In my experience that sort of thing is always deliberate
Then your experience is very limited. Most videogames nowdays are hugely complex. To remove code from a game well into development could mean introducing even more bugs or problems.
The constitution says we are free to conduct business. We just can't FORCE people...
I honestly can't believe this entire comment section. There is no abetting of rights here. There is no right to force a company to conduct its business in a way that makes YOU happy.
Don't mistake a corporation's means and methods with a government's laws and courts.
And I already know the rebuttal. 'But they ARE forcing me, because they're the biggest park! I have no choice!'... its the same arguement about microsoft, or any other company who becomes an important market force and others, who are not important market forces, wanting to compete on an unlevel playing field.
I have to agree with you on that one. I'm a microsoft user, and I develop apps for the web using ASP as well as windows forms applications. But I am really wondering where the new features are. OSX has released some major feature upgrades almost annually, and MSFT hasn't. I'm also STILL waiting for the new Visual Studio, SQL server, and a number of tools.
You're also right about 2000. 2000 was a major windows upgrade, with such incredible stability and great driver support, that I haven't seen the BSOD or experienced crashes in a long time. But sine 2000, we've had to wait for a lot of things. We need IE 7, we need a new version of the media player, we need a better shell to compete with OSX, we need a better UI to compete with OSX, and we need a bunch of other things. I just hope they can deliver, because I really can't nor want to switch to linux or apple.
I used to work at Sears for a year and a half, selling televisions. for 90% of the TVs, we left the color balances as they came from the factory. Some were kinda off / bad, and we adjusted them for the better.
Most *good* manufacturers spend time to make sure that the default settings are well balanced.
You don't need an HDTV to receive digital broadcasts.
Here's how it will actually work. Most Over the Air Digital Tuners have analog output. So, for those who like their old skool TV , they can buy at sub-$200 digital tuner, which will take the ATSC signal and convert it to 480i composite video for their TV. By 2009, those tuners should be sub-$100, even if HDTVs (which contain a built in version of the ATSC by law) aren't.
A similar thing happened when major electronics manufacturers didn't include RF modulators in DVD players. Lots of people had old TVs that only took in RF video/audio instead of composite video/audio. The solution was electronics companies sold $30 RF modulators that provided a stopgap.
The Cabs aren't regulated for safety. All vehicles are required annual vehicle inspections in states like Massachusetts.
Instead, the regulation is about fees. Ever get taken on a ride you knew was the long way? How about being charged a 'fee' for going to routine destinations, on top of the fare? That's what the regulation is about. The city is putting its stamp on the validity of prices; hence why all taxis usually have a list of special fees and regular rates listed inside. This, in turn , encourages tourists and others to feel safe and justified in spending money on it. Physical safety of the vehicle already exists through other legislation apart from regulation.
However, I agree with the original thread; regulation has made starting a business moving people via car practically impossible without giving obscene amounts of cash to the regulation body. Like almost all local government institutions, graft, bribery, and the good-ole boy network rear their ugly heads.
Nature has inherent value beyond being a resource to be exploited, manipulated or eliminated
To say that Nature has an inherent value apart from humans is a fallicy.
For anything to have value, one must say of value to whom? Values and judgements and ideas and theories all fail to exist without someone or something to HAVE Those values. Without mankind, the planet could burn. Does a dead planet like mars have the same value? Do we weep when a supernova destroys an empty, lifeless system of planets who all have no life or atmosphere? Of course not.
Nature is , really, how things are, sans-humans. The natural state, the original state. but given that our means of survival is not automatic, that we as humans must master our environment in order to survive, (not trust instinct or use some special evolved strength or appendage) means that humans cannot just leave things as is and expect to survive.
Comcast and RCN compete in Metro Boston. RCN has faster internet available; But Comcast has signed some exclusive HD channel agreements so RCN's HD isn't as prevalent as Comcast's.
It seems to work fine, I had RCN in Arlington and now I have Comcast in Somerville. Both provided excellent service and had decent prices.
If you want to see the most concrete (no pun intended) example of this, look up Scollay Square, in Boston. It used to be a thriving, seedy part of town where you could see a burlesque show and buy nickel hot dogs. Poor, honest people worked their ass off to run their businesses and live their lives.
In the 60s the city tore it down and put up a gigantic city hall, and a vast wasteland of bricks and steps. It is as if the government built an altar to itself and buried the bones of the city underneath.
CNN wins the website viewers because Fox News' website is poorly graphically designed. Its too busy, (even for a news site) , with too much color contrast and unbalanced content positioning.
Well, I think the reason is because Cellular is a technology, not a brand name, and a lot of people don't understand that. The biggest advantage Cellular technology has is the ability to seamlessly route traffic between towers, so that if someone moves from Cell A to Cell B, that the users never notice.
WiMax and other technologies don't dynamically route. So if you're downloading or calling someone, and you move out of WiMax area A, to WiMax area B, how do you disclose your new IP address to the caller? How do you tell someone left the range of WiMax A? IP technology assumes a fixed IP address; VoIP rely on that fixed IP address to route the phonecalls to your Vonage or other phone.
Cellphones quickly route and identify themselves to the network so that essentially the cellphone companies know where to send and receive calls to. To my current knowledge, no such system exists for Internet Protocol based devices like VoIP.
I completely agree with you. I mean, would Slashdot be writing the same things about Apple if they were required to distribute their software without Quicktime? From what I understand a large portion of the webcore engine that runs safari requires QT stuff.
Oh wait, I forgot. Apple isn't a MONOPOLY.
Neither is Microsoft, since there are other operating systems for sale for Personal Computers. Some even given away for Free. Really, microsoft is the victim of its own success. Microsoft Bundling is illegal, because its the most successful OS, and Apple or Linux bundling is legal because they're the underdogs.
It is important to note, that before 9/11, the largest US terror attack was an act of DOMESTIC terrorism. After Al-Qaida, the second largest threat from terror, according to our government, is eco-terrorists, who are domestic in origin.
The no-fly list and ID system is being implemented to prevent more than just no-fly lists.
Also, its because of the favored traveler type status between the US and UK that it is much easier for a terrorist to come into the US from the UK than directly from an arab or other nation. Think of the UK-French underground tunnel. With the EU fast approaching, crossing from one to the other will no longer require a passport. Probably not a terror screening.
The largest validator of the parent posts point is that all of us are speculating, because no one from Cuba is on the internet to affirm or deny our inferences. That is enough of a statement to make me believe the quality of life is less than it should be.
it's one gigantorific patch that the KDE guys have to go through almost line by line to tell which parts will work and which won't
Well, that's way easier than actually having to debug and fix the mistakes or add changes in the first place!
I can't believe these people. If I wrote something less than perfect, and I gave it away, and then someone fixed what was bad, and repackaged it, I wouldn't care how that person gave me the changes. Apple's reward for making Safari great, which meant fixing KHTML, is that they brand and 'sell' Safari. KHTML's reward is validation of their work, and oppourtunities to use all of Apple's knicknacks royalty free.
would file charges against the Big Dig Contractors, as well as the shitty state management, and the Mass Turnpike authority.
While geeks are probably going to herald this as a great thing, a more cursory review might reveal this to be an easier way of filling the state's coffers, through lawsuits.
A similar example might be how Tobacco Companies were sued and now provide a great deal of revenue to the states.
Not to mention, aren't roads paved with a non-concrete material? I'm pretty sure the stuff that is poured into housing foundations is not the same as the stuff they use on the road. as a non-scientific explanation, I often see pavement applied steaming hot, which is kind of a tar like stuff. I only see cement poured from those giant trucks and it never seems hot when poured.
Good sources of HD, such as Motorola 6200 series HD set top cable box, will allow you to choose output conversion prior to the signal leaving the box. That way, your TV will recognize the signal as native and not do a scale/conversion.
As an example, if you own the above box, or the PVR box, (both are silver and provided by Comcast), do the following:
Turn off your cable box, then press 'setup' on the remote. You'll get a different config screen, one which allows you, among other things, tell the box what 'resolution' to display. (1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i). The Motorola scaler seems to do a great job, I'm not sure the algorithm / method, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't dice the 1080i fieldset then scale/stretch.
Early plasma TVs who have a native resolution of 852x480, and who have bad scalers in the TVs, benefit by setting the resolution to 480p.
I got lucky, my plasma has an excellent scaler so I left the cable box settings as-is.
The driver isn't dead. a security person protecting the former italian hostage is dead. I was under the assumption the the driver was a seperate person.
Specifically, I live in California (where the issue hasn't been decided yet). We have a law that says marriage=man+woman
Actually, if you already have a law, it seems like it has been decided.
The judges and courts exist to interpret existing law and to ensure that state law does not trump the state's constitutional guarantees. If a judge rules against a law despite not violating the state's constitutional guarantees, or bends the constitutional guarantees in order to rule against the law, he/she may be seen as an 'activist', one who is exceeding the bounds of his charge.
The new consoles will be more expensive than prior generations
FUD. Consoles have hovered in the 'more than 100 but less than 500' range for a while. My parents paid top dollar for their intellivision in the eighties. http://www.intellivisionlives.com/blues ky/hardware/
That's $300 at release. Wow, same price as Xbox and Playstation, but twenty years later. Now, since the dollar depreciated over time, Xbox and Playstation were actually less costly on their release.
Super Nintendo games were MORE than gamecube games are now. (street fighter 2 was $60, and I remember some carts costing as much as $80).
Not to mention that the video game market is cheaper in general, with a resale market through major video game outlets, so kids can buy used games and trade in their old ones. That didn't exist when the only place you could buy video games was Toys R Us.
Stop whining for college kids and ramen. Xbox Next probably won't be more than $300. The last system to top out too much was Neo Geo, which I believe listed for $500. And didn't sell squat.
The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre. If the government wishes to spy on its own citizens, there are far more effective means. There are a large number of survelliance cameras in the US and elsewhere, not to mention satellite imagery and 'bugs'.
The reasons they build UAVs in the first place is because they can't bring agents into the area, because its still too hostile. I hardly think a family picnic is so 'hostile' as to require a UAV.
A small amount of logic would probably dictate that NASA is probably interested in modeling spaceflight stresses, or simulations of large parts of the universe, or large physical properties, like a supernova or black holes.
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience that sort of thing is always deliberate
Then your experience is very limited. Most videogames nowdays are hugely complex. To remove code from a game well into development could mean introducing even more bugs or problems.
Genius, I applaud you, parent post.
The constitution says we are free to conduct business. We just can't FORCE people...
I honestly can't believe this entire comment section. There is no abetting of rights here. There is no right to force a company to conduct its business in a way that makes YOU happy.
Don't mistake a corporation's means and methods with a government's laws and courts.
And I already know the rebuttal. 'But they ARE forcing me, because they're the biggest park! I have no choice!'... its the same arguement about microsoft, or any other company who becomes an important market force and others, who are not important market forces, wanting to compete on an unlevel playing field.
I have to agree with you on that one. I'm a microsoft user, and I develop apps for the web using ASP as well as windows forms applications. But I am really wondering where the new features are. OSX has released some major feature upgrades almost annually, and MSFT hasn't. I'm also STILL waiting for the new Visual Studio, SQL server, and a number of tools.
You're also right about 2000. 2000 was a major windows upgrade, with such incredible stability and great driver support, that I haven't seen the BSOD or experienced crashes in a long time. But sine 2000, we've had to wait for a lot of things. We need IE 7, we need a new version of the media player, we need a better shell to compete with OSX, we need a better UI to compete with OSX, and we need a bunch of other things. I just hope they can deliver, because I really can't nor want to switch to linux or apple.
Not to be a dick, but do you have proof of this?
I used to work at Sears for a year and a half, selling televisions. for 90% of the TVs, we left the color balances as they came from the factory. Some were kinda off / bad, and we adjusted them for the better.
Most *good* manufacturers spend time to make sure that the default settings are well balanced.
You don't need an HDTV to receive digital broadcasts.
Here's how it will actually work. Most Over the Air Digital Tuners have analog output. So, for those who like their old skool TV , they can buy at sub-$200 digital tuner, which will take the ATSC signal and convert it to 480i composite video for their TV. By 2009, those tuners should be sub-$100, even if HDTVs (which contain a built in version of the ATSC by law) aren't.
A similar thing happened when major electronics manufacturers didn't include RF modulators in DVD players. Lots of people had old TVs that only took in RF video/audio instead of composite video/audio. The solution was electronics companies sold $30 RF modulators that provided a stopgap.
The Cabs aren't regulated for safety. All vehicles are required annual vehicle inspections in states like Massachusetts.
Instead, the regulation is about fees. Ever get taken on a ride you knew was the long way? How about being charged a 'fee' for going to routine destinations, on top of the fare? That's what the regulation is about. The city is putting its stamp on the validity of prices; hence why all taxis usually have a list of special fees and regular rates listed inside. This, in turn , encourages tourists and others to feel safe and justified in spending money on it. Physical safety of the vehicle already exists through other legislation apart from regulation.
However, I agree with the original thread; regulation has made starting a business moving people via car practically impossible without giving obscene amounts of cash to the regulation body. Like almost all local government institutions, graft, bribery, and the good-ole boy network rear their ugly heads.
Nature has inherent value beyond being a resource to be exploited, manipulated or eliminated
To say that Nature has an inherent value apart from humans is a fallicy.
For anything to have value, one must say of value to whom? Values and judgements and ideas and theories all fail to exist without someone or something to HAVE Those values. Without mankind, the planet could burn. Does a dead planet like mars have the same value? Do we weep when a supernova destroys an empty, lifeless system of planets who all have no life or atmosphere? Of course not.
Nature is , really, how things are, sans-humans. The natural state, the original state. but given that our means of survival is not automatic, that we as humans must master our environment in order to survive, (not trust instinct or use some special evolved strength or appendage) means that humans cannot just leave things as is and expect to survive.
Comcast and RCN compete in Metro Boston. RCN has faster internet available; But Comcast has signed some exclusive HD channel agreements so RCN's HD isn't as prevalent as Comcast's.
It seems to work fine, I had RCN in Arlington and now I have Comcast in Somerville. Both provided excellent service and had decent prices.
If you want to see the most concrete (no pun intended) example of this, look up Scollay Square, in Boston. It used to be a thriving, seedy part of town where you could see a burlesque show and buy nickel hot dogs. Poor, honest people worked their ass off to run their businesses and live their lives.
In the 60s the city tore it down and put up a gigantic city hall, and a vast wasteland of bricks and steps. It is as if the government built an altar to itself and buried the bones of the city underneath.
CNN wins the website viewers because Fox News' website is poorly graphically designed. Its too busy, (even for a news site) , with too much color contrast and unbalanced content positioning.
Well, I think the reason is because Cellular is a technology, not a brand name, and a lot of people don't understand that. The biggest advantage Cellular technology has is the ability to seamlessly route traffic between towers, so that if someone moves from Cell A to Cell B, that the users never notice.
WiMax and other technologies don't dynamically route. So if you're downloading or calling someone, and you move out of WiMax area A, to WiMax area B, how do you disclose your new IP address to the caller? How do you tell someone left the range of WiMax A? IP technology assumes a fixed IP address; VoIP rely on that fixed IP address to route the phonecalls to your Vonage or other phone.
Cellphones quickly route and identify themselves to the network so that essentially the cellphone companies know where to send and receive calls to. To my current knowledge, no such system exists for Internet Protocol based devices like VoIP.
I completely agree with you. I mean, would Slashdot be writing the same things about Apple if they were required to distribute their software without Quicktime? From what I understand a large portion of the webcore engine that runs safari requires QT stuff.
Oh wait, I forgot. Apple isn't a MONOPOLY.
Neither is Microsoft, since there are other operating systems for sale for Personal Computers. Some even given away for Free. Really, microsoft is the victim of its own success. Microsoft Bundling is illegal, because its the most successful OS, and Apple or Linux bundling is legal because they're the underdogs.
It is important to note, that before 9/11, the largest US terror attack was an act of DOMESTIC terrorism. After Al-Qaida, the second largest threat from terror, according to our government, is eco-terrorists, who are domestic in origin.
The no-fly list and ID system is being implemented to prevent more than just no-fly lists.
Also, its because of the favored traveler type status between the US and UK that it is much easier for a terrorist to come into the US from the UK than directly from an arab or other nation.
Think of the UK-French underground tunnel. With the EU fast approaching, crossing from one to the other will no longer require a passport. Probably not a terror screening.
Say what you want, but I love VS.NET so much I develop my PHP applications on it.
http://jcxsoftware.com/
Professionals usually don't own the hardware they work on, which is a bigger reason why they don't overclock.
The largest validator of the parent posts point is that all of us are speculating, because no one from Cuba is on the internet to affirm or deny our inferences. That is enough of a statement to make me believe the quality of life is less than it should be.
it's one gigantorific patch that the KDE guys have to go through almost line by line to tell which parts will work and which won't
Well, that's way easier than actually having to debug and fix the mistakes or add changes in the first place!
I can't believe these people. If I wrote something less than perfect, and I gave it away, and then someone fixed what was bad, and repackaged it, I wouldn't care how that person gave me the changes. Apple's reward for making Safari great, which meant fixing KHTML, is that they brand and 'sell' Safari. KHTML's reward is validation of their work, and oppourtunities to use all of Apple's knicknacks royalty free.
would file charges against the Big Dig Contractors, as well as the shitty state management, and the Mass Turnpike authority.
While geeks are probably going to herald this as a great thing, a more cursory review might reveal this to be an easier way of filling the state's coffers, through lawsuits.
A similar example might be how Tobacco Companies were sued and now provide a great deal of revenue to the states.
Not to mention, aren't roads paved with a non-concrete material? I'm pretty sure the stuff that is poured into housing foundations is not the same as the stuff they use on the road. as a non-scientific explanation, I often see pavement applied steaming hot, which is kind of a tar like stuff. I only see cement poured from those giant trucks and it never seems hot when poured.
Good sources of HD, such as Motorola 6200 series HD set top cable box, will allow you to choose output conversion prior to the signal leaving the box. That way, your TV will recognize the signal as native and not do a scale/conversion.
As an example, if you own the above box, or the PVR box, (both are silver and provided by Comcast), do the following:
Turn off your cable box, then press 'setup' on the remote. You'll get a different config screen, one which allows you, among other things, tell the box what 'resolution' to display. (1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i). The Motorola scaler seems to do a great job, I'm not sure the algorithm / method, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't dice the 1080i fieldset then scale/stretch.
Early plasma TVs who have a native resolution of 852x480, and who have bad scalers in the TVs, benefit by setting the resolution to 480p.
I got lucky, my plasma has an excellent scaler so I left the cable box settings as-is.
The driver isn't dead. a security person protecting the former italian hostage is dead. I was under the assumption the the driver was a seperate person.
Specifically, I live in California (where the issue hasn't been decided yet). We have a law that says marriage=man+woman
Actually, if you already have a law, it seems like it has been decided.
The judges and courts exist to interpret existing law and to ensure that state law does not trump the state's constitutional guarantees. If a judge rules against a law despite not violating the state's constitutional guarantees, or bends the constitutional guarantees in order to rule against the law, he/she may be seen as an 'activist', one who is exceeding the bounds of his charge.
The new consoles will be more expensive than prior generations
s ky/hardware /
FUD. Consoles have hovered in the 'more than 100 but less than 500' range for a while. My parents paid top dollar for their intellivision in the eighties.
http://www.intellivisionlives.com/blue
That's $300 at release. Wow, same price as Xbox and Playstation, but twenty years later. Now, since the dollar depreciated over time, Xbox and Playstation were actually less costly on their release.
Super Nintendo games were MORE than gamecube games are now. (street fighter 2 was $60, and I remember some carts costing as much as $80).
Not to mention that the video game market is cheaper in general, with a resale market through major video game outlets, so kids can buy used games and trade in their old ones. That didn't exist when the only place you could buy video games was Toys R Us.
Stop whining for college kids and ramen. Xbox Next probably won't be more than $300. The last system to top out too much was Neo Geo, which I believe listed for $500. And didn't sell squat.
The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre. If the government wishes to spy on its own citizens, there are far more effective means. There are a large number of survelliance cameras in the US and elsewhere, not to mention satellite imagery and 'bugs'.
The reasons they build UAVs in the first place is because they can't bring agents into the area, because its still too hostile. I hardly think a family picnic is so 'hostile' as to require a UAV.
A small amount of logic would probably dictate that NASA is probably interested in modeling spaceflight stresses, or simulations of large parts of the universe, or large physical properties, like a supernova or black holes.