If there is no God, and we are free to practice any or no religion we want who sets up the rules for us to live by?
I usually stay out of these types of debates, but the above statement is one of the most ignorant statements I've read in the thread. It's the same old ignorant Christian view that somehow religion equates to morality. (tell that to the victims of sexual abuse by catholic priests...) I'm sorry to inform you, but there are many people in this world, who have extremely high moral fiber, yet they don't practice any religion. Morality has absolutely nothing to do with faith, though some religions include moral teachings in their doctrine.
You ask 'who says murder is murder'. That's a very easy question to answer... when one human being deliberately kills another human being. It's a murder. Whether it's justified or not may be the debated question, but in the end, it's still a murder.
If you don't know where morality comes from, than I would suggest you grew up in a very disfunctional environment, and I feel very sorry for you.
Re:If you care about digital audio, no choices
on
Comparing the DVRs?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You should have considered your PVR options before choosing DishNetwork since the DishPlayer software is not so great.
Umm, he's not talking about DishPlayer, he's talking about Dish PVR, which is completely different from the DishPlayer. I have the DishPlayer, and it's essentially Microsoft UltimateTV before they decided to sell it themselves, and agree that TiVo software is much better that that. However, the new Dish PVR uses completely different software developed by the Dish Network, and there is no monthly service fee for this PVR, unlike Tivo/DirecTivo, or my DishPlayer. The fact that you don't have to pay for the PVR service alone is a big bonus in my opinion.
OK, I live in Plano, TX (greater Dallas area) and I noticed on Sunday evening that the modem was synced up, so I tried to hit yahoo, but it took me to AT&T Broadband page instead, where it told me that I need to switch over to DHCP. I reconfigured my Red Hat 7.2 to DHCP, but it fails to assign me an IP anyway. Tried this morning, same thing.
BTW, I manually edited the/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 file, and changed it to BOOTPROTO=DHCP, etc... I even tried to add the DHCP_HOSTNAME and gave it my old cryptic @home assigned name, but still no workie.
Second of all, I have a domain registered which was pointed at my static @home IP. It was mainly so I could ssh to my home computer from anywhere, and receive email using a nifty first@lastname.com address. Will I have to switch to DSL now, or does AT&T BI make exceptions to the dynapic IP rule?
Certainly they are not taking in the entire $39.95 each month. The local provider (Cox Cable in my town) obviously takes a portion of that montly bill, but Excite! must still be receiving a ton of money each month.
One of the stories I read about this, said that @Home gets $16 dollars/month out of the total monthly fee. For me, this fee is $45.95 + taxes for a grand total of $50.30/month. AFAIC, this is a very reasonable rate, considering the performance I get (up to 460 KB/sec), but it's clear that @Home was getting only a small portion of my monthly payment. Supposedly @Home was trying to renegotiate these customer charges to be as high as $50/month. I think I would seriously reconsider my subscription at that point.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping that they don't pull the plug on me tonight.:-/
...does this remind anyone of the good ol' Digiview for the Amiga back in the 80's? It used the exact same process to make color HAM ('Hold And Modify' for the uninitiated) images. I remember being so impressed with the results, especially when one compared it with the B&W Macs of the day, and the 16 color EGA x86 clones.
I used to have the same problems, because I would try out different email clients every few months. One day I just got fed up with it, and installed imapd. Now I have only one inbox in/var/spool/mail, which I can access with KMail, Mozilla, Pine, Outlook, etc... in a uniform fashion. It's definately the way to go, IMHO.
...to contain the (in)famous Amiga DE and the JVM from UK's Tao Group? Every time I see the specs of this thing, they change. The only thing static is the Lineo Imbedix. Sheesh, Sharp, make up yer mind already! I'd really like to get one of these things.
Well, I just started a new text file in my documents subdirectory, in which I will collect STUPID QUOTES. Mr. Burney gets the honor of having the first entry:
"Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better,because the source wouldn't be open..."
Derek Burney, CEO of Corel on benefits of.NET
in pcworld.com Feb. 6, 2001
Talk about not getting it! Perhaps Sun should go back to their Reality Check document we discussed yesterday, and do a:
I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago, when I purchased a DVD player (Sony DVP-S550D). The old Dolby Pro Logic receiver wouldn't cut it anymore. After doing some research, I opted to go with the Sony STR-DE 935, and ordered it from a mail order place. Since this model was just comming onto the market, the retailer did not have them in stock and mine was placed on backorder.
About that time I discovered AudioReview.com and found this site to be immensely helpful. I quickly canceled my DE935 order, and ordered the Sony STR-DB930 from another dealer. The receivers were very similar feature-for-feature, yet the DB series is much better than the DE series. It is only sold through Sony ES dealers (so you won't be able to find it at Best Buy or C.C.) and is built from higher quality components, using the frame/beam construction of the ES products. Though the DB935 and DE930 are both rated at 100W / channel, closer examination of the specs (THD) reveals that the DB has really a much more powerful amp. The DB930 has now been replaced by DB935 which appears to be very similar, except for some cosmetic changes.
Overall, I'd highly recommend the Sony STR-DB930/935. In the price/performance dept. it can't be beat; it's like getting a Sony ES receiver for nearly the DE level price.
I'd also like to add my voice to those who mentioned not to be conned into buying Bose stuff. It sounds fine in the store, but most people that get it home are usually disappointed with the performance after a few months.
Correct, but misleading. Cyrix has been acquired by VIA Technologies of Taiwan, and in fact, they're currently preparing to release a new chip to compete with Celeron. I wouldn't write them off just yet. For more info, check out this page.
I have been with a company for 3 years.the way they work (at least here) is you have the "option" to buy x number of shares each six months at whatever the current price is.
This is not a stock option plan, it's an employee stock purchase plan (and not a very good one.) At the place I work, we have both. Out ESPP works pretty much how you describe it, except that we get to buy the stock at 85% of the lower market price at either the beginning or the end of the 6 month period. Another words, let's say the 6 month window begins on July 1st, at which time the stock is at $10. We have an elected amount of money deducted from our paycheck each pay period and this money gets put into an escrow account. On December 31st, the stock closes at $26 per share. Well, at that point, we get to buy the stock at $8.50, effectively making $17.50 per share profit if we turn around and sell it immediately. Conversely, if the stock took a dive, and closed on December 31st at only $5, then we'd get to buy it at $4.25, which is 85% of the lower price.
On the other hand, we also stock options, which were granted to us when we joined the company, and the price of these options is set based on the closing price the day the options were granted. From that point on, the option price remains the same, no matter what happens to the stock, thus if the company does well and the stock goes through the roof, you can make a killing, but if the company does poorly, then the options are worthless. There is also the issue of vesting in these options. Our vesting period is rather long (5 years) but it vests 4 times a year, so each quarter I become vested in 1/20 of my grant, so if I wanted to, I can exercise that portion.
If the company is doing well, this amounts to a shiny pair of golden handcuffs, because if your options are suddenly worth, say, $100,000 net profit, it's much harder to walk away from that, if you're not fully vested. A good way for company to keep people around.
While parts of Europe are most definately ahead of the U.S. in adoption of the 16:9 aspect ratio, I believe that we're on a verge of a large scale market explosion on this side of the Atlantic.
I live in Dallas, TX area, which is one of the top 10 television markets in the country, and local TV stations have been broadcasting HDTV signals for a year now. The television sets are still very expensive, however the prices are rapidly falling. I saw a nice Sony 16:9 HDTV set for $6,000. That's still a lot of money, however considering that six months ago the same unit was $8,000, the price drop indicates to me that within a relatively short amount of time, we'll see these things at a price point where ordinary consumers shopping for a new TV set will opt for the newer 16:9 digital televisions, simply because it's clearly the future. I know that personally I'm holding out on buying a new TV, simply because I'm waiting for the price of 16:9 sets to drop to more reasonable levels. I have already upgraded the rest of my home entertainment equipment to Dolby Digital/DTS audio equipment and DVD (which supports 16:9 aspect ratio), so the wide screen TV is the only missing element. Once the prices drop, it will be my next purchase.
The biggest problem here in the U.S. is simply consumer ignorance. Most people don't realize how much motion picture content they are missing when watching movies on their 4:3 televisions, unless the movie is presented in letterbox. Of course, this format has quite a few enemies as well, because they just don't understand the simple fact that the black bars at the top and the bottom of the screen are NOT blocking any part of the picture, usually. I say usually, because it is true that some films are shot using the 'super 35' process which is in fact 4:3, however during theatrical presentation is 'soft matted' to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. It is then possible to actually present more visual information on a 4:3 television set, than what was actually seen in the movie theaters. However, even in this particular scenario, I usually prefer the matted 1.85:1 presentation, simply because the film still 'looks' better. It has more to do with the art of cinematography, than with the technical aspects of the presentation medium. As someone here stated earlier, movie directors generally want their films to look the best in the theaters. This is simply because the theater is where most of the initial costs of making the film are recovered. Unfortunately, until the day comes when 16:9 fully replaces 4:3 format in the U.S., the aspect ratio wars will rage on. To see what I'm talking about, simply look into any DVD news group.
Umm, what you might not be realizing, is that Mac OS X is a BSD derivative, so in essence, the Amiga move to Linux is not really that different from Mac moving to BSD. The simple fact is that for a new OS to improve its chances of acceptance, some sort of POSIX compatibility is a Good Thing(TM). My personal opinion on this whole thing is that if Amiga Inc. was to move to a POSIX based kernel, I'd rather see them use Linux than a proprietary solution.
Absolutely! On technical merits, the Amiga squashed the Mac like a bug, and we won't even mention Windows, which sucked so bad that nobody even paid any attention until May '89 when 3.0 came out. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for Apple) the Amiga had the curse of Commodore (non)marketing so the machine didn't really start taking off 'till it was too late, and even then it was only because of the NewTek Video Toaster, not because Commodore actually did something right with the machine. I'm convinced that some day there will be a movie made about how horribly mismanaged CBM really was. Those that know anything about the Amiga history will surely know what I'm talking about.
I live in Plano, TX where TCI Cable has been promising cable modem access for ages, and keeps bumping up the availability date. So I more or less decided to go for ADSL which is supposed to be available in my neighborhood. I am wondering if others here in DFW area have DSL and what did you have to go through to get it. It looks like Southwestern Bell is the default ISP, but what other options are there? I'd like to be able to get a static IP address if possible (though DHCP is acceptable), I want to be able to run a personal low bandwidth servers (sendmail, ftpd, etc), and the ISP should at least be aware of what Linux is, because that's my primary operating system.
Slashdot Mirror
for god's sake man, disengange yourself, and your opinions/thoughts/beliefs/whatever from your ENTERTAINMENT
"The captain said, excuse me ma'am, the species has amused itself to death." - Roger Waters, 1992.
If there is no God, and we are free to practice any or no religion we want who sets up the rules for us to live by?
I usually stay out of these types of debates, but the above statement is one of the most ignorant statements I've read in the thread. It's the same old ignorant Christian view that somehow religion equates to morality. (tell that to the victims of sexual abuse by catholic priests...) I'm sorry to inform you, but there are many people in this world, who have extremely high moral fiber, yet they don't practice any religion. Morality has absolutely nothing to do with faith, though some religions include moral teachings in their doctrine.
You ask 'who says murder is murder'. That's a very easy question to answer... when one human being deliberately kills another human being. It's a murder. Whether it's justified or not may be the debated question, but in the end, it's still a murder.
If you don't know where morality comes from, than I would suggest you grew up in a very disfunctional environment, and I feel very sorry for you.
Umm, he's not talking about DishPlayer, he's talking about Dish PVR, which is completely different from the DishPlayer. I have the DishPlayer, and it's essentially Microsoft UltimateTV before they decided to sell it themselves, and agree that TiVo software is much better that that. However, the new Dish PVR uses completely different software developed by the Dish Network, and there is no monthly service fee for this PVR, unlike Tivo/DirecTivo, or my DishPlayer. The fact that you don't have to pay for the PVR service alone is a big bonus in my opinion.
Second of all, I have a domain registered which was pointed at my static @home IP. It was mainly so I could ssh to my home computer from anywhere, and receive email using a nifty first@lastname.com address. Will I have to switch to DSL now, or does AT&T BI make exceptions to the dynapic IP rule?
One of the stories I read about this, said that @Home gets $16 dollars/month out of the total monthly fee. For me, this fee is $45.95 + taxes for a grand total of $50.30/month. AFAIC, this is a very reasonable rate, considering the performance I get (up to 460 KB/sec), but it's clear that @Home was getting only a small portion of my monthly payment. Supposedly @Home was trying to renegotiate these customer charges to be as high as $50/month. I think I would seriously reconsider my subscription at that point.
Meanwhile, I'm hoping that they don't pull the plug on me tonight. :-/
...does this remind anyone of the good ol' Digiview for the Amiga back in the 80's? It used the exact same process to make color HAM ('Hold And Modify' for the uninitiated) images. I remember being so impressed with the results, especially when one compared it with the B&W Macs of the day, and the 16 color EGA x86 clones.
I used to have the same problems, because I would try out different email clients every few months. One day I just got fed up with it, and installed imapd. Now I have only one inbox in /var/spool/mail, which I can access with KMail, Mozilla, Pine, Outlook, etc... in a uniform fashion. It's definately the way to go, IMHO.
...to contain the (in)famous Amiga DE and the JVM from UK's Tao Group? Every time I see the specs of this thing, they change. The only thing static is the Lineo Imbedix. Sheesh, Sharp, make up yer mind already! I'd really like to get one of these things.
"Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better,because the source wouldn't be open..."
Derek Burney, CEO of Corel on benefits of .NET
in pcworld.com Feb. 6, 2001
Talk about not getting it! Perhaps Sun should go back to their Reality Check document we discussed yesterday, and do a:
1,$s/Chuck/Derek/g
I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago, when I purchased a DVD player (Sony DVP-S550D). The old Dolby Pro Logic receiver wouldn't cut it anymore. After doing some research, I opted to go with the Sony STR-DE 935, and ordered it from a mail order place. Since this model was just comming onto the market, the retailer did not have them in stock and mine was placed on backorder.
About that time I discovered AudioReview.com and found this site to be immensely helpful. I quickly canceled my DE935 order, and ordered the Sony STR-DB930 from another dealer. The receivers were very similar feature-for-feature, yet the DB series is much better than the DE series. It is only sold through Sony ES dealers (so you won't be able to find it at Best Buy or C.C.) and is built from higher quality components, using the frame/beam construction of the ES products. Though the DB935 and DE930 are both rated at 100W / channel, closer examination of the specs (THD) reveals that the DB has really a much more powerful amp. The DB930 has now been replaced by DB935 which appears to be very similar, except for some cosmetic changes. Overall, I'd highly recommend the Sony STR-DB930/935. In the price/performance dept. it can't be beat; it's like getting a Sony ES receiver for nearly the DE level price.
I'd also like to add my voice to those who mentioned not to be conned into buying Bose stuff. It sounds fine in the store, but most people that get it home are usually disappointed with the performance after a few months.
Correct, but misleading. Cyrix has been acquired by VIA Technologies of Taiwan, and in fact, they're currently preparing to release a new chip to compete with Celeron. I wouldn't write them off just yet. For more info, check out this page.
I have been with a company for 3 years.the way they work (at least here) is you have the "option" to buy x number of shares each six months at whatever the current price is.
This is not a stock option plan, it's an employee stock purchase plan (and not a very good one.) At the place I work, we have both. Out ESPP works pretty much how you describe it, except that we get to buy the stock at 85% of the lower market price at either the beginning or the end of the 6 month period. Another words, let's say the 6 month window begins on July 1st, at which time the stock is at $10. We have an elected amount of money deducted from our paycheck each pay period and this money gets put into an escrow account. On December 31st, the stock closes at $26 per share. Well, at that point, we get to buy the stock at $8.50, effectively making $17.50 per share profit if we turn around and sell it immediately. Conversely, if the stock took a dive, and closed on December 31st at only $5, then we'd get to buy it at $4.25, which is 85% of the lower price.
On the other hand, we also stock options, which were granted to us when we joined the company, and the price of these options is set based on the closing price the day the options were granted. From that point on, the option price remains the same, no matter what happens to the stock, thus if the company does well and the stock goes through the roof, you can make a killing, but if the company does poorly, then the options are worthless. There is also the issue of vesting in these options. Our vesting period is rather long (5 years) but it vests 4 times a year, so each quarter I become vested in 1/20 of my grant, so if I wanted to, I can exercise that portion.
If the company is doing well, this amounts to a shiny pair of golden handcuffs, because if your options are suddenly worth, say, $100,000 net profit, it's much harder to walk away from that, if you're not fully vested. A good way for company to keep people around.
While parts of Europe are most definately ahead of the U.S. in adoption of the 16:9 aspect ratio, I believe that we're on a verge of a large scale market explosion on this side of the Atlantic.
I live in Dallas, TX area, which is one of the top 10 television markets in the country, and local TV stations have been broadcasting HDTV signals for a year now. The television sets are still very expensive, however the prices are rapidly falling. I saw a nice Sony 16:9 HDTV set for $6,000. That's still a lot of money, however considering that six months ago the same unit was $8,000, the price drop indicates to me that within a relatively short amount of time, we'll see these things at a price point where ordinary consumers shopping for a new TV set will opt for the newer 16:9 digital televisions, simply because it's clearly the future. I know that personally I'm holding out on buying a new TV, simply because I'm waiting for the price of 16:9 sets to drop to more reasonable levels. I have already upgraded the rest of my home entertainment equipment to Dolby Digital/DTS audio equipment and DVD (which supports 16:9 aspect ratio), so the wide screen TV is the only missing element. Once the prices drop, it will be my next purchase.
The biggest problem here in the U.S. is simply consumer ignorance. Most people don't realize how much motion picture content they are missing when watching movies on their 4:3 televisions, unless the movie is presented in letterbox. Of course, this format has quite a few enemies as well, because they just don't understand the simple fact that the black bars at the top and the bottom of the screen are NOT blocking any part of the picture, usually. I say usually, because it is true that some films are shot using the 'super 35' process which is in fact 4:3, however during theatrical presentation is 'soft matted' to a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. It is then possible to actually present more visual information on a 4:3 television set, than what was actually seen in the movie theaters. However, even in this particular scenario, I usually prefer the matted 1.85:1 presentation, simply because the film still 'looks' better. It has more to do with the art of cinematography, than with the technical aspects of the presentation medium. As someone here stated earlier, movie directors generally want their films to look the best in the theaters. This is simply because the theater is where most of the initial costs of making the film are recovered. Unfortunately, until the day comes when 16:9 fully replaces 4:3 format in the U.S., the aspect ratio wars will rage on. To see what I'm talking about, simply look into any DVD news group.
Umm, what you might not be realizing, is that Mac OS X is a BSD derivative, so in essence, the Amiga move to Linux is not really that different from Mac moving to BSD. The simple fact is that for a new OS to improve its chances of acceptance, some sort of POSIX compatibility is a Good Thing(TM). My personal opinion on this whole thing is that if Amiga Inc. was to move to a POSIX based kernel, I'd rather see them use Linux than a proprietary solution.
Absolutely! On technical merits, the Amiga squashed the Mac like a bug, and we won't even mention Windows, which sucked so bad that nobody even paid any attention until May '89 when 3.0 came out. Unfortunately, (or fortunately for Apple) the Amiga had the curse of Commodore (non)marketing so the machine didn't really start taking off 'till it was too late, and even then it was only because of the NewTek Video Toaster, not because Commodore actually did something right with the machine. I'm convinced that some day there will be a movie made about how horribly mismanaged CBM really was. Those that know anything about the Amiga history will surely know what I'm talking about.
I live in Plano, TX where TCI Cable has been promising cable modem access for ages, and keeps bumping up the availability date. So I more or less decided to go for ADSL which is supposed to be available in my neighborhood. I am wondering if others here in DFW area have DSL and what did you have to go through to get it. It looks like Southwestern Bell is the default ISP, but what other options are there? I'd like to be able to get a static IP address if possible (though DHCP is acceptable), I want to be able to run a personal low bandwidth servers (sendmail, ftpd, etc), and the ISP should at least be aware of what Linux is, because that's my primary operating system.
I was just about to quote Eldon Tyrell's line from Blade Runner:
"The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long, and you have burned so very brightly."
It sums it up very effectively.