The thing I don't get about the Wii is that anybody seems to like it at all. I don't know if I'm a "hardcore" gamer, in that I don't really give two shits about playing a game until I've unlocked every trivial piece of worthless content, and I don't get a hardon thinking about buying the next yet-another-FPS or OMGMMORPG, but I certainly enjoy immersive, challenging games. My wife would rather play word games or actual sports. And diverting the kids away from Webkinz and Penguin whatever is a chore.. The Wii is that thing they play as a last resort, like right now when it's too cold to go outside and gets dark early, and they're tired of watching Wall-e for the 1000th time. That's basically 0 for 4 in my household.
I learned to drive by playing GTA, you insensitive clod. Why, just this morning I bailed out of my car in front of my office and then stood in front of the door until someone appeared and told me what to do next. The only thing that sucks is that there are no good cars in this part of town, so I'll have to use some old beater after work until I can get over to the nicer areas. Once I find a Lamborghini or Ferrari, I'll use that, but I won't bother to put it in my garage because even if it makes it home without exploding, it'll probably be covered with dents and missing a door or two.
To compound the problem, medicine is trying to hit a moving target, especially where infectious agents are concerned. What may have been 99.9999% effective in clinical trials and the first few years of use may now be all but useless, as we've killed off a predominant strain and another more resistant strain has moved in to fill the void.
But certainly, there's a large amount of trial and error even in approved treatments. It's a lot like "This stain is red, but we don't know if it's wine, tomato sauce, or blood, so we'll try various stain removers which are known to work on red stains, and hopefully it disappears without causing damage to the material." One of the biggest reasons is that it's not really cost-effective to analyze the exact cause of the problem, either in dollars or in time. Until we get widespread, rapid, and cost-effective testing, things won't likely change. Genetic testing (of infectious agents as well as patients) may or may not be an effective avenue, but it's certainly increasing in speed and decreasing in cost very rapidly, and may prove useful in some situations.
Hopefully that was the introduction of Slartibartfast's new 435-part series, Better Say It. Part One: The Fightin' What!?! Proper placement of the word what, you're now better said!
Exactly. We had computers in 3 places at my school: In the library (or "media center"), in the Typing/Keyboarding classroom, and in the CS classroom. And even in the latter, the computers were ancillary and peripherally placed around on the side and back of the room. The desk & chair were still the primary method of instruction, and the computers were for "lab time", the same way you don't keep beakers of sulfuric acid on your desk during chemistry. The tools are used when appropriate, and the rest of the time they're put away, or at least left unused.
Laptops would be even worse. At least with note-passing and Playboys, the teacher can exercise some moderate amount of control over the disruption. With laptops on every desk and boss-keys, the teacher may never even realize it's happening. It's not that IMing and omg-porn are damaging to the "fragile child psyche", but they detract from what little of a learning environment may exist to begin with.
In college there's a higher level of maturity overall, however so slight, and a direct incentive to learn, since you or someone you will have to answer to are footing the bill. Additionally, your peer set is broader than, and possibly exclusive of, the people sitting around you, so if you're wasting your time on Yim, at least you're not wasting your classmates' time in the process.
Computers have a place in education, but it's not in laptop form on the desk in front of the student day in and day out.
I'm not sure what sort of resurrection you're trying to describe in the first place -- the Mac is still a small niche in the bigger picture -- but your arguments themselves are not particularly convincing.
Think about all those crazy applications that you had way back then before the late 90's. An Encyclopedia and Full dictionary, other resource applications all needed to be on physical media which you put in your system and run by your system.
Maybe you did... The rest of us had Q-Link (later AOL), Compuserve, GEnie, or some other service which included plenty of reference material. There were lots of great and innovative games then as well, perhaps more than today, which provided more than 1 day of entertainment. Yes, there were even multiplayer online games like Air Warrior which, by the way, was available on the Amiga, Mac, and Atari.. but not the PC. Shock and awe.
It took the popularity of the Web to really get Apple out of the slump. it started with the iMac (the colorful ones) sure the computer was cute and all, however its focus was the fact that most of the stuff you do on it will be via the web.
Which is pretty much why it never caught on among people who did not have money to throw at an expensive, but cute, web browser.
Created an environment where people started thinking about making Web Applications vs. Application that you run on your PC. So now we have an enviroment where we can say go to Slashdot and interact on an equal level doesn't matter if you are Using a Mac, Linux, or Windows. Where if this was released before the web was common you would have a Slashdot application which you would run. Probably only being a Windows Only App. With perhaps a MacPort.
Slashdot is not a "web application" in any meaningful sense of the word. It, and other forums like it, have much older roots, such as BBSes, FidoNet, and Usenet, all of which were 100% platform independent, and the common protocol was ASCII. The web makes it easier to directly reference data that everyone else can see without having to create our own repository, but that's hardly the equivalent of platform-independent applications.
Ask Linux users just how platform-independent most of the web is. Or iPhone users for that matter, who still gripe about the lack of Flash. Third party plugins are still prevalent, and they must be tailored to the "independent platform" used to access the content. There are only two ways to get around that -- common hardware, where every "Web 2.0" application can run natively, or extremely high bandwidth, where the actual graphical data is the only thing sent to the terminal. Good luck with either of those.
The OS, and software as we know it, are not going away anytime soon, and having the technical ability to do it won't necessarily make it the best thing to do either. The "Web 2.0 Revolution" reminds me very much of the people saying how the Minority Report style interface will replace the mouse, or how voice recognition will replace the keyboard. I have no doubt that our computing model will continue to evolve, but the current model exists because it works, and it works very well. Any replacement will need to have all of its advantages and more, or else provide an extremely compelling reason to change.
But Microsoft is going to parachute in on us! They're going to shoot some of our innocent babies. They'll torture our children! They'll torture some of our people here! They'll torture our seniors! The ones that they take captured, they're gonna let them grow up and be dummies! We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
Well, that's not completely true... you can tell the difference between, say, a cat and a bird. So unless you have a cat that has eaten another cat, this should work for you.
I'm no geneticist, but I'm pretty sure that's not correct. Just from a logical perspective, you would have to know the differences before you can look for them, and you can't know the differences until you have pure samples as a reference.
To complicate matters, a single strand of DNA is not sequenced start to finish; rather thousands of chains are broken up into tiny pieces, like a torrent file. You might piece 1 from source A, and piece 2 from source B, but you know you're working with the same file, and the pieces will be identical, so it doesn't matter.
But unlike the ordered division of a torrent file, DNA is broken up into pieces in a relatively crude method which results in pieces of arbitrary length. To figure out what order to put them back in, you have to look for overlapping sequences. A sequence that ends in ABCDEFG likely comes immediately before another piece that begins in ABCDEFG. It all comes down to probability. The more overlap you have, the more probable the two pieces represent a continuation of the sequence.
Throw in the fact that a given piece could be from a completely different sample (species), but that many species share a large portion of DNA, and you're basically just making a wild guess. Unless you have a reference to compare them to. See: The beginning of this post.
I assume you're talking about state/local government since you're discussing state/local issues. I don't know where you live, but in my state, legislative salaries are well below the state median income.
Ah, the fallacy that the self-interest of others will protect the self-interest of ourselves. People wouldn't dare go without healthcare, would they? Do I really need to answer that?
The alternative to "stop spending those funds on healthcare" is not "and let your neighbor spend his own funds," it is "and stop providing healthcare to people who can't pay for it." Because when you take away that coverage, you rely on the idea that the person a) can afford his own coverage, b) will buy it if he can afford it, c) will never use medical facilities if he doesn't have coverage and/or d) will not get sick and/or die from a preventable or treatable cause. That's a lot of assumptions, most of which probably won't be true. But even if that person never costs a dollar in healthcare, and dies of a heart attack at 45, then we're just shifting those costs around, and likely increasing them in the process. If he had life insurance, then your insurance company just had to make an early payout. Rates go up. If he had a home, it's now in foreclosure. Lending rates go up. If he had a job, he probably has to be replaced. That means HR costs, training costs, and lost productivity in the interim. And those are just the most common, obvious costs.
So we could go on pretending that not taking care of our neighbor has no cost to ourselves or to society, or we could face reality and implement comprehensive healthcare where people *have to* pay, in the form of taxes. Not only does that lower the cost overall, because people are receiving preventative treatment, but by seeing the direct cost instead of adding up all the external ones, it gives us a direct incentive to lower those costs even further. Whether that means taxing McCoronaries, subsidizing vegetables, or giving a rebate to those who demonstrably follow certain guidelines, the point is that the discussion is *possible*, whereas the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal behavior is not very likely to lead to any sort of improvements at all.
And a big fuck you to whomever modded down my parent post as "overrated," as "I disagree". You pussy. Use a mod that actually goes through meta next time.
Posting non-anonymously because I actually have a set.
There's a big difference between a laptop, which is designed to be moved/used in motion, and a console, which is designed to be placed on a stable surface. That said, I'm pretty sure you could get a disc to scratch in anything if you shook it vigorously. Should they have a disclaimer for that too, or should it just be common sense?
In this case, not only is it common sense, but there's also a disclaimer telling you specifically NOT to move the console while it's in use, just in case the user is too obtuse to realize that gyroscopic forces do indeed apply to rapidly spinning discs.
Guess what? Your refrigerator won't work if you turn it sideways or upside down, and could be permanently damaged if you tried. Is that a design defect as well, even though the manual says to place it upright on a level surface?
I think I'm going to sue Microsoft for not making discs that resist baking. There's nothing on the label that tells me not to bake it. It's not my fault, I'M AN IDIOT!!!!
You don't really even have to get up to shut off the 360, or to turn it on for that matter. Granted, you (probably) have to get up to reorient it, but it should be well shut down by the time you get up after performing a "remote" shutdown.
Anyway, SCREW YOU for assuming that just because people play a console, that they're messy pizza eaters.
*Wipes hands on shirt and sits on pizza boxes to cover them*
My girlfriend plays with the 360, and she doesn't eat pizza! Or anything else, for that matter.
ENGINEERING CHALLENGE - design a dialup modem that runs 128k or better (i.e. double current limits)
If you're talking about voiceband modems (which I assume you are from the context), it's not an engineering problem; it's a political problem. The problem is that we've reached the theoretical limits of how much data you can fit in a given bandwidth. In this case, the bandwidth is only an 8kHz sampling rate, which means you're limited to a 4kHz signal (according to the Nyquist Sampling Theorem). In order to transmit more data, you have to literally increase the bandwidth (which is the definition of "broadband"), and the only way you can do that is to convince the phone companies to upgrade all of their voiceband hardware with higher sampling rates.
Aside from the headend, the other problem is that unshielded twisted-pair conductors are unsuitable for high-frequency transmissions over a long distance. That's because they are susceptible to electromagnetic interference while at the same time radiating much of their power as heat and RF. They can transmit high frequencies for a short distance, depending on the frequency, which is why DSL availability is limited by radius from a switching point. It's also why the further away you are, the lower the speed; because longer distances can only be reached by using a lower data rate.
So again, if you can convince your telco to upgrade its entire infrastructure, or your local government to mandate such an upgrade, then I'd be happy to provide you with a 128k voiceband modem. But as long as you're making a huge change like that, you might as well go with fiber. Which seems to be the trend.
Ah, provider pirates... So detached from reality that they attempt to forbid redistribution of "their" releases via torrent. For even more irony, check the user agreement of any private tracker, which typically prohibits redistribution of "their" torrents to any other tracker.
I guess the ultimate irony would be your friend refusing to give you a copy of the title he just downloaded from TPB because the README says he'll get banned for P2P.
USENET must be extremely efficient indeed, considering that you've managed to forget both the First Rule of USENET and the Second Rule of USENET at the same time!
Personally, I'm not holding my breath for the DTV transition.. and not just because I can't hold my breath for 2 months. (Well, maybe, but it would be debatable as to whether the last 1 month, 29 days, 23 hours, and 57 minutes would count as "holding my breath.")
Given how prone to procrastination we are as a society, I'd wager that many, many people have not yet purchased DTVs, or DTV converters. Many were probably planning to buy a new TV for the holidays, but it remains to be seen whether those plans will materialize in the current economic conditions. Basically, if I had to place a bet, I'd wager that there will be a huge outcry from people who cannot afford to update their equipment, even with the subsidy, and the FCC will push back the blackout date yet again. To compound the issue, those who already bought DTV equipment and may have received acceptable, or even good analog reception may find themselves with much lower quality reception of a digital signal; generally because there is much less fault tolerance. Even a minor disruption of the signal can and does throw off reception for upwards of 5-10 seconds as the receiver restarts decoding at the next complete frame -- enough to be a nuisance at best, or make a program completely unwatchable.
I think both of those issues will force the transition date to be postponed yet again, and a cursory Google search shows that other people (who actually have the power to control these things) have already been considering it.
While we're at it, we should replace the steering wheel with touch-to-steer-by-wire^h^h^h^hWiFi! Naturally it will have a sophisticated encryption method such as WEP, or ROT-13, to prevent accidental or malicious control of surrounding vehicles. As further protection, all input will be followed with a confirmation dialog: "Car needs your permission to stop. If you started this action, continue. [Cancel] or [Allow]?"
Slashdot Mirror
The thing I don't get about the Wii is that anybody seems to like it at all. I don't know if I'm a "hardcore" gamer, in that I don't really give two shits about playing a game until I've unlocked every trivial piece of worthless content, and I don't get a hardon thinking about buying the next yet-another-FPS or OMGMMORPG, but I certainly enjoy immersive, challenging games. My wife would rather play word games or actual sports. And diverting the kids away from Webkinz and Penguin whatever is a chore.. The Wii is that thing they play as a last resort, like right now when it's too cold to go outside and gets dark early, and they're tired of watching Wall-e for the 1000th time. That's basically 0 for 4 in my household.
I learned to drive by playing GTA, you insensitive clod. Why, just this morning I bailed out of my car in front of my office and then stood in front of the door until someone appeared and told me what to do next. The only thing that sucks is that there are no good cars in this part of town, so I'll have to use some old beater after work until I can get over to the nicer areas. Once I find a Lamborghini or Ferrari, I'll use that, but I won't bother to put it in my garage because even if it makes it home without exploding, it'll probably be covered with dents and missing a door or two.
To compound the problem, medicine is trying to hit a moving target, especially where infectious agents are concerned. What may have been 99.9999% effective in clinical trials and the first few years of use may now be all but useless, as we've killed off a predominant strain and another more resistant strain has moved in to fill the void.
But certainly, there's a large amount of trial and error even in approved treatments. It's a lot like "This stain is red, but we don't know if it's wine, tomato sauce, or blood, so we'll try various stain removers which are known to work on red stains, and hopefully it disappears without causing damage to the material." One of the biggest reasons is that it's not really cost-effective to analyze the exact cause of the problem, either in dollars or in time. Until we get widespread, rapid, and cost-effective testing, things won't likely change. Genetic testing (of infectious agents as well as patients) may or may not be an effective avenue, but it's certainly increasing in speed and decreasing in cost very rapidly, and may prove useful in some situations.
Hopefully that was the introduction of Slartibartfast's new 435-part series, Better Say It. Part One: The Fightin' What!?! Proper placement of the word what, you're now better said!
Exactly. We had computers in 3 places at my school: In the library (or "media center"), in the Typing/Keyboarding classroom, and in the CS classroom. And even in the latter, the computers were ancillary and peripherally placed around on the side and back of the room. The desk & chair were still the primary method of instruction, and the computers were for "lab time", the same way you don't keep beakers of sulfuric acid on your desk during chemistry. The tools are used when appropriate, and the rest of the time they're put away, or at least left unused.
Laptops would be even worse. At least with note-passing and Playboys, the teacher can exercise some moderate amount of control over the disruption. With laptops on every desk and boss-keys, the teacher may never even realize it's happening. It's not that IMing and omg-porn are damaging to the "fragile child psyche", but they detract from what little of a learning environment may exist to begin with.
In college there's a higher level of maturity overall, however so slight, and a direct incentive to learn, since you or someone you will have to answer to are footing the bill. Additionally, your peer set is broader than, and possibly exclusive of, the people sitting around you, so if you're wasting your time on Yim, at least you're not wasting your classmates' time in the process.
Computers have a place in education, but it's not in laptop form on the desk in front of the student day in and day out.
I'm not sure what sort of resurrection you're trying to describe in the first place -- the Mac is still a small niche in the bigger picture -- but your arguments themselves are not particularly convincing.
Think about all those crazy applications that you had way back then before the late 90's. An Encyclopedia and Full dictionary, other resource applications all needed to be on physical media which you put in your system and run by your system.
Maybe you did... The rest of us had Q-Link (later AOL), Compuserve, GEnie, or some other service which included plenty of reference material. There were lots of great and innovative games then as well, perhaps more than today, which provided more than 1 day of entertainment. Yes, there were even multiplayer online games like Air Warrior which, by the way, was available on the Amiga, Mac, and Atari.. but not the PC. Shock and awe.
It took the popularity of the Web to really get Apple out of the slump. it started with the iMac (the colorful ones) sure the computer was cute and all, however its focus was the fact that most of the stuff you do on it will be via the web.
Which is pretty much why it never caught on among people who did not have money to throw at an expensive, but cute, web browser.
Created an environment where people started thinking about making Web Applications vs. Application that you run on your PC. So now we have an enviroment where we can say go to Slashdot and interact on an equal level doesn't matter if you are Using a Mac, Linux, or Windows. Where if this was released before the web was common you would have a Slashdot application which you would run. Probably only being a Windows Only App. With perhaps a MacPort.
Slashdot is not a "web application" in any meaningful sense of the word. It, and other forums like it, have much older roots, such as BBSes, FidoNet, and Usenet, all of which were 100% platform independent, and the common protocol was ASCII. The web makes it easier to directly reference data that everyone else can see without having to create our own repository, but that's hardly the equivalent of platform-independent applications.
Ask Linux users just how platform-independent most of the web is. Or iPhone users for that matter, who still gripe about the lack of Flash. Third party plugins are still prevalent, and they must be tailored to the "independent platform" used to access the content. There are only two ways to get around that -- common hardware, where every "Web 2.0" application can run natively, or extremely high bandwidth, where the actual graphical data is the only thing sent to the terminal. Good luck with either of those.
The OS, and software as we know it, are not going away anytime soon, and having the technical ability to do it won't necessarily make it the best thing to do either. The "Web 2.0 Revolution" reminds me very much of the people saying how the Minority Report style interface will replace the mouse, or how voice recognition will replace the keyboard. I have no doubt that our computing model will continue to evolve, but the current model exists because it works, and it works very well. Any replacement will need to have all of its advantages and more, or else provide an extremely compelling reason to change.
But Microsoft is going to parachute in on us! They're going to shoot some of our innocent babies. They'll torture our children! They'll torture some of our people here! They'll torture our seniors! The ones that they take captured, they're gonna let them grow up and be dummies! We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
Well, that's not completely true... you can tell the difference between, say, a cat and a bird. So unless you have a cat that has eaten another cat, this should work for you.
I'm no geneticist, but I'm pretty sure that's not correct. Just from a logical perspective, you would have to know the differences before you can look for them, and you can't know the differences until you have pure samples as a reference.
To complicate matters, a single strand of DNA is not sequenced start to finish; rather thousands of chains are broken up into tiny pieces, like a torrent file. You might piece 1 from source A, and piece 2 from source B, but you know you're working with the same file, and the pieces will be identical, so it doesn't matter.
But unlike the ordered division of a torrent file, DNA is broken up into pieces in a relatively crude method which results in pieces of arbitrary length. To figure out what order to put them back in, you have to look for overlapping sequences. A sequence that ends in ABCDEFG likely comes immediately before another piece that begins in ABCDEFG. It all comes down to probability. The more overlap you have, the more probable the two pieces represent a continuation of the sequence.
Throw in the fact that a given piece could be from a completely different sample (species), but that many species share a large portion of DNA, and you're basically just making a wild guess. Unless you have a reference to compare them to. See: The beginning of this post.
I assume you're talking about state/local government since you're discussing state/local issues. I don't know where you live, but in my state, legislative salaries are well below the state median income.
Federal legislators.. well that's a whole different story.
Ah, the fallacy that the self-interest of others will protect the self-interest of ourselves. People wouldn't dare go without healthcare, would they? Do I really need to answer that?
The alternative to "stop spending those funds on healthcare" is not "and let your neighbor spend his own funds," it is "and stop providing healthcare to people who can't pay for it." Because when you take away that coverage, you rely on the idea that the person a) can afford his own coverage, b) will buy it if he can afford it, c) will never use medical facilities if he doesn't have coverage and/or d) will not get sick and/or die from a preventable or treatable cause. That's a lot of assumptions, most of which probably won't be true. But even if that person never costs a dollar in healthcare, and dies of a heart attack at 45, then we're just shifting those costs around, and likely increasing them in the process. If he had life insurance, then your insurance company just had to make an early payout. Rates go up. If he had a home, it's now in foreclosure. Lending rates go up. If he had a job, he probably has to be replaced. That means HR costs, training costs, and lost productivity in the interim. And those are just the most common, obvious costs.
So we could go on pretending that not taking care of our neighbor has no cost to ourselves or to society, or we could face reality and implement comprehensive healthcare where people *have to* pay, in the form of taxes. Not only does that lower the cost overall, because people are receiving preventative treatment, but by seeing the direct cost instead of adding up all the external ones, it gives us a direct incentive to lower those costs even further. Whether that means taxing McCoronaries, subsidizing vegetables, or giving a rebate to those who demonstrably follow certain guidelines, the point is that the discussion is *possible*, whereas the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal behavior is not very likely to lead to any sort of improvements at all.
And a big fuck you to whomever modded down my parent post as "overrated," as "I disagree". You pussy. Use a mod that actually goes through meta next time.
Posting non-anonymously because I actually have a set.
Good explanation. Unfortunately, sarcasm by idiots who think they're being clever trumps fact any day here on /.
There's a big difference between a laptop, which is designed to be moved/used in motion, and a console, which is designed to be placed on a stable surface. That said, I'm pretty sure you could get a disc to scratch in anything if you shook it vigorously. Should they have a disclaimer for that too, or should it just be common sense?
In this case, not only is it common sense, but there's also a disclaimer telling you specifically NOT to move the console while it's in use, just in case the user is too obtuse to realize that gyroscopic forces do indeed apply to rapidly spinning discs.
Guess what? Your refrigerator won't work if you turn it sideways or upside down, and could be permanently damaged if you tried. Is that a design defect as well, even though the manual says to place it upright on a level surface?
I think I'm going to sue Microsoft for not making discs that resist baking. There's nothing on the label that tells me not to bake it. It's not my fault, I'M AN IDIOT!!!!
They should have opted for the clamshell design, which also doubles as a pancake iron, in the opinions of 100% of small children surveyed.
You don't really even have to get up to shut off the 360, or to turn it on for that matter. Granted, you (probably) have to get up to reorient it, but it should be well shut down by the time you get up after performing a "remote" shutdown.
Anyway, SCREW YOU for assuming that just because people play a console, that they're messy pizza eaters.
*Wipes hands on shirt and sits on pizza boxes to cover them*
My girlfriend plays with the 360, and she doesn't eat pizza! Or anything else, for that matter.
*Strokes Real Doll's hair*
ENGINEERING CHALLENGE - design a dialup modem that runs 128k or better (i.e. double current limits)
If you're talking about voiceband modems (which I assume you are from the context), it's not an engineering problem; it's a political problem. The problem is that we've reached the theoretical limits of how much data you can fit in a given bandwidth. In this case, the bandwidth is only an 8kHz sampling rate, which means you're limited to a 4kHz signal (according to the Nyquist Sampling Theorem). In order to transmit more data, you have to literally increase the bandwidth (which is the definition of "broadband"), and the only way you can do that is to convince the phone companies to upgrade all of their voiceband hardware with higher sampling rates.
Aside from the headend, the other problem is that unshielded twisted-pair conductors are unsuitable for high-frequency transmissions over a long distance. That's because they are susceptible to electromagnetic interference while at the same time radiating much of their power as heat and RF. They can transmit high frequencies for a short distance, depending on the frequency, which is why DSL availability is limited by radius from a switching point. It's also why the further away you are, the lower the speed; because longer distances can only be reached by using a lower data rate.
So again, if you can convince your telco to upgrade its entire infrastructure, or your local government to mandate such an upgrade, then I'd be happy to provide you with a 128k voiceband modem. But as long as you're making a huge change like that, you might as well go with fiber. Which seems to be the trend.
Ah, provider pirates... So detached from reality that they attempt to forbid redistribution of "their" releases via torrent. For even more irony, check the user agreement of any private tracker, which typically prohibits redistribution of "their" torrents to any other tracker.
I guess the ultimate irony would be your friend refusing to give you a copy of the title he just downloaded from TPB because the README says he'll get banned for P2P.
USENET must be extremely efficient indeed, considering that you've managed to forget both the First Rule of USENET and the Second Rule of USENET at the same time!
Yeah, none...that you know of.
<shifty grin>
Personally, I'm not holding my breath for the DTV transition.. and not just because I can't hold my breath for 2 months. (Well, maybe, but it would be debatable as to whether the last 1 month, 29 days, 23 hours, and 57 minutes would count as "holding my breath.")
Given how prone to procrastination we are as a society, I'd wager that many, many people have not yet purchased DTVs, or DTV converters. Many were probably planning to buy a new TV for the holidays, but it remains to be seen whether those plans will materialize in the current economic conditions. Basically, if I had to place a bet, I'd wager that there will be a huge outcry from people who cannot afford to update their equipment, even with the subsidy, and the FCC will push back the blackout date yet again. To compound the issue, those who already bought DTV equipment and may have received acceptable, or even good analog reception may find themselves with much lower quality reception of a digital signal; generally because there is much less fault tolerance. Even a minor disruption of the signal can and does throw off reception for upwards of 5-10 seconds as the receiver restarts decoding at the next complete frame -- enough to be a nuisance at best, or make a program completely unwatchable.
I think both of those issues will force the transition date to be postponed yet again, and a cursory Google search shows that other people (who actually have the power to control these things) have already been considering it.
Wow, that was painful to, being reading on so many level.
Boowho.
"In the year two thousaaaaand. In the year two thousaaaaaaaaand!"
The cyber-term "cyber" will become an ubiquitous cyber-prefix to all cyber-nouns. And half of all cyber-verbs.
While we're at it, we should replace the steering wheel with touch-to-steer-by-wire^h^h^h^hWiFi! Naturally it will have a sophisticated encryption method such as WEP, or ROT-13, to prevent accidental or malicious control of surrounding vehicles. As further protection, all input will be followed with a confirmation dialog: "Car needs your permission to stop. If you started this action, continue. [Cancel] or [Allow]?"
I know what you mean ;)