Think of it as an armoured truck carrying the movie from the Internet to your display, it keeps the data safe from pirates...
You wouldn't want those nasty pirates to hijack your data and replace little Susie's episode of Dora the Explorer with donkey porn, would you? Think of the children! Dear God, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! Thank you, Intel, for the safe and secure armored truck of Intel Insider!
... humans, as a whole, are a pretty messed up bunch.
[Citation Needed].
I've found it much more fruitful to view my fellow travelers on this tiny ball of mud to actually be pretty benign, for the most wanting simply to live their lives as best they can. Other than the few aberrations (sociopaths, psychopaths,and other variations of "path"), the only messed-up thing about us is that we have somehow allowed to exist (or have actively created) societies that mis-allocate resources, allow the most venal among us to rise to positions of power, and do not tend to promote policies that could help keep us from procreating to the extent that we must rape the planet (and each other) to survive. As such, I believe that the main treatment should be on the creation of societies that do not have these flaws.
You know, TV used to be simple. You brought one home, you plugged it into the wall, hooked up an antenna, and you had your choice of three stations (maybe four, if you had one of those "educational" channels"). And although most of the programming wasn't stellar (Mr. Ed, I'm looking at you!), it was at least something that had pictures along with the sound.
The came color TV. Again, simple... Well, sometimes people looked a little too orange or green, but you know, Star Trek made green chicks sexy.
Then along came cable. A bit more complex, but since most of the installation work was done by "the cable guy" (even though you did have to wait the entire day for him), it was still understandable - you changed the antenna connection to a connection to a box installed and owned by the cable company. So now you had thirty or forty channels, even though you had to suffer with two remotes (and they fixed that when the "cable ready" TVs came out) - but you still had a lot of the stuff that was worth watching.
But TV started dying the day the video recorder came along. Sure, you could rent a movie from the local video outlet (Porn even!), and look at it. And, if you were smart enough, you could even figure out how to set the time right and record a TV show that you might not be home for. However, you now had (at least) two remotes, figuring out how to get signals from the VCR to the TV and from the cable to both of the units, and things were not so simple. But when you got all this stuff hooked up, you noticed that the number of items you actually wanted to watch on TV weren't quite as large as it had been.
And then came DVDs. But, since there were still things available only on tape, you had to figure out how to hook up the DVD player to the rest of your system. You needed a TV with multiple video inputs. And now you had three remotes. Or maybe you sprang for one of the "universal" remotes, which were never quite as universal (or easy to program) as they claimed to be. So now you might have three or four remotes which you had to futz around with for five minutes before you got everything going right. But oddly enough, the number of TV shows you actually wanted to watch was diminishing at an alarming rate (not that you ever saw the beginning of any of them, because you were futzing with the remote).
Of course, along the way we bought TVs with larger screens. Some folks had projectors put into their houses so that their living rooms started looking like theaters. In fact, said the equipment execs, "TV is not enough! You must have a Home Theater System!" And so it was said; and so it was done (though to be honest, the sound coming out of our old TV systems was getting a little tinny). So we bought 5.1 surround systems, which needed to be "integrated" into our current systems (because simply "hooking up something" was long behind us). And, lo! For our efforts we were rewarded with... another remote! But oddly enough, the home theater seemed to sit silent much of the time, because by then, we had gotten laptops and, save for the occasional movie that we rented (which, to be fair, were often watched by ourselves on the laptop), there really wasn't anything to watch on TV.
I've left off a lot of other stuff, like DVRs, internet-ready TV, etc. But the reality is this - people long for the simplicity of the old days of the TV. They want to bring home a single box, make a minimal number of connections to it (hopefully, at most, a cable connection and a few speakers) and watch movies, TV shows, a video from the internet and (occasionally) time shift and/or save these items for later perusal. And they want one (eins, uno, ichi) remote that controls it all. Given the current level of media integration, it should not be difficult for someone to provide this. But it seems to elude most of the equipment manufacturers and/or content providers.
But, all of this being said, if something like this would come together, I'd expect it from Apple first, Sony (when partnered with a cable provider) second and, from Microsoft, about fiftieth. And Microsoft would still screw it up by trying to put a Windows UI on it...
Even with concept albums, the songs need to be good enough to stand on their own. That's one reason why I'm not bothered by individual tracks being released from the legendary Floyd albums.
Yes, with all songs taken together, the albums "Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here", and "Animals" are insanely good and provide an interesting flow. But all of the songs on those albums are just this side of genius even when taken one-by-one.
On the other hand, if you listen to "The Wall"... a good 30% of those songs suck - they can't stand on their own outside the album structure. Same with the earlier Floyd releases like "Ummagumma" (Does anyone who isn't stoned - or a drummer - actually like "Several Species of Small Furry Animals"?) and "Meddle" (I love "Echos", but "Seamus" - which I think was just on the US release - is just weird for the album). And, God knows, back in the Barrett days, they were trying to make singles. And a lot of the other songs on those albums downright sucked.
Bottom line, if an "artist" is fighting to keep his "concept" together, you know he or she is saying that half the album sucks and is fighting for the addition $5 or so selling the entire album and not just the two or three good tracks therefrom gives.
But the number that we have discovered has no bearing whatsoever on the amount or variety of undiscovered flora, at all.
Not necessarily true. One can build a probabilistic model based on discovery percentage in well-charted areas, agreement between discovery percentages in well-charted areas to see how closely the discovery effort correlates with an "actual number", and then adjust for less-well-charted areas. If one wishes to get fancier, one could adjust for biome "quality" and species density. One could cross-check with a model of "discoveries/active biologist-year" assuming that the density of unknown species was decreasing much faster than new species were evolving. The bottom line is that one can probably get a pretty good estimate of the number of unknown species. Computational biology and statistics have gotten pretty accurate.
Pretty much the only thing it takes to move from statist communism (i.e. any form of Marxism) to fascism is to allow private property - as that is the only major difference between the two.
What!? According to right-wingers, economic freedom breeds political freedom. That's one of the reasons why "globalism is a good thing (TM)". The Chinese must not be doing it right!
While you are at it, how about learning a little about what American Conservatives actually believe.
Then, to appropriate the words of another of your tribe (or fellow travelers thereof), why don't you "refudiate" the so-called "Conservatives" that practice verbal terrorism?
Or how it was originally passed by liberals as a "soak the rich" amendment (class warfare at its finest)...
And what's wrong with that? It seems we already have an undeclared "class war" and the rich are winning because idiots say that "class warfare" is wrong - it hasn't stopped the rich from kicking the poor. If you can broker a "peace" in this war (something that we haven't managed to do since... well, forever) then more power to you. But, when your in the middle of a war, there are only the victors and the dead. Personally, I want to be on the winning side.
...those of us who want the internet to remain open to innovation and freedom of expression have to help educate them before the debate can really be held.
To debate, you first need people who are open to debate and rational argument. The bribed people on both sides are neither. They don't want to debate, they want to have their way. Debating, in this case, is only a distraction. Thinking you can educate them is either misguided or hubris of the highest order.
Face up to the fact that no matter how awesome your software is, it's going to fail.
As any good programmer knows, failure is not an option. If software fails it is because of misuse, foreign (read "anyone who isn't me") programming staff, or failure to RTFM. Please do not bother us with your petty problems and See Figure 1. Understand this and your life as an admin will be forever simpler.
...even though I usually spell things correctly, lose/loose is one that I find myself correcting frequently as I write.
The point is that you do correct it. Most of the folks around here seem to either have been too lazy to learn the difference or are too lazy to give a rat's ass.
Yeah, except you forgot the part where McCain grabbed back his $20 because he changed his mind and started kicking the homeless guy because he was shiftless (as most R's think homeless people are).
... because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking actions which implied that certain risky actions were being guaranteed against failure by the government.
Yes, and that explains why foreign real estate markets crashed, too.
A nice right-wing talking point not born out by the facts. In fact, FNMA and FMCC did not start taking large percentages of high risk loans until well after private firms did. And why did they? Yes, politicians on the left were asking them to make homes more affordable. What is missed by the conservatards is that politicians on the right were doing the same thing - they called it spreading the American Dream - and they thought that if the GSEs were raking in the kind of money that Countrywide, et al. were, they wouldn't need to fund them at as high a level. So yeah, blame them all you want - you'll be stupid doing so, but go ahead.
There is no serious radioactive danger from the plant, at least compared to other substances in the plant, such as HF.
Yeah, you're right enough about that. It's just that the general public doesn't know quite how nasty HF really is. So the fact that the media is riling up people about radioactivity doesn't bother me because HF is worse.
Uh, no. It isn't. It means that you have to pay the same amount that a union member would have to pay for the benefits that union bargaining provides you. This is absolutely different from being a member of the union.
The fact that you don't see that being or not being a union member (i.e., membership is a binary set - yes/no - no shades of gray here) is completely separate from whether or not you have to pay money for something that benefits you (again, a completely separate binary, yes/no issue) is rather strange. Simply paying for a benefit does not mean you support or are a member of the organization providing the benefit. My employer contracts with an insurance company to help employees pay for health care. I make monthly payments to said insurance company. Am I a member of the insurance company? No. Just a subscriber to its system - and only because my employer elected to bargain with this particular insurance company. Do I support my insurance company's actions beyond their payment of my health care providers - very damned unlikely.
Membership money, services == money. The only one having a comprehension issue with this is you.
Slashdot Mirror
Tru' dat. You don't get between an Icelander and his fish. What the hell was the EU thinking?
Think of it as an armoured truck carrying the movie from the Internet to your display, it keeps the data safe from pirates...
You wouldn't want those nasty pirates to hijack your data and replace little Susie's episode of Dora the Explorer with donkey porn, would you? Think of the children! Dear God, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! Thank you, Intel, for the safe and secure armored truck of Intel Insider!
... humans, as a whole, are a pretty messed up bunch.
[Citation Needed].
I've found it much more fruitful to view my fellow travelers on this tiny ball of mud to actually be pretty benign, for the most wanting simply to live their lives as best they can. Other than the few aberrations (sociopaths, psychopaths,and other variations of "path"), the only messed-up thing about us is that we have somehow allowed to exist (or have actively created) societies that mis-allocate resources, allow the most venal among us to rise to positions of power, and do not tend to promote policies that could help keep us from procreating to the extent that we must rape the planet (and each other) to survive. As such, I believe that the main treatment should be on the creation of societies that do not have these flaws.
You know, TV used to be simple. You brought one home, you plugged it into the wall, hooked up an antenna, and you had your choice of three stations (maybe four, if you had one of those "educational" channels"). And although most of the programming wasn't stellar (Mr. Ed, I'm looking at you!), it was at least something that had pictures along with the sound.
The came color TV. Again, simple... Well, sometimes people looked a little too orange or green, but you know, Star Trek made green chicks sexy.
Then along came cable. A bit more complex, but since most of the installation work was done by "the cable guy" (even though you did have to wait the entire day for him), it was still understandable - you changed the antenna connection to a connection to a box installed and owned by the cable company. So now you had thirty or forty channels, even though you had to suffer with two remotes (and they fixed that when the "cable ready" TVs came out) - but you still had a lot of the stuff that was worth watching.
But TV started dying the day the video recorder came along. Sure, you could rent a movie from the local video outlet (Porn even!), and look at it. And, if you were smart enough, you could even figure out how to set the time right and record a TV show that you might not be home for. However, you now had (at least) two remotes, figuring out how to get signals from the VCR to the TV and from the cable to both of the units, and things were not so simple. But when you got all this stuff hooked up, you noticed that the number of items you actually wanted to watch on TV weren't quite as large as it had been.
And then came DVDs. But, since there were still things available only on tape, you had to figure out how to hook up the DVD player to the rest of your system. You needed a TV with multiple video inputs. And now you had three remotes. Or maybe you sprang for one of the "universal" remotes, which were never quite as universal (or easy to program) as they claimed to be. So now you might have three or four remotes which you had to futz around with for five minutes before you got everything going right. But oddly enough, the number of TV shows you actually wanted to watch was diminishing at an alarming rate (not that you ever saw the beginning of any of them, because you were futzing with the remote).
Of course, along the way we bought TVs with larger screens. Some folks had projectors put into their houses so that their living rooms started looking like theaters. In fact, said the equipment execs, "TV is not enough! You must have a Home Theater System!" And so it was said; and so it was done (though to be honest, the sound coming out of our old TV systems was getting a little tinny). So we bought 5.1 surround systems, which needed to be "integrated" into our current systems (because simply "hooking up something" was long behind us). And, lo! For our efforts we were rewarded with... another remote! But oddly enough, the home theater seemed to sit silent much of the time, because by then, we had gotten laptops and, save for the occasional movie that we rented (which, to be fair, were often watched by ourselves on the laptop), there really wasn't anything to watch on TV.
I've left off a lot of other stuff, like DVRs, internet-ready TV, etc. But the reality is this - people long for the simplicity of the old days of the TV. They want to bring home a single box, make a minimal number of connections to it (hopefully, at most, a cable connection and a few speakers) and watch movies, TV shows, a video from the internet and (occasionally) time shift and/or save these items for later perusal. And they want one (eins, uno, ichi) remote that controls it all. Given the current level of media integration, it should not be difficult for someone to provide this. But it seems to elude most of the equipment manufacturers and/or content providers.
But, all of this being said, if something like this would come together, I'd expect it from Apple first, Sony (when partnered with a cable provider) second and, from Microsoft, about fiftieth. And Microsoft would still screw it up by trying to put a Windows UI on it...
Even with concept albums, the songs need to be good enough to stand on their own. That's one reason why I'm not bothered by individual tracks being released from the legendary Floyd albums.
Yes, with all songs taken together, the albums "Dark Side of the Moon", "Wish You Were Here", and "Animals" are insanely good and provide an interesting flow. But all of the songs on those albums are just this side of genius even when taken one-by-one.
On the other hand, if you listen to "The Wall"... a good 30% of those songs suck - they can't stand on their own outside the album structure. Same with the earlier Floyd releases like "Ummagumma" (Does anyone who isn't stoned - or a drummer - actually like "Several Species of Small Furry Animals"?) and "Meddle" (I love "Echos", but "Seamus" - which I think was just on the US release - is just weird for the album). And, God knows, back in the Barrett days, they were trying to make singles. And a lot of the other songs on those albums downright sucked.
Bottom line, if an "artist" is fighting to keep his "concept" together, you know he or she is saying that half the album sucks and is fighting for the addition $5 or so selling the entire album and not just the two or three good tracks therefrom gives.
Any movie where James Brolin has to eat a sanke is awesome.
But the number that we have discovered has no bearing whatsoever on the amount or variety of undiscovered flora, at all.
Not necessarily true. One can build a probabilistic model based on discovery percentage in well-charted areas, agreement between discovery percentages in well-charted areas to see how closely the discovery effort correlates with an "actual number", and then adjust for less-well-charted areas. If one wishes to get fancier, one could adjust for biome "quality" and species density. One could cross-check with a model of "discoveries/active biologist-year" assuming that the density of unknown species was decreasing much faster than new species were evolving. The bottom line is that one can probably get a pretty good estimate of the number of unknown species. Computational biology and statistics have gotten pretty accurate.
because I'm sure she's a nice person in the right context
[citation needed]
Pretty much the only thing it takes to move from statist communism (i.e. any form of Marxism) to fascism is to allow private property - as that is the only major difference between the two.
What!? According to right-wingers, economic freedom breeds political freedom. That's one of the reasons why "globalism is a good thing (TM)". The Chinese must not be doing it right!
Because that's the word's connotation.
Only in the wacky Libertarian mind.
If you're on any sort of geek-dominated subject, there are no girls let alone in short skirts!
And, if there are, you wish they weren't!
Here. But at least you waited almost a month, rather than a couple days! Maybe Slashdot is getting better...
While you are at it, how about learning a little about what American Conservatives actually believe.
Then, to appropriate the words of another of your tribe (or fellow travelers thereof), why don't you "refudiate" the so-called "Conservatives" that practice verbal terrorism?
... why liberals didn't just turn around and ask why privately run death panels for profit were better than democratically elected death panels.
Several did. They got labeled as "shrill" and were then ignored by the media. I guess it's fine to lie, but calling out a liar makes you shrill.
Or how it was originally passed by liberals as a "soak the rich" amendment (class warfare at its finest)...
And what's wrong with that? It seems we already have an undeclared "class war" and the rich are winning because idiots say that "class warfare" is wrong - it hasn't stopped the rich from kicking the poor. If you can broker a "peace" in this war (something that we haven't managed to do since... well, forever) then more power to you. But, when your in the middle of a war, there are only the victors and the dead. Personally, I want to be on the winning side.
...those of us who want the internet to remain open to innovation and freedom of expression have to help educate them before the debate can really be held.
To debate, you first need people who are open to debate and rational argument. The bribed people on both sides are neither. They don't want to debate, they want to have their way. Debating, in this case, is only a distraction. Thinking you can educate them is either misguided or hubris of the highest order.
... now we should be concerned because the magnetic pole is "rapidly" heading towards the geographic pole?
Yes, because the magnetic pole being in Canada was one of the last interesting things about the country. What will they have left?
as if any programmer ever wants to do that
Got that right!
Face up to the fact that no matter how awesome your software is, it's going to fail.
As any good programmer knows, failure is not an option. If software fails it is because of misuse, foreign (read "anyone who isn't me") programming staff, or failure to RTFM. Please do not bother us with your petty problems and See Figure 1. Understand this and your life as an admin will be forever simpler.
XOX,
Your most awesome programming staff
... the other duck with Bert in the bedroom...
That was no duck! That was Big Bird! And, now, Bert knows why he's called "Big".
...even though I usually spell things correctly, lose/loose is one that I find myself correcting frequently as I write.
The point is that you do correct it. Most of the folks around here seem to either have been too lazy to learn the difference or are too lazy to give a rat's ass.
Dumb right-wing joke
Yeah, except you forgot the part where McCain grabbed back his $20 because he changed his mind and started kicking the homeless guy because he was shiftless (as most R's think homeless people are).
... because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking actions which implied that certain risky actions were being guaranteed against failure by the government.
Yes, and that explains why foreign real estate markets crashed, too.
A nice right-wing talking point not born out by the facts. In fact, FNMA and FMCC did not start taking large percentages of high risk loans until well after private firms did. And why did they? Yes, politicians on the left were asking them to make homes more affordable. What is missed by the conservatards is that politicians on the right were doing the same thing - they called it spreading the American Dream - and they thought that if the GSEs were raking in the kind of money that Countrywide, et al. were, they wouldn't need to fund them at as high a level. So yeah, blame them all you want - you'll be stupid doing so, but go ahead.
Blah, blah, blah,...wonderful garden... blah, blah, blah...
Is there a car analogy stuck in here somewhere?
There is no serious radioactive danger from the plant, at least compared to other substances in the plant, such as HF.
Yeah, you're right enough about that. It's just that the general public doesn't know quite how nasty HF really is. So the fact that the media is riling up people about radioactivity doesn't bother me because HF is worse.
Uh, no. It isn't. It means that you have to pay the same amount that a union member would have to pay for the benefits that union bargaining provides you. This is absolutely different from being a member of the union.
The fact that you don't see that being or not being a union member (i.e., membership is a binary set - yes/no - no shades of gray here) is completely separate from whether or not you have to pay money for something that benefits you (again, a completely separate binary, yes/no issue) is rather strange. Simply paying for a benefit does not mean you support or are a member of the organization providing the benefit. My employer contracts with an insurance company to help employees pay for health care. I make monthly payments to said insurance company. Am I a member of the insurance company? No. Just a subscriber to its system - and only because my employer elected to bargain with this particular insurance company. Do I support my insurance company's actions beyond their payment of my health care providers - very damned unlikely.
Membership money, services == money. The only one having a comprehension issue with this is you.