'Western culture isn't immune to these effects either (cf. high-profile financial advisors committing suicide in 2008-2009), but I understand that it's significantly more of an issue in Asia.'
Most Western companies in recent years have also tended not to hire thugs to deal with suspects by kidnapping, beating, and maybe worse (at least not directly, or on home turf):
'Sun allegedly committed suicide after being detained and beaten by a man surnamed Gu, a senior official of Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group's security department, the newspaper [Southern Metropolis Daily] said, citing Sun's classmate. Sun chatted online with the classmate, who has not been identified, before his death. Sun said he was being investigated after one iPhone went missing at the company. "But I didn't steal it. I never steal anything," Sun said during the online chat. "How can you (the senior official) take me by force and beat me?"...Apple put pressure on the company after the phone went missing, the report said...[and] Foxconn began to investigate Sun. According to Sun's girlfriend, three company officials went to Sun's home to search it on July 15, but they didn't find the iPhone and left with Sun. She received a short message from Sun at 1:48am last Thursday, saying he had some trouble and asked her not to tell his family, the report said. Police said they will first determine whether Sun was murdered and then investigate Foxconn's treatment of Sun. Gu was suspended and under police investigation now, Foxconn said, which added it never allows employees to do anything against the law.'
'Because the authors of the study looked only at the mRNA from the aortic tissue, they cannot exclude the possibility that the mutations in the mRNA arose from RNA editing, and not somatic mutation. It seems like it would have been fairly simple to sequence the genomic DNA from the aortic tissue, and I'm curious as to why the authors did not perform these analyses'
Indeed. It's pretty hard to know what, if anything, to conclude from this paper as it's not making a like-for-like comparison. It seems quite possible that they're simply looking at RNA editing, and it isn't even possible to say whether this was tissue specific, because they didn't look at cDNA in the blood samples. Also, although the SNPs (sequence variants) turned up in cDNA from aneurysms, they were also present in cDNA from healthy aortic tissue, so there's no evidence that they are involved in any disease process.
The situation won't be as extreme as it was with this proprietary system, of course (the number of number of DVD readers in circulation is very large, and the software that interacts with them is well documented), but in the long run the only thing that really makes sense is to make multiple copies that are shifted to new storage media as they become available.
'The new method sounds like they're doing a microarray or something and just storing high resolution jpegs. I could see why that would require oodles of image processing power. It does seem like an odd storage format for what's essentially linear data.'
Millions of short sequences are analysed in a massively parallel way, and you need to take a new high resolution image for every cycle to see which 'polonies' the new base has been added to, so obviously there's a large of image data to store (you can throw it away afterwards, of course, but since it probably cost you several thousand $USD to generate, you might want to hang on to it for a bit until you're sure you've analysed it properly).
But the image series isn't the only large data set you have to deal with. A Solexa/Illumina sequencer can generate 20 gigabases of data from a single paired-end run. This seems like a lot, but you'll actually need multiple runs to assemble a genome with any confidence (to make sure you've got both alleles, and can distinguish variants from artefacts - 30-fold 'depth' is common). It's this raw short read data, rather than the images, that would typically be delivered to a scientific end user (algorithms to assemble and align it to a reference genome are still in active development, so you probably don't want to throw it away in case a better method of processing it comes along next month).
Even the final product, a complete assembled genome, takes up a bit more space than you might think. You'll be getting diploid data, so that's over 6 gigabases. And although 2-bit encoding is used for some purposes (like BLAT databases for fast pattern matching), finished sequences are typically stored as standard 8-bit ascii text files for convenience, so the whole thing is over 6Gb uncompressed (a couple of Gb gzipped). James Watson got his genome on a couple of (presumably single layer) DVDs. Commercial personal genomics services will ship yours on a fancy encrypted USB stick:
'people will gravitate towards free. If they go pay... people will just go elsewhere its simple as that, law or no law.'
Well, I think we should at least consider the terms of their proposal carefully. Check out the full text below:
"Hamburg Declaration regarding intellectual property rights
The Internet offers immense opportunities to professional journalism - but only if the basis for profitability remains secure throughout the digital channels of distribution. This is currently [ERROR! ACAP VIOLATION IN PROGRESS! YOU HAVE EXCEEDED THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CHARACTERS ALLOCATED TO THIS NEWS AGGREGATOR! PLEASE DEPOSIT EUR 50 TO READ THE NEXT 100 WORDS OF THIS ARTICLE!]"
'The excellent programme for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the pictures hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the artists used to produce their provocative works. Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers from Time magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas, painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley...Despite this, the programme does not say a word about copyright...There is, however, another message about copyright in the National Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the "No Photography" signs prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition. These signs are not intended to protect the works from the depredations of camera flashes (otherwise they would read "No Flash Photography"). No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the copyright of the works hung on the walls - a fact that every member of staff I asked instantly confirmed. Indeed, it seems every square centimetre of the National Portrait Gallery is under some form of copyright. I wasn't even allowed to photograph the "No Photographs" sign. A member of staff explained that the typography and layout of the signs was itself copyrighted...Perhaps, just perhaps, this is actually a Dadaist show masquerading as a pop art show. Perhaps the point is to titillate us with the delicious irony of celebrating copyright infringement while simultaneously taking the view that even the "No Photography" sign is a form of property not to be reproduced without the permission that can never be had.'
'It is debatable as to whether merely removing "clicks and crackle" from an old record would qualify, as these artifacts are not usually part of the original recording but are most likely the result of manufacturing defects and/or subsequent wear and tear. It is possible, however, that the creative use of equalisation or special effects (such as reverberation or pseudo-stereo) in the audio chain, or even the making of an analogue to digital transfer, might well be sufficient to establish a new copyright in such a version...Currently there is evidence that some commercial re-issues of restored public domain sound recordings are being openly pirated, perhaps on the assumption that no copyright can exist in these copies. The validity of such an assumption has yet to be tested in the courts.'
So basically we'd need a test case to clarify this.
I see this is currently modded as 'Troll', since the Codex obviously
has many such references. However, the other possibility is that Philip
is unwittingly viewing the manuscript using an Evil
Tool of the Devil.
Philips already has production tungsten halogen bulbs with standard bayonet and screw fittings ('EcoClassic 50' here in the UK) that only use about 50% of the power required by conventional tungsten lamps:
Right now these are only available in lower wattages, and the 100W replacement still draws 70W like those in the NYT article ('EcoClassic 30' over here). But it looks like existing technologies should be able to bring down the power consumption of this class of bulbs across the board. Lots of details, teardowns of current devices and predictions of future developments here:
In a strikingly similar incident, the 43rd president, George W Bush, was apparently challenged while in office with an encrypted text by an unknown correspondent. Though the cipher remains unsolved, there are hints that the plaintext, like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, encapsulates some of the President's profoundest thoughts. Former President Bush hopes that the science of cryptanalysis may one day advance to the point where future generations will be able to read the message. The full text is given below:
Znxr gur Cvr Uvture
V guvax jr nyy nterr, gur cnfg vf bire. Guvf vf fgvyy n qnatrebhf jbeyq. Vg'f n jbeyq bs znqzra Naq hapregnvagl Naq cbgragvny zragny ybffrf.
Eneryl vf gur dhrfgvba nfxrq Vf bhe puvyqera yrneavat? Jvyy gur uvtujnlf bs gur vagrearg Orpbzr zber srj? Ubj znal unaqf unir V funxrq?
Gurl zvfhaqrerfgvzngr zr. V nz n cvgohyy ba gur cnagyrt bs bccbeghavgl. V xabj gung gur uhzna orvat naq gur svfu Pna pbrkvfg.
Snzvyvrf vf jurer bhe angvba svaqf ubcr Jurer bhe jvatf gnxr qernz. Chg sbbq ba lbhe snzvyl! Xabpx qbja gur gbyyobbgu! Ihypnavmr fbpvrgl! Znxr gur cvr uvture! Znxr gur cvr uvture!
Absolutely! This is just more Apple-hating propaganda. Everyone in the
iPhone community knows this is an auto-repair feature, designed to weld
together all those cracks
in the casing.
'Glad to see that the US has a big surplus in the budget that we can afford to fund this stuff.'
Glad to see that Slashdot is helpfully parroting a 'story' fed to Fox News by a 'government watchdog', AKA a right-wing astroturf lobby group previously known for its heroic pro-tobacco, pro-Microsoft and anti-FOSS campaigns funded by (well, you can guess who):
In other news, the Kodachrome
Basin State Park is to beconcreted over to make way
for the new Sandisk Extreme IV SDHC Mall. '"The majority of today's
consumers have voiced their preference to experience the natural world
with newer technology -- both DVD and Blu-Ray", said Mary Jane
Vizigoth, president of Kodak's Film, Photofinishing And Other Stuff
We're Trying To Get Rid Of Group. "While the Basin is a truly iconic
Park that has served tourists very well for decades, the simple truth
is that people have moved on and are no longer visiting it in
sustainable volumes."
Seriously, this is a terrible shame, though hardly a surprise (here in
the UK, we already have to post the exposed film to Kodak Switzerland,
who forward it to the only lab in the world that can process the film,
Dwayne's in Kansas). It's a bit like waking up one morning to hear that
oil paints are no longer available, but acrylics should be an adequate
substitute. Kodachrome is a truly unique film that works in a
completely different way to any other emulsion, and gives a distinctive
'look' that no other film (let alone digital) can reproduce.
Check out The
Kodachrome Project to see why some of us will miss it so
much.
'Get cheapest phone you can find with GPRS and USB.'
Yes, but not just one. Buy several and dispose of them regularly (if you're paranoid or at real risk, after a single use). But don't bulk-buy as that tends to attract attention:
To minimise the risk of tracking, keep the phone switched off when it's not in active use and make sure that 'off' means 'off' - if in doubt, remove the battery:
The really idiotic thing would be to take one quote out of context and assume this represents the world view of a very thoughtful writer. It's pretty clear from what he's said elsewhere, as in 'Bradbury on the Internet':
that he recognises the net's value as an information resource and commercial tool, and relishes the irony of using it to communicate his own criticism of the medium. His main concern is the danger of people 'playing their lives away with too many toys' by wasting enormous amounts of time on the trivial, a criticism that extends to the output of the other mass media, and which any reader of 'Fahrenheit 451' will understand.
It's more like consumers wanted horses, but were (briefly) offered zebras. The netbook companies made much of how the zebras looked pretty much like horses, and could do most of the things that horses could. The zebras were healthier and more resilient than the horses, ate less (you couldn't fit much hay in the early netbooks), and were cheaper to buy. And back then, microsoft was trying to sell a new breed of pretty horse, which they wanted people to like, even though the new horses were slower than greedier and more expensive than the old workhorses. But consumers weren't quite convinced by the zebras. They were used to working with horses, they had one at home, and another for the kids to play with, and some of their horse tackle didn't fit the zebras. And then the netbooks got a little bigger, so they could easily feed a horse, and Microsoft realised that if they bred some more workhorses from the old stock that people were used to, and sold them cheaply to the netbook companies, then everyone would lose interest in the zebras. And so everybody was happy, except the Mac users, who still didn't have a netbook for their leopards.
The problem is that quite low dilutions can still be classed as 'homeopathic', so there's a risk you're actually buying something with an active ingredient rather than the usual harmless pixie dust placebo. There's a good discussion here:
"While most homeopathic remedies are diluted to the point that they are indistinguishable from water, that is not a requirement. Lesser dilutions may contain small amounts of active ingredient. If a "homeopathic remedy" contains a biological active amount of a drug as an active ingredient, is it not a regular drug? This is relevant to Zicam because these products are regulated as homeopathic drugs - which means they were allowed on the market without having to provide any evidence for safety or efficacy.The homeopathic exception allowed the manufacturer to simply bypass the usual requirements, even though Zicam is not really homeopathic but contains biologically active levels of zinc."
'Sounds to me more like justification for making examples out of people who were feeling unwell.'
Also sounds suspiciously like an excuse for the basic failure of their system to detect infected cases. Which should come as no surprise, since airport temperature scanners are known to be pretty ineffective, and the border controls they aim to enforce have essentially no impact on the spread of a pandemic virus:
'But on the other hand, some women like the dark and dangerous type.'
I guess the popularity of the whole 'Twilight' might work in your favour. On the other hand, any budding Dark Lord would probably have to work on his dating skills ('Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark then any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor' - not exactly dinner and a movie, is it?).
'By acting as a god, you play god, even if you don't think any gods exist. You can play Satan too if you wished to. Or Sauron for that matter.'
At least you can always tell when the parents have played Sauron ('The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing' - this is never a good look, and little Pharazon will be mercilessly bullied at school). Don't even ask about the hair colour...
'It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?'
Already happening, at least with some specialised labels, e.g.:
Slashdot Mirror
'Western culture isn't immune to these effects either (cf. high-profile financial advisors committing suicide in 2008-2009), but I understand that it's significantly more of an issue in Asia.'
Most Western companies in recent years have also tended not to hire thugs to deal with suspects by kidnapping, beating, and maybe worse (at least not directly, or on home turf):
'Sun allegedly committed suicide after being detained and beaten by a man surnamed Gu, a senior official of Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group's security department, the newspaper [Southern Metropolis Daily] said, citing Sun's classmate. Sun chatted online with the classmate, who has not been identified, before his death. Sun said he was being investigated after one iPhone went missing at the company. "But I didn't steal it. I never steal anything," Sun said during the online chat. "How can you (the senior official) take me by force and beat me?"...Apple put pressure on the company after the phone went missing, the report said...[and] Foxconn began to investigate Sun. According to Sun's girlfriend, three company officials went to Sun's home to search it on July 15, but they didn't find the iPhone and left with Sun. She received a short message from Sun at 1:48am last Thursday, saying he had some trouble and asked her not to tell his family, the report said. Police said they will first determine whether Sun was murdered and then investigate Foxconn's treatment of Sun. Gu was suspended and under police investigation now, Foxconn said, which added it never allows employees to do anything against the law.'
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2009/200907/20090721/article_408142.htm
'Because the authors of the study looked only at the mRNA from the aortic tissue, they cannot exclude the possibility that the mutations in the mRNA arose from RNA editing, and not somatic mutation. It seems like it would have been fairly simple to sequence the genomic DNA from the aortic tissue, and I'm curious as to why the authors did not perform these analyses'
Indeed. It's pretty hard to know what, if anything, to conclude from this paper as it's not making a like-for-like comparison. It seems quite possible that they're simply looking at RNA editing, and it isn't even possible to say whether this was tissue specific, because they didn't look at cDNA in the blood samples. Also, although the SNPs (sequence variants) turned up in cDNA from aneurysms, they were also present in cDNA from healthy aortic tissue, so there's no evidence that they are involved in any disease process.
'As if DVD players will be around for 1000 years?'
Or even 20 years:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning
The situation won't be as extreme as it was with this proprietary system, of course (the number of number of DVD readers in circulation is very large, and the software that interacts with them is well documented), but in the long run the only thing that really makes sense is to make multiple copies that are shifted to new storage media as they become available.
'The new method sounds like they're doing a microarray or something and just storing high resolution jpegs. I could see why that would require oodles of image processing power. It does seem like an odd storage format for what's essentially linear data.'
There's a good summary of the technology here:
http://seqanswers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21
Millions of short sequences are analysed in a massively parallel way, and you need to take a new high resolution image for every cycle to see which 'polonies' the new base has been added to, so obviously there's a large of image data to store (you can throw it away afterwards, of course, but since it probably cost you several thousand $USD to generate, you might want to hang on to it for a bit until you're sure you've analysed it properly).
But the image series isn't the only large data set you have to deal with. A Solexa/Illumina sequencer can generate 20 gigabases of data from a single paired-end run. This seems like a lot, but you'll actually need multiple runs to assemble a genome with any confidence (to make sure you've got both alleles, and can distinguish variants from artefacts - 30-fold 'depth' is common). It's this raw short read data, rather than the images, that would typically be delivered to a scientific end user (algorithms to assemble and align it to a reference genome are still in active development, so you probably don't want to throw it away in case a better method of processing it comes along next month).
Even the final product, a complete assembled genome, takes up a bit more space than you might think. You'll be getting diploid data, so that's over 6 gigabases. And although 2-bit encoding is used for some purposes (like BLAT databases for fast pattern matching), finished sequences are typically stored as standard 8-bit ascii text files for convenience, so the whole thing is over 6Gb uncompressed (a couple of Gb gzipped). James Watson got his genome on a couple of (presumably single layer) DVDs. Commercial personal genomics services will ship yours on a fancy encrypted USB stick:
http://www.knome.com/service/genomekey.html
'I say we fork and refactor the entire project.'
You mean like this?:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16729053
'people will gravitate towards free. If they go pay... people will just go elsewhere its simple as that, law or no law.'
Well, I think we should at least consider the terms of their proposal carefully. Check out the full text below:
"Hamburg Declaration regarding intellectual property rights
The Internet offers immense opportunities to professional journalism - but only if the basis for profitability remains secure throughout the digital channels of distribution. This is currently [ERROR! ACAP VIOLATION IN PROGRESS! YOU HAVE EXCEEDED THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF CHARACTERS ALLOCATED TO THIS NEWS AGGREGATOR! PLEASE DEPOSIT EUR 50 TO READ THE NEXT 100 WORDS OF THIS ARTICLE!]"
'...someone in a different post argues that National Gallery does not allow the public to take pictures. Is that true? Not even without flash?'
Yes. Cory Doctorow has some fun with their policy here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/13/pop.art.copyright
'The excellent programme for Pop Art Portraits, the current exhibition at London's National Portrait Gallery, has a lot to say about the pictures hanging on the walls and the diverse source material the artists used to produce their provocative works. Apparently they cut up magazines, copied comic books, drew trademarked cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse, reproduced covers from Time magazine, made ironic use of a cartoon Charles Atlas, painted over iconic photos of James Dean and Elvis Presley...Despite this, the programme does not say a word about copyright...There is, however, another message about copyright in the National Portrait Gallery: it is implicit in the "No Photography" signs prominently displayed throughout its rooms, including one by the entrance to the Pop Art Portraits exhibition. These signs are not intended to protect the works from the depredations of camera flashes (otherwise they would read "No Flash Photography"). No, the ban on pictures is meant to safeguard the copyright of the works hung on the walls - a fact that every member of staff I asked instantly confirmed. Indeed, it seems every square centimetre of the National Portrait Gallery is under some form of copyright. I wasn't even allowed to photograph the "No Photographs" sign. A member of staff explained that the typography and layout of the signs was itself copyrighted...Perhaps, just perhaps, this is actually a Dadaist show masquerading as a pop art show. Perhaps the point is to titillate us with the delicious irony of celebrating copyright infringement while simultaneously taking the view that even the "No Photography" sign is a form of property not to be reproduced without the permission that can never be had.'
The same analogy occurred to me. There's some good discussion of exactly this issue from a UK perspective here:
http://www.copyright.mediarights.co.uk/
'It is debatable as to whether merely removing "clicks and crackle" from an old record would qualify, as these artifacts are not usually part of the original recording but are most likely the result of manufacturing defects and/or subsequent wear and tear. It is possible, however, that the creative use of equalisation or special effects (such as reverberation or pseudo-stereo) in the audio chain, or even the making of an analogue to digital transfer, might well be sufficient to establish a new copyright in such a version...Currently there is evidence that some commercial re-issues of restored public domain sound recordings are being openly pirated, perhaps on the assumption that no copyright can exist in these copies. The validity of such an assumption has yet to be tested in the courts.'
So basically we'd need a test case to clarify this.
'It has no mention of a resurrection.'
I see this is currently modded as 'Troll', since the Codex obviously has many such references. However, the other possibility is that Philip is unwittingly viewing the manuscript using an Evil Tool of the Devil.
Philips already has production tungsten halogen bulbs with standard bayonet and screw fittings ('EcoClassic 50' here in the UK) that only use about 50% of the power required by conventional tungsten lamps:
http://www.lighting.philips.com/gl_en/news/press/innovations/2008/home_ecoclassic.php?main=global&parent=4390&id=gl_en_news&lang=en
Right now these are only available in lower wattages, and the 100W replacement still draws 70W like those in the NYT article ('EcoClassic 30' over here). But it looks like existing technologies should be able to bring down the power consumption of this class of bulbs across the board. Lots of details, teardowns of current devices and predictions of future developments here:
http://www.eceee.org/press/B_Class_lamps/BClassHalogens_and_beyond-eceeeReportDecember12.pdf
'The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel' - Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere (yes, of course it's deliberate).
'Their existence was so intertwined with technology, they did not have the same perspective or motivations that ordinary humans do.'
They'd fit right in here then.
In a strikingly similar incident, the 43rd president, George W Bush, was apparently challenged while in office with an encrypted text by an unknown correspondent. Though the cipher remains unsolved, there are hints that the plaintext, like Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, encapsulates some of the President's profoundest thoughts. Former President Bush hopes that the science of cryptanalysis may one day advance to the point where future generations will be able to read the message. The full text is given below:
Znxr gur Cvr Uvture
V guvax jr nyy nterr, gur cnfg vf bire.
Guvf vf fgvyy n qnatrebhf jbeyq.
Vg'f n jbeyq bs znqzra
Naq hapregnvagl
Naq cbgragvny zragny ybffrf.
Eneryl vf gur dhrfgvba nfxrq
Vf bhe puvyqera yrneavat?
Jvyy gur uvtujnlf bs gur vagrearg
Orpbzr zber srj?
Ubj znal unaqf unir V funxrq?
Gurl zvfhaqrerfgvzngr zr.
V nz n cvgohyy ba gur cnagyrt bs bccbeghavgl.
V xabj gung gur uhzna orvat naq gur svfu
Pna pbrkvfg.
Snzvyvrf vf jurer bhe angvba svaqf ubcr
Jurer bhe jvatf gnxr qernz.
Chg sbbq ba lbhe snzvyl!
Xabpx qbja gur gbyyobbgu!
Ihypnavmr fbpvrgl!
Znxr gur cvr uvture!
Znxr gur cvr uvture!
'it isn't a bug, it's a feature'
Absolutely! This is just more Apple-hating propaganda. Everyone in the iPhone community knows this is an auto-repair feature, designed to weld together all those cracks in the casing.
'Glad to see that the US has a big surplus in the budget that we can afford to fund this stuff.'
Glad to see that Slashdot is helpfully parroting a 'story' fed to Fox News by a 'government watchdog', AKA a right-wing astroturf lobby group previously known for its heroic pro-tobacco, pro-Microsoft and anti-FOSS campaigns funded by (well, you can guess who):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Against_Government_Waste
Still, who cares about politically motivated attacks on public health research, provided we can make Knob Jokes?
In other news, the Kodachrome Basin State Park is to beconcreted over to make way for the new Sandisk Extreme IV SDHC Mall. '"The majority of today's consumers have voiced their preference to experience the natural world with newer technology -- both DVD and Blu-Ray", said Mary Jane Vizigoth, president of Kodak's Film, Photofinishing And Other Stuff We're Trying To Get Rid Of Group. "While the Basin is a truly iconic Park that has served tourists very well for decades, the simple truth is that people have moved on and are no longer visiting it in sustainable volumes."
Seriously, this is a terrible shame, though hardly a surprise (here in the UK, we already have to post the exposed film to Kodak Switzerland, who forward it to the only lab in the world that can process the film, Dwayne's in Kansas). It's a bit like waking up one morning to hear that oil paints are no longer available, but acrylics should be an adequate substitute. Kodachrome is a truly unique film that works in a completely different way to any other emulsion, and gives a distinctive 'look' that no other film (let alone digital) can reproduce. Check out The Kodachrome Project to see why some of us will miss it so much.
...or perhaps they bought one on closeout AS a cheap upscaling DVD player?:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/hd-dvd-players-become-dvd-upscalers-in-format-war-fallout/
Better not tell this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frZTf3mX97c
'Get cheapest phone you can find with GPRS and USB.'
Yes, but not just one. Buy several and dispose of them regularly (if you're paranoid or at real risk, after a single use). But don't bulk-buy as that tends to attract attention:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1499905
To minimise the risk of tracking, keep the phone switched off when it's not in active use and make sure that 'off' means 'off' - if in doubt, remove the battery:
https://ssd.eff.org/wire/protect/cell-tracking
'I agree; what an idiot.'
The really idiotic thing would be to take one quote out of context and assume this represents the world view of a very thoughtful writer. It's pretty clear from what he's said elsewhere, as in 'Bradbury on the Internet':
http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html
that he recognises the net's value as an information resource and commercial tool, and relishes the irony of using it to communicate his own criticism of the medium. His main concern is the danger of people 'playing their lives away with too many toys' by wasting enormous amounts of time on the trivial, a criticism that extends to the output of the other mass media, and which any reader of 'Fahrenheit 451' will understand.
It's more like consumers wanted horses, but were (briefly) offered zebras. The netbook companies made much of how the zebras looked pretty much like horses, and could do most of the things that horses could. The zebras were healthier and more resilient than the horses, ate less (you couldn't fit much hay in the early netbooks), and were cheaper to buy. And back then, microsoft was trying to sell a new breed of pretty horse, which they wanted people to like, even though the new horses were slower than greedier and more expensive than the old workhorses. But consumers weren't quite convinced by the zebras. They were used to working with horses, they had one at home, and another for the kids to play with, and some of their horse tackle didn't fit the zebras. And then the netbooks got a little bigger, so they could easily feed a horse, and Microsoft realised that if they bred some more workhorses from the old stock that people were used to, and sold them cheaply to the netbook companies, then everyone would lose interest in the zebras. And so everybody was happy, except the Mac users, who still didn't have a netbook for their leopards.
The problem is that quite low dilutions can still be classed as 'homeopathic', so there's a risk you're actually buying something with an active ingredient rather than the usual harmless pixie dust placebo. There's a good discussion here:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=530
"While most homeopathic remedies are diluted to the point that they are indistinguishable from water, that is not a requirement. Lesser dilutions may contain small amounts of active ingredient. If a "homeopathic remedy" contains a biological active amount of a drug as an active ingredient, is it not a regular drug? This is relevant to Zicam because these products are regulated as homeopathic drugs - which means they were allowed on the market without having to provide any evidence for safety or efficacy.The homeopathic exception allowed the manufacturer to simply bypass the usual requirements, even though Zicam is not really homeopathic but contains biologically active levels of zinc."
'Sounds to me more like justification for making examples out of people who were feeling unwell.'
Also sounds suspiciously like an excuse for the basic failure of their system to detect infected cases. Which should come as no surprise, since airport temperature scanners are known to be pretty ineffective, and the border controls they aim to enforce have essentially no impact on the spread of a pandemic virus:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/5238030/Swine-flu-Border-controls-dont-work-warns-WHO.html
'But on the other hand, some women like the dark and dangerous type.'
I guess the popularity of the whole 'Twilight' might work in your favour. On the other hand, any budding Dark Lord would probably have to work on his dating skills ('Then Morgoth looking upon her beauty conceived in his thought an evil lust, and a design more dark then any that had yet come into his heart since he fled from Valinor' - not exactly dinner and a movie, is it?).
'By acting as a god, you play god, even if you don't think any gods exist. You can play Satan too if you wished to. Or Sauron for that matter.'
At least you can always tell when the parents have played Sauron ('The Eye was rimmed with fire, but was itself glazed, yellow as a cat's, watchful and intent, and the black slit of its pupil opened on a pit, a window into nothing' - this is never a good look, and little Pharazon will be mercilessly bullied at school). Don't even ask about the hair colour...
'It's been, what, 25 years since the CD came out? If digital distribution is to be the new standard, surely we can reasonably expect there to be some improvement in sound quality over the previous technology?'
Already happening, at least with some specialised labels, e.g.:
http://www.gimell.com/catalogue.aspx?filter=Studio+Master+Pro+5.1
http://www.linnrecords.com/linn-formats.aspx
http://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=staticpage&pagename=audiophile_96khz