You have made an assumption about my reasons for this becoming a federal law (I'll grant I wasn't clear on my purpose, read carefully). The reasons for it falling under federal jurisdiction are, as you agree, inter-state commerce. It shouldn't be federalized because it has consensus, it should be federalized when it has consensus. My concern is more over the timing of federalization. Too many federal programs and laws are put in place before any proof of concept laws have established best practice at the state levels (DMCA, PATRIOT, ad nauseum). Such laws stifle innovation and inhibit any evolutionary process in law-making. *That* is what leads to the nanny state: ill-concieved, speculative, and reactionary laws which fail to adequately account for the complexities of their issue.
It definately fits within the interstate commerce clause. That means the states shouldn't have anything to do with this.
This is, I think, where we disagree. I think it perfectly reasonable for a state to make laws governing the inter-state activities of its constituents. The states are, in general, allowed to put laws in place which go beyond the restrictions and protections provided by federal statutes, so long as they don't attempt to override federal laws (here's the inevitable grey area). This needs to happen more. The federal government needs to stop trying to react so quickly and use the states as field testers for laws. This provides for comparison on differing solutions and, more importantly, encourages engagement in the law making process by the smaller state units and their constituencies. Plus, it seems vastly easier to repeal state laws that aren't working because both the egos and the stakes are smaller.
Bullshit. The states should be more powerful than they are. There's nothing worse than a federal government dictating one-size-fits-all laws that don't really work for 49% of the population.
One of the reasons that federalism (that is, shared governance) is a good system is that it allows the states to "test-run" laws, to see which work and which don't. Once a large majority of states have non-contradictory laws, all governing the same thing in nearly the same way, it is time for the federal government to provide the one missing piece: consistency.
Absolutely, the states should be the test beds for laws, and they should be empowered to evolve the laws on a smaller stage. But its like in software: at some point it pays to refactor for consistency, efficiency, and simplicity. This is, in fact, a law that works suprisingly well, and has almost no negative impact on the populace. At something like 38 separate state-wide statutes, it is at (or at least nearing) that stage.
The number one design choice I don't get so far is the non-replacable battery. From the tear-downs it seems like a trival (and relatively inexpensive) bit of engineering to have altered the back shell to allow for a clip-in battery. Is Apple really that desperate for their cut of battery replacements? They could even have designed around a smaller battery trusting that heavy users would buy a backup anyway.
Since this is "news for nerds" I just can't let this go:
Blackjack = 113mm tall iPhone = 115mm tall Difference = less than 1%
Blackjack = 59mm wide iPhone = 61mm wide Difference = less than 1%
113/115 = 0.9826 = 113 is 1.74% smaller than 115 115/113 = 1.0177 = 115 is 1.77% bigger than 113
59/ 61 = 0.9672 = 59 is 3.28% smaller than 61
61/ 59 = 1.0339 = 61 is 3.39% bigger than 59
Not one of these percentages is "less than 1%". When you have the numbers right in front of you there really isn't any need to just make up percentages.
A stat I find interesting is density: iPhone density = 135g / 11.5x6.1x1.1 cm^3 = 1.749 g/cm^3 Blackjack density = 106g / 11.3x5.9x1.2 cm^3 = 1.325 g/cm^3
I wonder if there are any studies on density as it influences initial perception of quality? How many times have you picked up something that was heavier than it looked? How many times did you think that thing was pretty nice. Yes it interferes with the desire to have a lightweight phone, but it must be packed with goodness!
If it was for road usage, why aren't cyclists also charged?
See, this was my question also. I think they are taxing the wrong thing. Instead of taxing fuel, we should tax the tires for road usage. Its probably just as accurate an accounting system as fuel usage, plus it allows us to tax "off-road" tires at a higher rate (offset for environmental damages).
You know why they don't do this? Its simple actually. There would be a revolt if all the taxes we pay per gallon for road use were consolidated into one payment. Given 50k miles on a set of tires, and the current rate of (conservatively) 1 cent per mile road use cost, that ends up with $125 per tire road use tax. That's more expensive than the tire itself (for most people). I bet more people would get rotations and alignments that way:)
Touch screens are nice and all, but personally I like the current interface. I enjoy being able to reach into my pocket while jogging and change songs without having to stop, pull the thing out, and look at the screen.
If both sides of the device were fully multi-touch enabled it seems like the device might be able to determine from your grip the orientation of the unit in your hand. That might allow for non-visual operation.
The folks at Apple are pretty focused on usability. I'd at least give them the chance to prove their new technologies before I write them off.
I don't get your statement. I get up in the morning, feed my child, take a shower, go to work, go home, do my wife, go to bed. The same as I did before the government took away all my rights. Please tell me what I'm missing so I can be an angry citizen like yourself.
Good morning friend!
We noticed a number of oddities in our records and were hoping you might like to demonstrate your patriotism with an explanation of yesterday's infractions:
1) Your daily alotment of water is 379.35 gallons (US). It appears that you have attempted to do 2 loads of laundry and flush your toilet 5 times, in addition to your standard morning usage. Since your grace quantity is 25 gallons, we must inform you that you have now garnered 7.35 misdemeanor points on your RealID.
2) Food sensors indicate that your Child ingested nearly 53 grams of processed sugars yesterday. As you are well aware such dangerous levels of sucrose can lead to hyperactivity and possible injury, not to mention severe oral hygene problems and a pronounced increase in the likelihood of obesity. We have passed our records on to your local child services coordinator. We hope that with the proper supervision you will be better able to manage the health and patriotism of your child. Since this is your second offense, we are required to inform you that any further infractions will lead to a temporary revocation of your "parent" status. Also, 12.1 misdemeanor points have been added to your RealID total.
3) It has come to our attention that your intimate relations with your wife do not conform with the three prescribed forms. Please see publication 14T-S for a full description of the acceptable forms. Please be aware that continued violation of this statute will lead to a full review of your marriage license. Since this is a first offense, and the position in question was judged to have been "in transitition", no misdemeanor points have been assigned. In the future it would be wise to decouple before attempting to roll over.
Of course, due to the nature and severity of these infractions, these matters cannot be reviewed by the open court system, as they might incite further acts of indecency and treason. If you feel you have been wrongly implicated and seek judicial review of these convictions, please present yourself at your nearest processing station on the 15th of the month. If cleared you will be released no later than the 25th of the following month.
And remember, only terrorists and traitors have anything to hide!
As others have pointed out alzheimers is just a money grab here. Alzheimers is a systemic problem, requiring a pervasive solution rather than a localized one. Besides, who cares about Alzheimers? When am I going to be able to get my damned datajack? I'll deal with the black and grey ICE, but man am I ever tired of using a mouse and keyboard.
So, you are dismissing all Hinduism. absolutely not...read again. Refusing to opine is not rejection.
you come to sound conclusions about the import of religions based on your own **lack** of information. This is generally a logical fallacy called "the argument from ignorance" and your argument of "I've never heard of it so it can't be important" falls squarely into it. Again, I'm not rejecting Hinduism as valid, or invalid. I acknowledge my ignorance of it and move on. I think you are, like most people, assuming that by refusing to take a side on the existence of a higher power I am in fact taking the atheists view. I am neither theistic, nor atheistic. I believe the concept of a higher power is unverifiable (in most cases by definition).
While it may be pragmatic to evaluate religions on their relative "good" or "harm" to society you leave open the metrics for such an evaluation. Well, there's a good reason for that. The meaning of "good" and "harm" are personal and deeply complex. I have my opinion and you have yours. we aren't discussing that. I'm not attempting to convince you that religion X is good or does harm. That's too simple in any case...*people* act, people do good, people do harm. The religion can only be evaluated based on the characteristics of the people it attracts/develops.
You especially ignore the harm caused to society by the perpetuation of non-reason over reason. My answer to this always gets people riled up, but since you brought it up: Can you prove a net harm over the course of human history? Can you reason out what human society might have become if the notion of a higher power had never occurred to us? I can't. It is *way* too entwined in our nature. Now, I might be convinced that we can at some point learn to do without it. But even that requires that we understand the reasons for its prevelance. Religion provides something that is nearly universally sought in groups of humans. Until you can identify and replace that you can't reasonably say that "perpetuation of non-reason" is, in fact, a negative trait. Human society is like any ecosystem. Elimination of any subset of the system can have unexpected consequences.
While your ignorance is understandable, it shows the failure of your system of evaluating religious systems... I saved this till last since I think it is the most imporant thing. You are making a subtle assumption about my beliefs. Why do you believe that I should be responsible for evaluating every religious system under heaven? The question that no one seems to ask is whether this whole discussion is significant. If the question of a higher power is unprovable why do we ask it? There are plenty of questions whose answers are unknown yet provable with effort. Why then do we expend *vast* amounts of effort arguing the sides of an unprovable question.
I self identify as agnostic. I first feel the need to separate religious behavior from belief. I do not commit to any belief without some reasonable scientific backing. The belief structure of most religions is specifically designed to require faith, and is by definition unprovable. Scientifically if you wish to proove the existence of X, you must instead disprove the absence of X. I await the expriment where X = (your diety of choice).
Religious behavior can be evaluated in terms of societal health, so I feel that I can at some level judge the value of a religion by this means. Some religions fail to provide any lasting improvement to the social health of their followers or their communities. These religions I reject not in terms of their precepts (which are generally unprovable) but rather in terms of their value.
In Zeus and Thor I reserve judgement. They still have followers but not enough to establish their systemic value. I've never heard of a follower of Mithras or Ganesha, so I wouldn't know where to begin evaluating them. Scientologists and the Unificationists are generally considered (by external entities) to do harm within their communities so I would reject them for that reason. I've never met an actual advocate of any of these belief structures, so I can't say its been of real importance to me to evaluate their value.
Ok, I'll use small words: Yes, 1920*1080 == 1080*1920, but that isn't what we are talking about. In video signals there are four components in each direction: active,front porch,sync,back porch. A 1920x1080 signal (notice that 'x' != '*') is 2200x1176 when you include the "pixels" (samples) associated with the stuff that doesn't get displayed. Now, if it were to be 1080x1920 then, by extention the actual framed signal would be something like: (1080+(2200-1920))x(1920+(1176-1080)) == 1360x2016
So, a signal that means: 1920x1080 active == 2200x1176 framed == 2,587,200 quanta/frame 1080x1920 active == 1360x2016 framed == 2,741,760 quanta/frame
The result being that when we talk about video signals 1920x1080 != 1080x1920. My noted loss of credibility was based on the fact that we were discussing the real world effect of video signals, and no engineer familiar with video signals would confuse the issue this way.
And not yet one mention of Timecode. It took them fifteen takes until they got it right. And it has multiple cameras active throughout the entire shot. I was amazed.
The OP "wondered for years why most [companies] don't [provide Linux drivers]". How, exactly is an explanation of why one specific company was reluctant to do so "non-sensical or unrelated"? I'm sorry if you don't grok the point of view, but that doesn't make it irrelevant.
The manufacturers typically lack the software skills to create a linux device driver in-house
Unless things have changed noticably in the last 4 years, Linux is the easiest system I know of to write drivers for, specifically *because* it is open source. Don't know how to do something? just look at the driver for device X and see how they did it. Anyone who can write a WDM driver can write drivers for Linux. The hard part about writing drivers isn't the system API its the hardware. The APIs are all the same: Message enters saying "do this and give me a result", you block while performing the request and return a response, unless you are non-blocking, then you record some stuff for later instead of blocking. It isn't rocket science.
and don't feel that sales to Linux users will comprise sufficient dollar amount sales to justify paying a developer to create one.
That is a reasonable argument and is a legitimite concern for hardware that is tightly coupled with user space applications. The spread of virtualization is making this a less prevalent concern.
Plain Old Ingnorance (POI) due to not having anyone in a position of influence at the company with sufficient knowledge of things like GPL licensing and non-Windows systems to know just how full of shit remarks like the one you make above really are.
It is fantastic that you think the GPL is so simple to understand...perhaps you could settle the question of whether creating a binary blob driver is actually legal or not. It seems that every time I try to get a straight answer on this a shouting match starts between the two camps: "The code that implements the API is GPL'd so anything using the API must be GPL'd", and "The code that implements the API is GPL'd, but anything can use the API". I'm in the latter camp BTW, but I'm not a lawyer.
All the usual hate, religion, and bribery that are brought into play when anyone in the industry so much as thinks about doing something that is not Windows.
"the industry"? I'm apparently far enough outside of this that this just sound hysterical. There's no conspiracy. Microsoft wants businesses to continue supporting them, but there's no baptisms, rites of passage or crusades involved. It's just business: do what makes each company the most money. Businesses choose to support the market leader's stuff. Sometimes they see profit margins in supporting other niches in the market, and sometimes they don't. Your comment smells like a spurious relationship: linux isn't universally supported, Windows is, therefore there is a conspiracy to keep Linux down.
...like you've been stuck in some dusty closet at the "Solaris Experts" department of Microsoft...
Heh. I bet it pays pretty well, but no, today I work creating embedded control systems for automation systems. While I occationally am pulled back into the headaches inherent to portable driver level code I work closer to the iron now. This is strike two on the assumpt-o-meter (your first was assuming I'd never written a Linux kernel driver).
In the past I *have* driven business away from Open Source when it was the right thing to do. I have driven businesses toward Open Source when it was viable. My original point was an attempt to explain *why* some businesses might legitimitely avoid open source options, since the OP was not seeing their perspective. I, like many people, think the Free Kernel Driver Development Offer is just a PR stunt. That being
I thought I'd let you know that I have in fact written (well, helped to write) the Linux driver for a number of video capture devices (supporting the Osprey 200, 210, 220, 500, and 540). At the time when I was involved in this work (2000-2003) there were a number of consumer devices supported by Solaris but not Linux. It isn't about ignorance or at least it wasn't with Viewcast, it was about protecting our investment. During my time with them we had two instances of knock-offs produced by companies in China.
It is too bad that you assume I'm full of it. I no longer write Linux drivers, but that doesn't invalidate my *experience* with a hardware manufacurer. Zealotry is one of the things that scares business away, and you just contributed.
First, its 1920x1080. You lost most of your credibility there.
Second, it isn't about can we or can't we manage to create analog signals. Its about cost. Very high speed DACs are expensive, as are the ADCs required on the other end. Assuming you get good connections between components an analog connection will *never* outperform a digital connection. So you are paying extra money for something that is by definition lower quality.
Third, it is easier to engineer around the potential consumer problems with digital signals than it is to engineer around the potential problems with analog signals. How many consumers are going to bundle their AC power line right next to their signal lines? How about the noise generator that is your stereo system (lots of EMI there)? This stuff screws up every analog signal I've ever worked with. No significant effect on digital signals.
I'll grant that it is easier for manufacturers to encrypt a digital signal. It doesn't really matter though, because most people don't care. They just want a system that works out of the box, and that system will be digital.
What we really need is for companies to provide Linux drivers on their own, and delivered with their hardware. I've wondered for years why most of them don't do that.
It is expensive to create hardware. If you publish your hardware register set, internal bus mappings, and the meanings of all the magic numbers so prevalent in hardware level code, it makes it easier (and cheaper) to reverse engineer hardware. Most companies that do real hardware development spend a lot of money up front doing design and prototyping, and expect to make that money back in sales over the lifetime of the product. By releasing the code for the driver reverse engineering has become cheaper. The life of most products these days is less than two years. If we lose six months of that to knockoffs designed to exactly mimic our hardware we land firmly in the red.
Windows and Solaris provide a binary kernel API so that compiled code can be loaded. We can release drivers without giving away the keys to the hardware. Linux explicitly doesn't allow that. With Linux it is all or nothing, and many hardware manufacturers choose the predictable 'nothing' instead of the less predictable 'all'.
Someone with that kind of psychopathic personality should have never made it into the NASA manned spaceflight program, where people have to depend on each other. Someone who would drive 900 miles in diapers to kill someone to satisfy some selfish itch is not going to make any sacrifices for the good of the mission or her fellow space travelers.
You seem to be under the impression that NASA screens for team players. Whatever gave you that idea?
I'll grant there are a number of other minor aspects, but primarilly NASA knows that the people they send up have to be excellent at planning, adaptation, and execution. This woman had a problem, she saw a solution, and she acted on it. It isn't right, certainly, but it isn't shocking either. I'll bet her service record would show she was good at thinking outside the box.
Funny thing about English: It isn't a dead language. Word usage and meaning creeps around every day. While the term "hard disk" was originally used to describe the hard platters that data was stored on the term "drive" was used because the hard or floppy disk drive was just that...the device that pushes (drives) the disk(s) around so the read heads could search them.
By your argument none of the words in "hard disk drive" apply to a device that uses NAND memory to store data. There's no hard (or soft) disks, and there's no motor required to drive those non-existant disks around. When I talk about the hard drive on your computer I mean the hard *mounted* (not easilly removable) storage device on your computer. When I say flash drive I'm talking about that thing sticking out of your USB plug. I don't know when the transition happened, but a hard drive (to me at least) has almost no relation to the technology used. I suspect most people agree with me.
That video was mad prior to their demonstrations of their "new" technology, and only shows point touches, which are easier to locate. The "new" technology is in tracking a continuously moving point. They might very well be able to do it, but I would have expected them to show that they could. I base my concerns on watching the guy draw a question mark an have some noticable difficulty lining up the dot below the first stroke.
Did anyone else notice that the video doesn't show then using the corners of the touchable region? I'm curious whether the system is reliable when one sensor is very close to the source of the vibrations.
Slashdot Mirror
You have made an assumption about my reasons for this becoming a federal law (I'll grant I wasn't clear on my purpose, read carefully). The reasons for it falling under federal jurisdiction are, as you agree, inter-state commerce. It shouldn't be federalized because it has consensus, it should be federalized when it has consensus. My concern is more over the timing of federalization. Too many federal programs and laws are put in place before any proof of concept laws have established best practice at the state levels (DMCA, PATRIOT, ad nauseum). Such laws stifle innovation and inhibit any evolutionary process in law-making. *That* is what leads to the nanny state: ill-concieved, speculative, and reactionary laws which fail to adequately account for the complexities of their issue.
It definately fits within the interstate commerce clause. That means the states shouldn't have anything to do with this.
This is, I think, where we disagree. I think it perfectly reasonable for a state to make laws governing the inter-state activities of its constituents. The states are, in general, allowed to put laws in place which go beyond the restrictions and protections provided by federal statutes, so long as they don't attempt to override federal laws (here's the inevitable grey area). This needs to happen more. The federal government needs to stop trying to react so quickly and use the states as field testers for laws. This provides for comparison on differing solutions and, more importantly, encourages engagement in the law making process by the smaller state units and their constituencies. Plus, it seems vastly easier to repeal state laws that aren't working because both the egos and the stakes are smaller.
Bullshit. The states should be more powerful than they are. There's nothing worse than a federal government dictating one-size-fits-all laws that don't really work for 49% of the population.
One of the reasons that federalism (that is, shared governance) is a good system is that it allows the states to "test-run" laws, to see which work and which don't. Once a large majority of states have non-contradictory laws, all governing the same thing in nearly the same way, it is time for the federal government to provide the one missing piece: consistency.
Absolutely, the states should be the test beds for laws, and they should be empowered to evolve the laws on a smaller stage. But its like in software: at some point it pays to refactor for consistency, efficiency, and simplicity. This is, in fact, a law that works suprisingly well, and has almost no negative impact on the populace. At something like 38 separate state-wide statutes, it is at (or at least nearing) that stage.
The number one design choice I don't get so far is the non-replacable battery. From the tear-downs it seems like a trival (and relatively inexpensive) bit of engineering to have altered the back shell to allow for a clip-in battery. Is Apple really that desperate for their cut of battery replacements? They could even have designed around a smaller battery trusting that heavy users would buy a backup anyway.
113/115 = 0.9826 = 113 is 1.74% smaller than 115
115/113 = 1.0177 = 115 is 1.77% bigger than 113
59/ 61 = 0.9672 = 59 is 3.28% smaller than 61
61/ 59 = 1.0339 = 61 is 3.39% bigger than 59
Not one of these percentages is "less than 1%". When you have the numbers right in front of you there really isn't any need to just make up percentages.
A stat I find interesting is density:
iPhone density = 135g / 11.5x6.1x1.1 cm^3 = 1.749 g/cm^3
Blackjack density = 106g / 11.3x5.9x1.2 cm^3 = 1.325 g/cm^3
I wonder if there are any studies on density as it influences initial perception of quality? How many times have you picked up something that was heavier than it looked? How many times did you think that thing was pretty nice. Yes it interferes with the desire to have a lightweight phone, but it must be packed with goodness!
If it was for road usage, why aren't cyclists also charged?
:)
See, this was my question also. I think they are taxing the wrong thing. Instead of taxing fuel, we should tax the tires for road usage. Its probably just as accurate an accounting system as fuel usage, plus it allows us to tax "off-road" tires at a higher rate (offset for environmental damages).
You know why they don't do this? Its simple actually. There would be a revolt if all the taxes we pay per gallon for road use were consolidated into one payment. Given 50k miles on a set of tires, and the current rate of (conservatively) 1 cent per mile road use cost, that ends up with $125 per tire road use tax. That's more expensive than the tire itself (for most people). I bet more people would get rotations and alignments that way
If both sides of the device were fully multi-touch enabled it seems like the device might be able to determine from your grip the orientation of the unit in your hand. That might allow for non-visual operation.
The folks at Apple are pretty focused on usability. I'd at least give them the chance to prove their new technologies before I write them off.
I don't get your statement. I get up in the morning, feed my child, take a shower, go to work, go home, do my wife, go to bed. The same as I did before the government took away all my rights. Please tell me what I'm missing so I can be an angry citizen like yourself.
Good morning friend!
We noticed a number of oddities in our records and were hoping you might like to demonstrate your patriotism with an explanation of yesterday's infractions:
1) Your daily alotment of water is 379.35 gallons (US). It appears that you have attempted to do 2 loads of laundry and flush your toilet 5 times, in addition to your standard morning usage. Since your grace quantity is 25 gallons, we must inform you that you have now garnered 7.35 misdemeanor points on your RealID.
2) Food sensors indicate that your Child ingested nearly 53 grams of processed sugars yesterday. As you are well aware such dangerous levels of sucrose can lead to hyperactivity and possible injury, not to mention severe oral hygene problems and a pronounced increase in the likelihood of obesity. We have passed our records on to your local child services coordinator. We hope that with the proper supervision you will be better able to manage the health and patriotism of your child. Since this is your second offense, we are required to inform you that any further infractions will lead to a temporary revocation of your "parent" status. Also, 12.1 misdemeanor points have been added to your RealID total.
3) It has come to our attention that your intimate relations with your wife do not conform with the three prescribed forms. Please see publication 14T-S for a full description of the acceptable forms. Please be aware that continued violation of this statute will lead to a full review of your marriage license. Since this is a first offense, and the position in question was judged to have been "in transitition", no misdemeanor points have been assigned. In the future it would be wise to decouple before attempting to roll over.
Of course, due to the nature and severity of these infractions, these matters cannot be reviewed by the open court system, as they might incite further acts of indecency and treason. If you feel you have been wrongly implicated and seek judicial review of these convictions, please present yourself at your nearest processing station on the 15th of the month. If cleared you will be released no later than the 25th of the following month.
And remember, only terrorists and traitors have anything to hide!
As others have pointed out alzheimers is just a money grab here. Alzheimers is a systemic problem, requiring a pervasive solution rather than a localized one. Besides, who cares about Alzheimers? When am I going to be able to get my damned datajack? I'll deal with the black and grey ICE, but man am I ever tired of using a mouse and keyboard.
So, you are dismissing all Hinduism.
absolutely not...read again. Refusing to opine is not rejection.
you come to sound conclusions about the import of religions based on your own **lack** of information. This is generally a logical fallacy called "the argument from ignorance" and your argument of "I've never heard of it so it can't be important" falls squarely into it.
Again, I'm not rejecting Hinduism as valid, or invalid. I acknowledge my ignorance of it and move on. I think you are, like most people, assuming that by refusing to take a side on the existence of a higher power I am in fact taking the atheists view. I am neither theistic, nor atheistic. I believe the concept of a higher power is unverifiable (in most cases by definition).
While it may be pragmatic to evaluate religions on their relative "good" or "harm" to society you leave open the metrics for such an evaluation.
Well, there's a good reason for that. The meaning of "good" and "harm" are personal and deeply complex. I have my opinion and you have yours. we aren't discussing that. I'm not attempting to convince you that religion X is good or does harm. That's too simple in any case...*people* act, people do good, people do harm. The religion can only be evaluated based on the characteristics of the people it attracts/develops.
You especially ignore the harm caused to society by the perpetuation of non-reason over reason.
My answer to this always gets people riled up, but since you brought it up: Can you prove a net harm over the course of human history? Can you reason out what human society might have become if the notion of a higher power had never occurred to us? I can't. It is *way* too entwined in our nature. Now, I might be convinced that we can at some point learn to do without it. But even that requires that we understand the reasons for its prevelance. Religion provides something that is nearly universally sought in groups of humans. Until you can identify and replace that you can't reasonably say that "perpetuation of non-reason" is, in fact, a negative trait. Human society is like any ecosystem. Elimination of any subset of the system can have unexpected consequences.
While your ignorance is understandable, it shows the failure of your system of evaluating religious systems...
I saved this till last since I think it is the most imporant thing. You are making a subtle assumption about my beliefs. Why do you believe that I should be responsible for evaluating every religious system under heaven? The question that no one seems to ask is whether this whole discussion is significant. If the question of a higher power is unprovable why do we ask it? There are plenty of questions whose answers are unknown yet provable with effort. Why then do we expend *vast* amounts of effort arguing the sides of an unprovable question.
I self identify as agnostic. I first feel the need to separate religious behavior from belief. I do not commit to any belief without some reasonable scientific backing. The belief structure of most religions is specifically designed to require faith, and is by definition unprovable. Scientifically if you wish to proove the existence of X, you must instead disprove the absence of X. I await the expriment where X = (your diety of choice).
Religious behavior can be evaluated in terms of societal health, so I feel that I can at some level judge the value of a religion by this means. Some religions fail to provide any lasting improvement to the social health of their followers or their communities. These religions I reject not in terms of their precepts (which are generally unprovable) but rather in terms of their value.
In Zeus and Thor I reserve judgement. They still have followers but not enough to establish their systemic value. I've never heard of a follower of Mithras or Ganesha, so I wouldn't know where to begin evaluating them. Scientologists and the Unificationists are generally considered (by external entities) to do harm within their communities so I would reject them for that reason. I've never met an actual advocate of any of these belief structures, so I can't say its been of real importance to me to evaluate their value.
Ok, I'll use small words: Yes, 1920*1080 == 1080*1920, but that isn't what we are talking about. In video signals there are four components in each direction: active,front porch,sync,back porch. A 1920x1080 signal (notice that 'x' != '*') is 2200x1176 when you include the "pixels" (samples) associated with the stuff that doesn't get displayed. Now, if it were to be 1080x1920 then, by extention the actual framed signal would be something like: (1080+(2200-1920))x(1920+(1176-1080)) == 1360x2016
So, a signal that means:
1920x1080 active == 2200x1176 framed == 2,587,200 quanta/frame
1080x1920 active == 1360x2016 framed == 2,741,760 quanta/frame
The result being that when we talk about video signals 1920x1080 != 1080x1920. My noted loss of credibility was based on the fact that we were discussing the real world effect of video signals, and no engineer familiar with video signals would confuse the issue this way.
And not yet one mention of Timecode. It took them fifteen takes until they got it right. And it has multiple cameras active throughout the entire shot. I was amazed.
The OP "wondered for years why most [companies] don't [provide Linux drivers]". How, exactly is an explanation of why one specific company was reluctant to do so "non-sensical or unrelated"? I'm sorry if you don't grok the point of view, but that doesn't make it irrelevant.
Unless things have changed noticably in the last 4 years, Linux is the easiest system I know of to write drivers for, specifically *because* it is open source. Don't know how to do something? just look at the driver for device X and see how they did it. Anyone who can write a WDM driver can write drivers for Linux. The hard part about writing drivers isn't the system API its the hardware. The APIs are all the same: Message enters saying "do this and give me a result", you block while performing the request and return a response, unless you are non-blocking, then you record some stuff for later instead of blocking. It isn't rocket science.
That is a reasonable argument and is a legitimite concern for hardware that is tightly coupled with user space applications. The spread of virtualization is making this a less prevalent concern.
It is fantastic that you think the GPL is so simple to understand...perhaps you could settle the question of whether creating a binary blob driver is actually legal or not. It seems that every time I try to get a straight answer on this a shouting match starts between the two camps: "The code that implements the API is GPL'd so anything using the API must be GPL'd", and "The code that implements the API is GPL'd, but anything can use the API". I'm in the latter camp BTW, but I'm not a lawyer.
"the industry"? I'm apparently far enough outside of this that this just sound hysterical. There's no conspiracy. Microsoft wants businesses to continue supporting them, but there's no baptisms, rites of passage or crusades involved. It's just business: do what makes each company the most money. Businesses choose to support the market leader's stuff. Sometimes they see profit margins in supporting other niches in the market, and sometimes they don't. Your comment smells like a spurious relationship: linux isn't universally supported, Windows is, therefore there is a conspiracy to keep Linux down.
Heh. I bet it pays pretty well, but no, today I work creating embedded control systems for automation systems. While I occationally am pulled back into the headaches inherent to portable driver level code I work closer to the iron now. This is strike two on the assumpt-o-meter (your first was assuming I'd never written a Linux kernel driver).
In the past I *have* driven business away from Open Source when it was the right thing to do. I have driven businesses toward Open Source when it was viable. My original point was an attempt to explain *why* some businesses might legitimitely avoid open source options, since the OP was not seeing their perspective. I, like many people, think the Free Kernel Driver Development Offer is just a PR stunt. That being
I thought I'd let you know that I have in fact written (well, helped to write) the Linux driver for a number of video capture devices (supporting the Osprey 200, 210, 220, 500, and 540). At the time when I was involved in this work (2000-2003) there were a number of consumer devices supported by Solaris but not Linux. It isn't about ignorance or at least it wasn't with Viewcast, it was about protecting our investment. During my time with them we had two instances of knock-offs produced by companies in China.
It is too bad that you assume I'm full of it. I no longer write Linux drivers, but that doesn't invalidate my *experience* with a hardware manufacurer. Zealotry is one of the things that scares business away, and you just contributed.
Good Day.
entwined pairs of course! duh!
*Sigh*
First, its 1920x1080. You lost most of your credibility there.
Second, it isn't about can we or can't we manage to create analog signals. Its about cost. Very high speed DACs are expensive, as are the ADCs required on the other end. Assuming you get good connections between components an analog connection will *never* outperform a digital connection. So you are paying extra money for something that is by definition lower quality.
Third, it is easier to engineer around the potential consumer problems with digital signals than it is to engineer around the potential problems with analog signals. How many consumers are going to bundle their AC power line right next to their signal lines? How about the noise generator that is your stereo system (lots of EMI there)? This stuff screws up every analog signal I've ever worked with. No significant effect on digital signals.
I'll grant that it is easier for manufacturers to encrypt a digital signal. It doesn't really matter though, because most people don't care. They just want a system that works out of the box, and that system will be digital.
It is expensive to create hardware. If you publish your hardware register set, internal bus mappings, and the meanings of all the magic numbers so prevalent in hardware level code, it makes it easier (and cheaper) to reverse engineer hardware. Most companies that do real hardware development spend a lot of money up front doing design and prototyping, and expect to make that money back in sales over the lifetime of the product. By releasing the code for the driver reverse engineering has become cheaper. The life of most products these days is less than two years. If we lose six months of that to knockoffs designed to exactly mimic our hardware we land firmly in the red.
Windows and Solaris provide a binary kernel API so that compiled code can be loaded. We can release drivers without giving away the keys to the hardware. Linux explicitly doesn't allow that. With Linux it is all or nothing, and many hardware manufacturers choose the predictable 'nothing' instead of the less predictable 'all'.
You seem to be under the impression that NASA screens for team players. Whatever gave you that idea?
I'll grant there are a number of other minor aspects, but primarilly NASA knows that the people they send up have to be excellent at planning, adaptation, and execution. This woman had a problem, she saw a solution, and she acted on it. It isn't right, certainly, but it isn't shocking either. I'll bet her service record would show she was good at thinking outside the box.
Funny thing about English: It isn't a dead language. Word usage and meaning creeps around every day. While the term "hard disk" was originally used to describe the hard platters that data was stored on the term "drive" was used because the hard or floppy disk drive was just that...the device that pushes (drives) the disk(s) around so the read heads could search them.
By your argument none of the words in "hard disk drive" apply to a device that uses NAND memory to store data. There's no hard (or soft) disks, and there's no motor required to drive those non-existant disks around. When I talk about the hard drive on your computer I mean the hard *mounted* (not easilly removable) storage device on your computer. When I say flash drive I'm talking about that thing sticking out of your USB plug. I don't know when the transition happened, but a hard drive (to me at least) has almost no relation to the technology used. I suspect most people agree with me.
192 = 128 + 64 = 11000000 in binary
Or, for instance, 7th grade algebra.
That video was mad prior to their demonstrations of their "new" technology, and only shows point touches, which are easier to locate. The "new" technology is in tracking a continuously moving point. They might very well be able to do it, but I would have expected them to show that they could. I base my concerns on watching the guy draw a question mark an have some noticable difficulty lining up the dot below the first stroke.
Well, we have the simulator, now we just need the aliens and and a six year old prodigy.
Did anyone else notice that the video doesn't show then using the corners of the touchable region? I'm curious whether the system is reliable when one sensor is very close to the source of the vibrations.