Seriously, name something better...you don't have to use the default interface if you don't want to (I don't), but you are really missing out by not using a modern IDE. I used to have the same view as you, but now I would never willingly go back to an environment without intellisense, refactoring, project and build management, and all of the rest. Its just too much hassle to do all of that stuff manually. I am going to take a wild guess that your favorite text editor for coding is...Emacs, right? or wait no...VI ah VI only the *true* Linux coders can handle the pain dished out by VI...hehe yeah.
This is all well and good, but do you want to know the real reason why Microsoft continues to maintain their stranglehold? Have you ever tried to develop software for open source platforms or mac or anything else besides Windows? If there is one thing that Microsoft does well it is software development kit and tool support with their Visual Studio products and massive documentation and knowledge base on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). However, before you confuse me with the other Microsoft shills, let me just say that I agree that Linux is a better OS with a better design and superior performance and I would like nothing better than to switch, but I just cannot do it because the developer tools on the Microsoft platform are just too damn good to give up. Steve Ballmer may be an idiot, but he was right about one thing...its the developers. If you can get developers interested in your platform with good quality tools and support then all of the rest, software and users will follow. The one area where Microsoft has always been quick to respond to competitive threats was in the area of software development tools because they knew that if they lost the developers then they would loose their monopoly. If you don't believe that then look at their own leaked memos where they talk about "developer mindshare" and getting their tools into all of the computer science programs everyone on earth. If Linux wants to strike a blow to Microsoft then the surest way to get there is to ramp up the competition for developers (and don't tell me that Eclipse is as good as Visual Studio because its not). I would like to have my programs run on lots of platforms, but as long as Microsoft keeps kicking butt in the developer tools and support market I just cannot bring myself to give up Visual Studio and.NET.
The best bet for getting ALL channels on your PC is still the analog hole.
The analog hole (at least for the premium channels) is going the way of the dodo in the not to distant future when they cut off analog broadcasts and begin transitioning people to HDTV with all of those set top boxes (for those who don't know or care what HDTV is or just want to keep their coax television and have it work). Once the transition has begun the cable monopolies will move rapidly to reduce the number of channels that their set top box will output to their legacy analog television customers both to push people into buying more premium packages and reclaim the ground they lost starting in the late 1970s with the widespread introduction of the VCR and continuing on to this day with recordable DVD, SVCD, DVRs, etc...This will also push people into buying new digital HDTV television sets and complete the unholy alliance of closed DRM format with end-to-end hardware control (no analog holes). So yeah, you may still have your analog Linux DVR, but there will be no more analog cable content (that is worth a crap) to record.
In short, if you want to use a homebrew PVR, you are srewed and limited to over the air HD or non-encrypted QAM channels...
Is the encryption for the premium channels on a per subscriber basis, each subscriber has a different key and separate digital cable data stream sent to their house with the channels they paid for encrypted with their key OR are the encrypted channels broadcast in common with a common key for all of the subscribers in the neighborhood who paid for the premium stuff? If it is the later and not the former then it might be possible to reverse engineer the decoder box and decode the channels for free (open source hardware! learn to solder and read circuit diagrams!) (like people do with satellite equipment). It would be interesting to know which.
Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me, but what is to stop some company in China, or Europe, or somewhere else where US laws apply in name only (i.e. there is some trade agreement or treaty on 'intellectual property' but the foreign producers simply ignore it when it is inconvenient) from producing and selling third party hardware which does not recognize a 'broadcast flag' or any other junk that the government and the cable monopoly lobbyists come up with?
The torch of knowledge has a way of surviving, albeit at times just barely, the vicissitudes of history and even if it does not there are always, given a long enough period of time, those who are willing to risk the ire of the dogmatic powers of their day to rediscover the knowledge that has been lost. The library of Alexandria, with all of its knowledge, was burned to the ground to fuel bathhouses full of drunken, rowdy, and illiterate barbarians. The inquisition burned hundreds of non-religious books and sentenced Galileo to house arrest for suggesting that not every body in the heavens revolved around the Earth. All of the prerequisites, from the standpoint of basic scientific principles, for an industrial revolution were in place in the Ancient world, but then we had the fall of the Roman Empire and the dark ages. If history is any guide then our own civilization will someday fall and our descendants may be a long time in getting back to where we are today. In many ways we have advanced remarkably as a species, but at the same time we have been unable to escape the violent proclivities of our ancestors (as evidenced by the Global War on Terror and the progressive gains being made by fundamentalists of every stripe the whole world over). The point here is that the truth has a way of coming to light, no matter how many times or how aggressively the opponents of that truth attempt to suppress it. Let people believe as they wish and the truth will take care of itself...eventually.
I guess what I fail to understand is why slashdotters are so reactionary to such stories.
Because the politicians have a long history of using such fears, legitimate though they may be, to reduce the rights of *everyone* on a global scale in order to protect a few people from possibly getting hurt. If you want to use filtering software then go ahead, that is your right as a parent, but with politicians one thing leads to another and pretty soon you have nationwide censorship at the backbone level whereby big brother is blocking websites for everyone based upon what some group of political elites decides is acceptable and unacceptable. The people who argue along the lines of, "well it cost us billions of dollars and we had to shred the constitution, but at least a couple of children were saved from being slightly hurt and my job as a parent is easier..." really burn me up. They have no freaking idea of the value of what generations of our fathers fought and died for...sad really. Your seven year old will survive his first sighting of a naked breast of perhaps even some bush *gasp* on the Internet, but our democracy will not survive the nanny state stupidity being forced upon us by the politicians.
The wise parent realizes that he cannot shelter his children completely from the world and so he begins, as soon as they are able to understand spoken language, to explain to them the way that the world works in ways that they can understand, gradually building their awareness and maturity as their age and cognitive ability advance to grasp with increasing sophistication that which he is telling them. To say that, "I will use whatever tool that I can, however imperfect and however much it harms everyone else, because it helps me, even if only slightly, protect my child from harm" is the same as saying to everyone else in society, "to hell with you and any rights that you might have, if they inconvience me as parent, even in the slightest." Is it any wonder that we as a society are raising self centered and bratty kids who think that the world is their oyster and have no work ethic? So you ask why we slashdotters are so reactionary to such stories...well because there is a large group of people out there that believe that they are more equal or entitled to protection under the law then us...and nerds, hackers, computer gamers, etc are an easy, convenient, and attractive target. If we don't stay on top of things then people like that may actually get what they want and that will be a sad day for freedom in this country.
I think downloaded music/movies should do it similarly so I easily can move my collection between computers without any fuzz at all making all my movies/music basically immortal. Good service at a good price is better then pirating.
This is most definitely the future and the few companies (so far) that have tried this are quietly reaping the rewards. The first major game studio to really seriously experiment with high speed downloads linked to a subscription account (for games and services) was probably Valve (the half-life creators) although many other companies, such as Stardock with their games and skinning tools, including smaller companies have been experimenting with this as well. If companies would provide a good reliable service at the right price, as you suggest, stop suing their customers, and genuinely appeal to people to do the right thing (i.e. pay the reasonable fee - key word *reasonable* - for the content) then most people would comply and the remainder (the hard core industrial scale pirates) could be tracked down and targeted for litigation. The problem right now is that the content companies are basically saying, "we don't trust you at all and everyone one of you is a potential thief so bend over and take this DRM now or we are taking our ball and going home." This implies a disrespect, even contempt, for the customer so is it any wonder, when offered these terms on a "my way or the highway" basis by the content companies, that people turn around and walk away? And how do the content companies respond? More lawsuits and even more onerous DRM...brilliant.
All of the problems which you describe could have been easily prevented by fully vesting the pension in an independent trust managed by a professionally licensed and regulated third party management company which has a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to manage the trust in the best interests of the beneficiaries, namely the retirees. If they had done this then it would not have been possible for the corporate raiders to raid the pension fund because it would have been part of a legally independent and separate trust. In, fact the steel workers have been doing this for years now (using trust funds to secure their pensions).
That is false. It actually will protect Europe from Russian, Chinese, NK, and Iranian launches. Why? Because this gets the rockets in cruise phase as opposed to boost or targeting. So anything that is coming overheard or just to the side will be blocked.
It *might* be effective against some short or intermediate range ballistic missiles (and that is a big if) launched against targets in Europe (and this would probably be point blank range for those interceptors since Iran is somewhat further away to the South and East), but it would certainly NOT be effective against missiles launched towards the the North American continent (which would still be in the high acceleration boost phase while passing over the north pole). I don't remember exactly but I am pretty sure that there are no efficient ballistic trajectories to hit North America while passing over Europe within range of the proposed interceptor bases (i.e. if they were going to hit America then they would fire North or East, not West).
The real issue is, how many missiles are we looking to put in? Not many. Russia can easily overrun our number with current inventory.
That is exactly the point that Bush and everyone else is making. It has long been known that missile defense interceptors are not economical in an arms race with an approximately equal adversary (i.e. an adversary who can field at least 1/4 as many MIRV missiles to overwhelm your interceptors, assuming that the interceptors are 100% effective which they are not in any case). The United States, for this reason, elected not to build the single allowed missile defense site under the ABM treaty. We decided that we would rather spend that money increasing the number of offensive missiles instead of protecting a single location at great expense for the following reasons (among others):
1) At the time of the ABM treaty (1972) technology was limited such that the only viable interceptors of ballistic inbound missiles were themselves nuclear tipped (not the direct impact or conventional warhead interceptors that we are now testing). Thus, such a system, even if it worked at all, would be limited to at *most* a couple of intercepts before the radars were rendered totally useless by the detonations of their own interceptors (the rest of the inbounds would make it through before the effects of the EMP dissipated enough for the ABM system to track and fire again).
2) Any use of the ABM system would necessarily involve nuclear detonations above or close to one's own territory (with all of the deleterious effects thereof) making the whole system that much less desirable as opposed to having no ABM system at all.
3) Most of the scenarios that were gamed out very quickly escalated into a full scale attack and/or retaliation by the other side (there really was and is no such thing as a limited engagement between similarly armed adversaries). So what is the point of getting a couple of intercepts when there are a couple of hundred warheads heading your way?
It was (and probably still is) cheaper and better to simply do nothing or maybe build a few more offensive missiles when faced with similarly armed adversaries. Incidentally, the Russians chose Moscow as their allowed ABM site under the treaty, but there has never been a full scale test (for obvious reasons) so who knows if it (the Russian ABM system) actually works (and the Russians probably don't care anyway since the value of such a system is mainly propaganda for the uninformed masses...look we have a defense!). The proposed system does not in any way erode the credibility of the Russian deterrent despite improved interceptor technology (offensive missiles have improved as well or could be in short order which leads us to the next point...)
The simple solution for Russia is to have verification of launchers/missiles
Which they (the Russians) are doing with increased testing and upgrades.
But it would be better for everyone if Bush would spend more time talking to Putin about this.
Which they (NATO) have clearly tried to do, but Putin is using the issue as a pretext to promote his political agenda and curry favor at home.
"Proposals to tax the Internet are gaining steam as state legislators see a giant pot of money just waiting to be dipped into."
I believe it was Milton Friedman who once said something to the effect of, "A man who is accustomed to helping himself to another man's property has an extremely difficult time breaking himself of that habit once he gets used to the idea." Where is it written that whenever there is a transaction, labor, or storage of capital that the government *must* dip their hand into it and pull out some tax? There are legitimate cases to be made for some taxes, particularly for those items which are related to a service that is being rendered by the government (i.e. defense of your private property against foreign aggression and the court system). However, people have become too accustomed to the notion that the government has a *right* to put their hand in their pocket whenever they feel like it and for whatever reason (or lack thereof) that they (the government) can come up with, especially when the hand goes into their neighbor's pocket instead of their own. Taxes also have the rather nasty property of not going away, even when they become anachronisms due to technological advancement for example, once they government gets used to another revenue stream and the programs funded (wholly or partially) by it. It is best not to introduce new taxes in the first place if it can possibly be helped for these reasons.
Blizzard's PVP system isn't really anything to get excited about as it is totally un-interesting outside of arenas.
If Blizzard *really* wanted to make things interesting then they could turn on Global PVP (i.e. anyone can kill anyone else at any time and for any reason without warning) AND make the entire map like battlegrounds (where opposing sides can capture and control areas by meeting objectives). If the capital city of either Horde or Alliance falls then all of the players on the winning side get awards and the world resets to the default start state (the static one that it currently is in) and the cycle begins again (perhaps with time sensitive diminishing returns to prevent alarm clock raids with several 'quick' wins in a row for either Alliance or Horde). That would make the game interesting.
Perhaps an unrelated question but if I may, what company in their right mind, with all of the risk and complexity of the MMORPG genre, would attempt to compete with Blizzard and everyone else (and their brother) in a market where the switching costs (for the players) are high and almost everyone that wants to play an MMORPG already has an addiction to either World of Warcraft or one of the many other titles currently available? The financial risks for a new title to break into such a crowded space are simply incredible (even by game development standards and MMORPGs are the most risky and expensive of them all). Perhaps you are working on a next generation engine for an existing game, but IMHO new development in this market, especially if you work for a small company going through a larger publisher, is just crazy man crazy. You aren't working on the fallout MMORPG for Interplay (or what is left of them) are you?
Lack of skill and training in the work force (including the understanding that there are no general solutions)
You may be shocked then to discover that a substantial percentage of the lecturers and professors in computer science programs at American (and probably foreign as well) universities have little or no *practical* experience in programming large multithreaded applications as well (they know what it is of course and they wave their hands while describing it but the programming details are often left as an exercise for the student to figure out on his own). Is it any wonder that their students, while familiar with the concept, also lack that experience or even practical training? The exceptions are professors whose area of interest or research involves operating systems, real time systems, or linear programming whereas many other disciplines in computer science, being more theoretical in nature, do not rely on practical mulithreaded programming abilities to advance the state of the art (or if it does occasionally come up then there are always a couple of grad students around who can do that grunt work for you in exchange for saying nice things about their research assistance on their PhD evaluations).
Lack of mature development tool to easy the development process (debugging tools especially)
Modern professional IDEs, such as Visual Studio, have really improved in this area (especially in the last five (5) years with the introduction of the.NET Framework) although the demand (the explicit demand anyway), relative to the many other types of development project that occur in the business world, remains relatively speaking quite low. If a particular programmer is able and willing and if the project allows for this type of solution then he may choose a multithreaded approach to solve the problem and if he succeeds then the management never knows that the application is multithreaded (most of them do not understand the concept in any more detail than some vague notion of multitasking anyway). It is rare for multithreaded to be an explicit project requirement, especially in the more common types of business applications. Of course, if the project fails and it is found that multithreading is involved then the progammer might take some heat, so why improve efficiency at the cost of project failure when you can do something that you know will work even if it doesn't hit the theoretical maximum efficiency? That last 10% of performance is frequently too expensive for all but the most critical applications (i.e. those that specify it as a project requirement).
The *real* question is this, if you need someone with a high level of skill in parallel programming are you willing to pay a substantial premium for that person over a more average programmer or do you just expect every programmer who works professionally to have those skills? In the same way that not every lawyer is a constitutional scholar, not every programmer is a multithreading, operating system kernel hacking, real time Jedi programming master. If you want (and need) master Yoda, then you have to be willing to pay him what he is worth.
Google may delist you overnight, after an algorithm tweak, for something completely innocent, and not SEO related at all, that you did on your site. It's unavoidable, even if Google was run by shiny white angels with halo above their heads, an algorithm for a search engine isn't an exact science, and so anybody in any moment can end up as an edge case that Google doesn't handle properly.
If people spent more time creating genuinely *valuable* and original creative content for their sites instead of hiring search engine optimizers to "tweak" their site to take advantage of intermitent "flaws" in the implementation of a proprietary search algorithm then they wouldn't have such a big problem when a change to the internal implementation negates or even punishes their "tweak" and their attempt to game the system backfires in their face. If they chose to rely on black hat trickery to boost their search rank then they shouldn't complain when Google pulls the rug out from under their feet.
The other thing about search engines that people tend to forget is that Google ranks content based upon what everyone thinks in the aggregate about how much a particular site is worth. No doubt, the content producers believe that their content is the best out there, but other web users and therefore Google may disagree. One cannot sue the public, or by extension an agency which aggregates the opinion of the public, simply for not agreeing with the official line of the content producers. Imagine what the world would be like if Mazda or GM or Ford could sue Consumer Reports (and prevail) simply because Consumer Reports gave them a bad review...if they materialy misrepresented facts then there may be a case (although possibly difficult to prove), but you cannot sue somebody (and prevail) simply because it is their opinion that your product sucks and they tell other people who ask what their opinion is. People will choose to believe who they want to believe whether that is Google or Consumer Reports or the content providers.
They don't really make any content themselves, beyond pretty basic local stuff that a smart highschool Junior could write up. Everything else is just wire service stuff.
Even in that area these regional newspapers, like the times, are under attack by an ever increasing number of smaller local publications that specialize in quality local reporting only to the exclusion of national content for precisely the reasons that you and the grandparent state, there is little no money in simply reprinting the AP and Reuters wire service stories. Take Los Angeles for example, which is pretty large city with many distinct regions and districts. You now have small papers, say 16 pages total or less per paper, printing local stories with local ads in a nich which is too small to interest newspapers like the Times (who cannot focus on every special niche area of Los Angeles) but hurts them none the less because people grab these (often free) small rags for their local fix and use Google News for the national wire stories. The newspaper business is heading for a big crunch and everyone can see it, even Warren Buffet and Jim Crammer both agree on that one...and how often do *those* two guys agree on anything (for those of you who don't know they are pretty much polar opposites in the investing world).
So camping a trial account spammer at the auction house in a major city will net a pretty big payoff in terms of impact vs. time spent, especially since the trial account is free.
This is why all of the servers on the game should be full PvP where anybody can kill anyone else at any time and for any reason whatsoever without warning. This does not necessarily result in the chaos that one might otherwise suspsect since factions and groups quickly emerge to keep the asshats and the spammers in line. That low level trial account spammer would quickly be cut in half by the lvl 50 orc warlord for engaging in such navery in the public auction locations.
# Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
-- See the above commentary on when those inalienable rights kick in...
# No federal funding of abortion, and pro-life. (Dec 2000)
-- Government is not supposed to be promoting particular social agendas
Voted YES on restricting bankruptcy rules. (Jan 2004)
-- Bankruptcy was originally intended to be privilege that would be exercised responsibly by the citizens. Unfortunately however, enough of us proved to be irresponsible enough to ruin it for the rest of us who might need it at some point in our lives for legitimate reasons. The specifics of the bill in question are debatable, but pretty much everyone agreed that *some* type of reform was needed to reign in the freeloaders.
Voted YES on protecting the Pledge of Allegiance. (Sep 2004)
-- In the words of Justice Rehnquist,
"To give the parent of such a child a sort of 'heckler's veto' over a patriotic ceremony willingly participated in by other students, simply because the Pledge of Allegiance contains the descriptive phrase 'under God,' is an unwarranted extension of the establishment clause, an extension which would have the unfortunate effect of prohibiting a commendable patriotic observance"
Voted YES on vouchers for private & parochial schools (AKA religious schools)
-- As Milton Friedman said, "Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely or frugally as he spends his own." It is well known that us Libertarians have long supported the school voucher program as the best solution to the problems of our public school system. Here in California we should be getting air-conditioned business park type campuses with community college professors for the amount of money that we are spending, but instead we get poorly motivated and less skilled teachers (there are a few diamonds in the rough, but they are the exception not the rule), peeling paint, and leaking roofs. Who cares more about the quality of education that our children receive? The parents or the teachers union (don't strain your brain answering that one)?
Voted NO on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR.
-- Oil is the lifeblood of our economy and we need whatever domestic supplies that we can get desperately. I like environment quality too, but I am not willing to pay *anything* in order to get it.
-- See the above commentary on government not promoting a social agenda
Voted NO on establishing nationwide AMBER alert system for missing kids.
-- See above commentary on limited Federal government powers to legislate...these types of laws are left up to the states.
Rated 76% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
-- It doesn't matter what *other* people think about a candidate when it comes time to vote, but what *you* think. Voting against somebody simply because you perceive it as harming a group which you do not like (especially if you have no other reason for voting that way) is probably irresponsible.
Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006)
-- That is a tough one, very tough indeed. You may take some comfort from the fact that intelligence gathering by the CIA is not intended to build a case against a US citizen that would stand up in court. The CIA doesn't care about prosecuting people, only about gathering...well intelligence to assist us in general foreign policy decisions and to protect us against hostile foreign governments and their intelligence gathering activities.
Rated 100% by FAIR, indicating a voting record restricting immigration. (Dec 2003)
-- See above comment about thinking for yourself...but with regard to immigration it boils down to this, "Uncontrolled immigration into a welfare state cannot be allowed without bankrupting the state." So you either cut all of t
I hate going in there. They never have what I want, the people are idiots the line at the checkout is slow and the parking lot is way to small
Hmmm...I see, well other than that how do you feel about your shopping experience at Fry's? The other funny thing about Fry's is that they usually have ten (10) or more cashiers waiting to process people in the checkout line, even when there are very few or no people standing in the checkout line. Meanwhile the return line is out the door and around the block with a single employee (usually somebody new who isn't very fast) taking returns and issuing receipts for refunds or exchanges. Fry's works best when you know *exactly* what you want to purchase before you enter the store (and preferably exactly where that item is located in the store) and the item is an item which is not frequently returned and relatively speaking a commodity such as RAM, HDD, or basic networking and electronics hardware supplies. If you want any kind of advice, service, or are easily frustrated by a positively byzantine return process then rest assured that Fry's is not the place for you.
Anything else ends up being a bad financial gamble.
In fact, it almost *always* is a bad financial gamble...take cell phone insurance plans for example (most people are probably familiar with those). The last time I purchased a cell phone w/plan I calculated, given the monthly insurance payment and the value of the phone, using the formulas for Expected Value and Present Value (using short term bank CD rates for interest), that the insurance companies figure that there is better than 90% chance that every person who purchases the insurance on their cell phone will end up using it before the insurance company receives payments in the amount of the original purchase price of the phone. In other words, if you believe that your chance of having a total loss on your phone is less than 90% certain (assuming that you don't plan to break it on purpose to collect, which would be fraudulent and is probably why the insurance companies chose this high rate, to cover the costs of the people that do this so that their insurance money wasn't 'wasted') before you have paid an amount equivalent to the phone then you should *not* purchase the insurance. It would be cheaper to simply buy a new phone at full (or probably reduced price, but I didn't even factor that into my calculation so how much *worse* of a deal would the insurance be if we accounted for depreciation of the phone? Probably push that probability over 100% which means that the insurance company wins no matter what happens) price on the off chance that you lose it or it breaks. I would imagine that most consumer product insurance, with the possible exception of really big ticket durable goods like cars, is scaled like this to account for all of the cheaters since most people who buy this type of insurance plan to collect at some point in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, name something better...you don't have to use the default interface if you don't want to (I don't), but you are really missing out by not using a modern IDE. I used to have the same view as you, but now I would never willingly go back to an environment without intellisense, refactoring, project and build management, and all of the rest. Its just too much hassle to do all of that stuff manually. I am going to take a wild guess that your favorite text editor for coding is...Emacs, right? or wait no...VI ah VI only the *true* Linux coders can handle the pain dished out by VI...hehe yeah.
This is all well and good, but do you want to know the real reason why Microsoft continues to maintain their stranglehold? Have you ever tried to develop software for open source platforms or mac or anything else besides Windows? If there is one thing that Microsoft does well it is software development kit and tool support with their Visual Studio products and massive documentation and knowledge base on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN). However, before you confuse me with the other Microsoft shills, let me just say that I agree that Linux is a better OS with a better design and superior performance and I would like nothing better than to switch, but I just cannot do it because the developer tools on the Microsoft platform are just too damn good to give up. Steve Ballmer may be an idiot, but he was right about one thing...its the developers. If you can get developers interested in your platform with good quality tools and support then all of the rest, software and users will follow. The one area where Microsoft has always been quick to respond to competitive threats was in the area of software development tools because they knew that if they lost the developers then they would loose their monopoly. If you don't believe that then look at their own leaked memos where they talk about "developer mindshare" and getting their tools into all of the computer science programs everyone on earth. If Linux wants to strike a blow to Microsoft then the surest way to get there is to ramp up the competition for developers (and don't tell me that Eclipse is as good as Visual Studio because its not). I would like to have my programs run on lots of platforms, but as long as Microsoft keeps kicking butt in the developer tools and support market I just cannot bring myself to give up Visual Studio and .NET.
The best bet for getting ALL channels on your PC is still the analog hole.
The analog hole (at least for the premium channels) is going the way of the dodo in the not to distant future when they cut off analog broadcasts and begin transitioning people to HDTV with all of those set top boxes (for those who don't know or care what HDTV is or just want to keep their coax television and have it work). Once the transition has begun the cable monopolies will move rapidly to reduce the number of channels that their set top box will output to their legacy analog television customers both to push people into buying more premium packages and reclaim the ground they lost starting in the late 1970s with the widespread introduction of the VCR and continuing on to this day with recordable DVD, SVCD, DVRs, etc...This will also push people into buying new digital HDTV television sets and complete the unholy alliance of closed DRM format with end-to-end hardware control (no analog holes). So yeah, you may still have your analog Linux DVR, but there will be no more analog cable content (that is worth a crap) to record.
In short, if you want to use a homebrew PVR, you are srewed and limited to over the air HD or non-encrypted QAM channels...
Is the encryption for the premium channels on a per subscriber basis, each subscriber has a different key and separate digital cable data stream sent to their house with the channels they paid for encrypted with their key OR are the encrypted channels broadcast in common with a common key for all of the subscribers in the neighborhood who paid for the premium stuff? If it is the later and not the former then it might be possible to reverse engineer the decoder box and decode the channels for free (open source hardware! learn to solder and read circuit diagrams!) (like people do with satellite equipment). It would be interesting to know which.
Perhaps someone out there can answer this for me, but what is to stop some company in China, or Europe, or somewhere else where US laws apply in name only (i.e. there is some trade agreement or treaty on 'intellectual property' but the foreign producers simply ignore it when it is inconvenient) from producing and selling third party hardware which does not recognize a 'broadcast flag' or any other junk that the government and the cable monopoly lobbyists come up with?
The torch of knowledge has a way of surviving, albeit at times just barely, the vicissitudes of history and even if it does not there are always, given a long enough period of time, those who are willing to risk the ire of the dogmatic powers of their day to rediscover the knowledge that has been lost. The library of Alexandria, with all of its knowledge, was burned to the ground to fuel bathhouses full of drunken, rowdy, and illiterate barbarians. The inquisition burned hundreds of non-religious books and sentenced Galileo to house arrest for suggesting that not every body in the heavens revolved around the Earth. All of the prerequisites, from the standpoint of basic scientific principles, for an industrial revolution were in place in the Ancient world, but then we had the fall of the Roman Empire and the dark ages. If history is any guide then our own civilization will someday fall and our descendants may be a long time in getting back to where we are today. In many ways we have advanced remarkably as a species, but at the same time we have been unable to escape the violent proclivities of our ancestors (as evidenced by the Global War on Terror and the progressive gains being made by fundamentalists of every stripe the whole world over). The point here is that the truth has a way of coming to light, no matter how many times or how aggressively the opponents of that truth attempt to suppress it. Let people believe as they wish and the truth will take care of itself...eventually.
I guess what I fail to understand is why slashdotters are so reactionary to such stories.
Because the politicians have a long history of using such fears, legitimate though they may be, to reduce the rights of *everyone* on a global scale in order to protect a few people from possibly getting hurt. If you want to use filtering software then go ahead, that is your right as a parent, but with politicians one thing leads to another and pretty soon you have nationwide censorship at the backbone level whereby big brother is blocking websites for everyone based upon what some group of political elites decides is acceptable and unacceptable. The people who argue along the lines of, "well it cost us billions of dollars and we had to shred the constitution, but at least a couple of children were saved from being slightly hurt and my job as a parent is easier..." really burn me up. They have no freaking idea of the value of what generations of our fathers fought and died for...sad really. Your seven year old will survive his first sighting of a naked breast of perhaps even some bush *gasp* on the Internet, but our democracy will not survive the nanny state stupidity being forced upon us by the politicians.
The wise parent realizes that he cannot shelter his children completely from the world and so he begins, as soon as they are able to understand spoken language, to explain to them the way that the world works in ways that they can understand, gradually building their awareness and maturity as their age and cognitive ability advance to grasp with increasing sophistication that which he is telling them. To say that, "I will use whatever tool that I can, however imperfect and however much it harms everyone else, because it helps me, even if only slightly, protect my child from harm" is the same as saying to everyone else in society, "to hell with you and any rights that you might have, if they inconvience me as parent, even in the slightest." Is it any wonder that we as a society are raising self centered and bratty kids who think that the world is their oyster and have no work ethic? So you ask why we slashdotters are so reactionary to such stories...well because there is a large group of people out there that believe that they are more equal or entitled to protection under the law then us...and nerds, hackers, computer gamers, etc are an easy, convenient, and attractive target. If we don't stay on top of things then people like that may actually get what they want and that will be a sad day for freedom in this country.
Kirk: This is the ISS Enteprise of the Terran Empire, lower your shields and prepare to be boarded or we will open fire.
Spock: They are attempting to flee captain.
Kirk: Pursuit course Mr. Sulu! charge photons and lock phasers on target, prepare to fire on my command.
Mr. Sulu: Aye sir, estimated time to intercept 12 seconds.
Uhura: They are attempting to hail us captain, they are offering us a "settlement".
Kirk: No response lieutenant, continue the pursuit.
Mr. Sulu: Now within range captain.
Kirk: Fire!
Spock: (smirking) The target has been destroyed captain.
Kirk: Very well, resume patrol, report all anomalous readings.
I think downloaded music/movies should do it similarly so I easily can move my collection between computers without any fuzz at all making all my movies/music basically immortal. Good service at a good price is better then pirating.
This is most definitely the future and the few companies (so far) that have tried this are quietly reaping the rewards. The first major game studio to really seriously experiment with high speed downloads linked to a subscription account (for games and services) was probably Valve (the half-life creators) although many other companies, such as Stardock with their games and skinning tools, including smaller companies have been experimenting with this as well. If companies would provide a good reliable service at the right price, as you suggest, stop suing their customers, and genuinely appeal to people to do the right thing (i.e. pay the reasonable fee - key word *reasonable* - for the content) then most people would comply and the remainder (the hard core industrial scale pirates) could be tracked down and targeted for litigation. The problem right now is that the content companies are basically saying, "we don't trust you at all and everyone one of you is a potential thief so bend over and take this DRM now or we are taking our ball and going home." This implies a disrespect, even contempt, for the customer so is it any wonder, when offered these terms on a "my way or the highway" basis by the content companies, that people turn around and walk away? And how do the content companies respond? More lawsuits and even more onerous DRM...brilliant.
All of the problems which you describe could have been easily prevented by fully vesting the pension in an independent trust managed by a professionally licensed and regulated third party management company which has a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to manage the trust in the best interests of the beneficiaries, namely the retirees. If they had done this then it would not have been possible for the corporate raiders to raid the pension fund because it would have been part of a legally independent and separate trust. In, fact the steel workers have been doing this for years now (using trust funds to secure their pensions).
That is false. It actually will protect Europe from Russian, Chinese, NK, and Iranian launches. Why? Because this gets the rockets in cruise phase as opposed to boost or targeting. So anything that is coming overheard or just to the side will be blocked.
It *might* be effective against some short or intermediate range ballistic missiles (and that is a big if) launched against targets in Europe (and this would probably be point blank range for those interceptors since Iran is somewhat further away to the South and East), but it would certainly NOT be effective against missiles launched towards the the North American continent (which would still be in the high acceleration boost phase while passing over the north pole). I don't remember exactly but I am pretty sure that there are no efficient ballistic trajectories to hit North America while passing over Europe within range of the proposed interceptor bases (i.e. if they were going to hit America then they would fire North or East, not West).
The real issue is, how many missiles are we looking to put in? Not many. Russia can easily overrun our number with current inventory.
That is exactly the point that Bush and everyone else is making. It has long been known that missile defense interceptors are not economical in an arms race with an approximately equal adversary (i.e. an adversary who can field at least 1/4 as many MIRV missiles to overwhelm your interceptors, assuming that the interceptors are 100% effective which they are not in any case). The United States, for this reason, elected not to build the single allowed missile defense site under the ABM treaty. We decided that we would rather spend that money increasing the number of offensive missiles instead of protecting a single location at great expense for the following reasons (among others):
1) At the time of the ABM treaty (1972) technology was limited such that the only viable interceptors of ballistic inbound missiles were themselves nuclear tipped (not the direct impact or conventional warhead interceptors that we are now testing). Thus, such a system, even if it worked at all, would be limited to at *most* a couple of intercepts before the radars were rendered totally useless by the detonations of their own interceptors (the rest of the inbounds would make it through before the effects of the EMP dissipated enough for the ABM system to track and fire again).
2) Any use of the ABM system would necessarily involve nuclear detonations above or close to one's own territory (with all of the deleterious effects thereof) making the whole system that much less desirable as opposed to having no ABM system at all.
3) Most of the scenarios that were gamed out very quickly escalated into a full scale attack and/or retaliation by the other side (there really was and is no such thing as a limited engagement between similarly armed adversaries). So what is the point of getting a couple of intercepts when there are a couple of hundred warheads heading your way?
It was (and probably still is) cheaper and better to simply do nothing or maybe build a few more offensive missiles when faced with similarly armed adversaries. Incidentally, the Russians chose Moscow as their allowed ABM site under the treaty, but there has never been a full scale test (for obvious reasons) so who knows if it (the Russian ABM system) actually works (and the Russians probably don't care anyway since the value of such a system is mainly propaganda for the uninformed masses...look we have a defense!). The proposed system does not in any way erode the credibility of the Russian deterrent despite improved interceptor technology (offensive missiles have improved as well or could be in short order which leads us to the next point...)
The simple solution for Russia is to have verification of launchers/missiles
Which they (the Russians) are doing with increased testing and upgrades.
But it would be better for everyone if Bush would spend more time talking to Putin about this.
Which they (NATO) have clearly tried to do, but Putin is using the issue as a pretext to promote his political agenda and curry favor at home.
"Proposals to tax the Internet are gaining steam as state legislators see a giant pot of money just waiting to be dipped into."
I believe it was Milton Friedman who once said something to the effect of, "A man who is accustomed to helping himself to another man's property has an extremely difficult time breaking himself of that habit once he gets used to the idea." Where is it written that whenever there is a transaction, labor, or storage of capital that the government *must* dip their hand into it and pull out some tax? There are legitimate cases to be made for some taxes, particularly for those items which are related to a service that is being rendered by the government (i.e. defense of your private property against foreign aggression and the court system). However, people have become too accustomed to the notion that the government has a *right* to put their hand in their pocket whenever they feel like it and for whatever reason (or lack thereof) that they (the government) can come up with, especially when the hand goes into their neighbor's pocket instead of their own. Taxes also have the rather nasty property of not going away, even when they become anachronisms due to technological advancement for example, once they government gets used to another revenue stream and the programs funded (wholly or partially) by it. It is best not to introduce new taxes in the first place if it can possibly be helped for these reasons.
Blizzard's PVP system isn't really anything to get excited about as it is totally un-interesting outside of arenas.
If Blizzard *really* wanted to make things interesting then they could turn on Global PVP (i.e. anyone can kill anyone else at any time and for any reason without warning) AND make the entire map like battlegrounds (where opposing sides can capture and control areas by meeting objectives). If the capital city of either Horde or Alliance falls then all of the players on the winning side get awards and the world resets to the default start state (the static one that it currently is in) and the cycle begins again (perhaps with time sensitive diminishing returns to prevent alarm clock raids with several 'quick' wins in a row for either Alliance or Horde). That would make the game interesting.
You're going to help us Mr. Anderson whether you want to or not...
Perhaps an unrelated question but if I may, what company in their right mind, with all of the risk and complexity of the MMORPG genre, would attempt to compete with Blizzard and everyone else (and their brother) in a market where the switching costs (for the players) are high and almost everyone that wants to play an MMORPG already has an addiction to either World of Warcraft or one of the many other titles currently available? The financial risks for a new title to break into such a crowded space are simply incredible (even by game development standards and MMORPGs are the most risky and expensive of them all). Perhaps you are working on a next generation engine for an existing game, but IMHO new development in this market, especially if you work for a small company going through a larger publisher, is just crazy man crazy. You aren't working on the fallout MMORPG for Interplay (or what is left of them) are you?
Lack of skill and training in the work force (including the understanding that there are no general solutions)
.NET Framework) although the demand (the explicit demand anyway), relative to the many other types of development project that occur in the business world, remains relatively speaking quite low. If a particular programmer is able and willing and if the project allows for this type of solution then he may choose a multithreaded approach to solve the problem and if he succeeds then the management never knows that the application is multithreaded (most of them do not understand the concept in any more detail than some vague notion of multitasking anyway). It is rare for multithreaded to be an explicit project requirement, especially in the more common types of business applications. Of course, if the project fails and it is found that multithreading is involved then the progammer might take some heat, so why improve efficiency at the cost of project failure when you can do something that you know will work even if it doesn't hit the theoretical maximum efficiency? That last 10% of performance is frequently too expensive for all but the most critical applications (i.e. those that specify it as a project requirement).
You may be shocked then to discover that a substantial percentage of the lecturers and professors in computer science programs at American (and probably foreign as well) universities have little or no *practical* experience in programming large multithreaded applications as well (they know what it is of course and they wave their hands while describing it but the programming details are often left as an exercise for the student to figure out on his own). Is it any wonder that their students, while familiar with the concept, also lack that experience or even practical training? The exceptions are professors whose area of interest or research involves operating systems, real time systems, or linear programming whereas many other disciplines in computer science, being more theoretical in nature, do not rely on practical mulithreaded programming abilities to advance the state of the art (or if it does occasionally come up then there are always a couple of grad students around who can do that grunt work for you in exchange for saying nice things about their research assistance on their PhD evaluations).
Lack of mature development tool to easy the development process (debugging tools especially)
Modern professional IDEs, such as Visual Studio, have really improved in this area (especially in the last five (5) years with the introduction of the
The *real* question is this, if you need someone with a high level of skill in parallel programming are you willing to pay a substantial premium for that person over a more average programmer or do you just expect every programmer who works professionally to have those skills? In the same way that not every lawyer is a constitutional scholar, not every programmer is a multithreading, operating system kernel hacking, real time Jedi programming master. If you want (and need) master Yoda, then you have to be willing to pay him what he is worth.
Google may delist you overnight, after an algorithm tweak, for something completely innocent, and not SEO related at all, that you did on your site. It's unavoidable, even if Google was run by shiny white angels with halo above their heads, an algorithm for a search engine isn't an exact science, and so anybody in any moment can end up as an edge case that Google doesn't handle properly.
If people spent more time creating genuinely *valuable* and original creative content for their sites instead of hiring search engine optimizers to "tweak" their site to take advantage of intermitent "flaws" in the implementation of a proprietary search algorithm then they wouldn't have such a big problem when a change to the internal implementation negates or even punishes their "tweak" and their attempt to game the system backfires in their face. If they chose to rely on black hat trickery to boost their search rank then they shouldn't complain when Google pulls the rug out from under their feet.
The other thing about search engines that people tend to forget is that Google ranks content based upon what everyone thinks in the aggregate about how much a particular site is worth. No doubt, the content producers believe that their content is the best out there, but other web users and therefore Google may disagree. One cannot sue the public, or by extension an agency which aggregates the opinion of the public, simply for not agreeing with the official line of the content producers. Imagine what the world would be like if Mazda or GM or Ford could sue Consumer Reports (and prevail) simply because Consumer Reports gave them a bad review...if they materialy misrepresented facts then there may be a case (although possibly difficult to prove), but you cannot sue somebody (and prevail) simply because it is their opinion that your product sucks and they tell other people who ask what their opinion is. People will choose to believe who they want to believe whether that is Google or Consumer Reports or the content providers.
They don't really make any content themselves, beyond pretty basic local stuff that a smart highschool Junior could write up. Everything else is just wire service stuff.
Even in that area these regional newspapers, like the times, are under attack by an ever increasing number of smaller local publications that specialize in quality local reporting only to the exclusion of national content for precisely the reasons that you and the grandparent state, there is little no money in simply reprinting the AP and Reuters wire service stories. Take Los Angeles for example, which is pretty large city with many distinct regions and districts. You now have small papers, say 16 pages total or less per paper, printing local stories with local ads in a nich which is too small to interest newspapers like the Times (who cannot focus on every special niche area of Los Angeles) but hurts them none the less because people grab these (often free) small rags for their local fix and use Google News for the national wire stories. The newspaper business is heading for a big crunch and everyone can see it, even Warren Buffet and Jim Crammer both agree on that one...and how often do *those* two guys agree on anything (for those of you who don't know they are pretty much polar opposites in the investing world).
So camping a trial account spammer at the auction house in a major city will net a pretty big payoff in terms of impact vs. time spent, especially since the trial account is free.
This is why all of the servers on the game should be full PvP where anybody can kill anyone else at any time and for any reason whatsoever without warning. This does not necessarily result in the chaos that one might otherwise suspsect since factions and groups quickly emerge to keep the asshats and the spammers in line. That low level trial account spammer would quickly be cut in half by the lvl 50 orc warlord for engaging in such navery in the public auction locations.
# Voted YES on banning partial-birth abortions. (Apr 2000)
-- See the above commentary on when those inalienable rights kick in...
# No federal funding of abortion, and pro-life. (Dec 2000)
-- Government is not supposed to be promoting particular social agendas
Voted YES on restricting bankruptcy rules. (Jan 2004)
-- Bankruptcy was originally intended to be privilege that would be exercised responsibly by the citizens. Unfortunately however, enough of us proved to be irresponsible enough to ruin it for the rest of us who might need it at some point in our lives for legitimate reasons. The specifics of the bill in question are debatable, but pretty much everyone agreed that *some* type of reform was needed to reign in the freeloaders.
Voted YES on protecting the Pledge of Allegiance. (Sep 2004)
-- In the words of Justice Rehnquist,
"To give the parent of such a child a sort of 'heckler's veto' over a patriotic ceremony willingly participated in by other students, simply because the Pledge of Allegiance contains the descriptive phrase 'under God,' is an unwarranted extension of the establishment clause, an extension which would have the unfortunate effect of prohibiting a commendable patriotic observance"
Voted YES on vouchers for private & parochial schools (AKA religious schools)
-- As Milton Friedman said, "Nobody spends somebody else's money as wisely or frugally as he spends his own." It is well known that us Libertarians have long supported the school voucher program as the best solution to the problems of our public school system. Here in California we should be getting air-conditioned business park type campuses with community college professors for the amount of money that we are spending, but instead we get poorly motivated and less skilled teachers (there are a few diamonds in the rough, but they are the exception not the rule), peeling paint, and leaking roofs. Who cares more about the quality of education that our children receive? The parents or the teachers union (don't strain your brain answering that one)?
Voted NO on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR.
-- Oil is the lifeblood of our economy and we need whatever domestic supplies that we can get desperately. I like environment quality too, but I am not willing to pay *anything* in order to get it.
Voted YES on barring website promoting Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.
-- See the above commentary on government not promoting a social agenda
Voted NO on establishing nationwide AMBER alert system for missing kids.
-- See above commentary on limited Federal government powers to legislate...these types of laws are left up to the states.
Rated 76% by the Christian Coalition: a pro-family voting record. (Dec 2003)
-- It doesn't matter what *other* people think about a candidate when it comes time to vote, but what *you* think. Voting against somebody simply because you perceive it as harming a group which you do not like (especially if you have no other reason for voting that way) is probably irresponsible.
Voted YES on continuing intelligence gathering without civil oversight. (Apr 2006)
-- That is a tough one, very tough indeed. You may take some comfort from the fact that intelligence gathering by the CIA is not intended to build a case against a US citizen that would stand up in court. The CIA doesn't care about prosecuting people, only about gathering...well intelligence to assist us in general foreign policy decisions and to protect us against hostile foreign governments and their intelligence gathering activities.
Rated 100% by FAIR, indicating a voting record restricting immigration. (Dec 2003)
-- See above comment about thinking for yourself...but with regard to immigration it boils down to this, "Uncontrolled immigration into a welfare state cannot be allowed without bankrupting the state." So you either cut all of t
...with CmdrTaco rounding out the ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate.
You forgot Nader or does he fall into the wacko independent category?
I hate going in there. They never have what I want, the people are idiots the line at the checkout is slow and the parking lot is way to small
Hmmm...I see, well other than that how do you feel about your shopping experience at Fry's? The other funny thing about Fry's is that they usually have ten (10) or more cashiers waiting to process people in the checkout line, even when there are very few or no people standing in the checkout line. Meanwhile the return line is out the door and around the block with a single employee (usually somebody new who isn't very fast) taking returns and issuing receipts for refunds or exchanges. Fry's works best when you know *exactly* what you want to purchase before you enter the store (and preferably exactly where that item is located in the store) and the item is an item which is not frequently returned and relatively speaking a commodity such as RAM, HDD, or basic networking and electronics hardware supplies. If you want any kind of advice, service, or are easily frustrated by a positively byzantine return process then rest assured that Fry's is not the place for you.
She told me that she couldn't let me do that.
Did she respond, "I'm sorry Dave, but I'm afraid I just can't do that..."
Anything else ends up being a bad financial gamble.
In fact, it almost *always* is a bad financial gamble...take cell phone insurance plans for example (most people are probably familiar with those). The last time I purchased a cell phone w/plan I calculated, given the monthly insurance payment and the value of the phone, using the formulas for Expected Value and Present Value (using short term bank CD rates for interest), that the insurance companies figure that there is better than 90% chance that every person who purchases the insurance on their cell phone will end up using it before the insurance company receives payments in the amount of the original purchase price of the phone. In other words, if you believe that your chance of having a total loss on your phone is less than 90% certain (assuming that you don't plan to break it on purpose to collect, which would be fraudulent and is probably why the insurance companies chose this high rate, to cover the costs of the people that do this so that their insurance money wasn't 'wasted') before you have paid an amount equivalent to the phone then you should *not* purchase the insurance. It would be cheaper to simply buy a new phone at full (or probably reduced price, but I didn't even factor that into my calculation so how much *worse* of a deal would the insurance be if we accounted for depreciation of the phone? Probably push that probability over 100% which means that the insurance company wins no matter what happens) price on the off chance that you lose it or it breaks. I would imagine that most consumer product insurance, with the possible exception of really big ticket durable goods like cars, is scaled like this to account for all of the cheaters since most people who buy this type of insurance plan to collect at some point in the future.