after all this time spent on developing LCDs with greater viewing angles
The problem in the past was the massive contrast shift when vertical angle changed. There was some horizontal hue shift as well (between pink and blue) but that was never a huge problem. Today we're more interested in the person sitting in the next seat to our left seeing our screen. So really the issue is one of different polarization. (horizontal vs vertical) If you have people viewing your screen from above (or below) then maybe you need to make some other adjustments to your security.;)
That's a fine philosophy when you're sitting in your armchair,
No, that's "thinking of US instead of thinking of ME". Too many people thinking of ME is why things like IE6, that are just plain bad for the public as a whole, are still so prevalent.
Please try to start thinking about US instead of ME ME ME.
Unless the another installation has been cracked, so it no longer checks the signature. This reduces this system back to regular DRM, which is routinely cracked.
of course there's always a way. but my point was that it's not just a snap of the fingers to do. they tried to make it more complicated, and as you point out, they succeeded.
No need for that. The new content has to be stored somewhere, so all you have to do is check the contents of the game directory before and after the update.
Things like that are easily defeated with signing. They just sign the update with a bit of license key, update key, and a bit of random salt made during initial installation. Prevents you from copying purchased content to another installation.
Not too far off from how say, most any music store purchases can't be just copied to another computer and played.
There are ways to use that with the server you download the content from, but that tends to increase the overhead on the server end, which they usually try to avoid. But for example the ITMS rolls in purchaser info to the mp3 before encrypting it and then sending it to you, so they don't always mind a little extra work to make your life a little more difficult.
the basic idea is when your installation connects to their servers to download the content, it sends your registration key. They run the same sort of keyservers as do online activation. If the key is burned, it just won't let you download the update.
The "fix" for that of course is to intercept the download off a legitimate installation, and package it such that you can download the update via torrent etc and run it locally to get the new content. But that's a lot more involved than simply shutting off a SN check with a tweak of a line or two of code.
When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."
but the vast majority of publishers still won't get it. But that's one of the most insightful comments I've ever read on the subject.
Black Hat conference cancelled one of their talks due to political pressure? Wow. I thought Black Hat was one of those "we don't care who you are, we're going to talk about this" forums?
Usually one would ridicule other conferences with something like "Do you see Black Hat canceling like this? Grow a pair!" But this is just depressing. Guess Black Hat is experiencing some "shrinkage".
Next thing you know they're going to be cowering over trumped up Cease and Desist orders.
The driver might give up on trying the brakes after the brake fade and focus on steering alone. Obviously these people that have these accidents have fallen into some kind of hopeless submission or they would try things like shifting into neutral... it's not unreasonable that someone who has given up enough to not even try to kill the engine or shift to have also given up on the brakes.
I get the impression that a lot of these situations are not long enough to run through options. They're usually described as "sudden acceleration", and in what looks like the majority of cases, while trying to park. If you're running down the highway and are having a loss of accelerator control, ok, options - brake, shift, ignition, ebrake, etc. But when you all of a sudden are zooming toward a parked car 6ft in front of you, it's just a matter of the right or wrong reaction. If your foot is on what you thought was the brake, and you tried to slow down and suddenly accelerate, there's a fair chance you will press harder on what you thought was the brake, there's just no time to stop and think about where your foot is, you have to take action immediately. That's almost certainly what's been happening here. That last gal in the article, the ramp cameras show her brake lights coming on AFTER the collision. That was a case of the driver realizing their foot was jamming on the wrong petal a second too late. (and she STILL doesn't admit to it, despite the camera evidence!)
Ms. Marseille said in an interview Tuesday that she was entering a parking space near a library when she heard the engine roar. "I looked down and my foot was still on the brake, so I did not have my foot on the gas pedal," she said.
Police in Sheboygan Falls, Wis., investigated and believe driver error was to blame, Chief Steven Riffel said Tuesday. He said surveillance video showed that the brake lights didn't illuminate until after the crash. But Mr. Riffel said that determination is preliminary and that his agency has turned over the investigation to NHTSA.
Based on the black box data, NHTSA investigators found that the brake was not engaged and the throttle was wide open, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms. Marseille sticks by her story. "It makes me very angry when someone tells me, 'She probably hit the gas pedal instead,' because I think it's a sexist comment, an ageist comment," she said.
So, every piece of evidence we have, and we have many, shows this woman panicked and jammed on the gas instead of the brake, and yet she remains thoroughly convinced she didn't do it. It's drivers like that who give credit to the phrase "woman drivers". But in this case we just have a bad driver crying "sexism!" as a defense. No, ma'am, you just need to fix your brain-foot coordination.
It's also interesting to look at the graph of reported incidents. Although there was no related changes in Toyota production, just look at that two month spike. That's caused by people, not by hardware. The number of bad drivers remains constant, and the performance of the vehicles remains constant. The only thing that surged was the number of people trying to blame their bad driving on Toyota. I'd bet that had they not gotten all the media-frenzy publicity to start with, that spike would not exist, that's just people latching onto a scapegoat. I'd love to see the graph of media coverage on toyota below that graph, to see the correlation. Bet there's about a two week lag from media to claims. Gotta feel bad for them, they're taking a lot of unfair heat, AND they're doing a better job than I would in holding their tongue when you know they want to just flat out call it, driver error. I don't think I could have that kind of resolve given the situation. They've waited until a lot of time has passed and the amount of evidence is overwhelming before starting to take that position publicly. And then Ms Marseille still insists she was hitting the brake when the black box AND the ramp cameras both say otherwise. The only thing left to debate here is whether she's genuinely that mistaken, or whether she's just stubbornly continuing to cover for her bad driving.
The two remaining issues are slow-return accelerators and floor mat traps. I don't see how a slow return to idle accelerator is going to significantly contribute to a crash, you still have the brake. (and so far, almost all the accidents investigated have shown NO brake use) As for the floor mats, heck, *I* have had that happen to me once in my cutlass. That's not a Toyota problem. That's a problem of floor mat creep that goes unnoticed for a long time (weeks) without the driver readjusting it. Again, driver error.
Amazing this surprises anyone. It's like protesters protesting against a store WHILE IN THE STORE. Of course they're going to kick you out. You're free to protest on the street or anywhere else for that matter.
If I paint up a sign that says "WalMart - Buy More, Pay Less, Eat Lead Paint" and walk around wal mart waving it I'll last about 10 seconds. But somehow when Apple does it, it's absurd?
It took them what, a couple days to react to the issue and start working on a fix, (the hiring of the antenna engineers we saw recently) so they're obviously trying to fix the problem. There's nothing to be gained by harassing them while they work on a fix for you, that will almost certainly be free.
Owell I suppose this comes with the territory. Apple wants to be chic and hip and trendy and on everyone's mind, this is just the dark side of that position. Do a good job and people will run around saying it's fabulous, do a poor job and people will run around saying its horrible. It's just a game of extremes.
what's the ip address? you could post it here and get some "help" in more ways than one.
Setting that aside for the moment, the first thing you should be doing is tracerouting the ip address and doing a lookup on it also to see who owns it. That should get you a geographic location and a contact. Figure out who the ISP is and contact them directly. They are almost guaranteed to say they won't give you customer information, expect that. BUT, they are almost certainly used to these sorts of things already, and will know the name and number of their local police department or sheriff you need to contact to GET that request. (THEFT if a matter of jurisdiction, but possession of stolen property is a local matter) Sometimes the ISP requires a subpoena, sometimes they're used to it enough that a fax from the local sheriff on their letterhead will do the trick. Usually they won't give YOU the information, but they will give it to the law enforcement agent. Hopefully, if it was the one the isp recommended to you in the first place, that should be a person experienced in handing this sort of issue, knows what an IP address is etc, and can at least somewhat sympathize with your situation.
All that considered, you may still be crap out of luck if it turns out to be the open wifi at Starbucks. But then again it may pull up a specific home address somewhere. (most thieves are less technical than the police you've been dealing with, and don't forget it's entirely possible your computer has already been sold and is in the hands of a soccer mom or a friend of the thief or through a pawn shop already) Be sure you have EXACT DATE AND TIME to go with the IP addresses, since DHCP leases on cable modems expire and change from time to time. The ISP SHOULD have record of who had what IP when, but don't bet the farm on them keeping that information indefinitely, so you need to act fast. It's very challenging, although possible, to track down a wifi user.
Bonus info: nmap has a very nice OS fingerprint feature that can often guess what is at the end of an ip address. It may say something like "busybox linux vers xxx" indicating a router. or it may say "Mac OS X 10.5" or it may say "windows xp sp 1" etc. If it gives a computer and not a router, you can think more positive.
They'll have this little red eraser-looking nipple on it to make up for the lack of touch support, and it will be marketed as a 'groundbreaking innovation' in the market.
What I want to see now is a cartoon, in that drawing style of Duffy etc with the political cartoon. Show a parade going down the street, with a float with a band playing and confetti raining down, and all the major tablet makers standing up in the "band wagon" holding up their tablets and smiling and waving to the crowd as they pass by.
And then I want to see Balmer jogging in from behind, pulling a little red wagon piled up with bits and pieces of electronics for tablets, dangly bits, and pieces falling out of the cart as he runs after the BandWagon pulling his cart, shouting "But we're Hard Core!"
Bonus points for someone barely visible in the crowd ready to throw a folding chair at him when he passes by.
Any artists that read this are free to use it as their own idea. I just want to see a copy when you're done.
It looks like Comcast is trying to make the tradition "boxless cable option" disappear.
If nothing else I'm just sick of all the remotes I have to juggle. I don't need another one for my tuner. My TV has QAM, I should be allowed to use it.
and all channels that are available over the air (OTA) should be unencrypted on Cable
And MediaCrap gets around that in this town here by stuffing 4+ HD channels into one channel, so thoroughly trashing the picture quality and causing dropped frames and glitching. I called two tv stations in town, and was pleasantly surprised on both occasions to end up talking with their station engineers. Both of them told me to use my rabbit ears, their stations would look MUUIUCH better than they do on cable because I'd be getting them at their full bitrate.
They were right. World of difference. Clearer, smoother animation, and no glitching.
It's like taking a 320k mp3 and transcoding it down into a 128k (or 64k!) mp3. Crucifies the quality. imho they shouldn't be allowed to do this, but they do it anyway.
It sounds like some of those scientists are placing more value on being right, or perhaps moreso in others believing they are right, than actually being right. They want people to believe them, and yet they hide their work out of fear of being suspected of perhaps even proven wrong. How screwed up is THAT?
As a true scientists, your quest is not for fame or notoriety or people believing you are right, but of finding the Truth. To those, public scrutiny is welcome. If nothing else, they DO prove you wrong, or at least find a flaw in your theory, and that is part of the process of greater understanding, refining your theories, and ultimately finding the perfect Truth. I have zero respect for scientists that place the public's view of them or their security in being right above finding the Truth.
Besides, even if you hide your work, if you turn out to be wrong, eventually it's going to be found out anyway. If you truly wanted to get to the bottom of something, quickly flushing out the flaws in your theories should be a top priority, and not showing your work is working against that. Nothing debugs your theories faster and more thoroughly than public scrutiny. That's the whole point of publishing papers.
Actually first time I listened Gaga and liked her music I had never seen her on video.
I don't watch TV. (seriously) When I first hear a new song on the radio that I like, it usually takes me a little bit to figure out the name and artist. (tunatic come in handy) I specifically remember firing up Tunatic the third or fourth time I heard Just Dance on the radio. I listen at work though. Helps the time pass. Also listen on the ipod while commuting since my truck's radio AND speakers are fubar, so need an artist and title to get it from the app store.
I can sort of see where someone watching a video may like the song, not because they like the song so much as they like the video and the song reminds them of the video when listening to it.
In the USA, it's illegal to use a predictive dialer to call a cell phone.
Yup. Was that way when I was in the 'biz. Since that's all we used, all cell phone blocks were DNCd first thing when a list came in. Though back then there weren't nearly so many cell phones. I'm sure there's easily 100x more now. But we were going by area code and sometimes exchange. I have NO IDEA how they are handling things with "number portability" now. I don't see how you can positively determine if a given number is a cell phone nowadays. Unless portability is only from cell carrier to cell carrier?
It was more important back then, from a consumer point of view, similar to junk faxes. My mom's small business has to leave their fax machine off except when expecting a fax, or robofaxes for random advertisements will still run their toner out. I don't know why they can still get away with that in this day and age. But back then, cell phones were much worse. My first cell phone in 1991 (ya, really) calls were 50c/minute, $1 minimum, and counted for both incoming and outgoing. So you can imagine how quickly a cell phone user would get pissed off at telemarketers! Buck a call. Nowadays with people on 500-1500 min/month plans it's mostly just an annoyance, but with a small cost to legally justify protection.
Where I worked, that list was extremely short (under 250 numbers?) and involved people that specifically had made the point that they were going to be litigious or had done so in the past. That, and all of US in the back had our numbers in there too of course. Before I put my number in, I got ONE call from them, and oh it was hilarious. I answered the phone and heard a veeeeery familiar opening sales pitch. "Is this xxxx?" (name of our company) Silence. very long silence. "um. yes it is." haha.. "put me on your Do Not Call list!". I think the rep had me on hold, asking her supervisor, "should I answer that?" I looked in the records that Monday and found my number in that list, correctly terminated DNC.
So yes, it happens, even to "us". That was back in the days of DOS and dbase iv.
We did follow all the rules. (for the most part, the sales managers were constantly nagging us to up the dial rate which would push the pass call limit) Numerous states at that time had DNC lists, I'm sure most of them do at this point. If you were on such a list, we would never call you, for any of our customers, regardless of the customer. I have no idea tho how common or uncommon it is for telemarketing companies to follow all the rules. I suspect the fraction that do not are a small minority, but due to the nature of what this leads to they tend to be very high visibility and give the entire industry a bad rep. Like when a single company can get a dozen states up in arms for blasting their entire population with robocalls for a month straight.
Bonus factoid: the senators that wrote and passed all those nice bills to protect us from harassment over the phone... there's ONE group that is exempt from those laws, in every single case. Care to guess who can get away with it, every time? Political Calls. If you want to direct your ire somewhere, there's a much better target. That's right, your favorite senator can robocall you all day long at election time and there's nothing you can do about it.
Oh, my mistake, one more. Unless it's changed recently, only privately owned numbers can be enforced on the DNC lists. Businesses can try to add their numbers to the lists, but the telemarketers can ignore it. (cannot be fined for calling you even if you're on the list)
Slashdot Mirror
after all this time spent on developing LCDs with greater viewing angles
The problem in the past was the massive contrast shift when vertical angle changed. There was some horizontal hue shift as well (between pink and blue) but that was never a huge problem. Today we're more interested in the person sitting in the next seat to our left seeing our screen. So really the issue is one of different polarization. (horizontal vs vertical) If you have people viewing your screen from above (or below) then maybe you need to make some other adjustments to your security. ;)
it's probably best to launch it into space
That and even moreso if suits with gold badges pay a visit to discuss your "voluntary cooperation".
It's like Bruno suggesting you "volunteer" your lunch money.
That's a fine philosophy when you're sitting in your armchair,
No, that's "thinking of US instead of thinking of ME". Too many people thinking of ME is why things like IE6, that are just plain bad for the public as a whole, are still so prevalent.
Please try to start thinking about US instead of ME ME ME.
the last thing we need is more people coming up with hacks to give PHBs another excuse not to leave the dark ages.
If anything, we need more of the web dev tools to make pages that are outright guaranteed not to work with IE6-7.
Unless the another installation has been cracked, so it no longer checks the signature. This reduces this system back to regular DRM, which is routinely cracked.
of course there's always a way. but my point was that it's not just a snap of the fingers to do. they tried to make it more complicated, and as you point out, they succeeded.
No need for that. The new content has to be stored somewhere, so all you have to do is check the contents of the game directory before and after the update.
Things like that are easily defeated with signing. They just sign the update with a bit of license key, update key, and a bit of random salt made during initial installation. Prevents you from copying purchased content to another installation.
Not too far off from how say, most any music store purchases can't be just copied to another computer and played.
There are ways to use that with the server you download the content from, but that tends to increase the overhead on the server end, which they usually try to avoid. But for example the ITMS rolls in purchaser info to the mp3 before encrypting it and then sending it to you, so they don't always mind a little extra work to make your life a little more difficult.
the basic idea is when your installation connects to their servers to download the content, it sends your registration key. They run the same sort of keyservers as do online activation. If the key is burned, it just won't let you download the update.
The "fix" for that of course is to intercept the download off a legitimate installation, and package it such that you can download the update via torrent etc and run it locally to get the new content. But that's a lot more involved than simply shutting off a SN check with a tweak of a line or two of code.
So then, the ultimate gateway drug, must be Sugar? Think of the Children! Say NO to sugar!
When it comes to piracy, I think you have to make the experience the answer to the issue — rather than respond the other way round and risk damaging that experience for the user."
but the vast majority of publishers still won't get it. But that's one of the most insightful comments I've ever read on the subject.
Black Hat conference cancelled one of their talks due to political pressure? Wow. I thought Black Hat was one of those "we don't care who you are, we're going to talk about this" forums?
Usually one would ridicule other conferences with something like "Do you see Black Hat canceling like this? Grow a pair!" But this is just depressing. Guess Black Hat is experiencing some "shrinkage".
Next thing you know they're going to be cowering over trumped up Cease and Desist orders.
The driver might give up on trying the brakes after the brake fade and focus on steering alone. Obviously these people that have these accidents have fallen into some kind of hopeless submission or they would try things like shifting into neutral... it's not unreasonable that someone who has given up enough to not even try to kill the engine or shift to have also given up on the brakes.
I get the impression that a lot of these situations are not long enough to run through options. They're usually described as "sudden acceleration", and in what looks like the majority of cases, while trying to park. If you're running down the highway and are having a loss of accelerator control, ok, options - brake, shift, ignition, ebrake, etc. But when you all of a sudden are zooming toward a parked car 6ft in front of you, it's just a matter of the right or wrong reaction. If your foot is on what you thought was the brake, and you tried to slow down and suddenly accelerate, there's a fair chance you will press harder on what you thought was the brake, there's just no time to stop and think about where your foot is, you have to take action immediately. That's almost certainly what's been happening here. That last gal in the article, the ramp cameras show her brake lights coming on AFTER the collision. That was a case of the driver realizing their foot was jamming on the wrong petal a second too late. (and she STILL doesn't admit to it, despite the camera evidence!)
Ms. Marseille said in an interview Tuesday that she was entering a parking space near a library when she heard the engine roar. "I looked down and my foot was still on the brake, so I did not have my foot on the gas pedal," she said.
Police in Sheboygan Falls, Wis., investigated and believe driver error was to blame, Chief Steven Riffel said Tuesday. He said surveillance video showed that the brake lights didn't illuminate until after the crash. But Mr. Riffel said that determination is preliminary and that his agency has turned over the investigation to NHTSA.
Based on the black box data, NHTSA investigators found that the brake was not engaged and the throttle was wide open, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Ms. Marseille sticks by her story. "It makes me very angry when someone tells me, 'She probably hit the gas pedal instead,' because I think it's a sexist comment, an ageist comment," she said.
So, every piece of evidence we have, and we have many, shows this woman panicked and jammed on the gas instead of the brake, and yet she remains thoroughly convinced she didn't do it. It's drivers like that who give credit to the phrase "woman drivers". But in this case we just have a bad driver crying "sexism!" as a defense. No, ma'am, you just need to fix your brain-foot coordination.
It's also interesting to look at the graph of reported incidents. Although there was no related changes in Toyota production, just look at that two month spike. That's caused by people, not by hardware. The number of bad drivers remains constant, and the performance of the vehicles remains constant. The only thing that surged was the number of people trying to blame their bad driving on Toyota. I'd bet that had they not gotten all the media-frenzy publicity to start with, that spike would not exist, that's just people latching onto a scapegoat. I'd love to see the graph of media coverage on toyota below that graph, to see the correlation. Bet there's about a two week lag from media to claims. Gotta feel bad for them, they're taking a lot of unfair heat, AND they're doing a better job than I would in holding their tongue when you know they want to just flat out call it, driver error. I don't think I could have that kind of resolve given the situation. They've waited until a lot of time has passed and the amount of evidence is overwhelming before starting to take that position publicly. And then Ms Marseille still insists she was hitting the brake when the black box AND the ramp cameras both say otherwise. The only thing left to debate here is whether she's genuinely that mistaken, or whether she's just stubbornly continuing to cover for her bad driving.
The two remaining issues are slow-return accelerators and floor mat traps. I don't see how a slow return to idle accelerator is going to significantly contribute to a crash, you still have the brake. (and so far, almost all the accidents investigated have shown NO brake use) As for the floor mats, heck, *I* have had that happen to me once in my cutlass. That's not a Toyota problem. That's a problem of floor mat creep that goes unnoticed for a long time (weeks) without the driver readjusting it. Again, driver error.
Does make one wonder how the artists can see their membership money being pissed away like that and think it's a positive
Amazing this surprises anyone. It's like protesters protesting against a store WHILE IN THE STORE. Of course they're going to kick you out. You're free to protest on the street or anywhere else for that matter.
If I paint up a sign that says "WalMart - Buy More, Pay Less, Eat Lead Paint" and walk around wal mart waving it I'll last about 10 seconds. But somehow when Apple does it, it's absurd?
It took them what, a couple days to react to the issue and start working on a fix, (the hiring of the antenna engineers we saw recently) so they're obviously trying to fix the problem. There's nothing to be gained by harassing them while they work on a fix for you, that will almost certainly be free.
Owell I suppose this comes with the territory. Apple wants to be chic and hip and trendy and on everyone's mind, this is just the dark side of that position. Do a good job and people will run around saying it's fabulous, do a poor job and people will run around saying its horrible. It's just a game of extremes.
what's the ip address? you could post it here and get some "help" in more ways than one.
Setting that aside for the moment, the first thing you should be doing is tracerouting the ip address and doing a lookup on it also to see who owns it. That should get you a geographic location and a contact. Figure out who the ISP is and contact them directly. They are almost guaranteed to say they won't give you customer information, expect that. BUT, they are almost certainly used to these sorts of things already, and will know the name and number of their local police department or sheriff you need to contact to GET that request. (THEFT if a matter of jurisdiction, but possession of stolen property is a local matter) Sometimes the ISP requires a subpoena, sometimes they're used to it enough that a fax from the local sheriff on their letterhead will do the trick. Usually they won't give YOU the information, but they will give it to the law enforcement agent. Hopefully, if it was the one the isp recommended to you in the first place, that should be a person experienced in handing this sort of issue, knows what an IP address is etc, and can at least somewhat sympathize with your situation.
All that considered, you may still be crap out of luck if it turns out to be the open wifi at Starbucks. But then again it may pull up a specific home address somewhere. (most thieves are less technical than the police you've been dealing with, and don't forget it's entirely possible your computer has already been sold and is in the hands of a soccer mom or a friend of the thief or through a pawn shop already) Be sure you have EXACT DATE AND TIME to go with the IP addresses, since DHCP leases on cable modems expire and change from time to time. The ISP SHOULD have record of who had what IP when, but don't bet the farm on them keeping that information indefinitely, so you need to act fast. It's very challenging, although possible, to track down a wifi user.
Bonus info: nmap has a very nice OS fingerprint feature that can often guess what is at the end of an ip address. It may say something like "busybox linux vers xxx" indicating a router. or it may say "Mac OS X 10.5" or it may say "windows xp sp 1" etc. If it gives a computer and not a router, you can think more positive.
The gaping corporate security hole you just opened
You will now be modded down for making a statement like that without providing a goatse link.
They'll have this little red eraser-looking nipple on it to make up for the lack of touch support, and it will be marketed as a 'groundbreaking innovation' in the market.
What I want to see now is a cartoon, in that drawing style of Duffy etc with the political cartoon. Show a parade going down the street, with a float with a band playing and confetti raining down, and all the major tablet makers standing up in the "band wagon" holding up their tablets and smiling and waving to the crowd as they pass by.
And then I want to see Balmer jogging in from behind, pulling a little red wagon piled up with bits and pieces of electronics for tablets, dangly bits, and pieces falling out of the cart as he runs after the BandWagon pulling his cart, shouting "But we're Hard Core!"
Bonus points for someone barely visible in the crowd ready to throw a folding chair at him when he passes by.
Any artists that read this are free to use it as their own idea. I just want to see a copy when you're done.
It looks like Comcast is trying to make the tradition "boxless cable option" disappear.
If nothing else I'm just sick of all the remotes I have to juggle. I don't need another one for my tuner. My TV has QAM, I should be allowed to use it.
and all channels that are available over the air (OTA) should be unencrypted on Cable
And MediaCrap gets around that in this town here by stuffing 4+ HD channels into one channel, so thoroughly trashing the picture quality and causing dropped frames and glitching. I called two tv stations in town, and was pleasantly surprised on both occasions to end up talking with their station engineers. Both of them told me to use my rabbit ears, their stations would look MUUIUCH better than they do on cable because I'd be getting them at their full bitrate.
They were right. World of difference. Clearer, smoother animation, and no glitching.
It's like taking a 320k mp3 and transcoding it down into a 128k (or 64k!) mp3. Crucifies the quality. imho they shouldn't be allowed to do this, but they do it anyway.
It sounds like some of those scientists are placing more value on being right, or perhaps moreso in others believing they are right, than actually being right. They want people to believe them, and yet they hide their work out of fear of being suspected of perhaps even proven wrong. How screwed up is THAT?
As a true scientists, your quest is not for fame or notoriety or people believing you are right, but of finding the Truth. To those, public scrutiny is welcome. If nothing else, they DO prove you wrong, or at least find a flaw in your theory, and that is part of the process of greater understanding, refining your theories, and ultimately finding the perfect Truth. I have zero respect for scientists that place the public's view of them or their security in being right above finding the Truth.
Besides, even if you hide your work, if you turn out to be wrong, eventually it's going to be found out anyway. If you truly wanted to get to the bottom of something, quickly flushing out the flaws in your theories should be a top priority, and not showing your work is working against that. Nothing debugs your theories faster and more thoroughly than public scrutiny. That's the whole point of publishing papers.
subject says it all. Quit blaming *.* for your political unrest. YOU are the common factor. Time for some self-reflection here methinks.
Actually first time I listened Gaga and liked her music I had never seen her on video.
I don't watch TV. (seriously) When I first hear a new song on the radio that I like, it usually takes me a little bit to figure out the name and artist. (tunatic come in handy) I specifically remember firing up Tunatic the third or fourth time I heard Just Dance on the radio. I listen at work though. Helps the time pass. Also listen on the ipod while commuting since my truck's radio AND speakers are fubar, so need an artist and title to get it from the app store.
I can sort of see where someone watching a video may like the song, not because they like the song so much as they like the video and the song reminds them of the video when listening to it.
In the USA, it's illegal to use a predictive dialer to call a cell phone.
Yup. Was that way when I was in the 'biz. Since that's all we used, all cell phone blocks were DNCd first thing when a list came in. Though back then there weren't nearly so many cell phones. I'm sure there's easily 100x more now. But we were going by area code and sometimes exchange. I have NO IDEA how they are handling things with "number portability" now. I don't see how you can positively determine if a given number is a cell phone nowadays. Unless portability is only from cell carrier to cell carrier?
It was more important back then, from a consumer point of view, similar to junk faxes. My mom's small business has to leave their fax machine off except when expecting a fax, or robofaxes for random advertisements will still run their toner out. I don't know why they can still get away with that in this day and age. But back then, cell phones were much worse. My first cell phone in 1991 (ya, really) calls were 50c/minute, $1 minimum, and counted for both incoming and outgoing. So you can imagine how quickly a cell phone user would get pissed off at telemarketers! Buck a call. Nowadays with people on 500-1500 min/month plans it's mostly just an annoyance, but with a small cost to legally justify protection.
Where I worked, that list was extremely short (under 250 numbers?) and involved people that specifically had made the point that they were going to be litigious or had done so in the past. That, and all of US in the back had our numbers in there too of course. Before I put my number in, I got ONE call from them, and oh it was hilarious. I answered the phone and heard a veeeeery familiar opening sales pitch. "Is this xxxx?" (name of our company) Silence. very long silence. "um. yes it is." haha.. "put me on your Do Not Call list!". I think the rep had me on hold, asking her supervisor, "should I answer that?" I looked in the records that Monday and found my number in that list, correctly terminated DNC.
So yes, it happens, even to "us". That was back in the days of DOS and dbase iv.
We did follow all the rules. (for the most part, the sales managers were constantly nagging us to up the dial rate which would push the pass call limit) Numerous states at that time had DNC lists, I'm sure most of them do at this point. If you were on such a list, we would never call you, for any of our customers, regardless of the customer. I have no idea tho how common or uncommon it is for telemarketing companies to follow all the rules. I suspect the fraction that do not are a small minority, but due to the nature of what this leads to they tend to be very high visibility and give the entire industry a bad rep. Like when a single company can get a dozen states up in arms for blasting their entire population with robocalls for a month straight.
Bonus factoid: the senators that wrote and passed all those nice bills to protect us from harassment over the phone... there's ONE group that is exempt from those laws, in every single case. Care to guess who can get away with it, every time? Political Calls. If you want to direct your ire somewhere, there's a much better target. That's right, your favorite senator can robocall you all day long at election time and there's nothing you can do about it.
Oh, my mistake, one more. Unless it's changed recently, only privately owned numbers can be enforced on the DNC lists. Businesses can try to add their numbers to the lists, but the telemarketers can ignore it. (cannot be fined for calling you even if you're on the list)