I'd disagree with your characterization of your DVD player as a 'convergance' device. All of the functions revolve around basic similarities - you're reading audio and/or video data off of a platter and sending the resulting signal out of the same outputs.
True 'convergance' devices combine several disparate devices. Phone, camera, and PDA are wildly different. So far, all attempts to combine them have resulted in poor user interfaces.
I'd rather have multiple devices that each do their job extremely well than have one device that does them all poorly.
You know, I never could figure that out, and they weren't too clear at explaining it. As far as I know it's a grey area. I think they were just trying to make people aware that some information that seemed innocuous could actually be of intelligence value.
Okay, so this is a bit offtopic, but I thought I'd speak to your pizza story.
When I was in the military, this type of information was usually marked as unclassified, but sensitive. What that meant was, even if the enemy couldn't get a hold of actual documents that listed what 'Operation X' was, they could probably deduce a lot by finding out who was activated, how many extra planes were coming in to the airbase, etc.
The idea was that just because it was unclassified didn't mean it was okay to tell it to everybody around.
I know, way off topic, but your pizza story just brought it back.
As for the content, the big 3 broadcast networks have the bulk of thier primetime programming in HD right now.
Many major cities have all of their local stations broadcasting in HD. If you're not lucky to be one of those, both satellite providers have multiple channels of HD content. There's Showtime, HBO, HDNet, and Discovery HD Theater. Band of Brothers was shown in HD and 5.1 audio. The programming is out there.
Maybe you haven't seen much HD content because you haven't looked for it.
And how you can say that someone can't tell the difference between 480i and 1080i, I'll never be able to fathom. I've shown HD on my own set to many, many people, and not one of them has said they can't tell the difference.
And the people who have told me they "don't care" hadn't seen HD before. Once they had, they immediately wanted to know what they had to do to get it.
You can't just rule out a whole class of content and say it doesn't count. Some people like 'Will & Grace'. (I don't, but I'm told some do.) Just because it's not content you care for, doesn't mean you can exclude it to make your point.
It's more like a genuine CD versus a 128kbps MP3. Sure, there are SOME people that can percieve the differences. Fewer people still actually care.
You must not have seen a true HDTV signal. A lot of consumer electronics shops (even the big ones) used to display the same old standard definition (SD) signal on their HD-ready sets.
Every time I've shown HD content to someone who hasn't seen it, they can't believe the difference. There is 6x more information in a HD picture than in a SD picture. It's immediately noticeable to someone who isn't half blind.
That decision perhaps could have come without such a great cost in civilian lives. It seems to me that the arguments you make are exceedingly weak when counted against all those innocent lives.
And I'd argue that all of your arguments are based on hindsight. Yes, the weapons killed a large number of civilians. That's bad - I'm not saying it's a preferred thing to do.
But let's look at the way wars were conducted in the WWII timeframe. Precision bombing, even in daylight conditions, was not even remotely what it is today. Nagasaki and Hiroshima contained vital military industrial complexes.
A lot of your opinions seem to come from the type of historical analysis that pulls from a lot of different documents ('We now know..'). What we must do when we evaluate the decisions of historical figures is what information did they have at the time, and how did it affect their decision?
All of the information Truman had at the time made the decision clear. Notice I didn't say easy. But the goal in war is to preserve your citizenry at the expense of the enemies'.
One of them, the implosion bomb which was not certain to work, could have been detonated over the sea as a demonstration.
Hmm...casual student...okay, that explains it.
You are a country in a declared war, one that you've maintained all along that will only accept an unconditional surrender. You have an extremely limited amount of fissile material, enough to make two weapons. Do you waste one of them on a 'demonstration' over an unpopulated area?
Actually, this was considered, and rejected. Using one of the weapons in that way was deemed wasteful. Remember the time - we didn't have the stockpile of weapons we do now. We had developed them to use them, and in a war you don't waste material you can use to fight the enemy.
As for doing the right thing, which you seem to imply would have been to continue with the invasion of Japan - do a little more research on a little island called Okinawa. All inhabitants of the island took part in its defense, and ended up committing suicide to avoid capture. To believe that the residents of Japan would not conduct themselves in a similar manner is folly.
And it's true, Japan did tender an offer of surrender before the second bomb was dropped. It was, however, with conditions. It amounted to the current regime retaining power.
IMHO, the people who say the decision to drop the bomb was unjustified either are looking at the time with modern sensibilities, or are revisionists. With the information that the US government had at the time, the decision was justified.
This is a response to several replies to my original post. If a point doesn't apply to you, don't get upset.
Regardless of the opinions related in other responses to my post, my friend bought a legal copy of iDVD. He has the box, and a valid license. Whether he had a superdrive or not does not make his purchase illegal. He's no pirate.
Second, the initial impetus was to edit video, not to burn the result to a DVD on the Mac. I know there's different editing software out there, that's not the point of the post.
The Apple superdrive is just a Pioneer A03 (or A04, I'm not sure which) with different firmware. My friend was a bit peeved that Apple had ensured that someone couldn't buy the same hardware as the superdrive and use it to run their program. In the PC world, we'd scoff at anyone who tried to write a DVD burning suite with a firmware check like that. Why is this acceptable from Apple?
A friend of mine owns a Mac, which he bought with a CD-R drive.
Another buddy was being driven to frustration trying to edit digital video on his PC. So, my Mac friend hauls his Mac over, and they go out and buy iDVD.
Turns out that Apple has put a firmware check in the software. When you launch it, iDVD checks for an Apple DVD player, and if it doesn't find one, doesn't load.
"Ah!" My friend says, "I'll just buy a DVD burner...I wanted one anyway!"
But Apple won't sell you a bare drive. If you want a DVD burner, you have to buy a whole new Mac.
An enterprising man made software that would sit between iDVD and a 'regular' DVD burner, and make iDVD think it was an Apple drive. Apple threatened him under the DMCA, and got him to remove his software from the market.
If GM foods are *so* safe, why do they not want us to know when they are being consumed?
Maybe it's because people have a history of overhyping 'bad' products so that people have a fear of them out of proportion to the risks.
As an example, lets look at the demonization of the word 'nuclear'... it has been so villified by the press and other groups, that the simple mention of the word (or of it's twin, radiation) will cause people to avoid anything having to do with it, no matter the benefits.
That's why irradiated foods do so poorly. Even though they aren't radioactive, people avoid them because it's 'one 'a them "nukulur" things'...
Of course, the company's opposition of the bill couldn't have had anything to do with that - it has to be a conspiracy to foist poisonous food on us! They want to kill all of us customers off so they can clear the way for the alien invasion!.....
I agree with this totally...there's more than enough market share out there for both SonicBlue and Tivo.
We need to educate people about PVRs, and the functionality that the media is trying to remove from them...not spend money on lawsuits like this.
Not the way most high school-level grants work.
Most grants (even Federal ones) at this level are to the teacher, not the school. Included in the terms of the grant are that the property bought with the money goes with the teacher - not the school they were at the time.
So, the school probably couldn't really have stopped him from taking it anyway.
If you'd actually read the site you'd know why this thing is worth $15K.
This guy spent 3 years building it - it's not just some shell that looks pretty and that's about it.
At the end of 1990, there were only 83 plants under construction in the world, half in Eastern Europe and not likely ever to be completed. A tragedy on the scale of Chernobyl,
which is inevitable in the next decade,(emphasis mine) will end dreams of nuclear power as an energy source forever. Because (as we note in Section l.3.1) it is highly likely that WIPP will be used to store civilian, as well as military, wastes, it is appropriate that the memorial at WIPP serve as a reminder of the tragic cost of nuclear power as used for "peaceful" as well as intentionally destructive purposes.
The above quote was taken from the report listing a marking scheme to mark the site so that it will be protected for the next 10,000 years.
(Full title: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter
Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia Report SAND92-1382 - UC-721)
It serves to remind me that people may quote statistics in an attempt to support their positions, but in the end, they're just statistics.
The report as a whole is interesting, I suggest you read it - but remember that the authors forgot the cardinal rule of 'scientific' study: never interject your opinions into research. Even if it doesn't color your results, it will give the appearance of bias.
If you run into the back of someone, even if they stop in the middle of the highway, you're liable. And there's nothing that can be done about it, because as stupid as it is, nothing's illegal about stopping in the middle of the road.
BTW, my wife learned this the hard way. She was able to stop, but the guy in back of her didn't and pushed her into the dimwit who stopped.
Guess who got the ticket? The guy in back. *You* are responsible for maintaining seperation between you and the car in front. Not the guy in front of you.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd disagree with your characterization of your DVD player as a 'convergance' device. All of the functions revolve around basic similarities - you're reading audio and/or video data off of a platter and sending the resulting signal out of the same outputs.
True 'convergance' devices combine several disparate devices. Phone, camera, and PDA are wildly different. So far, all attempts to combine them have resulted in poor user interfaces.
I'd rather have multiple devices that each do their job extremely well than have one device that does them all poorly.
Actually, HDTV broadcasts are almost exclusively UHF.
Oh, yeah....gotta love those non-proprietary memory sticks...
Better watch it, or TROGDOR will get you with the Burnination!
That robot is for the crew to use as a gofer/pda, and is supposed to be powered by ducted fans - i.e., no reaction mass to operate in a vacuum.
You know, I never could figure that out, and they weren't too clear at explaining it. As far as I know it's a grey area. I think they were just trying to make people aware that some information that seemed innocuous could actually be of intelligence value.
Okay, so this is a bit offtopic, but I thought I'd speak to your pizza story.
When I was in the military, this type of information was usually marked as unclassified, but sensitive. What that meant was, even if the enemy couldn't get a hold of actual documents that listed what 'Operation X' was, they could probably deduce a lot by finding out who was activated, how many extra planes were coming in to the airbase, etc.
The idea was that just because it was unclassified didn't mean it was okay to tell it to everybody around.
I know, way off topic, but your pizza story just brought it back.
No, I'm not assuming too much.
As for the content, the big 3 broadcast networks have the bulk of thier primetime programming in HD right now.
Many major cities have all of their local stations broadcasting in HD. If you're not lucky to be one of those, both satellite providers have multiple channels of HD content. There's Showtime, HBO, HDNet, and Discovery HD Theater. Band of Brothers was shown in HD and 5.1 audio. The programming is out there.
Maybe you haven't seen much HD content because you haven't looked for it.
And how you can say that someone can't tell the difference between 480i and 1080i, I'll never be able to fathom. I've shown HD on my own set to many, many people, and not one of them has said they can't tell the difference.
And the people who have told me they "don't care" hadn't seen HD before. Once they had, they immediately wanted to know what they had to do to get it.
You can't just rule out a whole class of content and say it doesn't count. Some people like 'Will & Grace'. (I don't, but I'm told some do.) Just because it's not content you care for, doesn't mean you can exclude it to make your point.
You must not have seen a true HDTV signal. A lot of consumer electronics shops (even the big ones) used to display the same old standard definition (SD) signal on their HD-ready sets.
Every time I've shown HD content to someone who hasn't seen it, they can't believe the difference. There is 6x more information in a HD picture than in a SD picture. It's immediately noticeable to someone who isn't half blind.
Paul Coverdell died in July of 2000.
Which means this memo is at least two and a half years old.
Plus, if you gave a good bit of money, wouldn't you expect to at least be able to talk to the guy you supported?
I really hate it when people go apes**t over corporations doing what they'd do if they had the money.
And I'd argue that all of your arguments are based on hindsight. Yes, the weapons killed a large number of civilians. That's bad - I'm not saying it's a preferred thing to do.
But let's look at the way wars were conducted in the WWII timeframe. Precision bombing, even in daylight conditions, was not even remotely what it is today. Nagasaki and Hiroshima contained vital military industrial complexes.
A lot of your opinions seem to come from the type of historical analysis that pulls from a lot of different documents ('We now know..'). What we must do when we evaluate the decisions of historical figures is what information did they have at the time, and how did it affect their decision?
All of the information Truman had at the time made the decision clear. Notice I didn't say easy. But the goal in war is to preserve your citizenry at the expense of the enemies'.
It's not a mirror of photos from the camera - just photos of the launch.
Read the whole post. He was attempting to upgrade to a DVD burner.
Regardless of the opinions related in other responses to my post, my friend bought a legal copy of iDVD. He has the box, and a valid license. Whether he had a superdrive or not does not make his purchase illegal. He's no pirate.
Second, the initial impetus was to edit video, not to burn the result to a DVD on the Mac. I know there's different editing software out there, that's not the point of the post.
The Apple superdrive is just a Pioneer A03 (or A04, I'm not sure which) with different firmware. My friend was a bit peeved that Apple had ensured that someone couldn't buy the same hardware as the superdrive and use it to run their program. In the PC world, we'd scoff at anyone who tried to write a DVD burning suite with a firmware check like that. Why is this acceptable from Apple?
Another buddy was being driven to frustration trying to edit digital video on his PC. So, my Mac friend hauls his Mac over, and they go out and buy iDVD.
Turns out that Apple has put a firmware check in the software. When you launch it, iDVD checks for an Apple DVD player, and if it doesn't find one, doesn't load.
"Ah!" My friend says, "I'll just buy a DVD burner...I wanted one anyway!"
But Apple won't sell you a bare drive. If you want a DVD burner, you have to buy a whole new Mac.
An enterprising man made software that would sit between iDVD and a 'regular' DVD burner, and make iDVD think it was an Apple drive. Apple threatened him under the DMCA, and got him to remove his software from the market.
Maybe it's because people have a history of overhyping 'bad' products so that people have a fear of them out of proportion to the risks.
As an example, lets look at the demonization of the word 'nuclear'... it has been so villified by the press and other groups, that the simple mention of the word (or of it's twin, radiation) will cause people to avoid anything having to do with it, no matter the benefits.
That's why irradiated foods do so poorly. Even though they aren't radioactive, people avoid them because it's 'one 'a them "nukulur" things'...
Of course, the company's opposition of the bill couldn't have had anything to do with that - it has to be a conspiracy to foist poisonous food on us! They want to kill all of us customers off so they can clear the way for the alien invasion!.....
I agree with this totally...there's more than enough market share out there for both SonicBlue and Tivo. We need to educate people about PVRs, and the functionality that the media is trying to remove from them...not spend money on lawsuits like this.
this article isn't going to convince him.
Not the way most high school-level grants work. Most grants (even Federal ones) at this level are to the teacher, not the school. Included in the terms of the grant are that the property bought with the money goes with the teacher - not the school they were at the time. So, the school probably couldn't really have stopped him from taking it anyway.
If you'd actually read the site you'd know why this thing is worth $15K. This guy spent 3 years building it - it's not just some shell that looks pretty and that's about it.
Look at all the money the .gif royalties made Compuserve...
(Full title: Expert Judgment on Markers to Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Sandia Report SAND92-1382 - UC-721)
It serves to remind me that people may quote statistics in an attempt to support their positions, but in the end, they're just statistics.
The report as a whole is interesting, I suggest you read it - but remember that the authors forgot the cardinal rule of 'scientific' study: never interject your opinions into research. Even if it doesn't color your results, it will give the appearance of bias.
It wasn't the joke...that was funny. The first time.
Seeing it in every thread is getting *really* old.
A legal act of agression? Where do you live?
If you run into the back of someone, even if they stop in the middle of the highway, you're liable. And there's nothing that can be done about it, because as stupid as it is, nothing's illegal about stopping in the middle of the road.
BTW, my wife learned this the hard way. She was able to stop, but the guy in back of her didn't and pushed her into the dimwit who stopped.
Guess who got the ticket? The guy in back. *You* are responsible for maintaining seperation between you and the car in front. Not the guy in front of you.