"(Note - UNIX does not use UTC since UTC incorporates leap seconds which UNIX & POSIX does not honor.)"
That's interesting, considering that all the big NTP servers respond in UTC, as do all the other important time services (e. g. GPS). Does *nix automagically know how many leap seconds to add/deduct from the UTC response? If so, how do they know the time differential?
I don't know about you, but part of what I'm paying my ISP for is to block that stuff. If they stop blocking it, at the very least I would expect some sort of refund.
Besides, it's redundant over here. Known Spam and Suspect Email gets dumped into holding bins where it hangs out for 14 days. I can see it whenever I want.
That's nice. The world in general doesn't care about your tastes, however. And we especially don't want to be bothered by pollsters just because you want us to.
"I want companies to introduce products that match what I want,"
Fill out customer feedback cards.
"I want my favourite TV programs to get more airtime,"
Write the networks.
(Hell, most people haven't even seen a Nielson box!)
"I want my political positions to be listened to and regarded as significant."
Write your congresscritters. If you still can't through, petition for an increase in the size of the House (if they need polls to keep in touch with voters, then there are too many voters per representative).
If you're so keen on answering polls, give pollsters your cell phone number. It seems easy enough for me.
"This presents a problem for telephone pollsters who are prohibited by the FCC from calling cell phones with automated equipment, and from calling people for whom receiving the call costs money."
I'm personally not sure that restriction goes far enough. "Hi, we're taking a survey to see if you've tried any of our fine products!"
"Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway."
Here's an interesting thing: Why are you so concerned about polling 18-24 year olds? Other than a vocal minority, most of them can't be bothered to care about current events, let alone vote. The only big reason to want to get to these people is... shall we say "marketing demographics?"
"If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone."
And for whom is that a problem, exactly? The election still happened and the guy who got the majority of electoral votes still became president, right? Other than the media and the political parties, who really needs this polling information?
I realize this may be ancient history for some, but with the debacle of the 2000 election still fresh in some memories, the media went through the 2002 election with next to no information from exit polls. Did democracy break down somehow because of it?
"Solar: Nonviable (cost of production exceeds energy consumed, massive chemical waste byproducts)" "Geothermal: Nonscalable (very few areas have harvestable geothermal resources)"
Even ignoring any harm production of the photovoltaic cells might cause, solar has the nasty habit of producing electricity only when we need it least.
During the day, the cells produce the electricity needed to do whatever it is we do. But after the sun sets, not only do we still need that same amount of electricity (you may not be a night person, but some others are) but also the additional requirement of keeping the lights on. A similar problem can be seen in the seasonal cycle; not only do we need to keep powering the same things during short winter days as well as long summer days, the winter days have the additional requirement of heat.
Just as an engineering guesstimate, you need solar cells to produce 5 times the energy you need at any given moment: 1 kilowatt-hour to use right now, 2 saved up for tonight and 2 saved up for next winter. The real limiting factor here is storage requirements. For the short term (day/night) the most realistic solution I can think of is banks of lead-acid batteries (how good is your local car battery recycling program?). But long-term (summer/winter) is going to pretty much require the "hydrogen economy" everybody keeps talking about (which means consuming water and venting ozone during the summer). That, and/or monsterous power grids that cross hemispheres.
Envrionmentally speaking, there's also the matter of land consumption. Collecting as much sunlight as you can means not letting sunlight get to other things, such as plants. It would be nice to set these up in a city, but there you have the most need for power combined with the least amount of usable surface area...
"allowing people to opt-out of burglery, robbery, extortion and murder are killing me. I'm just trying to make a living."
So make sure you really clean them out of all their cash and credit cards in your first free mugging (before they get to "opt out.") Better yet, they can't opt out when they're unconscious.
And that there is my main problem with the "opt out" mentality (or more, if I can't prove that you're using more than one identity). Everybody gets one free violation of my privacy and property. And if they really hose my e-mail account, I wouldn't even be able to opt out to begin with.
But that's the magic of the internet, I suppose. Crimes and misdemeanors in "the real world" have to deal with silly things like "history," "tradition" and "precedent." But because the internet is all new and shiney, Congress (and the moneyed interests that controll it) gets to reshape laws about it to their liking. Thank you so much, Direct Marketers of America and Congressman Tauzin!
I wonder if these guys let their dates opt out of future date rapes...
"Take Two's Grand Theft Auto is worse than child molestation and more harmful than second hand smoke."
How do they all compare to NYT's abuse of privacy with their "yadda yadda yadda" policy? After all, do they have anything in place to keep children from registering with their site and allowing who know what to track their movements on the web?
Slashdot Mirror
"Need a little help here..."
Alright. It should be "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" All set?
"Based on GPS? Correct me if I'm wrong here but couldn't a GPS jammer render this useless?"
Like the ones Sadam tried to use a few months back? Some of which, IIRC, were taken out by GPS-guided weapons reguardless?
"(Note - UNIX does not use UTC since UTC incorporates leap seconds which UNIX & POSIX does not honor.)"
That's interesting, considering that all the big NTP servers respond in UTC, as do all the other important time services (e. g. GPS). Does *nix automagically know how many leap seconds to add/deduct from the UTC response? If so, how do they know the time differential?
I don't know about you, but part of what I'm paying my ISP for is to block that stuff. If they stop blocking it, at the very least I would expect some sort of refund.
Besides, it's redundant over here. Known Spam and Suspect Email gets dumped into holding bins where it hangs out for 14 days. I can see it whenever I want.
"Thousands died while science looked to the stars."
Earthquakes don't happen in space.
"Why is a video game not free speech, but a book is? Or a television program, radio program, painting, song, sculpture, etc."
Video games don't have many lobbyists in Washington.
"maybe 'buy american' could be our new battle cry"
I personally prefer "build your own, luser!" myself...
You missed Estradasphere, who seem to specialize in jazz/swing/stuff. Most of their stuff seems original, but they've been known to cover the occasional Mario game (which is fairly easy to find on the PtP networks). Their rendition of the overworld music from Super Mario Bros. 2 kicks all manner of ass, but they don't seem to sell the CD that one is on from their website... grrr...
"and I'll cry myself to sleep the next time I play a title who's full score is by some craptacular pop-group"
Don't worry, they can do their worst and they'll still never be able to take our EarthBound away!
"The GPL is not a patent license - if I want to write something that reads and writes ext2fs"
Wouldn't writing something that can access ext2fs fall under the "derivative works" clause?
"(First off, remember that us MATHEMATICANS DO IT SMOOTHLY AND CONTINUOUSLY.)"
They also DO IT with GRATUITOUS USE of CAPITAL LETTERS! Lay off the shift key!
Man, who let Shatner have the keyboard?
"Would be great for LOTR"
What, distributed royalty payments to somebody that's been dead for over 30 years?
"I think it is safe to assume that they weren't friends, and that they most definitely aren't now."
You're forgetting something: alchohol.
"Apparently this is some strange new usage of the word "accident" which I was previously unfamiliar with."
Hey, y'all! Watch this!
"I _want_ the world to reflect my tastes."
That's nice. The world in general doesn't care about your tastes, however. And we especially don't want to be bothered by pollsters just because you want us to.
"I want companies to introduce products that match what I want,"
Fill out customer feedback cards.
"I want my favourite TV programs to get more airtime,"
Write the networks.
(Hell, most people haven't even seen a Nielson box!)
"I want my political positions to be listened to and regarded as significant."
Write your congresscritters. If you still can't through, petition for an increase in the size of the House (if they need polls to keep in touch with voters, then there are too many voters per representative).
If you're so keen on answering polls, give pollsters your cell phone number. It seems easy enough for me.
"This presents a problem for telephone pollsters who are prohibited by the FCC from calling cell phones with automated equipment, and from calling people for whom receiving the call costs money."
I'm personally not sure that restriction goes far enough. "Hi, we're taking a survey to see if you've tried any of our fine products!"
"Some evidence does indicate the frequency of cellular-only is highest among 18-24 year olds, traditionally the hardest to survey anyway."
Here's an interesting thing: Why are you so concerned about polling 18-24 year olds? Other than a vocal minority, most of them can't be bothered to care about current events, let alone vote. The only big reason to want to get to these people is... shall we say "marketing demographics?"
"If the problem grows worse, it's possible we could end up with a "Dewey Defeats Truman"-like situation where the telephone poll results were skewed because Truman supporters were less likely to own a telephone."
And for whom is that a problem, exactly? The election still happened and the guy who got the majority of electoral votes still became president, right? Other than the media and the political parties, who really needs this polling information?
I realize this may be ancient history for some, but with the debacle of the 2000 election still fresh in some memories, the media went through the 2002 election with next to no information from exit polls. Did democracy break down somehow because of it?
You laugh now, but when was the last time you saw a Flash ad for a Microsoft product on Archie?
Wouldn't skipping four years of high school be a pretty big jump, though?
"Not to mention the fact that hundreds of millions of birds are killed each year through collisions with glass windows, vehicles,..."
How many windows do you have on your house? Cars in your driveway?
Now, how many wind turbines do you have? How many wind turbines are even within 10 miles of your home?
"Solar: Nonviable (cost of production exceeds energy consumed, massive chemical waste byproducts)"
"Geothermal: Nonscalable (very few areas have harvestable geothermal resources)"
Why not use their cousin, OTEC?
Even ignoring any harm production of the photovoltaic cells might cause, solar has the nasty habit of producing electricity only when we need it least.
During the day, the cells produce the electricity needed to do whatever it is we do. But after the sun sets, not only do we still need that same amount of electricity (you may not be a night person, but some others are) but also the additional requirement of keeping the lights on. A similar problem can be seen in the seasonal cycle; not only do we need to keep powering the same things during short winter days as well as long summer days, the winter days have the additional requirement of heat.
Just as an engineering guesstimate, you need solar cells to produce 5 times the energy you need at any given moment: 1 kilowatt-hour to use right now, 2 saved up for tonight and 2 saved up for next winter. The real limiting factor here is storage requirements. For the short term (day/night) the most realistic solution I can think of is banks of lead-acid batteries (how good is your local car battery recycling program?). But long-term (summer/winter) is going to pretty much require the "hydrogen economy" everybody keeps talking about (which means consuming water and venting ozone during the summer). That, and/or monsterous power grids that cross hemispheres.
Envrionmentally speaking, there's also the matter of land consumption. Collecting as much sunlight as you can means not letting sunlight get to other things, such as plants. It would be nice to set these up in a city, but there you have the most need for power combined with the least amount of usable surface area...
"Energy generation - indeed any use of natural resources - must be sustainable indefinately."
<HOMER>
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
</HOMER>
"allowing people to opt-out of burglery, robbery, extortion and murder are killing me. I'm just trying to make a living."
So make sure you really clean them out of all their cash and credit cards in your first free mugging (before they get to "opt out.") Better yet, they can't opt out when they're unconscious.
And that there is my main problem with the "opt out" mentality (or more, if I can't prove that you're using more than one identity). Everybody gets one free violation of my privacy and property. And if they really hose my e-mail account, I wouldn't even be able to opt out to begin with.
But that's the magic of the internet, I suppose. Crimes and misdemeanors in "the real world" have to deal with silly things like "history," "tradition" and "precedent." But because the internet is all new and shiney, Congress (and the moneyed interests that controll it) gets to reshape laws about it to their liking. Thank you so much, Direct Marketers of America and Congressman Tauzin!
I wonder if these guys let their dates opt out of future date rapes...
"Take Two's Grand Theft Auto is worse than child molestation and more harmful than second hand smoke."
How do they all compare to NYT's abuse of privacy with their "yadda yadda yadda" policy? After all, do they have anything in place to keep children from registering with their site and allowing who know what to track their movements on the web?
At least it will be keeping your DVD-RAM drive, your Virtual Boy and your Ngage company!