Then there's eSata, of which you need 1 per drive.
Keep in mind that you do not -need- 1 per drive, per se. They can be hooked up internally much like a USB hub. However, your eSATA interface card must have a Port Multiplier.
This does divide the bandwidth across the attached devices if more than one is addressed at a time.. but this is no different than a USB hub, of course. I did some research into dual-slot SATA drive docking stations 2 days ago and almost all (~30) of them require a PM interface. There were only two models that had separate eSATA connectors.
( fwiw, USB 3.0 support is on the rise but still not present on most models, and where it is, it has to go through sub-par eSATA-to-USB3 interface chips. Overall, you'd be much better off just getting the eSATA model if you have a choice (often a USB 3 model won't have an eSATA connector, while the eSATA models -will- at least have a USB 2.0 port ) )
Up, Watchmen, Moon, Taken, Zombieland, and Sherlock Holmes were all movies I thought were at least good. [...] And none of them bludgeon me over the head with their moral message because I REALLY hate that sort of thing.
Wait.. what? What other movie called Taken was released in 2009? That thing was full of moral messages being thrown at you - maybe Liam Neeson kicking ass distracted you enough from that?:)
To be fair, Toyota is crippling it in one market, optionally, by the owner's choice.
Sure.. until the first suit / insurance agency complaint brings to attention that the owner had the choice of installing this option, and an expert witness testifying that the blind person/person in a hurry/whatever would most likely -not- have crossed the street -if- that option had been in place. I'm sure it'll still feel very optional then.
I've always wanted an option that wasn't quite horn, but wasn't just sitting-politely-waiting either. Keep the horn for the "Oh God We're All Going To Die" moments, and have some sort of sub-horn for "The light turned green: stop texting and drive" or "No really, we're in a right-turn-on-red state."
You have one already. The OMG OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! involves you honking your horn for an extended period of time. The Wake up you idiot! one is just a short tap/double-tap.
The refund was 40GBP. That's about 50EUR now, but exchange rates were different back then.. let's make that 65EUR.
So now let's take some games... I guess the Steam storefront should do for a nice cross-section.
There's DogFighter for 13.99EUR.
Microsoft Tax on your games so far: 65.00 / (13.99 + 65.00) * 100% = 82%
But surely you don't just play one game, and it'd probably not be the cheapest in that list either. So we'll add another game. Fallout: New Vegas at 49.99 EUR. Microsoft Tax on your games so far: 65.00 / (13.99 + 49.99 + 65.00) * 100% = 50%
Two games is still rather few.. I don't know why you'd bother unless you really, really, really loved those games. So let's add the other 4 listed.. Alpha Protocol (49.99), Aliens vs Predator (49.99), Grand Theft Auto IV (29.99) and Fallen Earth: Blood Sports (29.99). Microsoft Tax on your games so far: 65.00 / (13.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 29.99 + 29.99 + 65.00) * 100% = 20%
So let's say that's typical for your spending behavior on games... 6 games in a year with an average cost of (13.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 29.99 + 29.99) / 6 = 48.16EUR. Now let's say you actually use that machine as you would a typical gaming machine.. seems those have a lifetime of 5 years.. PS2 is going longer than that, of course, but let's stick to the 5 years. We don't need to do the math bit again to know that'll be down to 4%. So in order to play those 30 games you paid a 4% premium. Sounds like an insanely cheap 'game console' if you were already using the computer for non-gaming purposes anyway and can leave its cost out.
While I like free things as much as the next guy, I expect to pay for games.
But you don't expect to pay for the things that make those games run. Or, at least, in the case of Windows.. you'd rather not.
I suspect you have non-financial motives for this, but then why complain about the $microsoft_tax?
You take it that... 1. shoehornjob -moved- to the United States 2. at the time of said moving, Cherokee was the official or defacto conversational and government communication language in the country.
I take it you couldn't be more mistaken.
The xkcd comic ( http://xkcd.com/84/ ) doesn't just point out a hypocrisy at first glance, but a false hypocrisy when you think about it as it tries to apply the logic retroactively even to those who did -not- emigrate to The U.S.
As for the actual issue at hand... it seems to me that the spread of Spanish languages through adoption from businesses and government alike to cater to the immigrants who do -not- learn English well enough will continue and an English/Hispanic dual language would emerge.
Compare that to most other nations that border another nation with a different language, and you won't see quite such a wide-spread adoption - such dual languages or bilingual use is often limited to a few tens of kilometers around the borders. I.e. retail businesses in Coevorden, NL are probably going to have signs out in Dutch -and- German. But in Hoogeveen, NL, some 30kms away? Forget about it.
Which is preferable and whether it really matters is another story:)
But very often if you -were- using UTC already, then it was for a timekeeping/logging process that at least -may- involve us lowly humans.
So let's say you switch to TAI for all internal record-keeping. Great. Now a human needs to know what human time was associated with the TAI record. No problem, you say, just unleash the formula and look up tables and pass that to the display routine. The display routine looks at 23:59:60 and goes *BOOM* just the same as it did with the UTC codes.
I do think the -programs- need to be fixed, rather than the leap seconds dropped (although I don't see any serious problem with that either.. leap second-aware apps would simply see no further leap second insertions, and it wouldn't be an actual issue until many centuries later).. but saying that the programmer should switch to TAI is oversimplifying things.
Furthermore, it is not logical for a Englishman to be answerable to a Fucking Legislature where he has no voice. Can you imagine that chaos that would cause?
It would cause no particular chaos. You would be answerable (presuming a law was broken) but that doesn't mean you don't have a voice there. You can get representation to show up in their courts (potentially arguing that the seat of the court be moved to your state).
This is exactly the situation that applied in the BREIN vs Sunde et al (The Pirate Bay) case in The Netherlands. They were subpoena'd, they didn't show up, BREIN won by default. They then appealed and got representation into the court to argue their case. The judge did not buy several arguments and found that TPB was 'doing business in' The Netherlands and catering to the Dutch. Of course it helped BREIN's case that there's EU-wide agreements on these kinds of things as well. I'm not sure what the latest on that case is, other than the lead of BREIN going to Sunde in Austria to hand him some papers regarding the non-payment of fees (and Sunde filing charges for illegal filming by that lead and blablabla).
Now, just like Sunde, you're probably welcome to ignore what that French court finds. Odds are that your government isn't exactly going to extradite you either (depending on the severity of the charges; unless you're an American in America, of course). But you may have to give up those vacations in France or countries amicable to France who may hand you over to them.
Ya know, I don't feel like having my head chopped off just because an Iranian purchased an Ebay hard drive from me that showed women in bikinis.
Well the same as the above applies.. I guess you'd have to stay out of Iran - that shouldn't be a problem, right? That said.. your argument is flawed within the apparent system - *unless* you were directly marketing the drive to Iranians.
Being visible to is one thing. What if he starts offering his site in French as well? What if - prior to the adoption of the Euro - he offered his services available by payment in French Francs? Can you still argue that It's just a site in the UK that is only subject to UK legislation?
I agree that a line should be drawn, otherwise pretty much every site is going to be breaking a law -somewhere- and being subject to that law by default would be insane; but I'm not so sure that the line should be drawn so black-and-white as to say "the server is in" or "the owner of the site is registered in" being the discriminating factors in terms of what state's law applies.
Publishing an identifiable photo of a person without a model release signed by that person can result in civil liability for whoever publishes the photograph.
. Can, not will. Most of the pictures on flickr aren't exactly of random strangers.. they're of people themselves and their friends. There's often a presumption of consent in those. On the other hand, if you go into town and take pretty much portrait photos of random passers-by and decide to drop those on flickr; yes, if they find out and object they can take action.
I'm not entirely sure how this has -nothing- to do with Apple. Yes, the ruling would apply to any app store and all that.
But for my Windows Mobile phone.. it doesn't care where I browse to (purchase and) download an app. It could be one of the many dedicated stores or it could be XDA-Dev or it could be some lone developer's app stuck in an archive.org copy off of an old geocities page.
For my Android phone.. it also doesn't care which store I visit or whether I visit a store at all, I can install the apps manually if needed.
An iPhone, however... if you bought the thing in Australia, odds are its original locale is Australia and you're only supposed to access the Aussie app store. You can change the locale, then visit e.g. the U.S. app store, and create a new account (with valid, although obviously not your own, address data), then work with that. Of course, some apps you already have might then refuse to work. The only proper work-around seems to be in jailbreaking the thing, with all its consequences.
Simply by being the -only- store that can normally be accessed -and- having locale-specific offerings, Apple actually plays a major role in how this ruling would apply to the iPhone.
My information on this is a few months old, though, so if the buy-from-other-app-store situation has changed for the iPhone, I'll gladly stand corrected.
Just replying here to say.. wow - who knew that such an off-hand example would lead to the discussions at this level!
I see a lot of people trying to answer to you, and that's pretty awesome.
But the questions they're answering seem to be "What is the color red?", "Could you describe the color red by example?" "How do we perceive the color red?".. which are exactly the more precise questions that are answerable; unlike 'explain the color red' which truly doesn't make sense as a question. It's like a person asking "Why butterflies?" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlXJhGy3FEM - BBC QI )... the only response to that would be "Why -not- butterflies?" as the question just doesn't make sense. It's only when Stephen Fry expands the question to "Why do they exist" that one can explore the answers.
because it's an odd-looking creature that seemingly has 'random' bits and pieces from various other animals... the full question being "what specific selections in 'natural selection' led to this particular evolutionary path?"
So the question isn't to 'explain' the platypus.. that would be like asking to explain the number 5 or explain the color red.. the question itself doesn't make any sense without being more specific.
It's also not a question of 'why does the platypus exist?' - natural selection was already the answer, and can even be thought up by people on their own; clearly if it exists, it had some benefit being exactly the way it is within the environment it is in.. if it weren't well-adapted to that environment, it would have died out a long time ago (presuming the environment didn't radically change).
To be honest, the fully expanded question is actually an interesting one - and one which biologists and others continue to try to answer to more detail to this day. I hadn't actually looked into Platypus info since I was a kid (a school project on its venom, along with other animals' venom), and wiki tells me it was only discovered in 2004 that the Platypus has -10- sex chromosomes, and its genome mapped fully only as recently as 2008. Seems to me there's plenty of questions left.
I don't think you'll find much for home offline backups unless you have some money and look at small business offerings.
Maybe I'm mis-reading the 'offline backups' thing, but doesn't pretty much -every- USB/eSATA HDD and USB DVD/CD combo drive come with backup software these days? Not to mention the plethora of backup software for 'home use' available online.
These days (well, for at least 3 years now) you can even pick up a very simple USB/eSATA HDD 'docking station'.. hook it up to your machine, drop any HDD in there (PATA or SATA), and backup away.. store in safe. Want to do backups on separate drives? Just drop in another HDD - not much different from tape solutions in terms of operation (granted, my only hands-on experience there was QIC-80 on both an internal and an external drive, many many years ago).
In addition, most of these types of enclosures/docking stations have a button on them that talk to a special driver (usually Win/Mac only, though) and fire up pre-configured backups (usually of the entire drive).. couldn't be simpler for home use, really.
What exactly sounds weird about Ohioan and Wyomingite?
More to the point.. why would those sound any 'weirder' than people from TexaS being TexaN or people from Puerto RicO being Puerto RicAn, while people from Massachusetts aren't Massachusettan but Massachusettsan?
Not to mention Connecticuter.. cuter? Surely for pronunciation that should have been Connecticutter?
At least Ohioan makes it more clear it's somebody from Ohio than New Mexican does for somebody from New Mexico.. that should have been New Mexicoan as well.
Then again, I'm from The Netherlands, or Holland if you prefer, but you English-speaking folk insist on calling us Dutch.. so maybe I'm just used to these sorts of shenanigans;)
I'm not even sure why GPP (and a few other commenters) are bringing special effects into this at all. The point of this article, however, was about video quality and how acceptable lower quality video is if you enjoy a movie more.
It doesn't say anything about whether a YouTube 360p video of The Dark Knight (1998 version) being found acceptable means it would have been equally acceptable with the costumes and prop pieces from the 60's Batman TV show. I'd wager it wouldn't - and I don't think presenting the latter in lossless 1080p would have done much to raise the appreciation.
I know it's been 'the cool thing' to say for the past 2 decades now, but the whole "Hollywood's just fixated on special effects and CGI instead of a good story" is a falsehood. Special effects and CGI are tools, just like a hammer. Sure, sometimes they wield that hammer to crack an egg and make a mess of things; but more often than not the egg was rotten well before they struck it with the hammer.. and using an egg spoon wouldn't have made the movie any more palatable. We're just in an age where we are more readily exposed to movies, the good -and- the bad, than we would have in the past.. you need only look at imdb/rotten tomatoes/etc. for long lists of absolute stinkers from well before the era of special effects and visual effects.
But for those who like it absolutely as raw as it gets, without going directly to a play, check out Fail Safe (2000) (remake of an earlier version).. although I'm sure *somebody* will complain about its production in video-processed black-and-white being nothing more than a visual gimmick. (in which case, Fail Safe (1964) is the original)
Zero. There's the cultural difference of the japanese people in which they don't even think about stealing or vandalizing it.
I find the same to be true about parcel delivery in the United States. Although I'm sure delivered goods -do- get stolen off of doorsteps all the time.. it appears to be relatively safe enough that people do have things delivered to their doorstep and just dropped off there left in clear view until they get home.. and most of the time apparently not have them stolen.
I wouldn't try such a thing in The Netherlands - It's not even an option, for that matter.. they just hold it back at the nearest post office (or sub-office; usually run out of other stores) if they found nobody at the address in 2 attempts to deliver - it would disappear in no time.
That said.. I don't see much vandalism of such display types here either. There's tons sprinkled throughout the more touristy cities either as commercial displays or information displays. Then there's the hundreds of displays used by real estate agents behind thin slivers of glass, etc. A regular ol' bus stop, with no fancy technology at all, however.. those get vandalized with some regularity.
correct - those batteries are taken to the busiest inner-city intersection and pulverized down to an airborne particulate size for all to inhale, cling to structures, flood down drains, etc. mmm - lithium.
anyway... wake me when U.S. / Canadian gas prices are $7.10 to $7.90/gallon. (* at 1.419.. 1.579 Euro/liter in NL, 1.32328 USD/EUR (xe.net) and 3.78541178 liters/gallon)
The Dutch government just formally announced its exit from Afghanistan. And other governments around the world involved in the ISAF coalition have, in bigger and small ways, announced that they are trying to do something about the revelations in this material.
Maybe Mr. Assange knows something we don't - but the Dutch government's decision wasn't an event that 'just' happened. The Dutch government originally stated (a promise to the public), in 2009, that they would be withdrawing their military operation from Afghanistan in 2010 as agreed upon in 2006 (though at the time with the option for extending the mission). It's early in 2010 that one of the governing political parties - already having a little fight with one of the other governing parties - pushed the issue.. with the other parties going "well, maybe we should consider staying a bit longer...". In the end, a vote was held, and the party that essentially was in favor of keeping that promise (whether or not this was a power play is another discussion - if it was, it only had short-term success) won with the support of a lot of the smaller parties. It was one of many events leading up to the fall of the Dutch government and its currently on-going formation process after the elections from a few months ago.
So not only was it not an event that 'just' happened.. it is in no way directly related to the release of these documents whatsoever - not sure why Mr. Assange is trying to make that connection. Information that -also- happens to be in those documents may have played a part in the above, of course.. but that's happenstance.
Actually, get insurance anyway, if the building burns or something and you are responsible, you really want insurance.
Absolutely - get insurance, and make sure that the insurance you choose covers all the things you want it to cover, especially when it comes to goods inside the house (google translate tells me the translation for 'inboedel' is 'furniture', but I've never considered a notebook 'furniture').
In case you get your stuff stolen, get home insurance, they will give you money and then you can buy newer toys!
That's only true up to a certain point. Many insurers will only pay out what your goods are worth at the time of the burglary/burndown/etc. So while the nice giant plasma TV you paid $1800 for may be insured.. if its practical resale value is only $400, you're not going to be able to buy another giant plasma TV with that money. Again, check, doublecheck, triplecheck your insurance policy. Keep in mind also that there are non-monetary / physical good concerns. In the case of a computer, you might also have lost e-mail, photos, etc. Sure, you've got a backup that they didn't steal.. but how old is that backup? In the case of just about any device.. let's say they steal your oven. Hey, stranger things get stolen, and some of the combination microwave/convection ovens aren't exactly cheap. Are you really looking forward to spending time with a replacement oven (if another model) and learning all of its quirks? They may be minor issues bordering on the pathetic, but I'd certainly rather prevent them.
The odds that you will get your stuff stolen are pretty low.
Of course.
Security systems are mostly a waste of money.
The operative word there being 'mostly'. I've seen some of the security systems that people set up - microphones, videocameras, the works. Those -are- expensive, and mostly a waste of time.
Just get some realistic looking ADT stickers (from eBay) that will make the thieves think you have a security system.
Then again, the thieves are likely aware that people do this. It's a bit like the fake car alarm flashing LEDs - that may stop some of the thieves, but let's face it.. plenty of cars still get their windows smashed and goods taken. That LED will merrily continue flashing but in reality do absolutely nothing.
Having an actual system will get you ZERO extra security, just costs.
And this is where I disagree.
My neighbor's house was semi-broken into just last week. The burglars actually made it so far as half way through a small window that must have taken some effort to 1. open, 2. climb up to (larger window right underneath.. not exactly something that you can easily climb up against) and 3. crawl through. But they didn't get to crawl through - one of them was half-way through when the -audible- alarm went off. Sure, it woke half the neighborhood, but it also clearly signaled to the would-be thieves that unless they made themselves scant right quick, they'd be f'ed. So they bailed and didn't manage to take a thing; heck, they left the bag they presumably had intended to fill up.
Now, this alarm also alerted a central monitoring agency, which in turn phoned police and a designated neighbor and all that; but all of those would have likely been useless (cops take a while to get there, neighbors running into the streets half-naked isn't exactly instantaneous either).
So although it may be mostly a waste of money to get a full-on security system with mikes and cameras and so forth, you'd do well to at least invest in a simple alarm system that, for example, just works on movement
Extremely cheap.. outdoor lighting products use them a lot) routed with a delay (a simple timer circuit) to an audible alarm (also cheap.. get
3) Their PSU is inadequate for their card. High end graphics cards need a lot of voltage on the 12v rail
I think you meant amps there, rather than volts.. the 12V rail is only ever going to give 12V (ignoring spikes and voltage drops at high loads) - but a card that sucks up 60W at peak will need 5A to meet that requirement off of 12V.. and there's certainly monsters out there that'll take in much more than that with connectors for 2 separate rails.
That said.. although high amounts of load leading to either underpowering of the card or stage 1 overheating (processor logic goes out the window) of a card is something that can't easily be prevented, the headline stating "killing" - i.e. rendering the card unusable entirely - typically due to stage 2 overheating (components get anxious to release the magic smoke) is something that no software should be able to accomplish. All graphics cards should have thermal protection that will, quite essentially, simply cut power to (the power hungry aspects of) the card if it gets too hot.
In lieu of that, I'd recommend getting some temperature probes + readout on your machine (not so easily done with a notebook, admittedly) so that you can always choose to quit a program if you think the temperatures are getting out of hand. ( more fail-safe is a two-stage setup with temperature switches and an LED, switching the LED on at Temp1 and cutting power to the system at Temp2, but that's only for the soldering-happy among us )
All I've said is that it's a violation of the person to take someone's organs without their consent. I don't care if it's the state doing it, the doctor doing it or some criminal doing it. It's abhorrent and indefensible.
I wholly agree with you on this.
However, your post - at least to me - seemed to link such behavior to an opt-out system in the case of a person not being identifiable; making it impossible to check whether the person is a donor or not (and to what extent they're a donor, etc.) I fully agree that in such cases, "not a donor" should be the default assumed. This would apply to both opt-out -and- opt-in, really.
And if you make it opt-in and someone gets into an accident and can't be identified for whatever reason [...] his wishes aren't going to be respected.
True - and that is a risk that you take yourself when you don't carry any form of identification. This is no different from a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) card. If you forget to bring that, get in an accident, and you get resuscitated anyway.. well, tough.
(do you always carry your ID when you leave the house?)
Yes - my ID, my credit card, my debit card, my drivers' license, my (medical) insurance card, my unlimited-movies-at-the-theater card and, of course, my donor registration card I -always- carry with me when I leave the house same as I do my keys (can't get back in without them).
In the absence of proof that a person consented to organ donation it's absurd to slice up his body and take his organs.
For a moment I was wondering if you meant to argue that case in your first sentence - but I guess you're going for that approach here; If the system is opt-out and somebody can't be identified, that their organs would be taken under a presumption that they are a donor. Just in case: heck no. Of course the person should be identified first to get a conclusive donor vs non-donor either way; otherwise: presume non-donor.
The ownership of my body does not transfer to the state when I die.
That remains to be seen under many, many jurisdictions, especially as time passes from the time of death. In fact, if you are the victim of a homocide, ownership of your body -is- temporarily transferred to the state for purposes of conducting their investigation. Your body would only later be released to your family / loved ones / etc. But trying to muddy the waters by appealing to people's emotions that "opt-out" = "The Man is gonna harvest your organs!"? really?
But what if I get one of the attempts wrong and bleed to death? When does it stop being artistic and become attempted suicide?
It becomes attempted suicide when your -goal- was your death.
If you chop off your leg because you think you'd be happier with that leg gone.. go for it. If you then can't stop the arterial bleeding and bleed to death.. well, whoops. But your goal was only to remove your leg, not to kill yourself. Therefore, not suicide.
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Keep in mind that you do not -need- 1 per drive, per se. They can be hooked up internally much like a USB hub. However, your eSATA interface card must have a Port Multiplier.
This does divide the bandwidth across the attached devices if more than one is addressed at a time.. but this is no different than a USB hub, of course.
I did some research into dual-slot SATA drive docking stations 2 days ago and almost all (~30) of them require a PM interface. There were only two models that had separate eSATA connectors.
( fwiw, USB 3.0 support is on the rise but still not present on most models, and where it is, it has to go through sub-par eSATA-to-USB3 interface chips. Overall, you'd be much better off just getting the eSATA model if you have a choice (often a USB 3 model won't have an eSATA connector, while the eSATA models -will- at least have a USB 2.0 port ) )
Disable javascript on images.google.com/* ?
Wait.. what? What other movie called Taken was released in 2009? That thing was full of moral messages being thrown at you - maybe Liam Neeson kicking ass distracted you enough from that? :)
Sure.. until the first suit / insurance agency complaint brings to attention that the owner had the choice of installing this option, and an expert witness testifying that the blind person/person in a hurry/whatever would most likely -not- have crossed the street -if- that option had been in place. I'm sure it'll still feel very optional then.
You have one already. The OMG OMG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! involves you honking your horn for an extended period of time. The Wake up you idiot! one is just a short tap/double-tap.
Which, of course, is an ever-diminishing relative amount.
The last 'microsoft tax' amount I could spot was from 2009 in this /. story:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/23/1855211/Amazon-UK-Refunds-Windows-License-Fee-With-Little-Hassle
The refund was 40GBP. That's about 50EUR now, but exchange rates were different back then.. let's make that 65EUR.
So now let's take some games... I guess the Steam storefront should do for a nice cross-section.
There's DogFighter for 13.99EUR.
Microsoft Tax on your games so far: 65.00 / (13.99 + 65.00) * 100% = 82%
But surely you don't just play one game, and it'd probably not be the cheapest in that list either. So we'll add another game. Fallout: New Vegas at 49.99 EUR.
Microsoft Tax on your games so far: 65.00 / (13.99 + 49.99 + 65.00) * 100% = 50%
Two games is still rather few.. I don't know why you'd bother unless you really, really, really loved those games. So let's add the other 4 listed.. Alpha Protocol (49.99), Aliens vs Predator (49.99), Grand Theft Auto IV (29.99) and Fallen Earth: Blood Sports (29.99).
Microsoft Tax on your games so far: 65.00 / (13.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 29.99 + 29.99 + 65.00) * 100% = 20%
So let's say that's typical for your spending behavior on games... 6 games in a year with an average cost of (13.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 49.99 + 29.99 + 29.99) / 6 = 48.16EUR.
Now let's say you actually use that machine as you would a typical gaming machine.. seems those have a lifetime of 5 years.. PS2 is going longer than that, of course, but let's stick to the 5 years. We don't need to do the math bit again to know that'll be down to 4%. So in order to play those 30 games you paid a 4% premium.
Sounds like an insanely cheap 'game console' if you were already using the computer for non-gaming purposes anyway and can leave its cost out.
But you don't expect to pay for the things that make those games run. Or, at least, in the case of Windows.. you'd rather not.
I suspect you have non-financial motives for this, but then why complain about the $microsoft_tax?
You take it that...
1. shoehornjob -moved- to the United States
2. at the time of said moving, Cherokee was the official or defacto conversational and government communication language in the country.
I take it you couldn't be more mistaken.
The xkcd comic ( http://xkcd.com/84/ ) doesn't just point out a hypocrisy at first glance, but a false hypocrisy when you think about it as it tries to apply the logic retroactively even to those who did -not- emigrate to The U.S.
As for the actual issue at hand... it seems to me that the spread of Spanish languages through adoption from businesses and government alike to cater to the immigrants who do -not- learn English well enough will continue and an English/Hispanic dual language would emerge.
Compare that to most other nations that border another nation with a different language, and you won't see quite such a wide-spread adoption - such dual languages or bilingual use is often limited to a few tens of kilometers around the borders. I.e. retail businesses in Coevorden, NL are probably going to have signs out in Dutch -and- German. But in Hoogeveen, NL, some 30kms away? Forget about it.
Which is preferable and whether it really matters is another story :)
But very often if you -were- using UTC already, then it was for a timekeeping/logging process that at least -may- involve us lowly humans.
So let's say you switch to TAI for all internal record-keeping. Great. Now a human needs to know what human time was associated with the TAI record. No problem, you say, just unleash the formula and look up tables and pass that to the display routine. The display routine looks at 23:59:60 and goes *BOOM* just the same as it did with the UTC codes.
I do think the -programs- need to be fixed, rather than the leap seconds dropped (although I don't see any serious problem with that either.. leap second-aware apps would simply see no further leap second insertions, and it wouldn't be an actual issue until many centuries later).. but saying that the programmer should switch to TAI is oversimplifying things.
It would cause no particular chaos. You would be answerable (presuming a law was broken) but that doesn't mean you don't have a voice there. You can get representation to show up in their courts (potentially arguing that the seat of the court be moved to your state).
This is exactly the situation that applied in the BREIN vs Sunde et al (The Pirate Bay) case in The Netherlands. They were subpoena'd, they didn't show up, BREIN won by default. They then appealed and got representation into the court to argue their case. The judge did not buy several arguments and found that TPB was 'doing business in' The Netherlands and catering to the Dutch. Of course it helped BREIN's case that there's EU-wide agreements on these kinds of things as well. I'm not sure what the latest on that case is, other than the lead of BREIN going to Sunde in Austria to hand him some papers regarding the non-payment of fees (and Sunde filing charges for illegal filming by that lead and blablabla).
Now, just like Sunde, you're probably welcome to ignore what that French court finds. Odds are that your government isn't exactly going to extradite you either (depending on the severity of the charges; unless you're an American in America, of course). But you may have to give up those vacations in France or countries amicable to France who may hand you over to them.
Well the same as the above applies.. I guess you'd have to stay out of Iran - that shouldn't be a problem, right? That said.. your argument is flawed within the apparent system - *unless* you were directly marketing the drive to Iranians.
Being visible to is one thing. What if he starts offering his site in French as well? What if - prior to the adoption of the Euro - he offered his services available by payment in French Francs? Can you still argue that It's just a site in the UK that is only subject to UK legislation?
I agree that a line should be drawn, otherwise pretty much every site is going to be breaking a law -somewhere- and being subject to that law by default would be insane; but I'm not so sure that the line should be drawn so black-and-white as to say "the server is in" or "the owner of the site is registered in" being the discriminating factors in terms of what state's law applies.
Not "illegal"; actionable.
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Can, not will. Most of the pictures on flickr aren't exactly of random strangers.. they're of people themselves and their friends. There's often a presumption of consent in those. On the other hand, if you go into town and take pretty much portrait photos of random passers-by and decide to drop those on flickr; yes, if they find out and object they can take action.
I'm not entirely sure how this has -nothing- to do with Apple. Yes, the ruling would apply to any app store and all that.
But for my Windows Mobile phone.. it doesn't care where I browse to (purchase and) download an app. It could be one of the many dedicated stores or it could be XDA-Dev or it could be some lone developer's app stuck in an archive.org copy off of an old geocities page.
For my Android phone.. it also doesn't care which store I visit or whether I visit a store at all, I can install the apps manually if needed.
An iPhone, however... if you bought the thing in Australia, odds are its original locale is Australia and you're only supposed to access the Aussie app store. You can change the locale, then visit e.g. the U.S. app store, and create a new account (with valid, although obviously not your own, address data), then work with that. Of course, some apps you already have might then refuse to work.
The only proper work-around seems to be in jailbreaking the thing, with all its consequences.
Simply by being the -only- store that can normally be accessed -and- having locale-specific offerings, Apple actually plays a major role in how this ruling would apply to the iPhone.
My information on this is a few months old, though, so if the buy-from-other-app-store situation has changed for the iPhone, I'll gladly stand corrected.
Just replying here to say.. wow - who knew that such an off-hand example would lead to the discussions at this level!
I see a lot of people trying to answer to you, and that's pretty awesome.
But the questions they're answering seem to be "What is the color red?", "Could you describe the color red by example?" "How do we perceive the color red?".. which are exactly the more precise questions that are answerable; unlike 'explain the color red' which truly doesn't make sense as a question. It's like a person asking "Why butterflies?" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlXJhGy3FEM - BBC QI )... the only response to that would be "Why -not- butterflies?" as the question just doesn't make sense. It's only when Stephen Fry expands the question to "Why do they exist" that one can explore the answers.
quite true - good point :)
because it's an odd-looking creature that seemingly has 'random' bits and pieces from various other animals... the full question being "what specific selections in 'natural selection' led to this particular evolutionary path?"
So the question isn't to 'explain' the platypus.. that would be like asking to explain the number 5 or explain the color red.. the question itself doesn't make any sense without being more specific.
It's also not a question of 'why does the platypus exist?' - natural selection was already the answer, and can even be thought up by people on their own; clearly if it exists, it had some benefit being exactly the way it is within the environment it is in.. if it weren't well-adapted to that environment, it would have died out a long time ago (presuming the environment didn't radically change).
To be honest, the fully expanded question is actually an interesting one - and one which biologists and others continue to try to answer to more detail to this day. I hadn't actually looked into Platypus info since I was a kid (a school project on its venom, along with other animals' venom), and wiki tells me it was only discovered in 2004 that the Platypus has -10- sex chromosomes, and its genome mapped fully only as recently as 2008. Seems to me there's plenty of questions left.
Maybe I'm mis-reading the 'offline backups' thing, but doesn't pretty much -every- USB/eSATA HDD and USB DVD/CD combo drive come with backup software these days? Not to mention the plethora of backup software for 'home use' available online.
These days (well, for at least 3 years now) you can even pick up a very simple USB/eSATA HDD 'docking station'.. hook it up to your machine, drop any HDD in there (PATA or SATA), and backup away.. store in safe. Want to do backups on separate drives? Just drop in another HDD - not much different from tape solutions in terms of operation (granted, my only hands-on experience there was QIC-80 on both an internal and an external drive, many many years ago).
In addition, most of these types of enclosures/docking stations have a button on them that talk to a special driver (usually Win/Mac only, though) and fire up pre-configured backups (usually of the entire drive).. couldn't be simpler for home use, really.
What exactly sounds weird about Ohioan and Wyomingite?
More to the point.. why would those sound any 'weirder' than people from TexaS being TexaN or people from Puerto RicO being Puerto RicAn, while people from Massachusetts aren't Massachusettan but Massachusettsan?
Not to mention Connecticuter.. cuter? Surely for pronunciation that should have been Connecticutter?
At least Ohioan makes it more clear it's somebody from Ohio than New Mexican does for somebody from New Mexico.. that should have been New Mexicoan as well.
Then again, I'm from The Netherlands, or Holland if you prefer, but you English-speaking folk insist on calling us Dutch.. so maybe I'm just used to these sorts of shenanigans ;)
I'm not even sure why GPP (and a few other commenters) are bringing special effects into this at all. The point of this article, however, was about video quality and how acceptable lower quality video is if you enjoy a movie more.
It doesn't say anything about whether a YouTube 360p video of The Dark Knight (1998 version) being found acceptable means it would have been equally acceptable with the costumes and prop pieces from the 60's Batman TV show. I'd wager it wouldn't - and I don't think presenting the latter in lossless 1080p would have done much to raise the appreciation.
I know it's been 'the cool thing' to say for the past 2 decades now, but the whole "Hollywood's just fixated on special effects and CGI instead of a good story" is a falsehood. Special effects and CGI are tools, just like a hammer. Sure, sometimes they wield that hammer to crack an egg and make a mess of things; but more often than not the egg was rotten well before they struck it with the hammer.. and using an egg spoon wouldn't have made the movie any more palatable.
We're just in an age where we are more readily exposed to movies, the good -and- the bad, than we would have in the past.. you need only look at imdb/rotten tomatoes/etc. for long lists of absolute stinkers from well before the era of special effects and visual effects.
But for those who like it absolutely as raw as it gets, without going directly to a play, check out Fail Safe (2000) (remake of an earlier version).. although I'm sure *somebody* will complain about its production in video-processed black-and-white being nothing more than a visual gimmick. (in which case, Fail Safe (1964) is the original)
I find the same to be true about parcel delivery in the United States. Although I'm sure delivered goods -do- get stolen off of doorsteps all the time.. it appears to be relatively safe enough that people do have things delivered to their doorstep and just dropped off there left in clear view until they get home.. and most of the time apparently not have them stolen.
I wouldn't try such a thing in The Netherlands - It's not even an option, for that matter.. they just hold it back at the nearest post office (or sub-office; usually run out of other stores) if they found nobody at the address in 2 attempts to deliver - it would disappear in no time.
That said.. I don't see much vandalism of such display types here either. There's tons sprinkled throughout the more touristy cities either as commercial displays or information displays. Then there's the hundreds of displays used by real estate agents behind thin slivers of glass, etc.
A regular ol' bus stop, with no fancy technology at all, however.. those get vandalized with some regularity.
correct - those batteries are taken to the busiest inner-city intersection and pulverized down to an airborne particulate size for all to inhale, cling to structures, flood down drains, etc. mmm - lithium.
anyway... wake me when U.S. / Canadian gas prices are $7.10 to $7.90/gallon. .. 1.579 Euro/liter in NL, 1.32328 USD/EUR (xe.net) and 3.78541178 liters/gallon)
(* at 1.419
Maybe Mr. Assange knows something we don't - but the Dutch government's decision wasn't an event that 'just' happened. The Dutch government originally stated (a promise to the public), in 2009, that they would be withdrawing their military operation from Afghanistan in 2010 as agreed upon in 2006 (though at the time with the option for extending the mission). It's early in 2010 that one of the governing political parties - already having a little fight with one of the other governing parties - pushed the issue.. with the other parties going "well, maybe we should consider staying a bit longer...". In the end, a vote was held, and the party that essentially was in favor of keeping that promise (whether or not this was a power play is another discussion - if it was, it only had short-term success) won with the support of a lot of the smaller parties. It was one of many events leading up to the fall of the Dutch government and its currently on-going formation process after the elections from a few months ago.
So not only was it not an event that 'just' happened.. it is in no way directly related to the release of these documents whatsoever - not sure why Mr. Assange is trying to make that connection. Information that -also- happens to be in those documents may have played a part in the above, of course.. but that's happenstance.
I disagree...
Taking this in reverse order...
Absolutely - get insurance, and make sure that the insurance you choose covers all the things you want it to cover, especially when it comes to goods inside the house (google translate tells me the translation for 'inboedel' is 'furniture', but I've never considered a notebook 'furniture').
That's only true up to a certain point. Many insurers will only pay out what your goods are worth at the time of the burglary/burndown/etc. So while the nice giant plasma TV you paid $1800 for may be insured.. if its practical resale value is only $400, you're not going to be able to buy another giant plasma TV with that money. Again, check, doublecheck, triplecheck your insurance policy.
Keep in mind also that there are non-monetary / physical good concerns. In the case of a computer, you might also have lost e-mail, photos, etc. Sure, you've got a backup that they didn't steal.. but how old is that backup? In the case of just about any device.. let's say they steal your oven. Hey, stranger things get stolen, and some of the combination microwave/convection ovens aren't exactly cheap. Are you really looking forward to spending time with a replacement oven (if another model) and learning all of its quirks? They may be minor issues bordering on the pathetic, but I'd certainly rather prevent them.
Of course.
The operative word there being 'mostly'. I've seen some of the security systems that people set up - microphones, videocameras, the works. Those -are- expensive, and mostly a waste of time.
Then again, the thieves are likely aware that people do this. It's a bit like the fake car alarm flashing LEDs - that may stop some of the thieves, but let's face it.. plenty of cars still get their windows smashed and goods taken. That LED will merrily continue flashing but in reality do absolutely nothing.
And this is where I disagree.
My neighbor's house was semi-broken into just last week. The burglars actually made it so far as half way through a small window that must have taken some effort to 1. open, 2. climb up to (larger window right underneath.. not exactly something that you can easily climb up against) and 3. crawl through.
But they didn't get to crawl through - one of them was half-way through when the -audible- alarm went off. Sure, it woke half the neighborhood, but it also clearly signaled to the would-be thieves that unless they made themselves scant right quick, they'd be f'ed.
So they bailed and didn't manage to take a thing; heck, they left the bag they presumably had intended to fill up.
Now, this alarm also alerted a central monitoring agency, which in turn phoned police and a designated neighbor and all that; but all of those would have likely been useless (cops take a while to get there, neighbors running into the streets half-naked isn't exactly instantaneous either).
So although it may be mostly a waste of money to get a full-on security system with mikes and cameras and so forth, you'd do well to at least invest in a simple alarm system that, for example, just works on movement
Extremely cheap.. outdoor lighting products use them a lot) routed with a delay (a simple timer circuit) to an audible alarm (also cheap.. get
I think you meant amps there, rather than volts.. the 12V rail is only ever going to give 12V (ignoring spikes and voltage drops at high loads) - but a card that sucks up 60W at peak will need 5A to meet that requirement off of 12V.. and there's certainly monsters out there that'll take in much more than that with connectors for 2 separate rails.
That said.. although high amounts of load leading to either underpowering of the card or stage 1 overheating (processor logic goes out the window) of a card is something that can't easily be prevented, the headline stating "killing" - i.e. rendering the card unusable entirely - typically due to stage 2 overheating (components get anxious to release the magic smoke) is something that no software should be able to accomplish. All graphics cards should have thermal protection that will, quite essentially, simply cut power to (the power hungry aspects of) the card if it gets too hot.
In lieu of that, I'd recommend getting some temperature probes + readout on your machine (not so easily done with a notebook, admittedly) so that you can always choose to quit a program if you think the temperatures are getting out of hand.
( more fail-safe is a two-stage setup with temperature switches and an LED, switching the LED on at Temp1 and cutting power to the system at Temp2, but that's only for the soldering-happy among us )
I wholly agree with you on this.
However, your post - at least to me - seemed to link such behavior to an opt-out system in the case of a person not being identifiable; making it impossible to check whether the person is a donor or not (and to what extent they're a donor, etc.)
I fully agree that in such cases, "not a donor" should be the default assumed. This would apply to both opt-out -and- opt-in, really.
True - and that is a risk that you take yourself when you don't carry any form of identification. This is no different from a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) card. If you forget to bring that, get in an accident, and you get resuscitated anyway.. well, tough.
Yes - my ID, my credit card, my debit card, my drivers' license, my (medical) insurance card, my unlimited-movies-at-the-theater card and, of course, my donor registration card I -always- carry with me when I leave the house same as I do my keys (can't get back in without them).
For a moment I was wondering if you meant to argue that case in your first sentence - but I guess you're going for that approach here; If the system is opt-out and somebody can't be identified, that their organs would be taken under a presumption that they are a donor. Just in case: heck no. Of course the person should be identified first to get a conclusive donor vs non-donor either way; otherwise: presume non-donor.
That remains to be seen under many, many jurisdictions, especially as time passes from the time of death. In fact, if you are the victim of a homocide, ownership of your body -is- temporarily transferred to the state for purposes of conducting their investigation. Your body would only later be released to your family / loved ones / etc.
But trying to muddy the waters by appealing to people's emotions that "opt-out" = "The Man is gonna harvest your organs!"? really?
It becomes attempted suicide when your -goal- was your death.
If you chop off your leg because you think you'd be happier with that leg gone.. go for it. If you then can't stop the arterial bleeding and bleed to death.. well, whoops. But your goal was only to remove your leg, not to kill yourself. Therefore, not suicide.