The original 7 wonders weren't of the ancient world either... they are now, because we're living quite a few years later. But when the original list was made, it was of sites/objects roughly from that time. E.g. the lighthouse.
And how about Mount Rushmore? I could never take the list of original 'options' seriously when I noticed that it had e.g. the Sydney Opera House. Don't get me wrong, the Sydney Opera House is a marvel of engineering - but compared to Mt. Rushmore and, indeed, Angkor Wat.. ?
posting without karma bonus due to obvious off-topicness.. how does that whole "attached to bill" stuff work anyway? I couldn't find anything via either wikipedia or google... I may be using the wrong search terms.
I know it's at least not unique to the U.S. - the U.K. has similar dealings.. I'm not sure about 'mainland EU'.. I do know that a few years back there was a ruccus about some computer/tech thing being on the agenda for an EU whatsits -agriculture- meeting and I thought "wtf??" back then, too.. I presume it to be similar.
I'm thinking that sort of thing needs to stop - but there must be *some* reason the whole structure is allowed to exist.. Any good links with info? Or direct info if you (reader) happen to be initimately familiar with the matter.
go cry me a river, Colombia. Sometimes there's -months- between a U.S. and a Europe release. Now I'm all for simultaneous releases, but... 1. cost of film is prohibitive (yes, the things travel - which is fun if you get it after 8 other countries got it - mmm specks, dust, stripes.. the real movie experience) 2. promotion happens locally. E.g. actors can't be at the opening night everywhere if it's all on the same day. a few weeks, for Transformers, is actually pretty good, and getting a cam'd version just so you don't have to wait 2 weeks is lame. I can understand for 'months'.. though by then, get the DVD (undoubtedly released at that time) rip instead.. if you *must*.
The ISP wouldn't necessarily be in trouble. They'd just have to adjust their TOS to say "No encrypted P2P traffic allowed" and call upon their contract agreement with the client saying that the TOS can change at any time, and that the user is free to cancel their service if they disagree with the new TOS. After that, they can just block it - legitimate or not.
Yes, that may lose them some customers - probably less than the current order will cost them.. and even that will be puny in comparison to the total number of customers they have. Heck, they'll be free of the leechers. Maybe they'll secretly be happy about it.
Wasn't the whole point of the P2P stuff this court ruling targets that people don't want to pay for the content?
( Yes, I know.. "people are willing to pay for the content, but not as much as the copyright holders are asking"..not sure how that became an excuse for "so I'll just get it cheaper illicitly" instead of "so I'll just wait 2 months and pick it up out of the bargain bin", but alright. )
the same could be said for murder. Not equating the two, just pointing out that something is either illegal - or it isn't. Perhaps you meant "Fortunately, there are only consequences if you get caught".
How about this... the universe is collapsing on itself. As we speak. But it's also expanding. It just depends on your frame of reference.
To explain this in the easiest way I can, I'm going to have to move from the multidimensional to the more easily understood dimensions. Save you have a sphere. http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2081/asphereft7.j pg
That sphere has a top, and a bottom. Assume that at the top of that sphere, water is formed. This water will want to flow down that sphere to the very bottom of that sphere. In the case of our simple world - due to gravity, and gravity wants those water droplets to flow ever-faster toward that bottom, etc... ignore this bit about gravity except for the ever-faster.. they accelerate.
Now if you uncurl all those strips, and align them all together at the top, you get a sort of radial spokes system of peels. The more strips you made, the cleaner the result, but what it comes down to is this. The top point of the sphere is still a point. But the bottom point of the sphere is now no longer a point - it is part of a large circular shape in a disc. http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6959/anunfolded spherexj8.jpg
So if we had the same water droplets going from the top of the sphere to the bottom of the sphere, in this new disc-shape projection, then from the frame of reference of the top point - the center of the disc - the drops of water would appear to be continually diverging and accelerating outward. The Big Bang.
But here's the kicker. If you uncurl the strips and align them all together at the bottom and repeat the same thing - then a bunch of scattered around water droplets would appear to be accelerating towards it, and converging. The Big Crunch.
Just a thought - probably not original, but I don't remember reading anything on the subject.. it's not one I'm too interested in:) Graphics whipped up in 3dsmax (yeah, sorry - no Blender experience!)
okay, it's probably not (new user ID, single post (the one I'm replying to), nothing on google about "media center deleted" or '"media center" deletes' that would indicate media center magically deleting any files - let alone ones onf a network drive...
but if it's true, I'm amazed there's been no giant huff about this - not to mention lawsuits.
In case I've been googling wrong - I fully expect replies posting to the dozens of websites that would likely report this sort of thing:)
the coin to unlock the cart from the one in front of it at the 'cart queue'
and
the lock on the wheel if you try and take it outside of a particular perimeter.
the first is, as somebody else said, to encourage you to bring the darn thing back to a queue. It saves them work and every other shopper a stray cart. You, in return, get your coin / keyring token back. It never picked up much in the U.S. because everybody there is so accustomed to service. Your groceries get bagged -for- you. They get brought to your car -for- you. If you leave a stray cart.. no problem, some poor $3/hour sap will return it -for- you. Not saying that the service is a bad thing... hey, it employs another few kids, and still your products are cheaper than in the EU, so it can't be all bad. But I find not returning a shopping cart to be little above the level of people leaving their junk at a theatre because somebody else will come along and clean it up for you anyway. What's wrong with you that you find that enough reason to -not- just take your trash with you and drop it in the next bin along your way (of which there are plenty in a theatre). Anyway, I'll stop ranting and move on with...
The latter is purely to help prevent theft. And yes, carts cost a shitload to make - you'd think that just being bits of metal wire or even cast plastic they'd be as cheap as the next childrens' toy. Nuh-uh. They go well over a hundred euros. It's insane.
As for the story.. yay, another prankster.. ha ha. *yawn*
There's keyboards which have this sort of thing already built-in. If people -really- want to 'cheat' that way (is it cheating - or is it just using better hardware? Is a widescreen monitor cheating when compared to a 4:3 monitor because you gain a couple of degrees of vision horizontally? Is using a headset cheating when compared to the person who doesn't have one? etc.) they always can.
That said... the keyboards/etc. have a bit of a signature... the timing on the moves being the same within a few milliseconds, etc. It can be detected. Go ahead, build another better mouse that adds random delays. But you're going to be one of very few to make that sort of effort. As long as the vast majority of cheaters stand no chance in the game, the rest will still have a good playing experience.
..is that the server, at some point, has to trust the data the client is sending. Now there's client-side anti-cheat software that will do things like try and make sure that external applications (not entirely unlike the old TSR cheats of lore) aren't altering the data in RAM before it sends the info back to the server. But that client-side anti-cheat software can-and-will be defeated. Eventually there might be an anti-cheat relying on TCPM sort of things, but eventually somebody will just make a TCPM-less version indistinguishable from the TCPM type by the server.
So the only proper anti-cheat lays with the server. But there you hit a problem. You can, for example, prevent some cheats that way. Somebody lobs 2 nades while the server knows he only has 1? Cheating. Somebody moves all over the screen, faster than the player can actually run? Cheating. Wait - or a laggy connection.. or a bug. Tread with caution there. Caution means a margin. A margin means a margin for cheating. Okay, so you don't have your cheat make your player run at 200% - you just make him run at 105%. Still an advantage, and the anti-cheat won't catch it because of the margin. And even when you can detect all the -technical- cheats (more ammo, faster reloads, increased speed, greater jetpack fuel (if there's any), that leaves you with the cheats that cheat the User Input. Aimbots and the like - which can be extremely difficult to detect.
In the end, you can't 100% prevent cheating. But you can make the landscape unattractive enough to cheat in by at least trying to prevent it and having an actual human being look at suspicious behavior from time to time.
( I admin at one of the more popular Soldat servers - we're virtually cheater-free because the cheaters know they'll be busted in no time and their cheating fun ruined by us/kill'ing them (rather than banning - as they'll just be back) and ousting them in public. )
...is that only the top thread has a dozen or so messages about the actual issue in the story. The rest is warring among tribes of Pro-Moore vs Pro-HMO, Pro-U.S. vs Pro-EverybodyElse, Pro-Documetary vs Pro-OpinionPiece, etc.
I charge my smartphone every night, too - I only *have* to do so once in 3 days. Granted, my regular mobile phone can go 2 weeks without a recharge (given the little use it gets right now) - but even that phone I've had plugged in every night. It makes sure that at the start of every day, I have a full battery. I never have to worry whether the 30% charge left in the thing will last me through the day, or whether I should plug it in before taking a shower for another 7% extra just to be on the safe side.
Once you get into the habit of just plugging it in every night, then battery life becomes a moot issue unless.. *unless*.. it won't even last you the day anymore. At that point, the battery is pretty much dead (not empty, just dead), and you *should* be able to get a replacement battery and replace it.. instead of having it 'serviced' for a battery replacement. Not that servicing is bad - it's just that typically they say "come back tomorrow" (if you're lucky!) after taking the phone.
oops.. just to make clear, this was just on the note of agencies getting your DNA. I in no way meant to suggest that it should be easy for agencies to get said DNA stuff from Ancestry.com . In fact, I believe they shouldn't get any access to it at all because it'll just end up with Ancestry.com becoming a front for investigative services. I also don't believe that they, or anybody else for that matter, should be able to submit a swab for a person other than themselves, to be quite frank. In other words.. the only way I can see this service as being 'okay' is if somebody from that service comes by and takes the swab off of you in person. I'm sure you have to pay for the service anyway (to get the DNA analysis, get the results, etc.), might as well make them pay a little more so that people can't commit 'DNA fraud' (for lack of a better word).
I think the idea itself is great though... the possible privacy, fraud, impersonation (that's a type of fraud, innit?) implications are certainly scary, and I'd never submit a swab to it myself.
But in terms of an agency already having the DNA (regardless of how they got it - see above).. that's where my post came in. Sorry for any confusion:)
In fact, that's actually the best way to deal with them.
Mother's maiden name? 'Upyours'.
Say somebody gets a hold of your account data, but not enough to do anything.. for that, they need to reset an e-mail addy or whatever, and for -that- they need to answer the secret question. Mother's maiden name? pfft.. they already know nearly all they need for full access to your account.. you think they won't know your mother's maiden name? So they enter it.. Johnson. *BUZZ* wrong, mister. And with any luck your bank will be smart and have this logged and notify you of an attempt by somebody to do funny things to your account and that, if you wish, you can change your more common details to thwart any future attemt.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a bit and say that just because somebody's DNA is found at a scene doesn't automatically make agencies go "he did it". It's -a- piece of evidence and one that can be discarded as easily as *snaps fingers* that if there's a good explanation.
Now... if you have no alibi for the time they're placing the crime at, and no good explanation whatsoever of why your DNA would be there... yes, the police may investigate you a little closer. Still doesn't mean they'll just skip the whole investigation and trial thing and just lock you up 'because the DNA said he did it'. If they tried, then lawyers these days are quite savvy enough to come up with some reasonable explanation of why your DNA might be there (even if you can't), and the cops, too, know they'll need a little more than that to convince a judge/jury.
I find automated bits and pieces just as scary as the next guy (probably a bit scarier because I've been detained at 3 separate events for carrying a camera with a suspicious looking lens (it's a fisheye) - one of which was a bomb scare - so yeah, I know how it feels to automatically be 'suspect'), but let's not blow things way out of proportion.
okay... your grandmother then. Think of the geriatric! Or maybe Hitler... Think of the evils! It's not an emotional appeal... you lose anybody.. whatever. You lose your own car.. material damages.. whatever. I find it sad that on Slashdot one can't mention a child or somebody goes "think of the children!" and believes the discussion is neigh-over.
Back on-topic.. then they should lobby to have that stupid bit of road fixed. And yes, it's a cash cow - and who are giving them the cash? the speeders. Don't get me wrong, we could go over a shitload of situations in which speeding is okay (overtaking somebody going 1mph under the speed limit, going along with the flow, having to diver to allow an ambulance access, etc. etc.). I'm not talking about those situations/etc. though. I'm talking about the habitual 10-30mph-speeding people just because -they- feel they can. People can and do get killed on highways due to speeding as well.. thankfully it's typically the people doing the speeding.. but sadly sometimes it isn't.
Anyway, to put things in perspective.. I'm in The Netherlands.. and here they do mostly check for speeders / red light runners / etc. in the downtown/housing areas more than on highways.. so I'm somewhat biased to our situation.. I know that in the U.S. at least (if that's where you are) things are quite different.
Okay... while the rest of us are in 2007 with our regionless players and devices which -all- either have the macrovision chip or yea olde 'signal cleaner' box which, as a 'side-effect' removes the macrovision spike.. for us, no, there's no real DRM to speak of.
You -are- right, of course... region code is certainly a form of DRM. the macrovision spike is a form of DRM. But the barrier is pretty much non-existant; unlike the CSS -was-, and the AACS stuff 'is' (it might as well be considered 'was' by now as well - but who knows).
What I meant was that there'd be no additional DRM on the things - as the players would not be able to play them back.
=====
As somebody who's worked in an electronics repair shop, I'm extremely curious what TV that is though:)
You don't really lose a quarter of your color resolution... you lose half the resolution in a specific wavelength, the one normally corresponding to green (though how this is mapped to RG or GB (rarely purely G) is up to the demosaicing algorithm. On the up side, you gain light sensitivity by a factor more than two; assume the filters were perfect and light only existed in the wavelengths they let through. Then any single filtered cell only receives 33% of the stimulans. An unfiltered cell would get the full 100%.
This additional intensity resolution is, of course, only at a quarter of that of the resolution a full bayer... but nobody ever said you had to discard the intensity measured by the red/green/blue filtered bits; in fact, you can't, or you can't very well determine color at all.
It's actually a pretty obvious setup (it has likenings to the RGBe storage format.. though that has much larger range, it also mostly separates color (RGB) and intensity (exponent)) - can't wait to see it patented - and makes me wonder why the Bayer pattern was the choice in the first place. I certainly know why they picked green as the go-to channel (human visual sensitivity, blabla), and why the there have to be groups of 4 in the first place (cells are square/rectangular.. design a triangular sensor cell, somebody - quick! gimme that hexagonal sensor).. but why just now Kodak pops this up..
I don't know about that exact quote, but a few dozen sites seem to attribute the quote "Peace is the interlude between two wars" to an Indian spiritual leader called "Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba". There are other attributions (such as somebody's unnamed boss), but this seems to be the most popular. If nothing else, try a google search with 'interlude' as one of the key words (along with war / peace).
Just in case that hits the nail on the head - send your $5 to a Multiple Sclerosis research center plzkthx.
...you never lose a child due to a speeding driver. But if you do, perhaps you'll realize that what you think their priorities should be may not be what they realize priorities should be. It's all good and well to say "yeah, I was speeding, but I wasn't hurting anyone!" - but that sort of logic just means that you feel a ticket is only valid if the person did hurt somebody; obviously, it's a little late for a ticket then.
Put differently.. if speeders, drunk drivers, people running red lights, etc. etc. would just quit doing that, maybe cops wouldn't have to worry about them and put more manhours into those other cases.
The above not related to the MPAA/RIAA bit which this story is really about, so.. on-topic: good on them. It's a crime to sell counterfeit goods. Wake me when law goes into a direction where they can use a cop squad to bust somebody for downloading songs/movies only, and I'll actively oppose it. Those who want to make money off their downloads.. tough shitski if you get caught.
Slashdot Mirror
The original 7 wonders weren't of the ancient world either... they are now, because we're living quite a few years later. But when the original list was made, it was of sites/objects roughly from that time. E.g. the lighthouse.
And how about Mount Rushmore? I could never take the list of original 'options' seriously when I noticed that it had e.g. the Sydney Opera House. Don't get me wrong, the Sydney Opera House is a marvel of engineering - but compared to Mt. Rushmore and, indeed, Angkor Wat.. ?
posting without karma bonus due to obvious off-topicness.. how does that whole "attached to bill" stuff work anyway? I couldn't find anything via either wikipedia or google... I may be using the wrong search terms.
I know it's at least not unique to the U.S. - the U.K. has similar dealings.. I'm not sure about 'mainland EU'.. I do know that a few years back there was a ruccus about some computer/tech thing being on the agenda for an EU whatsits -agriculture- meeting and I thought "wtf??" back then, too.. I presume it to be similar.
I'm thinking that sort of thing needs to stop - but there must be *some* reason the whole structure is allowed to exist.. Any good links with info? Or direct info if you (reader) happen to be initimately familiar with the matter.
TIA
go cry me a river, Colombia. Sometimes there's -months- between a U.S. and a Europe release. Now I'm all for simultaneous releases, but...
1. cost of film is prohibitive (yes, the things travel - which is fun if you get it after 8 other countries got it - mmm specks, dust, stripes.. the real movie experience)
2. promotion happens locally. E.g. actors can't be at the opening night everywhere if it's all on the same day.
a few weeks, for Transformers, is actually pretty good, and getting a cam'd version just so you don't have to wait 2 weeks is lame. I can understand for 'months'.. though by then, get the DVD (undoubtedly released at that time) rip instead.. if you *must*.
The ISP wouldn't necessarily be in trouble. They'd just have to adjust their TOS to say "No encrypted P2P traffic allowed" and call upon their contract agreement with the client saying that the TOS can change at any time, and that the user is free to cancel their service if they disagree with the new TOS. After that, they can just block it - legitimate or not.
Yes, that may lose them some customers - probably less than the current order will cost them.. and even that will be puny in comparison to the total number of customers they have. Heck, they'll be free of the leechers. Maybe they'll secretly be happy about it.
$5/month or $50/12-month period
..not sure how that became an excuse for "so I'll just get it cheaper illicitly" instead of "so I'll just wait 2 months and pick it up out of the bargain bin", but alright. )
Wasn't the whole point of the P2P stuff this court ruling targets that people don't want to pay for the content?
( Yes, I know.. "people are willing to pay for the content, but not as much as the copyright holders are asking"
"it's only illegal if you get caught" ?
the same could be said for murder. Not equating the two, just pointing out that something is either illegal - or it isn't. Perhaps you meant "Fortunately, there are only consequences if you get caught".
How about this... the universe is collapsing on itself. As we speak. But it's also expanding. It just depends on your frame of reference.
j pg
e rejxd8.jpg
d spherexj8.jpg
:) Graphics whipped up in 3dsmax (yeah, sorry - no Blender experience!)
To explain this in the easiest way I can, I'm going to have to move from the multidimensional to the more easily understood dimensions. Save you have a sphere.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/2081/asphereft7.
That sphere has a top, and a bottom. Assume that at the top of that sphere, water is formed. This water will want to flow down that sphere to the very bottom of that sphere. In the case of our simple world - due to gravity, and gravity wants those water droplets to flow ever-faster toward that bottom, etc... ignore this bit about gravity except for the ever-faster.. they accelerate.
Now let's say you slice this sphere into strips going from the top, to the bottom. Like fancy orange peels.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/928/aslicedsph
Now if you uncurl all those strips, and align them all together at the top, you get a sort of radial spokes system of peels. The more strips you made, the cleaner the result, but what it comes down to is this. The top point of the sphere is still a point. But the bottom point of the sphere is now no longer a point - it is part of a large circular shape in a disc.
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6959/anunfolde
So if we had the same water droplets going from the top of the sphere to the bottom of the sphere, in this new disc-shape projection, then from the frame of reference of the top point - the center of the disc - the drops of water would appear to be continually diverging and accelerating outward. The Big Bang.
But here's the kicker. If you uncurl the strips and align them all together at the bottom and repeat the same thing - then a bunch of scattered around water droplets would appear to be accelerating towards it, and converging. The Big Crunch.
Just a thought - probably not original, but I don't remember reading anything on the subject.. it's not one I'm too interested in
okay, it's probably not (new user ID, single post (the one I'm replying to), nothing on google about "media center deleted" or '"media center" deletes' that would indicate media center magically deleting any files - let alone ones onf a network drive...
:)
but if it's true, I'm amazed there's been no giant huff about this - not to mention lawsuits.
In case I've been googling wrong - I fully expect replies posting to the dozens of websites that would likely report this sort of thing
you insensitive clods!
the coin to unlock the cart from the one in front of it at the 'cart queue'
and
the lock on the wheel if you try and take it outside of a particular perimeter.
the first is, as somebody else said, to encourage you to bring the darn thing back to a queue. It saves them work and every other shopper a stray cart. You, in return, get your coin / keyring token back. It never picked up much in the U.S. because everybody there is so accustomed to service. Your groceries get bagged -for- you. They get brought to your car -for- you. If you leave a stray cart.. no problem, some poor $3/hour sap will return it -for- you. Not saying that the service is a bad thing... hey, it employs another few kids, and still your products are cheaper than in the EU, so it can't be all bad. But I find not returning a shopping cart to be little above the level of people leaving their junk at a theatre because somebody else will come along and clean it up for you anyway. What's wrong with you that you find that enough reason to -not- just take your trash with you and drop it in the next bin along your way (of which there are plenty in a theatre). Anyway, I'll stop ranting and move on with...
The latter is purely to help prevent theft. And yes, carts cost a shitload to make - you'd think that just being bits of metal wire or even cast plastic they'd be as cheap as the next childrens' toy. Nuh-uh. They go well over a hundred euros. It's insane.
As for the story.. yay, another prankster.. ha ha. *yawn*
There's keyboards which have this sort of thing already built-in. If people -really- want to 'cheat' that way (is it cheating - or is it just using better hardware? Is a widescreen monitor cheating when compared to a 4:3 monitor because you gain a couple of degrees of vision horizontally? Is using a headset cheating when compared to the person who doesn't have one? etc.) they always can.
That said... the keyboards/etc. have a bit of a signature... the timing on the moves being the same within a few milliseconds, etc. It can be detected. Go ahead, build another better mouse that adds random delays. But you're going to be one of very few to make that sort of effort. As long as the vast majority of cheaters stand no chance in the game, the rest will still have a good playing experience.
..is that the server, at some point, has to trust the data the client is sending. Now there's client-side anti-cheat software that will do things like try and make sure that external applications (not entirely unlike the old TSR cheats of lore) aren't altering the data in RAM before it sends the info back to the server. But that client-side anti-cheat software can-and-will be defeated. Eventually there might be an anti-cheat relying on TCPM sort of things, but eventually somebody will just make a TCPM-less version indistinguishable from the TCPM type by the server.
/kill'ing them (rather than banning - as they'll just be back) and ousting them in public. )
So the only proper anti-cheat lays with the server. But there you hit a problem. You can, for example, prevent some cheats that way. Somebody lobs 2 nades while the server knows he only has 1? Cheating. Somebody moves all over the screen, faster than the player can actually run? Cheating. Wait - or a laggy connection.. or a bug. Tread with caution there. Caution means a margin. A margin means a margin for cheating. Okay, so you don't have your cheat make your player run at 200% - you just make him run at 105%. Still an advantage, and the anti-cheat won't catch it because of the margin. And even when you can detect all the -technical- cheats (more ammo, faster reloads, increased speed, greater jetpack fuel (if there's any), that leaves you with the cheats that cheat the User Input. Aimbots and the like - which can be extremely difficult to detect.
In the end, you can't 100% prevent cheating. But you can make the landscape unattractive enough to cheat in by at least trying to prevent it and having an actual human being look at suspicious behavior from time to time.
( I admin at one of the more popular Soldat servers - we're virtually cheater-free because the cheaters know they'll be busted in no time and their cheating fun ruined by us
...is that only the top thread has a dozen or so messages about the actual issue in the story. The rest is warring among tribes of Pro-Moore vs Pro-HMO, Pro-U.S. vs Pro-EverybodyElse, Pro-Documetary vs Pro-OpinionPiece, etc.
Google must be smiling.
I charge my smartphone every night, too - I only *have* to do so once in 3 days. Granted, my regular mobile phone can go 2 weeks without a recharge (given the little use it gets right now) - but even that phone I've had plugged in every night. It makes sure that at the start of every day, I have a full battery. I never have to worry whether the 30% charge left in the thing will last me through the day, or whether I should plug it in before taking a shower for another 7% extra just to be on the safe side.
Once you get into the habit of just plugging it in every night, then battery life becomes a moot issue unless.. *unless*.. it won't even last you the day anymore. At that point, the battery is pretty much dead (not empty, just dead), and you *should* be able to get a replacement battery and replace it.. instead of having it 'serviced' for a battery replacement. Not that servicing is bad - it's just that typically they say "come back tomorrow" (if you're lucky!) after taking the phone.
oops.. just to make clear, this was just on the note of agencies getting your DNA. I in no way meant to suggest that it should be easy for agencies to get said DNA stuff from Ancestry.com . In fact, I believe they shouldn't get any access to it at all because it'll just end up with Ancestry.com becoming a front for investigative services. I also don't believe that they, or anybody else for that matter, should be able to submit a swab for a person other than themselves, to be quite frank. In other words.. the only way I can see this service as being 'okay' is if somebody from that service comes by and takes the swab off of you in person. I'm sure you have to pay for the service anyway (to get the DNA analysis, get the results, etc.), might as well make them pay a little more so that people can't commit 'DNA fraud' (for lack of a better word).
:)
I think the idea itself is great though... the possible privacy, fraud, impersonation (that's a type of fraud, innit?) implications are certainly scary, and I'd never submit a swab to it myself.
But in terms of an agency already having the DNA (regardless of how they got it - see above).. that's where my post came in. Sorry for any confusion
In fact, that's actually the best way to deal with them.
Mother's maiden name? 'Upyours'.
Say somebody gets a hold of your account data, but not enough to do anything.. for that, they need to reset an e-mail addy or whatever, and for -that- they need to answer the secret question. Mother's maiden name? pfft.. they already know nearly all they need for full access to your account.. you think they won't know your mother's maiden name? So they enter it.. Johnson. *BUZZ* wrong, mister. And with any luck your bank will be smart and have this logged and notify you of an attempt by somebody to do funny things to your account and that, if you wish, you can change your more common details to thwart any future attemt.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here for a bit and say that just because somebody's DNA is found at a scene doesn't automatically make agencies go "he did it". It's -a- piece of evidence and one that can be discarded as easily as *snaps fingers* that if there's a good explanation.
Now... if you have no alibi for the time they're placing the crime at, and no good explanation whatsoever of why your DNA would be there... yes, the police may investigate you a little closer. Still doesn't mean they'll just skip the whole investigation and trial thing and just lock you up 'because the DNA said he did it'. If they tried, then lawyers these days are quite savvy enough to come up with some reasonable explanation of why your DNA might be there (even if you can't), and the cops, too, know they'll need a little more than that to convince a judge/jury.
I find automated bits and pieces just as scary as the next guy (probably a bit scarier because I've been detained at 3 separate events for carrying a camera with a suspicious looking lens (it's a fisheye) - one of which was a bomb scare - so yeah, I know how it feels to automatically be 'suspect'), but let's not blow things way out of proportion.
if you can still be modded up - I hope somebody does :) good find
okay... your grandmother then. Think of the geriatric! Or maybe Hitler... Think of the evils! It's not an emotional appeal... you lose anybody.. whatever. You lose your own car.. material damages.. whatever. I find it sad that on Slashdot one can't mention a child or somebody goes "think of the children!" and believes the discussion is neigh-over.
Back on-topic.. then they should lobby to have that stupid bit of road fixed. And yes, it's a cash cow - and who are giving them the cash? the speeders. Don't get me wrong, we could go over a shitload of situations in which speeding is okay (overtaking somebody going 1mph under the speed limit, going along with the flow, having to diver to allow an ambulance access, etc. etc.). I'm not talking about those situations/etc. though. I'm talking about the habitual 10-30mph-speeding people just because -they- feel they can. People can and do get killed on highways due to speeding as well.. thankfully it's typically the people doing the speeding.. but sadly sometimes it isn't.
Anyway, to put things in perspective.. I'm in The Netherlands.. and here they do mostly check for speeders / red light runners / etc. in the downtown/housing areas more than on highways.. so I'm somewhat biased to our situation.. I know that in the U.S. at least (if that's where you are) things are quite different.
Okay... while the rest of us are in 2007 with our regionless players and devices which -all- either have the macrovision chip or yea olde 'signal cleaner' box which, as a 'side-effect' removes the macrovision spike.. for us, no, there's no real DRM to speak of.
:)
You -are- right, of course... region code is certainly a form of DRM. the macrovision spike is a form of DRM. But the barrier is pretty much non-existant; unlike the CSS -was-, and the AACS stuff 'is' (it might as well be considered 'was' by now as well - but who knows).
What I meant was that there'd be no additional DRM on the things - as the players would not be able to play them back.
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As somebody who's worked in an electronics repair shop, I'm extremely curious what TV that is though
go fig :) Thanks!
You don't really lose a quarter of your color resolution... you lose half the resolution in a specific wavelength, the one normally corresponding to green (though how this is mapped to RG or GB (rarely purely G) is up to the demosaicing algorithm. On the up side, you gain light sensitivity by a factor more than two; assume the filters were perfect and light only existed in the wavelengths they let through. Then any single filtered cell only receives 33% of the stimulans. An unfiltered cell would get the full 100%.
This additional intensity resolution is, of course, only at a quarter of that of the resolution a full bayer... but nobody ever said you had to discard the intensity measured by the red/green/blue filtered bits; in fact, you can't, or you can't very well determine color at all.
It's actually a pretty obvious setup (it has likenings to the RGBe storage format.. though that has much larger range, it also mostly separates color (RGB) and intensity (exponent)) - can't wait to see it patented - and makes me wonder why the Bayer pattern was the choice in the first place. I certainly know why they picked green as the go-to channel (human visual sensitivity, blabla), and why the there have to be groups of 4 in the first place (cells are square/rectangular.. design a triangular sensor cell, somebody - quick! gimme that hexagonal sensor).. but why just now Kodak pops this up..
I don't know about that exact quote, but a few dozen sites seem to attribute the quote "Peace is the interlude between two wars" to an Indian spiritual leader called "Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba". There are other attributions (such as somebody's unnamed boss), but this seems to be the most popular. If nothing else, try a google search with 'interlude' as one of the key words (along with war / peace).
Just in case that hits the nail on the head - send your $5 to a Multiple Sclerosis research center plzkthx.
...you never lose a child due to a speeding driver. But if you do, perhaps you'll realize that what you think their priorities should be may not be what they realize priorities should be. It's all good and well to say "yeah, I was speeding, but I wasn't hurting anyone!" - but that sort of logic just means that you feel a ticket is only valid if the person did hurt somebody; obviously, it's a little late for a ticket then.
Put differently.. if speeders, drunk drivers, people running red lights, etc. etc. would just quit doing that, maybe cops wouldn't have to worry about them and put more manhours into those other cases.
The above not related to the MPAA/RIAA bit which this story is really about, so.. on-topic: good on them. It's a crime to sell counterfeit goods. Wake me when law goes into a direction where they can use a cop squad to bust somebody for downloading songs/movies only, and I'll actively oppose it. Those who want to make money off their downloads.. tough shitski if you get caught.