally different subject (well, still ads, but a totally different industry), has anyone seen that damn Coke commercial with the penguins and the polar bears? Talk about idio-fucking-otic ads, everything is wrong with that one.
Hardware dongles aren't exactly a new idea. And in the past they haven't been confined to expensive apps. I remember having a golf game on my commodore 64 that required a hardware dongle to be inserted in the back in order to play the game (no, I don't remember the name of hte game - but it had a silver label and a blue script title! God, the random things that stick in one's head...).
Personally, I don't like your idea of compartmentalizing applications to the point of each one residing on it's own cartridge. Solving a problem that exists due to ignorance by further idiot-proofing the system doesn't seem like a good long-term solution, nor does it seem a good precedent to set.
probably helps too :P