Exactly. Wheat, apples, bananas, dogs, modern horses, hens that lay an egg every 22 hours... all man made. Man shapes the landscape to his usefulness, and animals and plants have been part of this system for a long time.
> the agricultural revolution is a mystery, because the techniques of hunting/gathering had advanced sufficiently by 10000 years ago that they were far superior, in the short-term back then, then farming.
No, it is not a mystery, and for the reasons that you gave. Farming produced a surplus (can't be that inferior then), and most of all farming meant that babies could be weaned earlier and were more likely to survive. And if that is not incentive enough to take up farming, it still leads to the fact that farmers out-bred the hunter & gatherer groups. It is all well understood and not really a mystery.
Farming then enabled the formation of a stratified society, leading to the early high cultures. Sure, not everybody was well of, but it beats being chased by a lion, and for humankind it was a huge step forward. It was the beginning of civilisation as we know it.
> We were customer-friendly, so we would refund the customer's hosting charges if something went terribly wrong. But if you're paying $19/month, you can't really expect us to refund you more than $19/mo when something goes wrong.
Of course you can - since everybody is responsible for the consequences of their actions. If you buy a radio for 19 USD, it short circuits and burns down, you can go after the manufacturer for your damages. Same with services, unless it says otherwise in the contract.
> What’s more, based on Nyqvist theorem, you actually need oversampling for good performance. For example, audio needs to be sampled at 44 kHz to get good 22 kHz quality.
Send those guys back to the signal processing course at uni. They obviously didn't understand it.
> I still use a 6MP camera and it's more than sufficient for daily use.
I still have a 6MP DSLR, and it blows away any compact camera, 16MP or 41, unless you have a very specific use case.
The whole megapixel craze has mostly just lead to smaller pixels and more noise, degrading image quality. It is time to reverse the trend, because some of the 14 and 16MP cameras are truly horrible and even identified in reviews as a whole step backwards compared to the previous generation (10/12MP, which was already subtly worse than 6/8MP). See http://mpixel.org/en/
> particulate emissions are a much more immediate environmental concern
Agreed. And I have a potential explanation, too. Every once in a while you will encounter a vehicle that is dragging a black smoke cloud behind it - usually caused by a faulty Diesel engine. Just yesterday I was behind an especially bad example: I thought he was using it as some kind of camouflage - that's how dense it was.
So my theory is that most of the particle emissions come from very few vehicles: maybe some very old ones, but certainly some malfunctioning ones. I know that the EPA has an eye on this problem (the EU seems to be behind as usual), and it may be in the process of being solved for new cars, but in the rolling stock it is certainly an issue.
> Although it is possible that the other source was the tires from the vehicles.
Or the breaks. Both wear down, and both wear carbon. You don't need a scientific study to understand that it is going somewhere. Assuming it is not burned, it would most likely end up as carbon black.
And there are a few studies on this topic, it is just not as "hot" as engine emissions.
> Google is under no legal requirement to comply with any 3rd party browser "privacy requirements"
Maybe in the US, but not in the rest of the world, where privacy laws exist. Time and time again Google has argued that the consent of the user can be presumed, because cookies are enabled. Only with this presumed consent are they allowed to track users.
However, cookies are enabled by default, so this argument is pretty weak. And it collapses as soon as the user takes any action to discourage tracking, whether it is effective or not. Google is certainly not allowed to work around any imperfect measures to stop tracking.
It is not all clear here, because again MS has turned this on by default. But if P3P is actively being used to prevent tracking, then Google has to respect that.
> P3P is a honor system anyways. The same effect could be obtained by a syntactically well-formed promise not to abuse the 3rd party cookies, but which google would never intend to keep...
Yes, but that would not be legal. User tracking happens with the presumed consent of the user. Once a site known that the user does not want to be tracked and continues, or even tricks the browser into tracking despite a setting that demands the opposite, the tracking becomes illegal activity.
I am not sure most tracking sites bother with such fine distinctions, but they cannot hide from the law forever. The wild west days of the Internet are over.
> I wish they'd provide an easy-to-install version of the software for some mass-market phone.
Why that? You can already install CM in for example ZTE Blade, which has no restrictions in the boot loader or radio. Drivers are a bit of an issue, but the hardware is actually quite ok, if maybe a bit slow. But most of all it only sets you back 100 to 200 currency units.
> After the cold war, there was a feeling among many people that a victory had been won. "Never again" that kind of thought/expression control. Yay.
That's our problem in a nutshell. The cold war is over, and we have lost all incentive to be "better" than them. "They" are not a credible alternative any more (if they ever were).
Maybe China will take that role one day. They have an autocratic leadership, much less personal freedom (although the gap is diminishing day by day), but so far no obvious benefit coming from it. "For the people" is not a credible argument, unless the people actually see it working.
I am not sure it has much impact, but why would you use a 5 year old linux kernel to perform the test? Maturity is all very nice, but if you are pushing technology, it is not always the best approach.
> And if you're not a crook, why would you wanna hide anything?
- because you have business secrets - because you want to stay ahead of US competition - because you work with confidential data - because you do something that is perfectly legal, but maybe not appreciated by the US government - because you not everybody respects the law
I guess your house has no doors, you never wear cloth, and your walls are made from glass? And you tell everybody your password?
Now there is a thought - people bye a table not as a brick or a decorative object, but to get something done with the software on it. Very advanced thinking!
Why do they then go on to promote Android? As much as I love Android, it is just good enough, and not an example of really excellent software.
Unfortunately tablet manufacturer either ship Android pretty much unmodified, or even worse make some dubious "improvements" that makes everything even more inconsistent. How about some decent software and interface design for once? It has been done before, so why is it so difficult? I mean just look at the settings menu, it is about as uninspiring and as easy to navigate as a 1980's text adventure.
> last i checked, not only is it NOT illegal to pay for popular things, it's ALSO one of the fundamental principles behind the "free market".
Sure, it is called selling content. But you can only sell content you own, not content that someone pirated for you.
Dropbox and similar services get around this problem by offering a service, not content. You can upload your files, you can download your files, and you can even share your files. Dropbox has no incentive for illegal content.
I said it before and I will say it again: you cannot give a number like x% of your intelligence is determined by genes unless you define the variation of your genes (difficult, but doable in theory) and the variation of your environment (nearly impossible) first. That is because logically, in very similar environments (such as some egalitarian countries) genes will dominate, and in a homogeneous gene pool the environment will dominate.
> 1) Increase their visual quality of their display under non-reflective mode to be in the ballpark of your typical modern LCD panels.
I am not sure they can - the technology seems to be a trade-off between colour quality and day light visibility. Basically the display is "two in one", and each of the two functions is fighting for space.
> 2) Wait until the hype dies down over retina displays, OLED, etc, which may take a year or two.
Good luck. Traditionally display resolution knows only one direction: up. Remember the days when "character block graphics" were common place? That gives you 80x48 pixel, and still it was considered graphics. I see no way that I am going back to a lower resolution display after having 800x480 on my cheap android phone.
> 3) Make inroads into non-consumer devices, such as military equipment,
Now that is an idea, but do they have the durability for industrial applications? It is a tough market to get into.
> So the United States and Indian governments are claiming the memo is a fake
It may be a fake, and I think that is quite possible indeed. But does that make it wrong? I am much more sceptical there. Remember how Skype has given access to just about any government?
Why, because Apple said that they didn't do it? Come on, any secret service would attach a clause to the contract that keeps the content of the contract confidential. And that is not even paranoid, that is just a fact of live - think about the way the NSA works, the "secret" illegal wire-tapping, super-injunctions... misinforming the masses is fair game.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed: 30ms in country, 100ms in the Western hemisphere, and 300ms should get you around the world.
But that is just my personal opinion, I doubt any ISP will be impressed by it.
Exactly. Wheat, apples, bananas, dogs, modern horses, hens that lay an egg every 22 hours... all man made. Man shapes the landscape to his usefulness, and animals and plants have been part of this system for a long time.
> the agricultural revolution is a mystery, because the techniques of hunting/gathering had advanced sufficiently by 10000 years ago that they were far superior, in the short-term back then, then farming.
No, it is not a mystery, and for the reasons that you gave. Farming produced a surplus (can't be that inferior then), and most of all farming meant that babies could be weaned earlier and were more likely to survive. And if that is not incentive enough to take up farming, it still leads to the fact that farmers out-bred the hunter & gatherer groups. It is all well understood and not really a mystery.
Farming then enabled the formation of a stratified society, leading to the early high cultures. Sure, not everybody was well of, but it beats being chased by a lion, and for humankind it was a huge step forward. It was the beginning of civilisation as we know it.
> We were customer-friendly, so we would refund the customer's hosting charges if something went terribly wrong. But if you're paying $19/month, you can't really expect us to refund you more than $19/mo when something goes wrong.
Of course you can - since everybody is responsible for the consequences of their actions. If you buy a radio for 19 USD, it short circuits and burns down, you can go after the manufacturer for your damages. Same with services, unless it says otherwise in the contract.
> Linode.com does not make implied or written warranties for any of our services.
Why would you pay these guys to do anything? Obviously the only thing the promise is to take your money...
> What’s more, based on Nyqvist theorem, you actually need oversampling for good performance. For example, audio needs to be sampled at 44 kHz to get good 22 kHz quality.
Send those guys back to the signal processing course at uni. They obviously didn't understand it.
> I still use a 6MP camera and it's more than sufficient for daily use.
I still have a 6MP DSLR, and it blows away any compact camera, 16MP or 41, unless you have a very specific use case.
The whole megapixel craze has mostly just lead to smaller pixels and more noise, degrading image quality. It is time to reverse the trend, because some of the 14 and 16MP cameras are truly horrible and even identified in reviews as a whole step backwards compared to the previous generation (10/12MP, which was already subtly worse than 6/8MP). See http://mpixel.org/en/
> particulate emissions are a much more immediate environmental concern
Agreed. And I have a potential explanation, too. Every once in a while you will encounter a vehicle that is dragging a black smoke cloud behind it - usually caused by a faulty Diesel engine. Just yesterday I was behind an especially bad example: I thought he was using it as some kind of camouflage - that's how dense it was.
So my theory is that most of the particle emissions come from very few vehicles: maybe some very old ones, but certainly some malfunctioning ones. I know that the EPA has an eye on this problem (the EU seems to be behind as usual), and it may be in the process of being solved for new cars, but in the rolling stock it is certainly an issue.
> Although it is possible that the other source was the tires from the vehicles.
Or the breaks. Both wear down, and both wear carbon. You don't need a scientific study to understand that it is going somewhere. Assuming it is not burned, it would most likely end up as carbon black.
And there are a few studies on this topic, it is just not as "hot" as engine emissions.
> Any beneficial gains from mutation are WAY WAY outweighed by the non reproductive effecting entropy created.
It is really surprising how well life has developed then, despite you declaring that it is impossible :-)
> Google is under no legal requirement to comply with any 3rd party browser "privacy requirements"
Maybe in the US, but not in the rest of the world, where privacy laws exist. Time and time again Google has argued that the consent of the user can be presumed, because cookies are enabled. Only with this presumed consent are they allowed to track users.
However, cookies are enabled by default, so this argument is pretty weak. And it collapses as soon as the user takes any action to discourage tracking, whether it is effective or not. Google is certainly not allowed to work around any imperfect measures to stop tracking.
It is not all clear here, because again MS has turned this on by default. But if P3P is actively being used to prevent tracking, then Google has to respect that.
> P3P is a honor system anyways. The same effect could be obtained by a syntactically well-formed promise not to abuse the 3rd party cookies, but which google would never intend to keep...
Yes, but that would not be legal. User tracking happens with the presumed consent of the user. Once a site known that the user does not want to be tracked and continues, or even tricks the browser into tracking despite a setting that demands the opposite, the tracking becomes illegal activity.
I am not sure most tracking sites bother with such fine distinctions, but they cannot hide from the law forever. The wild west days of the Internet are over.
PS: In case that isn't clear, I wonder what OpenMoko provides that CM doesn't. I am not aware of any advantage, and certainly not one worth hundreds.
> I wish they'd provide an easy-to-install version of the software for some mass-market phone.
Why that? You can already install CM in for example ZTE Blade, which has no restrictions in the boot loader or radio. Drivers are a bit of an issue, but the hardware is actually quite ok, if maybe a bit slow. But most of all it only sets you back 100 to 200 currency units.
> After the cold war, there was a feeling among many people that a victory had been won. "Never again" that kind of thought/expression control. Yay.
That's our problem in a nutshell. The cold war is over, and we have lost all incentive to be "better" than them. "They" are not a credible alternative any more (if they ever were).
Maybe China will take that role one day. They have an autocratic leadership, much less personal freedom (although the gap is diminishing day by day), but so far no obvious benefit coming from it. "For the people" is not a credible argument, unless the people actually see it working.
I am not sure it has much impact, but why would you use a 5 year old linux kernel to perform the test? Maturity is all very nice, but if you are pushing technology, it is not always the best approach.
> And if you're not a crook, why would you wanna hide anything?
- because you have business secrets
- because you want to stay ahead of US competition
- because you work with confidential data
- because you do something that is perfectly legal, but maybe not appreciated by the US government
- because you not everybody respects the law
I guess your house has no doors, you never wear cloth, and your walls are made from glass? And you tell everybody your password?
Now there is a thought - people bye a table not as a brick or a decorative object, but to get something done with the software on it. Very advanced thinking!
Why do they then go on to promote Android? As much as I love Android, it is just good enough, and not an example of really excellent software.
Unfortunately tablet manufacturer either ship Android pretty much unmodified, or even worse make some dubious "improvements" that makes everything even more inconsistent. How about some decent software and interface design for once? It has been done before, so why is it so difficult? I mean just look at the settings menu, it is about as uninspiring and as easy to navigate as a 1980's text adventure.
> last i checked, not only is it NOT illegal to pay for popular things, it's ALSO one of the fundamental principles behind the "free market".
Sure, it is called selling content. But you can only sell content you own, not content that someone pirated for you.
Dropbox and similar services get around this problem by offering a service, not content. You can upload your files, you can download your files, and you can even share your files. Dropbox has no incentive for illegal content.
I said it before and I will say it again: you cannot give a number like x% of your intelligence is determined by genes unless you define the variation of your genes (difficult, but doable in theory) and the variation of your environment (nearly impossible) first. That is because logically, in very similar environments (such as some egalitarian countries) genes will dominate, and in a homogeneous gene pool the environment will dominate.
> I wanted this to work very, very badly, because both eInk and color tablets are an exercise in painful compromise for me.
A tablet has two sides, maybe it should have an LCD display on one, and eInk on the other? Better patent that before Apple gets it :-)
> 1) Increase their visual quality of their display under non-reflective mode to be in the ballpark of your typical modern LCD panels.
I am not sure they can - the technology seems to be a trade-off between colour quality and day light visibility. Basically the display is "two in one", and each of the two functions is fighting for space.
> 2) Wait until the hype dies down over retina displays, OLED, etc, which may take a year or two.
Good luck. Traditionally display resolution knows only one direction: up. Remember the days when "character block graphics" were common place? That gives you 80x48 pixel, and still it was considered graphics. I see no way that I am going back to a lower resolution display after having 800x480 on my cheap android phone.
> 3) Make inroads into non-consumer devices, such as military equipment,
Now that is an idea, but do they have the durability for industrial applications? It is a tough market to get into.
Heck, that's rather expensive. I have an N130, so I could conceivably buy this, but it is more than I paid for the whole machine.
> So the United States and Indian governments are claiming the memo is a fake
It may be a fake, and I think that is quite possible indeed. But does that make it wrong? I am much more sceptical there. Remember how Skype has given access to just about any government?
Why, because Apple said that they didn't do it? Come on, any secret service would attach a clause to the contract that keeps the content of the contract confidential. And that is not even paranoid, that is just a fact of live - think about the way the NSA works, the "secret" illegal wire-tapping, super-injunctions... misinforming the masses is fair game.