You just have to hold VERY still, and also take LOTS of frames. A camera with a fast recycle time is your friend when taking pictures in low light because you can take dozens of pictures and choose the one where your camera happened to not be moving.
I've always felt that the 95/life+75 term is WAY TOO LONG. I mean, shouldn't people be able to expect works produced in their childhood to come into the public domain at some point in their life? Most people don't even live to be 95 years old, period! Why should the public domain only consist of things produced long before you were born?
I think 30 years would be a reasonable copyright term. Plenty of time for authors to make lots of money on their work, and hope that a large number of people alive when a work is produced will someday see it in the public domain.
Trouble is, a lot of DOS formatted floppies DO have a boot sector on them, that checks for an msdos.sys/io.sys fileset, and if it doesn't exist, it prints out:
Non-system disk or disk error Replace and strike any key to continue
So in actuality, a lot of floppies you think are unbootable really ARE bootable; they just do nothing but display the above message. }:)
You're only saying that because you're an urban dweller, comfy with your DSL or cable service obtained cheaply.
You know what? I'm an urban dweller too. I pay the universal service charge, and have NO PROBLEM with this. Afterall, the food we eat every day comes from people living in rural areas. Sure, there's some assholes out there, but overall, they are people just like us, and I think they deserve BASIC SERVICES like electricity and phone service without paying ludicrous prices.
If everyone were as selfish as you, this world would suck even more. Jeez, get with it.
Uhh, the Universal Service fund is NOT to pay for phone service for the poor.
It's to ensure that everyone, rich and poor, can get phone service for the same price, even if they live somewhere that makes providing phone service prohibitive.
I don't mind paying an extra buck or so a month so that people in rural areas can have phone service. If it weren't for this fund, they'd have to pay $THOUSANDS of dollars to get phone lines run out to their location.
Universal Service is a good thing. You wouldn't be whining if you moved out to the country and discovered getting a phone out there costs $8 grand.
Sorry, but this is entirely the TV networks' fault.
If they'd play the shows worldwide within a reasonable time of the premiere in the US, this wouldn't be a problem.
But by making people wait months, a lot of them will say "fuck this" (like you have) and download the episodes. I know I would.
It's the same excuse movie studios used for region coding on DVD's. A pitiful excuse, since studios have shown that a worldwide simultaneous DVD release is indeed possible.
My biggest problem with DRM is that I have this philosophy that when I download something, I want to be able to watch and enjoy it any time I want, without having to "check in" with some server out on the net that can go down or revoke my right to watch it anytime.
Another problem with DRM encoded media is that it is generally only playable on certain crappy operating systems that I don't want to deal with.
Blame the assymetry of most high speed connections. For instance, I have a whole 3 megabits downstream, but only 384Kbps upstream. This means that if I get even half my connection speed downloading a torrent, my ratio will still be pathetic.
Sure, you can let torrents seed for a while, and I frequently do. But a 3 or 4GB torrent has to seed for days before even coming close to a 1:1 ratio.
I wish residential connections weren't so assymetrical. BitTorrent would be amazing if everyone had 3000/1000 or even 1500/1500 connections.
You could rip the gold cover off the bottom of an i486 chip, like I did.
Oh wait, I managed to do that, gaze at the pretty chip inside, leave it on my desk at work for a few months, then randomly take it home one night and plug it into an old 486 motherboard I have.
It still worked perfectly.
Somehow, by some miracle I had managed to remove the gold cover, using a POWER DRILL, without damaging the thin wires connecting the die to the package, or without shorting anything out with metal particles.
Either I'm lucky as hell, or those chips are damn TOUGH!
Don't be so sure he's an idiot... When you can't decide among several choices, because they're all good cars, sometimes little things like a 6-disc CD changer or XM radio can be the hair that balances the scale toward a particular model.
I know if I drove two cars with similar handling, price, and appealing appearence, the presence of something like an in-dash MP3 player or GPS navigation system would seal the choice. }:)
One of my favorite things about today's Macs running OSX is that they have appeal for both the novice computer user, who wants everything easy, and the geek, who wants to do more advanced thing.
The GUI is there and simple for novice users, and the UNIX shell and environment are there for the more advanced people. It's truly an OS that works for everyone.
I never even looked at Macs when it was OS9 and before, because it didn't provide anything for my geeky self to dig into. But today's macs and OSX are just sweeeet.
I just wish Apple would get more competive, price-wise, with the Intel world. I know lots of people who would buy a Mac in an instant if they weren't so overpriced.
Uhh, there's no EULA for CDs and DVDs, yet you have the right to view them.
How is software any different? Why does using software require a "license" in addition to posessing a copy?
Whoever thought up this greedy business model really should be slapped across the face. Was it Bill Gates?
I maintain that software should be like music CDs and movie DVDs: If you posess a copy, you can use it however you want; you just can't copy it and distribute the copies.
I've had random crashes browsing MapQuest. It seems around one out of every ten times I refresh a map, Firefox goes boom. I actually suspect it may be some Javascript/Java/DHTML/etc. in an advertisement that's in their rotation.
Because ALSA is STILL not really ready for prime time.
Lots of people, including myself, have problems with it and continue to use the OSS drivers (listed as deprecated) in the 2.6.x kernels.
For instance, the SBLive! ALSA driver doesn't support volume control on the digital output (whereas the OSS driver does), and I've also had issues with ALSA based applications having stuttering audio and other issues that are not present under OSS.
Frankly, OSS worked fine, I'm not even sure why they come up with an entirely new API when they could have just improved on the existing one.
I bet you a million dollars that if we ever come up with the ability to duplicate physical objects at little-to-no cost, there will be some lobby that will want to apply Copyrights to physical objects, just as they are now applied to information.
You will need to purchase a "license" to duplicate cars, boats, airplanes, etc. because the people who design and construct the first unit will want to get paid.
I bet even farmers will want to license the duplication of food, even though this capability would instantly solve world hunger.
A million bucks. I'm actually willing to shake on it, even though I'd be in debt the rest of my life if I lost that bet.
Actually, some people I talk to feel that the passing away of Frank Wells, former President of Walt Disney, was a major factor in Disney's turn to suckitude.
Supposedly, Frank Wells was holding Eisner's "leash", and kept a lot of his bad ideas and business methods from seeing the light of day.
When you consider that Frank Wells passed away in 1994, right when "The Lion King" was released, and that it's been downhill since then, this theory makes a lot of sense.
Poor guy, he died before his time. (helicopter crash)
I actually wish Redhat/Fedora had a slower release cycle. Once you get a Fedora Core system perfected and stable, the next release is already coming out and update support moves to Fedora legacy.
This much change raises havoc when all you want is a stable system where your software works, and don't want to have to worry about upgrading all the time.
We still have a large number of SPARC systems on Solaris 8 where I work, because it's still well-supported and it's stable. Luckily Fedora Legacy is there to support FC releases for around two years total, but it's still irritating to be "forced" to upgrade so often.
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Yeah, no kidding. I find myself being able to handhold and take great pictures even slower than the 1/focal length rule.
6 88 .jpg.html
1/40th @ 100mm:
http://zorin.org/vs/2004-10-24/imagepages/img_4
You just have to hold VERY still, and also take LOTS of frames. A camera with a fast recycle time is your friend when taking pictures in low light because you can take dozens of pictures and choose the one where your camera happened to not be moving.
I love my Digital Rebel. }:)
-Z
I've always felt that the 95/life+75 term is WAY TOO LONG. I mean, shouldn't people be able to expect works produced in their childhood to come into the public domain at some point in their life? Most people don't even live to be 95 years old, period! Why should the public domain only consist of things produced long before you were born?
I think 30 years would be a reasonable copyright term. Plenty of time for authors to make lots of money on their work, and hope that a large number of people alive when a work is produced will someday see it in the public domain.
-Z
Trouble is, a lot of DOS formatted floppies DO have a boot sector on them, that checks for an msdos.sys/io.sys fileset, and if it doesn't exist, it prints out:
Non-system disk or disk error
Replace and strike any key to continue
So in actuality, a lot of floppies you think are unbootable really ARE bootable; they just do nothing but display the above message. }:)
Gotta love technology, eh?
-Z
Whoah, nevermind. It's kinda late and I haven't gotten much sleep, I read that originally as "The majority of people still use WordPerfect 5.1".
Silly me, I'll read more carefully next time.. }:)
-Z
>the majority of people could use WordPerfect 5.1
I see you drive a DeLorean. Dude, maybe this was the case back in 1996, but these days, Word owns the market.
Sad but true. Hell, I haven't even SEEN a WP5.1 installation in years. Maybe it's still big in some small business sectors but overall it's history.
Kind of sad, too. It was the last great word processor for DOS.
-Z
Yes, fuck those people.
You're only saying that because you're an urban dweller, comfy with your DSL or cable service obtained cheaply.
You know what? I'm an urban dweller too. I pay the universal service charge, and have NO PROBLEM with this. Afterall, the food we eat every day comes from people living in rural areas. Sure, there's some assholes out there, but overall, they are people just like us, and I think they deserve BASIC SERVICES like electricity and phone service without paying ludicrous prices.
If everyone were as selfish as you, this world would suck even more. Jeez, get with it.
-Z
Uhh, the Universal Service fund is NOT to pay for phone service for the poor.
It's to ensure that everyone, rich and poor, can get phone service for the same price, even if they live somewhere that makes providing phone service prohibitive.
I don't mind paying an extra buck or so a month so that people in rural areas can have phone service. If it weren't for this fund, they'd have to pay $THOUSANDS of dollars to get phone lines run out to their location.
Universal Service is a good thing. You wouldn't be whining if you moved out to the country and discovered getting a phone out there costs $8 grand.
-Z
Sorry, but this is entirely the TV networks' fault.
If they'd play the shows worldwide within a reasonable time of the premiere in the US, this wouldn't be a problem.
But by making people wait months, a lot of them will say "fuck this" (like you have) and download the episodes. I know I would.
It's the same excuse movie studios used for region coding on DVD's. A pitiful excuse, since studios have shown that a worldwide simultaneous DVD release is indeed possible.
-Z
My biggest problem with DRM is that I have this philosophy that when I download something, I want to be able to watch and enjoy it any time I want, without having to "check in" with some server out on the net that can go down or revoke my right to watch it anytime.
Another problem with DRM encoded media is that it is generally only playable on certain crappy operating systems that I don't want to deal with.
-Z
Doesn't this apply to licensing Microsoft's code? If you write your own implementation, do you still have to pay?
-Z
You only really need a decoder, because there's plenty of other, much more open formats to encode into when you're on a Linux system.
WMV is a closed, proprietary codec. Please don't encode your files into that format. }:)
-Z
Blame the assymetry of most high speed connections. For instance, I have a whole 3 megabits downstream, but only 384Kbps upstream. This means that if I get even half my connection speed downloading a torrent, my ratio will still be pathetic.
Sure, you can let torrents seed for a while, and I frequently do. But a 3 or 4GB torrent has to seed for days before even coming close to a 1:1 ratio.
I wish residential connections weren't so assymetrical. BitTorrent would be amazing if everyone had 3000/1000 or even 1500/1500 connections.
-Z
You could rip the gold cover off the bottom of an i486 chip, like I did.
Oh wait, I managed to do that, gaze at the pretty chip inside, leave it on my desk at work for a few months, then randomly take it home one night and plug it into an old 486 motherboard I have.
It still worked perfectly.
Somehow, by some miracle I had managed to remove the gold cover, using a POWER DRILL, without damaging the thin wires connecting the die to the package, or without shorting anything out with metal particles.
Either I'm lucky as hell, or those chips are damn TOUGH!
-Z
Don't be so sure he's an idiot... When you can't decide among several choices, because they're all good cars, sometimes little things like a 6-disc CD changer or XM radio can be the hair that balances the scale toward a particular model.
I know if I drove two cars with similar handling, price, and appealing appearence, the presence of something like an in-dash MP3 player or GPS navigation system would seal the choice. }:)
-Z
One of my favorite things about today's Macs running OSX is that they have appeal for both the novice computer user, who wants everything easy, and the geek, who wants to do more advanced thing.
The GUI is there and simple for novice users, and the UNIX shell and environment are there for the more advanced people. It's truly an OS that works for everyone.
I never even looked at Macs when it was OS9 and before, because it didn't provide anything for my geeky self to dig into. But today's macs and OSX are just sweeeet.
I just wish Apple would get more competive, price-wise, with the Intel world. I know lots of people who would buy a Mac in an instant if they weren't so overpriced.
-Z
Uhh, there's no EULA for CDs and DVDs, yet you have the right to view them.
How is software any different? Why does using software require a "license" in addition to posessing a copy?
Whoever thought up this greedy business model really should be slapped across the face. Was it Bill Gates?
I maintain that software should be like music CDs and movie DVDs: If you posess a copy, you can use it however you want; you just can't copy it and distribute the copies.
-Z
I've had random crashes browsing MapQuest. It seems around one out of every ten times I refresh a map, Firefox goes boom. I actually suspect it may be some Javascript/Java/DHTML/etc. in an advertisement that's in their rotation.
-Z
You seem soooo uninterested in this story, yet you not only opened it to read it, but posted a flame about it!
Somehow I question your motives, Mister.
Jeez people, if a story doesn't interest you, DON'T READ IT. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure that out.
-Z
I don't get it. Isn't South Park already on cable? Thus, it isn't regulated by the same laws that regulate free over-the-air content?
Why does Comedy Central need to censor at all if they are a cable channel?
Someone enlighten me.
-Z
Because ALSA is STILL not really ready for prime time.
Lots of people, including myself, have problems with it and continue to use the OSS drivers (listed as deprecated) in the 2.6.x kernels.
For instance, the SBLive! ALSA driver doesn't support volume control on the digital output (whereas the OSS driver does), and I've also had issues with ALSA based applications having stuttering audio and other issues that are not present under OSS.
Frankly, OSS worked fine, I'm not even sure why they come up with an entirely new API when they could have just improved on the existing one.
-Z
>Besides, it's not as bad as waiting for a Gentoo >installation to be finished.
Gentoo installations actually eventually finish?
Wow, I learn something new every day. }:)
-Z
I bet you a million dollars that if we ever come up with the ability to duplicate physical objects at little-to-no cost, there will be some lobby that will want to apply Copyrights to physical objects, just as they are now applied to information.
You will need to purchase a "license" to duplicate cars, boats, airplanes, etc. because the people who design and construct the first unit will want to get paid.
I bet even farmers will want to license the duplication of food, even though this capability would instantly solve world hunger.
A million bucks. I'm actually willing to shake on it, even though I'd be in debt the rest of my life if I lost that bet.
-Z
Actually, some people I talk to feel that the passing away of Frank Wells, former President of Walt Disney, was a major factor in Disney's turn to suckitude.
Supposedly, Frank Wells was holding Eisner's "leash", and kept a lot of his bad ideas and business methods from seeing the light of day.
When you consider that Frank Wells passed away in 1994, right when "The Lion King" was released, and that it's been downhill since then, this theory makes a lot of sense.
Poor guy, he died before his time. (helicopter crash)
I actually wish Redhat/Fedora had a slower release cycle. Once you get a Fedora Core system perfected and stable, the next release is already coming out and update support moves to Fedora legacy.
This much change raises havoc when all you want is a stable system where your software works, and don't want to have to worry about upgrading all the time.
We still have a large number of SPARC systems on Solaris 8 where I work, because it's still well-supported and it's stable. Luckily Fedora Legacy is there to support FC releases for around two years total, but it's still irritating to be "forced" to upgrade so often.
-Z
Remember: Nullsoft and Netscape could have easily said "no" to the AOL buyout offer.
Unfortunately, they were greedy, so they signed on the dotted line.
This is not as much AOL's fault as it is the fault of the companies that sold out.
-Z