Strangely, astronomy is a science, though we've never created a supernova of ourselves, or travelled for a lightyear to get a feel for the distance.
I think there is a lot that can simply be learnt by studying and observing and THEN we can start thinking about how to change things.
My father suffered from Multiple Sclerosis; and one of my relatives suffered from Parkinson's -- still, I wouldn't want, just for my own selfish reasons, want to have someone fiddle around with genetics just saying how this might eventually improve treatment of such diseases.
I am not sure, whether this is really such a grand idea -- yes, genetics and cloning hold enormous potential, but I think with the current knowledge of this subject there should be a moratorium on actual experiments (especially on human cells) until we learn more of the background of the whole thing - and especially, until we have some form of agreement on ethical standards about what we want to achieve and how far we are willing to go.
(Note: this is not the "we should leave this to god argument" -- simply because I am agnostic. But somehow I think before we start "playing god", we should at least get to know whatever we can on a theoretical level, before we go about practical experiments on it and decide what should be allowed and what should be off limits... )
I would go further and say even those examples show the most important characteristic:
The push ahead innovation - in this case, on the OSS side. Of course, in a sense it wastes development time, but on the other hand - when are you more motivated to code? When you're working on something nobody else in the OSS world is working on - or if you're working on something that has competition and you want to show off that your piece of software is better...?
I am not afraid of forks, if they are executed well.
Look at some examples we've had in the past:
gcc fork - when the gcc development started to slow down, a new group forked it and the primary thing it did was to speed up development.
emacs fork - emacs had had a notice for ages saying that "X11 support was coming RSN", but nothing happened for quite a while. The Lucid-Emacs (later became XEmacs) happened and within a very short amount of time there was quite a hustle and bustle of activity between the two - Yes, there are some interoperability issues here in that both designed their respective GUI concepts a bit differently. But both evolved at a much quicker pace then if we only had one. (Especially good in this case, was that the lucid/xemacs team decided that sticking to old packages like the age old c-mode wasn't a good thing and that there were better alternatives to be used, and they didn't shy away from using them - much to the advantage of the entire community.
If there should be a linux fork, I am not really afraid of it, since those who will fork it, will know that they will also NEED interoperability (an issue that emacs/xemacs didn't really have in that sense, as the files you edit with them ARE interoperable -- and I don't think a linux fork that will make the formats of binaries / shared libs different, will find much acceptance, unless they also manage to continue supporting the old formats as well (pretty much like you can still use a.out binaries, if you still have the kernel support for it compiled in).
I don't think we should just have a kernel-fork just for the sake of it - but if there are good reasons for a fork, I am not afraid of it - in fact, I'd rather welcome it.
It is kind of strange to see these things happening.
As ridiculous region coding is for DVDs, there I can see a minimal reason (the publishers not wanting a DVD to make it into a market where the movie hasn't even been in the cinemas yet... But as cinema release dates for the big global productions inch ever closer to each other all over the globe, this reason is going away fast - leaving the only "good" thing of the region codings that they can charge more in Europe.
But for an inkjet printer manufacturer - this is pure rip-off. What would I gain by, say, buying an ink-cartridge for a printer that hasn't even been released here from the US? Nothing. I would only waste money.
But - since HP's pricing has gone worse over time anyway, I think it's time to ditch them for good and no longer buy their products... (and just hope that this whole thing doesn't catch on in the printer industry).
Get your own internet domain (and ideally a provider that allows you free use of subdomains) and that problem is solved permanently, as you can assign new addresses for every single contact and purpose. e.g. my (visiting) card has one specific email address I don't give out anywhere else, and since that address only exists in print, it's fairly safe from spam harvesters......similarly, every company I order something from gets an address in the form of companyname.com@biz.mydomain.tld That way, I can easily filter out all business related emails (*@biz.) to one mailbox, and in case one of those starts spamming, I will send every future email to that recipient address to bogofilter without even looking at it any more...
(If you're not allowed sub-domains, it's not too much of a problem either; in that case instead of companyname.com@biz... use something like companyname.com-biz@... That still allows you to procmail.*-biz@... to a business mailbox and somespammingidiot-biz@... straight into bogofilter / the trash...
I'm actually (at the cost of some traffic) using this to help me fight spam...
It's not just that spammers are ignoring these requests, they will actually just merge their lists with the responses (on the off chance that you might try to also unsubscribe some of your other email addresses / or a friend's email address).
In fact, if you enter just a random address in there, you can be pretty sure that this address will get spammed in the future, too.
If you use bayesian filter software, like bogofilter or spamprobe, you can turn this into an advantage. I've actually "unregistered" some previously non-existent email address on my internet domain that I'm not going use anywhere else. Now I know that any email coming in for that address is definitely spam - and can hence use it to automatically improve bogofilter/spamprobe by passing that email from procmail into them with the spam "learn" flags set.
Don't you think that this is something the Chinese might actually LIKE?
If Chinese email to the outside gets blocked on a wide scale, so does email traffic to chinese dissidents on the outside world...
If all of us just block port 25 that will primarily hurt the "little" man in China. Chinese corporations will undoubtedly also have counterparts in Japan, the US, or Europe, which could act as their "main" mail servers so that "proper" commercial email from legitimate Chinese companies will still get through.
What pisses me off is the US's statement that they'll locally block the European system in places they don't want potential "enemies" (read, China), having accurate location tracking.
I wonder how the US would react if, say, China started blocking GPS from certain places to hold back it's enemies. Tibet for example.
Interestingly enough, most of what I have heard of the US blocking plans sounds like they want to block the Galileo signal around China.
To me, this looks like primarily commercial interests, so that they can sell GPS better in that market. If it was to eliminate the possibility of someone to attack the US guided through Galileos positioning, they would need to block the Galileo signal IN THE US (e.g. in the TARGET area, not in the SOURCE area!).
Why should that piss you off? As a citizen of the US, I absolutely DO NOT want a third party to be able to accurately aim a missile at the White House, the Capitol, or a nuclear power plant. These are military assets, not GPL code for the benefit of mankind (the universal GPS was a side benefit, not the purpose).
Isn't this a bit like what RIAA wants when they are seeking to destroy P2P file sharing?
P2P file sharing has legitimate uses (sharing of non-copyrighted material) and illegal ones (sharing of copyrighted content). The RIAA wants P2P (basically) completely forbidden, because of illegal usage.
Galileo has legitimate uses (to aid navigation of civil planes, etc.) and uses that the US doesn't want to see (potentially guiding enemy missiles). And now the US wants to indiscriminately block the Galileo signal in a large part of the world, simply because of the potential that it might be abused, but at the same time locking out ALL perfectly legitimate usage.
I see a lot of parallels here - and it's kind of interesting that tons of RIAA bashing slashdotters would now take over the same position that the RIAA does in the case of Galileo...
Not quite - the original approach makes everything to your domain unreachable. This approach makes it selectively unreachable.
The original approach means that if a trusted source tries to send something to you during the time your domain is down, that mail will fail, too (without the sender being aware, what might have gone wrong).
Also, as for the temporary deactivation and then reactivation of the same address, that is only a partial protection. I still get spam to addresses that are several years old (I only get to see these from some of the luckily more clueless spammers, that openly spam several addresses - since the part before the @ is the same, there is a good chance that I get to see the old address, too. (which has the added bonus that you can trash messages containing old AND new addresses at the same time, because none of my "trusted" sources would do that).
You might entertain another method - if you have an internet domain of your own. Make use of mail-subdomains that you cycle through regularly. And only trusted friends give permanent (or ermanent sub-domain) email addresses.
And as for mailing lists, if you use procmail to filter inbound messages on mailing lists, scan for specific things in it, e.g. don't just scan for the recipient, but also for specific mailing list headers. Anything that falls through this sieve you throw away (or, at least, quarantine it in a separate location).
As I actually learnt 10 finger typing, I actually prefer the trackpoint over mouse / touchpad anytime, simply because with the trackpoint, my hands do not leave the basic starting position (left hand fingers on 'asdf', right hand on 'jkl;' - only the right hand index finger moves, and the thumbs (which usually only deal with the space key) operate the mouse buttons.
This definitely allows the speediest change between mouse and keyboard.
For a time I was contemplating getting one of IBMs external PC keyboards that had a trackpoint - the only reason I never bought them was that the external keyboards only had two mouse buttons...
That is because a lot of (younger) people let buying decisions be controlled by design issues -- a friend of mine has an incredibly loud computer at home - it isn't even a fast or very powerful machine. But the outer design is just "soooo cool". What a moron...
My first laptop was an Thinkpad 600E, and since then I've had 3 more machines (A21P, A30P, T42P), and I wouldn't trade them for anything!
I would sign any "petition"/"begging letter" to IBM asking them to keep their Thinkpad line any day... The premiums they ask for their notebooks are definitely worth it to have their machines!
Also, if I look at my colleagues at work - my T42P is my company notebook, everyone of us just gets the same budget for hardware, and I just spent my whole budget on the machine, instead of buying a notebook, a larger external screen, keyboards, docking stations and the like. Why should I even consider those? The display on my machine is magnificent, and unlike many other laptops I've seen, their machines are optimised for ergonomics; something that can't be said for some Dell notebooks I've had the misfortune of having had to use them for a while. Those are pretty much unusable without an external keyboard/mouse, and if I had the money to buy an external screen for them, I WOULD.
IBM, please come to your senses and keep the PC business. Even if it's profits aren't large - they are a credit to your company's reputation and it can only benefit you to maintain them!
So, you're effectively saying - you may be a slashdot user, and though slashdot is an international forum, stay out of this topic, because you're making sense in some of your points?
Warped seems an understatement for that kind of reasoning...;-)
I'm sorry, but - everybody learns by looking at others, but you explicitly make a point of politics not doing so?
It is an utter fool, who doesn't even bother about potential advice by an outsider - I know that I can't vote in the US, which is just as well, much the same way that you can't vote in Europe (now imagining the latter would really make me shudder - Europe getting overrun by religious zealots).
Have you ever paused a second, how you can call yourself a land of the free, if you let your government draw you into thinking USA Patriot act is a great idea? "America - Land of the Free and Spied Upon" seems a more matching description to me...
The idea, that airline passenger screening programs might prohibit some 2-3% of the population from flying just so that a potential 0.001% of people who might do something bad on a flight (like highjack it), also seems a bit over the top to me - and where's the freedom of those 2-3%?
Besides - do you really think that Al-Qaeda would be stupid enough to select people to carry out missions that would immediately fall within those target groups? Or - that they wouldn't go for something else this time, simply because (a) that's where the "security forces" are bundling their resources and (b) what kind of really symbolical targets are left that planes can even get close to?
Or what's the nonsense that passengers are now barred from taking nail files or nail clippers on board? Where's the danger in those, as compared to someone who would knock you down with a 10 pound Toblerone bar, or break a bottle of duty-free whisky and attack you with that... The latter two are regular carry-on luggage you can buy just before boarding a plane.
Also, what do you think of Al Qaeda's status right now? The war in Iraq didn't hurt THEM - but my guess is that Bush publicly called the war against Iraq a CRUSADE (a term for a RELIGIOUS war), is more likely to have driven loads of willing people straight into Al Qaeda's hands...
Oh - I don't have a problem with my statement in that respect.
There are enough countries that people won't visit, even as tourists, though there is no physical harm to them (i.e. have you met many tourists to countries like North Korea, Simbabwe,...). And the US is taking a similar place to me now...
I won't visit a country that makes it lawful to spy on your own people (USA Patriot act) for such offences as, say, buying a book on Islam, or that says friendship demands you'll blindly follow (that's the corollary when you hear your government basically calling France/Germany "false friends", just because they spoke up what their real opinion was -- a true friend should always be able to tell you, if you're wrong; and you shouldn't call a true friend a false friend, just because he has a differing opinion - even if you think your friend's opinion is wrong).
Besides, having a government that called it undemocratic that Germany stayed out of the war (despite the fact that some 90% of the German population didn't want the war), seems a "tad" off to me -- after all, what's more democratic than to do, what the people actually want?
Granted, it might alienate some people, but while I would have liked Kerry to win, I am happy he conceded - just because I think it would have been wrong to have Kerry win the presidency with a minority in the popular vote - yes, Bush ruled with a minority, but two wrongs don't make a right.
For me, as a foreigner living outside the US, this will simply mean, that I'll stay out of the US for at least another legislative period - as long as those paranoid suckers are in office, I wouldn't even want to enter the US as a tourist.
The only thing I am concerned about right now, is what the new cabinet will look like. If Colin Powell really drops out of the cabinet (and isn't replaced by someone with an equal amount of internationally accepted integrity), the government will lose a lot of its standing to the outside world. I'd give more about what he said, than all the crap that Bush, Rice and especially Rumsfeld "emitted"...
Having used vivisimo for a while, I would say that vivisimo certainly has a lot of potential. The problem the average user has with google, is that google is very good if you have a good idea what exactly you are looking for.
If you only have a word or two to go by, then the clustering really pays off in spades, as it will offer you several routes to follow up in your search results. Very much like, say, kartoo is great in the way that it shows what unites various results.
The problem with kartoo is just that its interface sucks (it by far has the cutest interface, but that alone doesn't make a good search engine).
The problem with vivisimo is that google indexed a lot more pages than vivisimo has so far, hence google often has some results that vivisimo doesn't know about (yet).
BUT - more often than not, vivisimo's clustering helped me to drill down to some very very good search results that didn't rank up highly on google (with the original search).
The first who manages to port gmailfs to their site, and uploads the first 100GB of data to his gmailfs partition gets a free 1TB remote storage account?
Hmmmm.... Hmmmm.... Let's have a look at this gmailfs code again...;-)
But - even if it's a 100GB, gmailfs over that alone could be very interesting...
Though I can't wait for the day, when we'll have the first gmailfs[gmail.com]+gmailfs[hriders.com] RAID-1 setup for backup.;-)
Well, if compression processing is an issue, use a low compression - gzip -1 is a LOT faster than gzip -9; and if DNG is less resource intensive then my guess would be that its compression is also on the "low" end...
But could you clarify what makes PNG *not* good for photography? Also - isn't there some other format that might be better suited and is already present?
Did anyone actually see a good reason for the creation of this particular format?
Does this format offer anything that couldn't be done with PNG?
I see a point of being able to store a picture before the camera's internal software starts working on it ("enhancing" it). But why a separate format? If you wanted to capture additional information for the camera, why not just add something like ID3 tags to an existing format like PNG to add this data?
Well, it depends on what happens afterwards. Government bodies usually request all electronic documents given to them to be in a standard format. If there actually WOULD be an ISO norm format for office documents, you can bet that government agencies (and large companies that exchange documents with them) will want to use such a format. This could possibly even force MS hand into complying with this format (or at least offer REALLY good import/export filters for these formats).
Slashdot Mirror
Ever heard of "theoretical" research?
Strangely, astronomy is a science, though we've never created a supernova of ourselves, or travelled for a lightyear to get a feel for the distance.
I think there is a lot that can simply be learnt by studying and observing and THEN we can start thinking about how to change things.
My father suffered from Multiple Sclerosis; and one of my relatives suffered from Parkinson's -- still, I wouldn't want, just for my own selfish reasons, want to have someone fiddle around with genetics just saying how this might eventually improve treatment of such diseases.
I am not sure, whether this is really such a grand idea -- yes, genetics
and cloning hold enormous potential, but I think with the current
knowledge of this subject there should be a moratorium on actual
experiments (especially on human cells) until we learn more of the
background of the whole thing - and especially, until we have some form
of agreement on ethical standards about what we want to achieve and how
far we are willing to go.
(Note: this is not the "we should leave this to god argument" -- simply
because I am agnostic. But somehow I think before we start "playing
god", we should at least get to know whatever we can on a theoretical
level, before we go about practical experiments on it and decide what
should be allowed and what should be off limits... )
I would go further and say even those examples show the most important characteristic:
The push ahead innovation - in this case, on the OSS side. Of course, in a sense it wastes development time, but on the other hand - when are you more motivated to code? When you're working on something nobody else in the OSS world is working on - or if you're working on something that has competition and you want to show off that your piece of software is better...?
I don't quite see the problem here.
I am not afraid of forks, if they are executed well.
Look at some examples we've had in the past:
gcc fork - when the gcc development started to slow down, a new group forked it and the primary thing it did was to speed up development.
emacs fork - emacs had had a notice for ages saying that "X11 support was coming RSN", but nothing happened for quite a while. The Lucid-Emacs (later became XEmacs) happened and within a very short amount of time there was quite a hustle and bustle of activity between the two - Yes, there are some interoperability issues here in that both designed their respective GUI concepts a bit differently. But both evolved at a much quicker pace then if we only had one. (Especially good in this case, was that the lucid/xemacs team decided that sticking to old packages like the age old c-mode wasn't a good thing and that there were better alternatives to be used, and they didn't shy away from using them - much to the advantage of the entire community.
If there should be a linux fork, I am not really afraid of it, since those who will fork it, will know that they will also NEED interoperability (an issue that emacs/xemacs didn't really have in that sense, as the files you edit with them ARE interoperable -- and I don't think a linux fork that will make the formats of binaries / shared libs different, will find much acceptance, unless they also manage to continue supporting the old formats as well (pretty much like you can still use a.out binaries, if you still have the kernel support for it compiled in).
I don't think we should just have a kernel-fork just for the sake of it - but if there are good reasons for a fork, I am not afraid of it - in fact, I'd rather welcome it.
Benedikt
It is kind of strange to see these things happening.
As ridiculous region coding is for DVDs, there I can see a minimal reason (the publishers not wanting a DVD to make it into a market where the movie hasn't even been in the cinemas yet... But as cinema release dates for the big global productions inch ever closer to each other all over the globe, this reason is going away fast - leaving the only "good" thing of the region codings that they can charge more in Europe.
But for an inkjet printer manufacturer - this is pure rip-off. What would I gain by, say, buying an ink-cartridge for a printer that hasn't even been released here from the US? Nothing. I would only waste money.
But - since HP's pricing has gone worse over time anyway, I think it's time to ditch them for good and no longer buy their products... (and just hope that this whole thing doesn't catch on in the printer industry).
Let me guess, those are missing in the night, right?
At least that would explain my lack of sleep lately...
I'd say it will be "The Internet" alone...
At least, there is one thing in the article that - though it might be a red herring - in this case, I don't believe it:
Have a look at the mobile phone picture in the article:
"
Calling
INTERNET
"
Hmmmm..... A giveaway?
Get your own internet domain (and ideally a provider that allows you free use of subdomains) and that problem is solved permanently, as you can assign new addresses for every single contact and purpose. e.g. my (visiting) card has one specific email address I don't give out anywhere else, and since that address only exists in print, it's fairly safe from spam harvesters... ...similarly, every company I order something from gets an address in the form of companyname.com@biz.mydomain.tld
.*-biz@... to a business mailbox and somespammingidiot-biz@... straight into bogofilter / the trash...
That way, I can easily filter out all business related emails (*@biz.) to one mailbox, and in case one of those starts spamming, I will send every future email to that recipient address to bogofilter without even looking at it any more...
(If you're not allowed sub-domains, it's not too much of a problem either; in that case instead of companyname.com@biz... use something like companyname.com-biz@...
That still allows you to procmail
Benedikt
I'm actually (at the cost of some traffic) using this to help me fight spam...
It's not just that spammers are ignoring these requests, they will actually just merge their lists with the responses (on the off chance that you might try to also unsubscribe some of your other email addresses / or a friend's email address).
In fact, if you enter just a random address in there, you can be pretty sure that this address will get spammed in the future, too.
If you use bayesian filter software, like bogofilter or spamprobe, you can turn this into an advantage. I've actually "unregistered" some previously non-existent email address on my internet domain that I'm not going use anywhere else. Now I know that any email coming in for that address is definitely spam - and can hence use it to automatically improve bogofilter/spamprobe by passing that email from procmail into them with the spam "learn" flags set.
Don't you think that this is something the Chinese might actually LIKE?
If Chinese email to the outside gets blocked on a wide scale, so does email traffic to chinese dissidents on the outside world...
If all of us just block port 25 that will primarily hurt the "little" man in China. Chinese corporations will undoubtedly also have counterparts in Japan, the US, or Europe, which could act as their "main" mail servers so that "proper" commercial email from legitimate Chinese companies will still get through.
What pisses me off is the US's statement that they'll locally block the European system in places they don't want potential "enemies" (read, China), having accurate location tracking.
I wonder how the US would react if, say, China started blocking GPS from certain places to hold back it's enemies. Tibet for example.
Interestingly enough, most of what I have heard of the US blocking plans sounds like they want to block the Galileo signal around China.
To me, this looks like primarily commercial interests, so that they can sell GPS better in that market. If it was to eliminate the possibility of someone to attack the US guided through Galileos positioning, they would need to block the Galileo signal IN THE US (e.g. in the TARGET area, not in the SOURCE area!).
Why should that piss you off? As a citizen of the US, I absolutely DO NOT want a third party to be able to accurately aim a missile at the White House, the Capitol, or a nuclear power plant. These are military assets, not GPL code for the benefit of mankind (the universal GPS was a side benefit, not the purpose).
Isn't this a bit like what RIAA wants when they are seeking to destroy P2P file sharing?
P2P file sharing has legitimate uses (sharing of non-copyrighted material) and illegal ones (sharing of copyrighted content). The RIAA wants P2P (basically) completely forbidden, because of illegal usage.
Galileo has legitimate uses (to aid navigation of civil planes, etc.) and uses that the US doesn't want to see (potentially guiding enemy missiles).
And now the US wants to indiscriminately block the Galileo signal in a large part of the world, simply because of the potential that it might be abused, but at the same time locking out ALL perfectly legitimate usage.
I see a lot of parallels here - and it's kind of interesting that tons of RIAA bashing slashdotters would now take over the same position that the RIAA does in the case of Galileo...
Not quite - the original approach makes everything to your domain unreachable. This approach makes it selectively unreachable.
The original approach means that if a trusted source tries to send something to you during the time your domain is down, that mail will fail, too (without the sender being aware, what might have gone wrong).
Also, as for the temporary deactivation and then reactivation of the same address, that is only a partial protection. I still get spam to addresses that are several years old (I only get to see these from some of the luckily more clueless spammers, that openly spam several addresses - since the part before the @ is the same, there is a good chance that I get to see the old address, too. (which has the added bonus that you can trash messages containing old AND new addresses at the same time, because none of my "trusted" sources would do that).
You might entertain another method - if you have an internet domain of your own. Make use of mail-subdomains that you cycle through regularly.
And only trusted friends give permanent (or ermanent sub-domain) email addresses.
And as for mailing lists, if you use procmail to filter inbound messages on mailing lists, scan for specific things in it, e.g. don't just scan for the recipient, but also for specific mailing list headers. Anything that falls through this sieve you throw away (or, at least, quarantine it in a separate location).
As I actually learnt 10 finger typing, I actually prefer the trackpoint over mouse / touchpad anytime, simply because with the trackpoint, my hands do not leave the basic starting position (left hand fingers on 'asdf', right hand on 'jkl;' - only the right hand index finger moves, and the thumbs (which usually only deal with the space key) operate the mouse buttons.
This definitely allows the speediest change between mouse and keyboard.
For a time I was contemplating getting one of IBMs external PC keyboards that had a trackpoint - the only reason I never bought them was that the external keyboards only had two mouse buttons...
That is because a lot of (younger) people let buying decisions be controlled by design issues -- a friend of mine has an incredibly loud computer at home - it isn't even a fast or very powerful machine. But the outer design is just "soooo cool". What a moron...
My first laptop was an Thinkpad 600E, and since then I've had 3 more machines (A21P, A30P, T42P), and I wouldn't trade them for anything!
I would sign any "petition"/"begging letter" to IBM asking them to keep their Thinkpad line any day...
The premiums they ask for their notebooks are definitely worth it to have their machines!
Also, if I look at my colleagues at work - my T42P is my company notebook, everyone of us just gets the same budget for hardware, and I just spent my whole budget on the machine, instead of buying a notebook, a larger external screen, keyboards, docking stations and the like. Why should I even consider those? The display on my machine is magnificent, and unlike many other laptops I've seen, their machines are optimised for ergonomics; something that can't be said for some Dell notebooks I've had the misfortune of having had to use them for a while. Those are pretty much unusable without an external keyboard/mouse, and if I had the money to buy an external screen for them, I WOULD.
IBM, please come to your senses and keep the PC business. Even if it's profits aren't large - they are a credit to your company's reputation and it can only benefit you to maintain them!
So, you're effectively saying - you may be a slashdot user, and though slashdot is an international forum, stay out of this topic, because you're making sense in some of your points?
;-)
Warped seems an understatement for that kind of reasoning...
Oh the ignorance...
I'm sorry, but - everybody learns by looking at others, but you explicitly make a point of politics not doing so?
It is an utter fool, who doesn't even bother about potential advice by an outsider - I know that I can't vote in the US, which is just as well, much the same way that you can't vote in Europe (now imagining the latter would really make me shudder - Europe getting overrun by religious zealots).
Have you ever paused a second, how you can call yourself a land of the free, if you let your government draw you into thinking USA Patriot act is a great idea? "America - Land of the Free and Spied Upon" seems a more matching description to me...
The idea, that airline passenger screening programs might prohibit some 2-3% of the population from flying just so that a potential 0.001% of people who might do something bad on a flight (like highjack it), also seems a bit over the top to me - and where's the freedom of those 2-3%?
Besides - do you really think that Al-Qaeda would be stupid enough to select people to carry out missions that would immediately fall within those target groups? Or - that they wouldn't go for something else this time, simply because (a) that's where the "security forces" are bundling their resources and (b) what kind of really symbolical targets are left that planes can even get close to?
Or what's the nonsense that passengers are now barred from taking nail files or nail clippers on board? Where's the danger in those, as compared to someone who would knock you down with a 10 pound Toblerone bar, or break a bottle of duty-free whisky and attack you with that... The latter two are regular carry-on luggage you can buy just before boarding a plane.
Also, what do you think of Al Qaeda's status right now? The war in Iraq didn't hurt THEM - but my guess is that Bush publicly called the war against Iraq a CRUSADE (a term for a RELIGIOUS war), is more likely to have driven loads of willing people straight into Al Qaeda's hands...
Oh - I don't have a problem with my statement in that respect.
...). And the US is taking a similar place to me now...
There are enough countries that people won't visit, even as tourists, though there is no physical harm to them (i.e. have you met many tourists to countries like North Korea, Simbabwe,
I won't visit a country that makes it lawful to spy on your own people (USA Patriot act) for such offences as, say, buying a book on Islam, or that says friendship demands you'll blindly follow (that's the corollary when you hear your government basically calling France/Germany "false friends", just because they spoke up what their real opinion was -- a true friend should always be able to tell you, if you're wrong; and you shouldn't call a true friend a false friend, just because he has a differing opinion - even if you think your friend's opinion is wrong).
Besides, having a government that called it undemocratic that Germany stayed out of the war (despite the fact that some 90% of the German population didn't want the war), seems a "tad" off to me -- after all, what's more democratic than to do, what the people actually want?
Granted, it might alienate some people, but while I would have liked Kerry to win, I am happy he conceded - just because I think it would have been wrong to have Kerry win the presidency with a minority in the popular vote - yes, Bush ruled with a minority, but two wrongs don't make a right.
For me, as a foreigner living outside the US, this will simply mean, that I'll stay out of the US for at least another legislative period - as long as those paranoid suckers are in office, I wouldn't even want to enter the US as a tourist.
The only thing I am concerned about right now, is what the new cabinet will look like. If Colin Powell really drops out of the cabinet (and isn't replaced by someone with an equal amount of internationally accepted integrity), the government will lose a lot of its standing to the outside world. I'd give more about what he said, than all the crap that Bush, Rice and especially Rumsfeld "emitted"...
Having used vivisimo for a while, I would say that vivisimo certainly has a lot of potential. The problem the average user has with google, is that google is very good if you have a good idea what exactly you are looking for.
If you only have a word or two to go by, then the clustering really pays off in spades, as it will offer you several routes to follow up in your search results. Very much like, say, kartoo is great in the way that it shows what unites various results.
The problem with kartoo is just that its interface sucks (it by far has the cutest interface, but that alone doesn't make a good search engine).
The problem with vivisimo is that google indexed a lot more pages than vivisimo has so far, hence google often has some results that vivisimo doesn't know about (yet).
BUT - more often than not, vivisimo's clustering helped me to drill down to some very very good search results that didn't rank up highly on google (with the original search).
The first who manages to port gmailfs to their site, and uploads the first 100GB of data to his gmailfs partition gets a free 1TB remote storage account?
;-)
;-)
Hmmmm.... Hmmmm.... Let's have a look at this gmailfs code again...
But - even if it's a 100GB, gmailfs over that alone could be very interesting...
Though I can't wait for the day, when we'll have the first gmailfs[gmail.com]+gmailfs[hriders.com] RAID-1 setup for backup.
Well, if compression processing is an issue, use a low compression - gzip -1 is a LOT faster than gzip -9; and if DNG is less resource intensive then my guess would be that its compression is also on the "low" end...
But could you clarify what makes PNG *not* good for photography? Also - isn't there some other format that might be better suited and is already present?
Did anyone actually see a good reason for the creation of this particular format?
Does this format offer anything that couldn't be done with PNG?
I see a point of being able to store a picture before the camera's internal software starts working on it ("enhancing" it). But why a separate format? If you wanted to capture additional information for the camera, why not just add something like ID3 tags to an existing format like PNG to add this data?
Well, it depends on what happens afterwards. Government bodies usually request all electronic documents given to them to be in a standard format. If there actually WOULD be an ISO norm format for office documents, you can bet that government agencies (and large companies that exchange documents with them) will want to use such a format.
This could possibly even force MS hand into complying with this format (or at least offer REALLY good import/export filters for these formats).