About the only thing bad I can say about it is that the keyboard layout's kind of lame. Considering the amount of room made avaliable by the form factor of the LCD screen (which is beautiful), you would think they could manage to sqeeze in pgup, pgdn, and delete keys without having to do fn-key combos (fn-up, fn-down, and fn-backspace, respectively)
As a recent switcher myself, that's been one of my few disappointments with my 1-GHz Tibook as well... they give me keys to adjust my monitor brightness and switch dual-display modes, but don't give me an ins, del, pgup, or pgdn without requiring contortions with the Fn key.
Also, I hate using the one-button trackpad, but that's a beef with Macs in general, and easily fixed by plugging in my Logitech trackball.
I've gotten used to the single button trackpad a lot faster than I thought I would... in general they seem to have paid a lot of attention to some of the human interface issues like this. The only irritation I've had is when I need to do things like contextual menus (ctrl-click) or command-click on something, since sometimes it makes me feel like I'm a finger contortionist.
Haven't had a chance to burn DVDs yet, but it's nice to have the option there.
It will teach you the value of patience, it's only a 1X DVD-R (unlike the desktop superdrive which is 2X IIRC). And I don't think it supports DVD-RW like the desktop superdrive. But, hey, it's a 1" thick laptop, I'm not picky.
My first few weeks of owning the Tibook have been quite pleasant... this thing makes my Dell Latitude at work look clumsy.
I should know this, since I work in an office that's half NH and half VT residents, and the VT residents are always claiming that we have high property tax rates, while if you actually look at the rates for most any place that's within 45 minutes of where I work (Hanover, NH), the property tax rates are equivalent on each side of the border (and then VT has sales tax and a high state income tax to boot).
What I gave up with T-Mobile versus Verizon was free nights and Vermont coverage (not that big a deal for us - we rarely
go there). But I got everything else on my list, and a much bigger bucket of included minutes.
Heh. Many of my friends and relatives keep pestering me to get a cell phone (I used to have one). My problem: I live in New Hampshire. A rather whopping huge part of VT, NH, and ME doesn't have cell phone coverage---in the case of my area (Grantham, NH), we don't even have *analog* coverage.
A good chunk of the rural US still doesn't have (or doesn't have any acceptable) cell coverage, and the bramble bush of standards isn't helping. Once this gets sorted out, you'll see a boom in rural cell phone usage. (Much like how rural VT is seeing a huge surge in DishNetwork dishes since they finally can get local (Burlington) stations...)
I arrived at the Manchester, NH, about fifteen minutes late...
Well, at least you had one in your part of NH. Apparently there wasn't a critical mass out here in the Hanover/Claremont/Lebanon area, since our meetup got canceled. Too bad I didn't have to time to drive down to Manchester.
What I find remarkable about this substance is not so much its density as the fact that it's strong, too.
Strong for it's weight, yes, but still very fragile and hard to work with. If you squeeze it, it shatters into lots of invisibly small dustlike particles that disappear into your carpet (remember, it *is* glass). If you try and machine it, it tends to fracture and shard.
It also attracts dirt and moisture like you wouldn't believe.
But it is neat to mess around with.
(Yes, I know what I'm talking about. I've got
a bag of approximately 10 ~1 cm^3 chunks here on my desk. It's a shame I don't have a digital camera handy. From here if anyone is interested)
If I leave a wallet on the sidewalk with bills hanging out and someone picks it up and walks off with it, they've committed
no crime.
Actually, in most case it is---you've intentionally taken the possessions of another person for your own use. In most US jurisdictiosn that is the definition of "theft". Not that anyone will set up roadblocks to catch you...
Also, if somehow the original owner tracks you down, even if the police don't consider it a crime, you can still be sued for "conversion", which is the act of taking another persons property for your own use (essentially, it's a fancy way of saying "theft", except that it implies no malicious wrongdoing).
Not necessarily. At least in most jurisdictions, "Entrapment" is law enforcement officers inducing or encouraging a person to commit a crime when the potential criminal wasn't inclined to commit the crime. Like many crimes, intent is important.
For example, if the cops are doing a drug sting, in which an undercover agent is selling drugs on the street, if a customer merely comes up and buys drugs, it's usually not entrapment, since the guy would've bought the drugs if the seller wasn't a narc. But if the agent pressures the buyer if the buyer wasn't already motivated to buy drugs, then it probably is.
In this case, it would be argued that the person stealing the car was already inclined to steal a car, so there would be no entrapment.
According to consumer advocates (one among them being Clark Howard in Atlanta GA) SpeedPass is bad news. If your
speedpass device is lost or stolen or in any way abused you are LIABLE for ALL charges
That's why, instead of the keyring transponder, I opted for the car-mounted one. Sure, I can't use it for anything but gasoline and car washes, but it's a lot harder to lose than my keyring.
That, and unlike the suggested mounting in the back window, I instead stuck in under some trim on the hatchback---it's not even visible. And it still works fine.
Why would anyone use this technology when micropayments and the like can be done using your mobile phone
Because, like it or not, mobile phones are far from having ubiqituous coverage. Digital mobile phones doubly so. The infrastructure simply isn't there yet. Remember, not all of the US (or Europe) live in cities, or even near cities.
The problem that DVD rental services as a whole face are scratched discs
While I agree it's an issue, I've been thoroughly stunned how much abuse a DVD can take and still function without any (visible or aubible) problems. For those that aren't Netflix members, the "packaging" of their DVDs is minimal. It's basically just a DVD in a sleeve, packed in an envelope. No padding. No stiffeners. And no "do not fold, spindle, multilate" style warnings on the mailer.
I've been a Netflix member for a while, and I've seen a lot. First of all, because of where I live (Rural NH) I get all my mail via a small PO Box. Well, the PO box is small enough that you can't fit a DVD in it (diagonal of the box is about 1/4" or 1/2" less than a DVD), unless you seriously bend it. About half of my DVD's from
Netflix get crammed into the box by a postal worker (the other half of the time they hold them behind the counter and I have to go into town in the middle of the day to fetch 'em). And the rest of my mail is crammed in the box as well. So most of my DVDs arrive in badly mutilated and torn mailers and have been sitting bent at a wicked angle for at least a day...
That, and some of the discs that arrive have obviously had other abuse. Huge scratches. Even gouges. Actual coffee rings. Waterlogged. Partially cracked (usually in the hub ring or around the edge). Sticky residue (don't know what it was, but it was water soluble). No mailer, just the disc sleeve (apparently someone at the PO knows that I'm the one with the Netflix membership, since I got this one without a delay). Etc.
And without a single exception, they've all worked. I'm still shocked.
Netflix has it's issues (poor availability of popular titles, long time delays), but they've been working for me. Certainly way better and cheaper than the local Hollywood (the only place with DVDs for rent. They suck).
I agree the Harrison Ford will be taking much time off. Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears will not feature Harrison
Ford as Jack Ryan, but instead Ben Affleck. Harrison Ford played Jack Ryan in the first two Tom Clancy movies that
included him.
The important topic that's always brought up is infrastructure. The beauty of the PRT design is that the infrastructure costs aren't all that appalling, since all the system needs to run is a narrow elevated track which can be built above existing roadways (so no right of way issues, etc). Yeah, it's more expensive than bus stations, but it's *way* cheaper than tunnels or elevated train track.
"Work for hire" means Party A pays Party B to do something.
What happens in the music industry is that the reocrding company (Party A) "lends" money to the artist to make a recording. This money must be paid back by the artist before they get anything.
It's most definitely NOT the true definition of "work for hire"
"Work Made For Hire" is a specific legal term, with a specific definition, specified in Section 101 of the Copyright Law. A good resource is gigalaw.com.
In brief, "Work Made For Hire" includes:
"work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a sound recording,..." (From the site).
For the artists, their work is a "Work for Hire" because they signed a contract agreeing so, and because the law says it is.
Should this be the case? No, but the artists knew what they were getting in to (or should have) and shouldn't have agreed to it.
Unfortunately, I can't see how a bunch of artists, famous or not, can, by telling the court how-it-is-for-an-artist is going to
overturn those contracts, as, while not necessarily presented in good faith by the Recording Companies, are legally
binding and accepted by the Artist. Citing previous legislation which is relevant to a different contract type, is, as/. would
say, Offtopic.
You've hit the nail on the head. Artists recording albums for record companies is the very definition of a "Work for hire."
The problem is twofold: recording companies writing contracts which don't give fair compensation to artists, and (more importantly) artists that were willing to sign those contracts.
To a large extent, I understand. They wanted to make music, and thought a recording contract would help them (I don't think *most* artists are just out to make a buck, there are better ways), only to find out later that the contract is more of a liability than an asset.
Reform has to come from two places:
Artists have to stop signing these contracts. They have a choice---if they don't sign, they can still perform, record, write, whatever... just not for the large record companies. But in this modern age, there are alternatives to the big record companies. There are many small labels. You can distribute you work online. Etc. Not as lucrative, perhaps, but you can then do it without (literally) selling your soul.
Unfortunately, groups like the RIAA are fighting tooth and nail to keep people from distributing things like MP3's and other similar technology, and they are lobbying hard. We have to lobby harder.
The second point is hard, since we're coming to the table at a disadvantage: mp3's and similar technology are viewed by many as piracy (and although it's a separate debate, that viewpoint is not completely incorrect). But there is still much we can do... Write your congressmen. Support your local artists. Support the attempts by big artists to explore new media.
After all, space research has lots of practical
spin-offs, like teflon for example.
Why does everyone feel the need to falsely attribute various inventions as space program spinoffs?
Teflon was invented in 1938, well before anything that could even remotely be considered modern space research.
Don't get me wrong, space research is good, and it produces a valuable product: knowledge.
False attributions to the space program don't help with their budget problems, though. I'm not blaming you, however, NASA themselves is quite guilty of exaggeration.
Re:Sundog : Frozen Legacy
on
Ultima Revived
·
· Score: 2
If someone wants to ressurect Sundog, they've got my vote.;)
Well, at the very least you can go check out the web page made by Bruce Webster, one of the Sundog authors.
Like the SCSC before it, it will end up on the cutting floor of a supposedly cost-conscious Congress.
I doubted that the current Congress would've approved something like this to begin with. With the current state of economy, and the fact that eventually we'll have to clean up the giant mess that the recent anti-terrorism and airline support bills have made of our budget, the outlook is grim.
Hopefully they won't waste a lot of money partially building it and then abandon it like the SCSC.
The article is short on details but it seems not to be very reliable. In corporations, the IT department usually has a master
key so that even when the employee leaves, the company can still retrieve the data. What about this
fingerprint-recognition system?
Indeed, if we don't know how it works internally, how do we know that Acer hasn't built a huge backdoor into it (like how their CEO's fingerprints or an easily reproducable pattern will always work)?
I expect it uses some system to "hash" fingerprints into simpler indentifiers, but how do we know that this function is unique? I've already dealt with iris-identification products that, given a large enough input sample, start incorrectly identifying people since the hashing function didn't produce unique hashes.
Salon is NOT "extorting" money by running ads-- they're trying to find a model that will support themselves and their
*outstanding* journalism.
The majority of businesses who followed that model are long gone.
First of all, think outside of the web for a moment. Our culture is filled with examples of other quality news outlets that manage to have come up with a business model that informs us without undue irritation.
For the "free" ones, think of PBS and NPR. Aside from the occasional pledge drive, they are more or less ad-free (ignoring the fact that the sponsorship messages can get quite long, at least they barely interrupt the programming in progress). The program quality is good, and in the case of NPR, the reporting is better than salon.com (in my opinion, yours may vary). Yes, they ask for money, and, yes, despite your beliefs, I pay for what I get with them (In fact, I pay both VT and NH public radio since I get both).
Another, better, example is the independent newspapers in most major metro areas (like CityPages in Minneapolis). Good, quality reporting on both local and national issues, from a different viewpoint than the mainstream media. And most of them do it while still keeping the paper free. Yes, they have ads, and lots of them. But if I see an article I'd like to read, like "Jesse Ventura's Seal Records Uncovered, p53", if I go to page 53 I get an article, not just part of the article saying that I have to pay to get the rest, and not an ad re-directing me to another page after I've looked at the ad.
Salon.com has to face it---they've got a product that people don't want to pay for, at least not enough of them to keep them in business.
Life's tough in the big city. If they expect people to pay, they've got to deliver. Making the ads more annoying isn't going to convince more people to pay them---if they weren't paying before, they won't be paying now. So a change in advertising policy isn't the answer. A better product that people want to pay for it. They're a business, and they should start acting like one.
grow up and quit being a goddamn crybaby who wants everything for nothing
I didn't say that. I found their whining about. If they had just said that they were converting to a premium service and left it at that, I wouldn't have minded. Maybe I would have subscribed. Maybe I wouldn't have. As it is, mere weeks after their announcements the truncated articles and annoying pleas for money got to me, so I decided to leave (and the quality of their reporting, has, IMHO, slipped since they became "Premium").
I like my news. I also don't mind paying for it, as my subscriptions to the Economist, NY Times, and WSJ attest.
Paying them to become a premium member to make the annoyances go away is rewarding them for bad behavior.
Don't get me wrong, I liked salon.com's reporting, it was quite good. But when they shifted to being essentially a pay service, that's when I stopped reading them.
There's a distinctive difference between "it's no longer free, but we'll let you sample some of the articles" and "we're going to irritate the heck out of you until you pay up and make us stop." Unlike most sites, they didn't distinguish between which articles required premium access and which didn't (although I just looked and sometime recently they started doing that). They had many irritating editorials basically accusing their readers of being deadbeats. And all along the attitude was increasing belligerent, "start subscribing or we'll make the ads more annoying."
There are other good news web sites, with better advertising/funding models, like economist.com. They'll get my money if they ask nicely. Salon.com started trying to extort it, so I left.
These aren't new. Blue and purple potatoes are perfectly normal, and common in South America.
Here in the US, you can even get them at
your local health-food store. In fact, at the very moment I am writing this I am looking at a quite delicious bag of Terra[tm] brand "Blues" (more of a cabbage-like purple) chips. They are quite good, and a little starchier than your normal chips.
Apparently, enough of them haven't made it to the UK yet to be noticed.
Because the current suits aren't appropriate for use on Mars, as per the article.
The comment in the lead article, "the current EVA suit is 24 years old" is incorrect and misleading.
Yes, the current suits are descendents or the A7LB suits used in Apollo. But since then, the design has been anything but static. The Apollo suits were designed for two things---as pressure suits for use in EVA situations, and as excursion suits for use on the Lunar surface. The Apollo suits had a number of features on them (the complicated joints in the legs to allow walking, the lunar overshoes, etc) that made them appropriate for lunar use.
However, the EVA requirements for the shuttle are different than for Apollo, and the suits evolved appropriately, with more cameras, simpler legs, a hard upper torso for better pressure control, metal ring joints instead of zippers, etc. The current suits are much better for EVA use than the Apollo A7LB suits. But a number of these features aren't good for planetary use. The Hard Upper Torso adds a *lot* of weight. The PLSS is very heavy for 1/3 gravity use. The legs need to be modified to allow walking again. Etc...
If we are going to Mars, a new suite optimized for the new conditions (including the fact that it needs to be designed to last for the years that travel to and from Mars requires) is needed. It must allow mobility, must be reusable, must have less weight, and many other factors.
When I hear DivX, I think of two things, actually. A pirate video format, and a failed marketing
experiment by the fine folks at Circus City.
I've always been annoyed with the name. Why go out of your way to choose a name that matches an existing (crappy) video standard. Not only is the name the same, but I've run into enough conversations where there is at least some ambiguity.
Seriously, I hope the people that came up with that name are forever getting pissed off by people mistaking their work for the failed Circuit City format. It'll teach them a lesson to pick names more carefully in the future.
Then again, they may rename it to something worse, like DeeVeeDee.:)
Even more surprising is the number of people I've talked to that don't even know that there was a previous video format called DIVX. Is the collective memory of the internet community that bad?
Slashdot Mirror
As a recent switcher myself, that's been one of my few disappointments with my 1-GHz Tibook as well... they give me keys to adjust my monitor brightness and switch dual-display modes, but don't give me an ins, del, pgup, or pgdn without requiring contortions with the Fn key.
Also, I hate using the one-button trackpad, but that's a beef with Macs in general, and easily fixed by plugging in my Logitech trackball.
I've gotten used to the single button trackpad a lot faster than I thought I would... in general they seem to have paid a lot of attention to some of the human interface issues like this. The only irritation I've had is when I need to do things like contextual menus (ctrl-click) or command-click on something, since sometimes it makes me feel like I'm a finger contortionist.
Haven't had a chance to burn DVDs yet, but it's nice to have the option there.
It will teach you the value of patience, it's only a 1X DVD-R (unlike the desktop superdrive which is 2X IIRC). And I don't think it supports DVD-RW like the desktop superdrive. But, hey, it's a 1" thick laptop, I'm not picky.
My first few weeks of owning the Tibook have been quite pleasant... this thing makes my Dell Latitude at work look clumsy.
Everyone says that, and our rate is high, but the property tax burden is, compared to other states, not that bad.
See here for example.
I should know this, since I work in an office that's half NH and half VT residents, and the VT residents are always claiming that we have high property tax rates, while if you actually look at the rates for most any place that's within 45 minutes of where I work (Hanover, NH), the property tax rates are equivalent on each side of the border (and then VT has sales tax and a high state income tax to boot).
Not that we don't have our problems here...
Heh. Many of my friends and relatives keep pestering me to get a cell phone (I used to have one). My problem: I live in New Hampshire. A rather whopping huge part of VT, NH, and ME doesn't have cell phone coverage---in the case of my area (Grantham, NH), we don't even have *analog* coverage.
A good chunk of the rural US still doesn't have (or doesn't have any acceptable) cell coverage, and the bramble bush of standards isn't helping. Once this gets sorted out, you'll see a boom in rural cell phone usage. (Much like how rural VT is seeing a huge surge in DishNetwork dishes since they finally can get local (Burlington) stations...)
Well, at least you had one in your part of NH. Apparently there wasn't a critical mass out here in the Hanover/Claremont/Lebanon area, since our meetup got canceled. Too bad I didn't have to time to drive down to Manchester.
Here, for one place.
Strong for it's weight, yes, but still very fragile and hard to work with. If you squeeze it, it shatters into lots of invisibly small dustlike particles that disappear into your carpet (remember, it *is* glass). If you try and machine it, it tends to fracture and shard.
It also attracts dirt and moisture like you wouldn't believe.
But it is neat to mess around with.
(Yes, I know what I'm talking about. I've got a bag of approximately 10 ~1 cm^3 chunks here on my desk. It's a shame I don't have a digital camera handy. From here if anyone is interested)
Actually, in most case it is---you've intentionally taken the possessions of another person for your own use. In most US jurisdictiosn that is the definition of "theft". Not that anyone will set up roadblocks to catch you...
Also, if somehow the original owner tracks you down, even if the police don't consider it a crime, you can still be sued for "conversion", which is the act of taking another persons property for your own use (essentially, it's a fancy way of saying "theft", except that it implies no malicious wrongdoing).
Not necessarily. At least in most jurisdictions, "Entrapment" is law enforcement officers inducing or encouraging a person to commit a crime when the potential criminal wasn't inclined to commit the crime. Like many crimes, intent is important.
For example, if the cops are doing a drug sting, in which an undercover agent is selling drugs on the street, if a customer merely comes up and buys drugs, it's usually not entrapment, since the guy would've bought the drugs if the seller wasn't a narc. But if the agent pressures the buyer if the buyer wasn't already motivated to buy drugs, then it probably is.
In this case, it would be argued that the person stealing the car was already inclined to steal a car, so there would be no entrapment.
But yes, there is a lot of grey area here.
(No, I'm not a lawyer)
That's why, instead of the keyring transponder, I opted for the car-mounted one. Sure, I can't use it for anything but gasoline and car washes, but it's a lot harder to lose than my keyring.
That, and unlike the suggested mounting in the back window, I instead stuck in under some trim on the hatchback---it's not even visible. And it still works fine.
So as long as the car isn't stolen...
Because, like it or not, mobile phones are far from having ubiqituous coverage. Digital mobile phones doubly so. The infrastructure simply isn't there yet. Remember, not all of the US (or Europe) live in cities, or even near cities.
Phone lines, however, are suprisingly ubiquitous.
While I agree it's an issue, I've been thoroughly stunned how much abuse a DVD can take and still function without any (visible or aubible) problems. For those that aren't Netflix members, the "packaging" of their DVDs is minimal. It's basically just a DVD in a sleeve, packed in an envelope. No padding. No stiffeners. And no "do not fold, spindle, multilate" style warnings on the mailer.
I've been a Netflix member for a while, and I've seen a lot. First of all, because of where I live (Rural NH) I get all my mail via a small PO Box. Well, the PO box is small enough that you can't fit a DVD in it (diagonal of the box is about 1/4" or 1/2" less than a DVD), unless you seriously bend it. About half of my DVD's from Netflix get crammed into the box by a postal worker (the other half of the time they hold them behind the counter and I have to go into town in the middle of the day to fetch 'em). And the rest of my mail is crammed in the box as well. So most of my DVDs arrive in badly mutilated and torn mailers and have been sitting bent at a wicked angle for at least a day...
That, and some of the discs that arrive have obviously had other abuse. Huge scratches. Even gouges. Actual coffee rings. Waterlogged. Partially cracked (usually in the hub ring or around the edge). Sticky residue (don't know what it was, but it was water soluble). No mailer, just the disc sleeve (apparently someone at the PO knows that I'm the one with the Netflix membership, since I got this one without a delay). Etc.
And without a single exception, they've all worked. I'm still shocked.
Netflix has it's issues (poor availability of popular titles, long time delays), but they've been working for me. Certainly way better and cheaper than the local Hollywood (the only place with DVDs for rent. They suck).
Why does everyone keep saying this?
The Hunt for Red October (1980) with Alec Baldwin was released two years before Patriot Games (1992).
Apparently another case where our society collectively has a short memory span...
Another good web site on the topic is Taxi2000.
Make sure you check out their FAQ.
The important topic that's always brought up is infrastructure. The beauty of the PRT design is that the infrastructure costs aren't all that appalling, since all the system needs to run is a narrow elevated track which can be built above existing roadways (so no right of way issues, etc). Yeah, it's more expensive than bus stations, but it's *way* cheaper than tunnels or elevated train track.
What happens in the music industry is that the reocrding company (Party A) "lends" money to the artist to make a recording. This money must be paid back by the artist before they get anything.
It's most definitely NOT the true definition of "work for hire"
"Work Made For Hire" is a specific legal term, with a specific definition, specified in Section 101 of the Copyright Law. A good resource is gigalaw.com.
In brief, "Work Made For Hire" includes: "work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a sound recording,..." (From the site).
For the artists, their work is a "Work for Hire" because they signed a contract agreeing so, and because the law says it is.
Should this be the case? No, but the artists knew what they were getting in to (or should have) and shouldn't have agreed to it.
You've hit the nail on the head. Artists recording albums for record companies is the very definition of a "Work for hire." The problem is twofold: recording companies writing contracts which don't give fair compensation to artists, and (more importantly) artists that were willing to sign those contracts.
To a large extent, I understand. They wanted to make music, and thought a recording contract would help them (I don't think *most* artists are just out to make a buck, there are better ways), only to find out later that the contract is more of a liability than an asset.
Reform has to come from two places:
The second point is hard, since we're coming to the table at a disadvantage: mp3's and similar technology are viewed by many as piracy (and although it's a separate debate, that viewpoint is not completely incorrect). But there is still much we can do... Write your congressmen. Support your local artists. Support the attempts by big artists to explore new media.
Why does everyone feel the need to falsely attribute various inventions as space program spinoffs?
Teflon was invented in 1938, well before anything that could even remotely be considered modern space research.
Don't get me wrong, space research is good, and it produces a valuable product: knowledge.
False attributions to the space program don't help with their budget problems, though. I'm not blaming you, however, NASA themselves is quite guilty of exaggeration.
Well, at the very least you can go check out the web page made by Bruce Webster, one of the Sundog authors.
I loved that game...
Must we always discuss everything twice?
Unfortunately, I doubt that it will get built.
Like the SCSC before it, it will end up on the cutting floor of a supposedly cost-conscious Congress.
I doubted that the current Congress would've approved something like this to begin with. With the current state of economy, and the fact that eventually we'll have to clean up the giant mess that the recent anti-terrorism and airline support bills have made of our budget, the outlook is grim.
Hopefully they won't waste a lot of money partially building it and then abandon it like the SCSC.
Indeed, if we don't know how it works internally, how do we know that Acer hasn't built a huge backdoor into it (like how their CEO's fingerprints or an easily reproducable pattern will always work)?
I expect it uses some system to "hash" fingerprints into simpler indentifiers, but how do we know that this function is unique? I've already dealt with iris-identification products that, given a large enough input sample, start incorrectly identifying people since the hashing function didn't produce unique hashes.
The majority of businesses who followed that model are long gone.
First of all, think outside of the web for a moment. Our culture is filled with examples of other quality news outlets that manage to have come up with a business model that informs us without undue irritation.
For the "free" ones, think of PBS and NPR. Aside from the occasional pledge drive, they are more or less ad-free (ignoring the fact that the sponsorship messages can get quite long, at least they barely interrupt the programming in progress). The program quality is good, and in the case of NPR, the reporting is better than salon.com (in my opinion, yours may vary). Yes, they ask for money, and, yes, despite your beliefs, I pay for what I get with them (In fact, I pay both VT and NH public radio since I get both).
Another, better, example is the independent newspapers in most major metro areas (like CityPages in Minneapolis). Good, quality reporting on both local and national issues, from a different viewpoint than the mainstream media. And most of them do it while still keeping the paper free. Yes, they have ads, and lots of them. But if I see an article I'd like to read, like "Jesse Ventura's Seal Records Uncovered, p53", if I go to page 53 I get an article, not just part of the article saying that I have to pay to get the rest, and not an ad re-directing me to another page after I've looked at the ad.
Salon.com has to face it---they've got a product that people don't want to pay for, at least not enough of them to keep them in business. Life's tough in the big city. If they expect people to pay, they've got to deliver. Making the ads more annoying isn't going to convince more people to pay them---if they weren't paying before, they won't be paying now. So a change in advertising policy isn't the answer. A better product that people want to pay for it. They're a business, and they should start acting like one.
grow up and quit being a goddamn crybaby who wants everything for nothing
I didn't say that. I found their whining about. If they had just said that they were converting to a premium service and left it at that, I wouldn't have minded. Maybe I would have subscribed. Maybe I wouldn't have. As it is, mere weeks after their announcements the truncated articles and annoying pleas for money got to me, so I decided to leave (and the quality of their reporting, has, IMHO, slipped since they became "Premium").
I like my news. I also don't mind paying for it, as my subscriptions to the Economist, NY Times, and WSJ attest.
Stop reading salon.com.
Paying them to become a premium member to make the annoyances go away is rewarding them for bad behavior.
Don't get me wrong, I liked salon.com's reporting, it was quite good. But when they shifted to being essentially a pay service, that's when I stopped reading them.
There's a distinctive difference between "it's no longer free, but we'll let you sample some of the articles" and "we're going to irritate the heck out of you until you pay up and make us stop." Unlike most sites, they didn't distinguish between which articles required premium access and which didn't (although I just looked and sometime recently they started doing that). They had many irritating editorials basically accusing their readers of being deadbeats. And all along the attitude was increasing belligerent, "start subscribing or we'll make the ads more annoying."
There are other good news web sites, with better advertising/funding models, like economist.com. They'll get my money if they ask nicely. Salon.com started trying to extort it, so I left.
These aren't new. Blue and purple potatoes are perfectly normal, and common in South America.
Here in the US, you can even get them at your local health-food store. In fact, at the very moment I am writing this I am looking at a quite delicious bag of Terra[tm] brand "Blues" (more of a cabbage-like purple) chips. They are quite good, and a little starchier than your normal chips.
Apparently, enough of them haven't made it to the UK yet to be noticed.
Because the current suits aren't appropriate for use on Mars, as per the article.
The comment in the lead article, "the current EVA suit is 24 years old" is incorrect and misleading.
Yes, the current suits are descendents or the A7LB suits used in Apollo. But since then, the design has been anything but static. The Apollo suits were designed for two things---as pressure suits for use in EVA situations, and as excursion suits for use on the Lunar surface. The Apollo suits had a number of features on them (the complicated joints in the legs to allow walking, the lunar overshoes, etc) that made them appropriate for lunar use.
However, the EVA requirements for the shuttle are different than for Apollo, and the suits evolved appropriately, with more cameras, simpler legs, a hard upper torso for better pressure control, metal ring joints instead of zippers, etc. The current suits are much better for EVA use than the Apollo A7LB suits. But a number of these features aren't good for planetary use. The Hard Upper Torso adds a *lot* of weight. The PLSS is very heavy for 1/3 gravity use. The legs need to be modified to allow walking again. Etc...
If we are going to Mars, a new suite optimized for the new conditions (including the fact that it needs to be designed to last for the years that travel to and from Mars requires) is needed. It must allow mobility, must be reusable, must have less weight, and many other factors.
When I hear DivX, I think of two things, actually. A pirate video format, and a failed marketing
experiment by the fine folks at Circus City.
I've always been annoyed with the name. Why go out of your way to choose a name that matches an existing (crappy) video standard. Not only is the name the same, but I've run into enough conversations where there is at least some ambiguity.
Seriously, I hope the people that came up with that name are forever getting pissed off by people mistaking their work for the failed Circuit City format. It'll teach them a lesson to pick names more carefully in the future.
Then again, they may rename it to something worse, like DeeVeeDee. :)
Even more surprising is the number of people I've talked to that don't even know that there was a previous video format called DIVX. Is the collective memory of the internet community that bad?