How can these scientists prove this image is not an optical illusion caused by some object between us and it? I find it very hard to believe that an object actually exploded into such a shape, and the fact that the researchers involved do not even mention that as a possibility seems absurd to me.
While the issue with ClearType is clearly not limited to Novell or SUSE (pick your flavor), that does not mean that Microsuck's patents are not an issue. This is an example of software patents affecting any users with a current distro.
While it turns out that Novell did not enable the functionality in their distro, there is still a possibility that they could enable it and claim that the rest of the Linux userbase could not. There is also the problem of sofware patents which do exist, and the fact that the developers of the FreeType package decided to disable part of the code because of the existence of software patents. Finally, there is also the problem of Novell, once again, not coming out and saying that they intended to defend anybody but their "customers", even though Free Software developers from around the world actually contributed their market product to them free of charge.
There was no FUD in the story. A blogger had an opinion that turned out not to be true. Go figure. This is a far cry from the type of marketing based smear campaign that The Beast at Redmond is famous for.
I have to second that. For some reason I regularly forget this. Then I start using someone else's Windows computer, and I suddenly realize how nice my own desktop is. This is also one of the places where Fedora truly outshines Knoppix. KDE's transparent menus are nice, but the fonts are so much prettier in Gnome (Yes, I know I am going to get totally flamed for this;).
However, there is no reason why a firmware update for the hardware player cannot be included on all new titles released. There is plenty of space on a Blu-Ray disk to hold thousands of firmware patches, for every compromised hardware player. So the end users will get updated.
This sounds like a wonderful idea. So, let me get this straight, you want to allow disc manufacturers to be able to rewrite the firmware at any time. This means that anybody that prints a disc can rewrite the firmware to make the player do anything.
"Do you know where that disc has been?"
Even if malicious crackers are not taken into account, what about bugware companies similar to Microsoft? What if there are bugs in the patch due to time pressures at the given disc's manufacturer's office? What if an error in the firmware update causes the machine to behave erratically? Or the update turns the player into a brick? Or the update uses the motors to damage the drive mechanism or even your disc?
What if a permanent commercial was inserted in the firmware and would not go away until the next update?
This corporate remote control crap is the same metality that gave rise to DRM. It is pure stupidity, and it is wrong. Nobody should be replacing anyone's firmware, software, or hardware without the owner's explicit permission (no, copyright holders are NOT software or data "owners"; the person on whose hardware the software or data resides is the owner).
Let us all hope that such firmware updates never come into existence. No one wants to experience another round of Microsoft's now legendary security vulnerabilities.
Special tools make up for stupid web designers who use MSWord or other bloatware to design their sites. MSWindows is hurting the general public yet again.
You have to _chose_ to put large images on your website. It's always been easy to design sites which are lightweight, it's just that numbnutted people persistently chose not to.
Yeah, that is what I was thinking when I read this. Seriously, if people were designing websites properly, it would not matter what the screen size was. Why does bad design have to be made up for by a crapload of extra JavaScript (or *shudder* even Java itself) when HTML is designed to change the text to fit into any window size?
I do not see why there has to be a "mobile web" either. These businessmen are messing up the internet again. When I log on with my phone or my laptop or my TV or even my refrigerator, I want the whole internet, not some small collection of sites some stupid marketing droid at some brainless company decided that I should like.
A couple summers ago, I went to Japan and discovered what 3G is really like. It is the ultimate vendor lockin: Slow download speeds and everything for a price. There is no direct internet access at all. What is the point of higher mobile download speeds if there is no internet access? After all those things companies said about data transmission speeds, a customer cannot even get what the customer wants. The customer gets what the phone company decides to give him. Avoid 3G at all costs, and give your phone company crap every time they try to push it.
I have had full internet access (GPRS) on my phone for a few years now (I have even posted to Slashdot from mobile devices before), so that came as a complete shock. Japan used to be technologically ahead of the rest of the world. Now they are only progressing at being bigger and bigger suckers. Let us hope the rest of the world does not follow their example.
Message to businesses on the Web: design your sites to work with all browsers. It really is not as difficult as people claim. It will be good for your business, and it will be good for the public at large.
Try to see it from their point of view. Lots of anonymous people are pirating music.
Incorrect. According to the decision in the Napster case, what those users were doing had the effect of piracy. The decision did not say that file sharers were pirates per se. Further, regardless of the claims of the RIAA, such activity has yet to be definitively classed as "piracy".
The record labels have given the RIAA the responsibility for stopping this. The only information they have about the pirates is an IP address. Only when they start legal proceedings they get other information from the ISP.
That, of course, supports my original claim which was that they were not choosing their battles carefully. This also supports the claim that they are accusing people of "piracy" that are not guilty. I really could not care less about what responsibility they have to the record lables. The labels' bottom lines do not justify extortion of the public at large (whether or not their business model has been based upon that in the past).
It's not possible for them to 'choose their battles carefully'.
But that is quite precisely what the original post claimed. I was arguing against that, and now you are defending that. That post was defending the RIAA for choosing their battles. Now, you are defending the RIAA by making excuses for them not choosing their battles. Either way, the original post was just wrong.
And what's the point - the idea is to sue people en masse, seek vast damages from the ones you're able to convict, and the publicise that as a deterrent to pirates.
Convict? Name a single conviction that has been produced. As far as I am aware, only two or three of these trials have gone to court. Those cases are all still pending, except one that was dropped after they discovered the defendant was dead. These are also civil cases where "conviction" is impossible. So, who has been convicted? The answer is NO INDIVIDUAL has been convicted or had to pay damages as a result of any court judgement in these cases.
You may not like it, but I can't see that it's a bad strategy, given what information they have and what their goals are.
I do not like it, and it is a bad strategy. First of all, they are businesses, so this bad PR makes everybody more sympathetic to people who do not pay for their music. More and more of the general public is starting to see the RIAA for what they are: a bunch of money hungry thugs running a protection racket. Secondly, given their goals, they are still people, and this sort of amoral behavior is just inhuman. Those four "file sharing students" that were sued did not do anything but set up search engines. For that, they had to each give up their life savings to the RIAA. Poor college students gave up all they had in the world to a bunch of millionare lawyers for creating the SMB equivalent to Google. The RIAA's goals are lying, cheating, and stealing. They lie on DMCA takedown notices. They cheat ordinary people out of their money. And they help the record industry collect monopoly rents, a form of theft.
No, I am sorry. It is impossible to see things from their point of view. They are just too greedy and amoral for me to manage that.
They are still being careful. They can essentially drop any case they want to, without penalty. So they can (and do) still bully anyone they want to, and if they fight back, they simply drop the case unless if there is any chance they would lose.
No, they are not. Aside from the one referenced to in this post, name me a single case that they have dropped. There is a penalty. The penalty is PR. If they admit they are wrong, they admit that they are not perfect, and the public will be more and more suspicious of their activities. They have to say, "See? We were right. All these people were guilty."
Lawyers do not drop cases if there is "any chance they would lose". If that were true, all cases would be dropped because even air tight cases are lost from time to time.
You have to remember also, that they are banking on the fact that defendants will run out of money. Most would if they went to court. So it really does not matter whether the RIAA has a case or not. It is cheaper to settle. In fact, in most cases, its the only way as the court system will pretty much finantially destroy most people.
I do not see what is new here. Cheating has been going on for centuries in Europe and thousands of years in China (this is probably why Chinese people are better at it). Plagiarism and services to supply papers to students who do not want to do their work have always existed.
The only problem is that teachers are less Net savvy than their students. A google search of random sentences in a paper would allow to the teacher to check if the student composed the paper from documents on the Web or plagiarized an entire text. In fact, I have considered writing a Perl script for this purpose. Such a program would be able to quickly assess the number of and relative similarity to various documents on the Web.
As for evaluating students' performance, is this not a teacher's job? Perhaps term papers could be broken into sections. Each would be approved by the teacher, and the introduction and conclusion, based of course on the content of the written sections, should be composed in the classroom like a test. In this way, the teacher could at least be certain the student understood the material. Plagiarism really is not that bad if the student understands. The real problem is when they copy and do not even read what they submit. I remember lots of students in college who did not understand anything their professors were saying but managed to pass every class.
Obviously, honesty is important, but learning is more important, and students cannot be forced to be honest. Teachers need to prove that students know something. If they got their ideas from other people, they still have those ideas. Testing and knowing the students personally allows teachers to know whether or not the student has received the teachers' instruction. Also, even if students do not plagiarise, they need to use the ideas of others. If they make others' ideas their own, they are doing enough.
"What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
No, they are not. They are bullying people into coughing up cash. If they were choosing their battles so carefully, why do they target people without computers? Or old ladys that cannot operate computers? Or minors who cannot be legally accused of maliciously harming them finantially? Or dead people?
The fact is: The RIAA's entire legal assault is based on hot air. They cannot prove anything and they never could. This is why there is so much pressure to settle (At even newer discounted rates for college students!!). They do not want to go to court ever (SCO did not really want to go to court either, and look what happened to them). Court is expensive, and they may be exposed for what they are: a bunch of lying extortionists.
My question is: Once it is proved that the RIAA have no evidence in one case, can all their past cases be called into question? And, more importantly, can they be forced to reimburse all the victims of their scorched earth campaign?
I know. I know. Believing a in a just outcome in our "just"ice system is like believing in the tooth fairy, but one has to hope.
Maybe you
can start
to see the
problem
with having
a screen
that is too
small for
the font
size you
need to be
comfortable
. ..
I do not really blow up my text that big. However, since you mentioned it, weaknessess of the Latin character set are the fault of some long dead Romans. Who needs Mafiarchy anyway (we are already getting a resurgence of that from the RIAA)? So, if you do not like longititudinally restricted writing systems, try Chinese or Mayan (except the Maya who could write are all dead), or maybe Egyptian (dead, too).
Is this talking about the size of the keyboard (which it sounds like), the size of the screen, or the size of the whole device?
It is obvious that keyboards/pads have a minimum size. Fingers limit that. Also, if the keys are too close together, typing is slowed because more than one key is frequently depressed.
The screen is also limited in its smallness by what is comfortable. I use my phone to read books, but I have heard many people claim (who havent tried it, of course) that the screens on phones are too small to read on. In my experience, screen size is not important as the size of the individual letters (or characters) in the text is what is important. Since my current phone allows me to blow the text up to a size that is larger than the typeface on most children's books, I cannot see the problem.
The limitations on the device size probably depend on what it is used for. If it is a phone, it needs to be large enough to be comfortably held for a long phone conversation. Phones that are too small are irritating and easily misplaced. If the device is a PDA, the screen is probably the limiting factor. It should be about the size of a screen and not much thicker. Ideally, this screen should be a size that would fit in your pocket, something that "Pocket"PC's generally do wrong.
If the device were something like a portable computer, with perhaps a bluetooth or WiFi keyboard and screen, there is probably no limit on its smallness. Why not make a USBkey style computer and keep it on your keyring? At 4+GB, such devices can already contain a decent suite of software. Removing hardware links to the device itself would free it from size restrictions. Theoretically, such a device could also be booted from any computer as its hard drive (Knoppix style), so you could take your computer anywhere.
IIRC, the advertised MPG were maximum values, which I have heard are achieved from time to time. It really does not matter, though, because Detroit is still pumping out cars with <20MPG gas mileage. Even the Prius' worst case scenario doubles that figure. So, while it is not a solution to the problem, it is certainly a step in the right direction.
As for the pollutants in the batteries, you certainly have a point. Compressed air is certainly better than battery acid for the environment. Either way, anything that makes individuals less reliant on petrochemicals has to be a good thing.
My friends and I were playing Need for Speed III and Grand Turismo (IIRC) on the old PlayStation 1. We went out and my friend totalled his sports car with us in it. The weird thing was that the accident was just like the ones in the game.
However, it is a lot different when it happens in real life. In the game, you are not afraid you are going to die. You also do not get to watch the sheet metal on the hood crumple or fluids from severed lines spray the windshield. My other friend learned why you should wear seatbelts even in the back seat.
We walked away more or less unharmed, but it could easily have been worse. People who play such games a lot would do well to remember they cannot do these things regularly in the real world and get away with it.
Given all that, I would generally blame the driver and not the game. My friend was definitely a reckless driver to begin with. Whether the game's similarity to reality is a coincidence or an influence is hard to say.
Exactly. If you want it for 'free', get up off your lazy butts and go tape it yourself.
Is that even possible? I was under the impression that the cameras in Congress were controlled by Congress itself and that C-Span had an exclusive license to obtain and distribute that footage. Does Congress allow any US citizen with a video camera to tape its proceedings at any time?
If not, it is obvious that C-Span has no right to exclusivity at all. They probably do not even own the cameras. The public probably does. However, I have no time to check on this assertion as I am off to an appointment. Cheers.
Boeing plans to roll out aircraft remote control systems in a bid to eliminate the threat of terrorist hijackings
So, presumably, there is a system where control of the airplane can be taken over from the ground. How is this safer? With such a system, terrorists -- or whoever might want to fake a terrorist action for political gain -- will have the power to hijack planes from the ground.
As much as I hate to use the term "terrorism" for anything (because it is a blanket term for anything that current leaders of witch hunts deem threatening to their positions), this invention makes possible "armchair hijacking". Well, I guess modern conveniences can be apportioned to any social group nowadays.
As there is no "tamper proof" system, I cannot see how this could be anything but stupid.
"The illusion of safety . .." -- Tyler Durden
Travellers, have fun waiting in line . . . for nothing.
...the owner of the machine can request a developer key which will allow them to modify anything on the system (even remove the daemon).
Who, then, is the owner of the machine? The school (or some other government institution) or the child?
Obviously, most children will not have the computer skills to need this daemon disabled, but kids in Eastern Europe have certainly proven themselves to have such skills. Will keys be issued to compotent kids who request them? Or will the kids only be considered rental clients who have no rights over their own computers?
The other question I have is: Is this system designed to prevent "theft" by the children or their parents? It sounds quite like this is the case.
"Pamela, if you read this, please, give me a call. We just want to chat."
Darl McBride sounds like one of those lying cops in the movies. Does he honestly believe PJ will fall for that? I mean, she has been debunking his lies for years now. I think Darl really is an imbecile.
Re:A slight to EFF?
on
SCO Vs. Groklaw
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
...thanks to the efforts of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco group that defends bloggers.
That was also my first reaction when I read that. It is obviously an attempt to marginalize the EFF by making it look like a stupid hippie organization from SF that defends kooks on the Internet. I always thought the defense of Free Speech was everybody's responsibility, and the Constitution is not exactly new technology.
This should come as no surprise as the reporter is Daniel Lyons (ugh... human resources... what a creep). PJ appears to have gotten after him in this Groklaw article (which points to this Forbes.com article). And has mentioned him in several other articles(no, I am not going to read and comment on all of them for this post -- do it yourself). He refers to PJ's criticism in today's posted article:
Jones also has criticized some journalists who cover the lawsuits, including this reporter, accusing them of being biased in favor of SCO.
As an interesting side note, the reference Groklaw and Forbes articles mention this odd little tidbit:
Another beneficiary could be John Wall, chief executive of Vista.com , a Redmond, Wash., company that last August struck a licensing arrangement with SCO.
Does anybody else find it interesting that there is a Redmond, Washington based company named, of all things Vista.com that invested in SCO at the beginning of the lawsuit? We all know that MS used Baystar as an investment front for the SCO litigation, but this makes it appear that MS had as many as three fronts set up to invest money in SCO right before the lawsuit (MS's purchase of a SCO license was the third).
Considering Windows Vista is MS's new "killer" product which incorporates hardware DRM to defend MS from Linux, could "Vista" mean a broad plan to attack FOSS in general?
I thought the devil had many names. Why is he using the same one more than once this time?
Variable pricing works both ways. When a record is new, and all the 13 year olds want it, they should pay top dollar. The artist's gotta eat. But when the initial demand dies down, it might be worthwhile for the price to drop to something like a 'library price' for people who are interested in building a good music library.
There was a scheme for this called "expiration" that was mandated by the phrase "limited Times" in the Constitution. Originally, this expiration was set at 14 years, at which time the monopoly would end and prices would return to their natural market driven levels. Therefore, the "top dollar" price you are talking about is the price we all have to pay. $0.99 per song or $14 or so per CD IS top dollar.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
Hahahahaha!!!! Yeah, and then, I suppose, MS will stop opposing ODF and give its assets to fund the development of Free Software, as well!
Thank you Jessica Mintz for giving me a month's worth of abdominal exercise! The International Business Times really employs some intelligent people.
How can these scientists prove this image is not an optical illusion caused by some object between us and it? I find it very hard to believe that an object actually exploded into such a shape, and the fact that the researchers involved do not even mention that as a possibility seems absurd to me.
While the issue with ClearType is clearly not limited to Novell or SUSE (pick your flavor), that does not mean that Microsuck's patents are not an issue. This is an example of software patents affecting any users with a current distro.
While it turns out that Novell did not enable the functionality in their distro, there is still a possibility that they could enable it and claim that the rest of the Linux userbase could not. There is also the problem of sofware patents which do exist, and the fact that the developers of the FreeType package decided to disable part of the code because of the existence of software patents. Finally, there is also the problem of Novell, once again, not coming out and saying that they intended to defend anybody but their "customers", even though Free Software developers from around the world actually contributed their market product to them free of charge.
There was no FUD in the story. A blogger had an opinion that turned out not to be true. Go figure. This is a far cry from the type of marketing based smear campaign that The Beast at Redmond is famous for.
I have to second that. For some reason I regularly forget this. Then I start using someone else's Windows computer, and I suddenly realize how nice my own desktop is. This is also one of the places where Fedora truly outshines Knoppix. KDE's transparent menus are nice, but the fonts are so much prettier in Gnome (Yes, I know I am going to get totally flamed for this;).
This sounds like a wonderful idea. So, let me get this straight, you want to allow disc manufacturers to be able to rewrite the firmware at any time. This means that anybody that prints a disc can rewrite the firmware to make the player do anything.
"Do you know where that disc has been?"
Even if malicious crackers are not taken into account, what about bugware companies similar to Microsoft? What if there are bugs in the patch due to time pressures at the given disc's manufacturer's office? What if an error in the firmware update causes the machine to behave erratically? Or the update turns the player into a brick? Or the update uses the motors to damage the drive mechanism or even your disc?
What if a permanent commercial was inserted in the firmware and would not go away until the next update?
This corporate remote control crap is the same metality that gave rise to DRM. It is pure stupidity, and it is wrong. Nobody should be replacing anyone's firmware, software, or hardware without the owner's explicit permission (no, copyright holders are NOT software or data "owners"; the person on whose hardware the software or data resides is the owner).
Let us all hope that such firmware updates never come into existence. No one wants to experience another round of Microsoft's now legendary security vulnerabilities.
Special tools make up for stupid web designers who use MSWord or other bloatware to design their sites. MSWindows is hurting the general public yet again.
Yeah, that is what I was thinking when I read this. Seriously, if people were designing websites properly, it would not matter what the screen size was. Why does bad design have to be made up for by a crapload of extra JavaScript (or *shudder* even Java itself) when HTML is designed to change the text to fit into any window size?
I do not see why there has to be a "mobile web" either. These businessmen are messing up the internet again. When I log on with my phone or my laptop or my TV or even my refrigerator, I want the whole internet, not some small collection of sites some stupid marketing droid at some brainless company decided that I should like.
A couple summers ago, I went to Japan and discovered what 3G is really like. It is the ultimate vendor lockin: Slow download speeds and everything for a price. There is no direct internet access at all. What is the point of higher mobile download speeds if there is no internet access? After all those things companies said about data transmission speeds, a customer cannot even get what the customer wants. The customer gets what the phone company decides to give him. Avoid 3G at all costs, and give your phone company crap every time they try to push it.
I have had full internet access (GPRS) on my phone for a few years now (I have even posted to Slashdot from mobile devices before), so that came as a complete shock. Japan used to be technologically ahead of the rest of the world. Now they are only progressing at being bigger and bigger suckers. Let us hope the rest of the world does not follow their example.
Message to businesses on the Web: design your sites to work with all browsers. It really is not as difficult as people claim. It will be good for your business, and it will be good for the public at large.
Incorrect. According to the decision in the Napster case, what those users were doing had the effect of piracy. The decision did not say that file sharers were pirates per se. Further, regardless of the claims of the RIAA, such activity has yet to be definitively classed as "piracy".
That, of course, supports my original claim which was that they were not choosing their battles carefully. This also supports the claim that they are accusing people of "piracy" that are not guilty. I really could not care less about what responsibility they have to the record lables. The labels' bottom lines do not justify extortion of the public at large (whether or not their business model has been based upon that in the past).
But that is quite precisely what the original post claimed. I was arguing against that, and now you are defending that. That post was defending the RIAA for choosing their battles. Now, you are defending the RIAA by making excuses for them not choosing their battles. Either way, the original post was just wrong.
Convict? Name a single conviction that has been produced. As far as I am aware, only two or three of these trials have gone to court. Those cases are all still pending, except one that was dropped after they discovered the defendant was dead. These are also civil cases where "conviction" is impossible. So, who has been convicted? The answer is NO INDIVIDUAL has been convicted or had to pay damages as a result of any court judgement in these cases.
I do not like it, and it is a bad strategy. First of all, they are businesses, so this bad PR makes everybody more sympathetic to people who do not pay for their music. More and more of the general public is starting to see the RIAA for what they are: a bunch of money hungry thugs running a protection racket. Secondly, given their goals, they are still people, and this sort of amoral behavior is just inhuman. Those four "file sharing students" that were sued did not do anything but set up search engines. For that, they had to each give up their life savings to the RIAA. Poor college students gave up all they had in the world to a bunch of millionare lawyers for creating the SMB equivalent to Google. The RIAA's goals are lying, cheating, and stealing. They lie on DMCA takedown notices. They cheat ordinary people out of their money. And they help the record industry collect monopoly rents, a form of theft.
No, I am sorry. It is impossible to see things from their point of view. They are just too greedy and amoral for me to manage that.
No, they are not. Aside from the one referenced to in this post, name me a single case that they have dropped. There is a penalty. The penalty is PR. If they admit they are wrong, they admit that they are not perfect, and the public will be more and more suspicious of their activities. They have to say, "See? We were right. All these people were guilty."
Lawyers do not drop cases if there is "any chance they would lose". If that were true, all cases would be dropped because even air tight cases are lost from time to time.
You have to remember also, that they are banking on the fact that defendants will run out of money. Most would if they went to court. So it really does not matter whether the RIAA has a case or not. It is cheaper to settle. In fact, in most cases, its the only way as the court system will pretty much finantially destroy most people.
Case in point: Then how can they be "choosing their battles carefully"?
I do not see what is new here. Cheating has been going on for centuries in Europe and thousands of years in China (this is probably why Chinese people are better at it). Plagiarism and services to supply papers to students who do not want to do their work have always existed.
The only problem is that teachers are less Net savvy than their students. A google search of random sentences in a paper would allow to the teacher to check if the student composed the paper from documents on the Web or plagiarized an entire text. In fact, I have considered writing a Perl script for this purpose. Such a program would be able to quickly assess the number of and relative similarity to various documents on the Web.
As for evaluating students' performance, is this not a teacher's job? Perhaps term papers could be broken into sections. Each would be approved by the teacher, and the introduction and conclusion, based of course on the content of the written sections, should be composed in the classroom like a test. In this way, the teacher could at least be certain the student understood the material. Plagiarism really is not that bad if the student understands. The real problem is when they copy and do not even read what they submit. I remember lots of students in college who did not understand anything their professors were saying but managed to pass every class.
Obviously, honesty is important, but learning is more important, and students cannot be forced to be honest. Teachers need to prove that students know something. If they got their ideas from other people, they still have those ideas. Testing and knowing the students personally allows teachers to know whether or not the student has received the teachers' instruction. Also, even if students do not plagiarise, they need to use the ideas of others. If they make others' ideas their own, they are doing enough.
No, they are not. They are bullying people into coughing up cash. If they were choosing their battles so carefully, why do they target people without computers? Or old ladys that cannot operate computers? Or minors who cannot be legally accused of maliciously harming them finantially? Or dead people?
The fact is: The RIAA's entire legal assault is based on hot air. They cannot prove anything and they never could. This is why there is so much pressure to settle (At even newer discounted rates for college students!!). They do not want to go to court ever (SCO did not really want to go to court either, and look what happened to them). Court is expensive, and they may be exposed for what they are: a bunch of lying extortionists.
My question is: Once it is proved that the RIAA have no evidence in one case, can all their past cases be called into question? And, more importantly, can they be forced to reimburse all the victims of their scorched earth campaign?
I know. I know. Believing a in a just outcome in our "just"ice system is like believing in the tooth fairy, but one has to hope.
I do not really blow up my text that big. However, since you mentioned it, weaknessess of the Latin character set are the fault of some long dead Romans. Who needs Mafiarchy anyway (we are already getting a resurgence of that from the RIAA)? So, if you do not like longititudinally restricted writing systems, try Chinese or Mayan (except the Maya who could write are all dead), or maybe Egyptian (dead, too).
Is this talking about the size of the keyboard (which it sounds like), the size of the screen, or the size of the whole device?
It is obvious that keyboards/pads have a minimum size. Fingers limit that. Also, if the keys are too close together, typing is slowed because more than one key is frequently depressed.
The screen is also limited in its smallness by what is comfortable. I use my phone to read books, but I have heard many people claim (who havent tried it, of course) that the screens on phones are too small to read on. In my experience, screen size is not important as the size of the individual letters (or characters) in the text is what is important. Since my current phone allows me to blow the text up to a size that is larger than the typeface on most children's books, I cannot see the problem.
The limitations on the device size probably depend on what it is used for. If it is a phone, it needs to be large enough to be comfortably held for a long phone conversation. Phones that are too small are irritating and easily misplaced. If the device is a PDA, the screen is probably the limiting factor. It should be about the size of a screen and not much thicker. Ideally, this screen should be a size that would fit in your pocket, something that "Pocket"PC's generally do wrong.
If the device were something like a portable computer, with perhaps a bluetooth or WiFi keyboard and screen, there is probably no limit on its smallness. Why not make a USBkey style computer and keep it on your keyring? At 4+GB, such devices can already contain a decent suite of software. Removing hardware links to the device itself would free it from size restrictions. Theoretically, such a device could also be booted from any computer as its hard drive (Knoppix style), so you could take your computer anywhere.
IIRC, the advertised MPG were maximum values, which I have heard are achieved from time to time. It really does not matter, though, because Detroit is still pumping out cars with <20MPG gas mileage. Even the Prius' worst case scenario doubles that figure. So, while it is not a solution to the problem, it is certainly a step in the right direction.
As for the pollutants in the batteries, you certainly have a point. Compressed air is certainly better than battery acid for the environment. Either way, anything that makes individuals less reliant on petrochemicals has to be a good thing.
My friends and I were playing Need for Speed III and Grand Turismo (IIRC) on the old PlayStation 1. We went out and my friend totalled his sports car with us in it. The weird thing was that the accident was just like the ones in the game.
However, it is a lot different when it happens in real life. In the game, you are not afraid you are going to die. You also do not get to watch the sheet metal on the hood crumple or fluids from severed lines spray the windshield. My other friend learned why you should wear seatbelts even in the back seat.
We walked away more or less unharmed, but it could easily have been worse. People who play such games a lot would do well to remember they cannot do these things regularly in the real world and get away with it.
Given all that, I would generally blame the driver and not the game. My friend was definitely a reckless driver to begin with. Whether the game's similarity to reality is a coincidence or an influence is hard to say.
Is that even possible? I was under the impression that the cameras in Congress were controlled by Congress itself and that C-Span had an exclusive license to obtain and distribute that footage. Does Congress allow any US citizen with a video camera to tape its proceedings at any time?
If not, it is obvious that C-Span has no right to exclusivity at all. They probably do not even own the cameras. The public probably does. However, I have no time to check on this assertion as I am off to an appointment. Cheers.
So, presumably, there is a system where control of the airplane can be taken over from the ground. How is this safer? With such a system, terrorists -- or whoever might want to fake a terrorist action for political gain -- will have the power to hijack planes from the ground.
As much as I hate to use the term "terrorism" for anything (because it is a blanket term for anything that current leaders of witch hunts deem threatening to their positions), this invention makes possible "armchair hijacking". Well, I guess modern conveniences can be apportioned to any social group nowadays.
As there is no "tamper proof" system, I cannot see how this could be anything but stupid.
"The illusion of safety . . ." -- Tyler Durden
Travellers, have fun waiting in line . . . for nothing.
Page 103:
Hahahahahaha!!!
Who, then, is the owner of the machine? The school (or some other government institution) or the child? Obviously, most children will not have the computer skills to need this daemon disabled, but kids in Eastern Europe have certainly proven themselves to have such skills. Will keys be issued to compotent kids who request them? Or will the kids only be considered rental clients who have no rights over their own computers?
The other question I have is: Is this system designed to prevent "theft" by the children or their parents? It sounds quite like this is the case.
Darl McBride sounds like one of those lying cops in the movies. Does he honestly believe PJ will fall for that? I mean, she has been debunking his lies for years now. I think Darl really is an imbecile.
Well put.
Isn't Bill Gates just Lucifer's geek suit?
That was also my first reaction when I read that. It is obviously an attempt to marginalize the EFF by making it look like a stupid hippie organization from SF that defends kooks on the Internet. I always thought the defense of Free Speech was everybody's responsibility, and the Constitution is not exactly new technology.
This should come as no surprise as the reporter is Daniel Lyons (ugh... human resources... what a creep). PJ appears to have gotten after him in this Groklaw article (which points to this Forbes.com article). And has mentioned him in several other articles(no, I am not going to read and comment on all of them for this post -- do it yourself). He refers to PJ's criticism in today's posted article:
As an interesting side note, the reference Groklaw and Forbes articles mention this odd little tidbit:
Does anybody else find it interesting that there is a Redmond, Washington based company named, of all things Vista.com that invested in SCO at the beginning of the lawsuit? We all know that MS used Baystar as an investment front for the SCO litigation, but this makes it appear that MS had as many as three fronts set up to invest money in SCO right before the lawsuit (MS's purchase of a SCO license was the third).
Considering Windows Vista is MS's new "killer" product which incorporates hardware DRM to defend MS from Linux, could "Vista" mean a broad plan to attack FOSS in general?
I thought the devil had many names. Why is he using the same one more than once this time?
There was a scheme for this called "expiration" that was mandated by the phrase "limited Times" in the Constitution. Originally, this expiration was set at 14 years, at which time the monopoly would end and prices would return to their natural market driven levels. Therefore, the "top dollar" price you are talking about is the price we all have to pay. $0.99 per song or $14 or so per CD IS top dollar.