The other side of the coin is regulation. If they moor outside national territorial waters, they could set up a data haven free from any government interference. Kinakuta anyone?
Locally I go to Micro Center (http://www.microcenter.com) but they have a very limited brick and mortar presence. Their prices are close to newegg's, but you can just take stuff back to the store if you have a problem. Returns are a big issue with me - I preferentially buy from newegg specifically because returns have never been an issue.
There was a recent article about US military concerns regarding other Chinese made chips. Basically there's no way to tell if there's a back door built in. Assuming the Chinese are successful in establishing a competitive CPU business, there's a real chance that some form external control might be possible.
When the Israelis bombed that Syrian reactor site a few months back, they weren't picked up by a supposedly state of the art radar system - there was some speculation that the Israelis used a back door to disable the radar, but of course they aren't talking.
The obvious follow up is this - has the US gov't managed to slip a back door into Intel's chips?
You know, this actually makes M$ look good. By providing automatic updates they are forcing even the casual users to keep their machines patched. It's a shame they threw WGA into the pipe and screwed it all up. If they just kept the automatic updates channel open for patches it would build trust. Of course they blew that opportunity.
I think it was overrated. I *liked* it, and the drm didn't cause me any problems, althought I oppose it in principle. The problem was just what you said - the same game mechanic over and over. I had NO desire to replay. Don't think I ever got to the end - it just wasn't interesting enough. Shame because it really was a game with a lot of promise.
I thought viruses targeted cellular membrane surface molecules (glycoproteins? It's been a while) unique to a given tissue, which is why cold viruses don't infect your liver, etc.? If this assumption is correct, then the problem is in both identifying that unique surface marker and figuring out how to use it to enable the virus to deliver it's contents.
A lot of devices have the polarity embossed on the case next to the plug but I still don't really trust it. BTW voltage meters only cost about ten bucks and they're indispensable if you're going to muck around with wires. Plus, they're fun to play with - you can de-mystify a lot of electronics just by poking around.
"Many of my toys are 12vDC, of the round pin variety. Polarity is totally random, as is size of the center pin, but many are compatible. If they're going to standardize, this is probably where to go."
I keep a well-used voltage tester handy for exactly this reason. This, coupled with an ultra-fine point sharpie marker (those marked "fine" are ballpoints, not markers) means I can mark the volt, amps and polarity somewhere on the device and mark the charger with the device is belongs to - it's amazing how few chargers are marked that way by the manufacturer.
Rounding out the equipment pack is a hard-to-find 12 VDC car lighter multi voltage converter that has a polarity switch. If a compatible plug isn't already on the converter it isn't hard to figure out which wires to splice. I put on a USB plug, but for items with entirely proprietary connectors you have to sacrifice a wall wart.
If valuable items came mainly from crafting instead of being farmed or obtained from drops the game would change dramatically. They included a bit of this in the use of dark iron items for the molten core, but then dropped the ball. The whole drop system is kind of weird when you think about it. There really wasn't much of a point to being a weapon smith, for example. Why set up a crafting system if it doesn't end up really being relevant to game play?
No, I don't think they see it as a real problem. If they set up a way to buy gold legitimately, it would limit the price farmers could charge and largely drive them out of business. It wouldn't completely eliminate the problems but it could make it a lot less profitable.
You seem to have missed the fact that I DON'T play anymore, in part because I got sick of their approach to farming and grinding.
Frankly after 3 readings I still can't figure out your point.
Bah! In my day we had blankets made out of asbestos so the cigarettes we smoked in bed wouldn't burn holes. We had lead paint on our tableware and lead in our water supply pipes. We put mercury solutions on our cuts, brushed our teeth with PCB's and washed our hair with dioxin. We spent every day in the sun without sunblock and it was GOOD for us.
The folks that like showing off and have and their egos at stake are a minor problem and easily avoidable - that's what guilds are for. The thing that made me leave WoW was the fact that the economy never really got easier despite getting epic gear. After playing the game for well over a year, it got really tiresome to constantly HAVE to grind, grind and grind some more just to pay for repairs, potions, etc.. I can understand making players do it when leveling up for the first time but not forever. That was a major aspect of the game I just never enjoyed and it was not possible for me to simply focus those aspects of the game I DID enjoy - raiding and group play with friends.
The whole farming industry would disappear overnight if they would just sell gold as part of the game. They can't get rid of it, they can't even really make a dent in it, so why not control it? In one fell swoop you rid the game of thousands of non-players AND open a huge stream of revenue for the company. Know why they won't do it? Farmers pay for accounts and it lets Blizzard pad out the numbers.
The hamster wheel gets rusty after a while, especially when watching gold farmers scoop up the resources you are forced to need just to play the game.
This is interesting and I'm sorry I was too busy to read it over the weekend.
LSB could indeed help pave the way for a truly open market of apps. The only thing is, people need to eat, so if you want them to devote serious time and effort someone, somewhere needs to pay them. Unless you have a big donor like Shuttleworth or Sun, the money has to come from somewhere and the open market beckons. Please understand that ideally, free versions of most software will eventually dominate and that the immediate goal is increased market share from present.
The sort of thing I'd like to see is a license that guarantees FOSS/GPL in the end but allows dev's to make some money for their efforts. The current (chair-throwing) system is broken so we need something else. We already have a lot of windows utilities where a decent home version is free but an expanded and/or commercial version costs some money - perhaps something like this could grease the wheels. LSB could facilitate that. I just think that the as you pointed out, the FOSS community is a bit too libertarian minded to address this question.
The thing that gets overlooked is the value of support. Support is expensive, which is why SAP does so well. Enterprise software is really a different market, but if you want to get someone to spend time troubleshooting you probably have to pay them.
Hear, hear. It's mind boggling that anyone could think that the first amendment shouldn't apply. I always thought the fairness doctrine was horseshit. The news always had a slant - they just had to whitewash it a bit so it wouldn't seem partisan. It's obvious to anyone that fox is "conservative", the Huffington Post is "liberal", etc.. Is it really such a burden to expect people to use their brains?
We truly get the government we deserve if such large percentages believe that expressed opinions need to be legislated and controlled.
There's a flip side to this that goes the the heart of the controversies. Without a doubt, the overriding strength of linux is the ability of configure it any way you want. However, the general population of end users don't want or need that level of flexibility; they just want the damn thing to work. Here's where Ubuntu shines.
The one big remaining problem is packages and software. For all the virtues of FOSS and GPL, in the end you're dependent on volunteers and/or sponsorship. At the end of the day, the choice for a given distro is to either develop your own packages or to use another distro's packages.
As distasteful as is may be to the FOSS community, I think the ability to walk into a store and buy a piece of software that works with basically any linux distro is the key to wider adoption and marketshare. The hard core kernel junkies will disagree, but there's basically no reason to be dependent on on your distro for software. Currently it's a closed market and it's not possible to develop software that will work out of the box with any distribution without customization - you still need the community to port your products to a given distro's package manager. What company is going to invest time and money developing when they can't really control their own compatibilities and release dates?
As powerful as FOSS/GPL can be, you have to allow companies to make money if you want them on board and developing, especially when market share is as small as it is currently.
It kind of depends on what they saw. I get the impression the guy's house was a mess. If they saw bottles labeled "nitric acid" dripping all over a box labeled "cellulose" their suspicion would be more than justified. Were I his neighbor, I may be rather glad. What if there had been a fire? The guy was definitely not storing his material properly.
When I was a kid the cops raided a neighbor's house and found live hand grenades, mortar shells, thousands of rounds of ammo, guns of all sorts including automatic weapons, etc. The guy was actually a collector and firearms expert who had been used as a consultant by the city of Philadelphia. He got raided because he pissed off some city official who dropped the hammer. Power politics? Yes, but ask the people who lived next door (it was a twin home, too) if they were glad about it. What if there had been a fire? There was enough ordnance to take out a city block. Sometimes public safety wins out.
I won't argue that you have success: go with what works. Perhaps less actual scratch removal is needed than one might supposed. If you need to actually remove scratches, you'd have to polish it like an optical lens or something.
When polishing basically anything, the usual procedure is to use successively finer grades of abrasive polishing agents to the point where the last one is really not abrasive at all. The idea is to physically remove enough surface material to flatten out scratches. I can't help but think that common automotive buffing and polishing compounds would work on CD or DVD plastic. Buffing compound is usually more abrasive, so if you used buffing compound followed by polishing compound and then the wax it should work great. An orbital car polisher has a buffer face sized almost perfectly for buffing a CD. You'd need fresh bonnets for each step and I think carnauba wax might be best as opposed to a polymer based wax to prevent inadvertent chemical reactions. AFAIK a final wax layer is to prevent surface oxidation and fill in (as you mentioned) microscopic scratches to create a smooth, shiny surface - I don't think it actually removes scratches but the polishing pad itself might be enough to remove the remaining microscopic scratches.
The ability of an optical drive to successfully read through a scratch will vary significantly from drive to drive. Has your waxing method worked on a variety of drives?
Heh, that's the problem isn't it? Plus, when I see how many people drive like blind lunatics, I'm forced to conclude that the only way to commute in a metal box, aka a car. In my area, things are fairly spread out and I don't see how you could expand public transportation to accommodate everyone.
That everyone should live close to work is a lovely dream, but what about families where both parents work?
The key thing is that the message is getting to the right ears. NYCL's work puts him in a unique position to put the pieces together to show the bigger picture. Hopefully things will improve as a result, at least until the RIAA and MPAA get the law changed. And yes, I'm THAT pessimistic about it.
There's still slavery in the US and Europe. AFAIK it's mostly prostitution & porn. If you see porn vids from eastern Europe there's a good chance you're watching a slave being raped. It's pretty common all over the so-called developed world.
In developing areas it's all over the place, too. Slavery in the US prior to the civil war in part took advantage of existing indigenous slave markets. Everybody's guilty and it's disgusting.
Actually, I heard of a study about 10 years ago that found that US catholics are on average, better educated and wealthier than average. Don't recall the specifics but it doesn't surprise me. Who really gives a crap anymore if you're catholic in the US?
If your area had a great public school, it would put pressure on the catholic schools since fewer people would want their kids to attend. It's a shame, but in our area that hasn't happened. The local public schools are pretty good. It's a heavily catholic area so there's a big base to draw on.
Re: science - the catholic church seems to have embraced science in a way other religions have not. The last I heard, they regarded science as a method of exploring God's creation. I don't have a problem with that - it's kind of a clever way to get around the creation issue. As the previous poster mentioned, they appear to have learned their lesson with Galileo. Good to see the world's largest christian denomination isn't choosing to hide it's head in the sand.
Slashdot Mirror
The other side of the coin is regulation. If they moor outside national territorial waters, they could set up a data haven free from any government interference. Kinakuta anyone?
Locally I go to Micro Center (http://www.microcenter.com) but they have a very limited brick and mortar presence. Their prices are close to newegg's, but you can just take stuff back to the store if you have a problem. Returns are a big issue with me - I preferentially buy from newegg specifically because returns have never been an issue.
There was a recent article about US military concerns regarding other Chinese made chips. Basically there's no way to tell if there's a back door built in. Assuming the Chinese are successful in establishing a competitive CPU business, there's a real chance that some form external control might be possible.
When the Israelis bombed that Syrian reactor site a few months back, they weren't picked up by a supposedly state of the art radar system - there was some speculation that the Israelis used a back door to disable the radar, but of course they aren't talking.
The obvious follow up is this - has the US gov't managed to slip a back door into Intel's chips?
You know, this actually makes M$ look good. By providing automatic updates they are forcing even the casual users to keep their machines patched. It's a shame they threw WGA into the pipe and screwed it all up. If they just kept the automatic updates channel open for patches it would build trust. Of course they blew that opportunity.
looks like someone is testing a new spam machine.
I think it was overrated. I *liked* it, and the drm didn't cause me any problems, althought I oppose it in principle. The problem was just what you said - the same game mechanic over and over. I had NO desire to replay. Don't think I ever got to the end - it just wasn't interesting enough. Shame because it really was a game with a lot of promise.
I thought viruses targeted cellular membrane surface molecules (glycoproteins? It's been a while) unique to a given tissue, which is why cold viruses don't infect your liver, etc.? If this assumption is correct, then the problem is in both identifying that unique surface marker and figuring out how to use it to enable the virus to deliver it's contents.
A lot of devices have the polarity embossed on the case next to the plug but I still don't really trust it. BTW voltage meters only cost about ten bucks and they're indispensable if you're going to muck around with wires. Plus, they're fun to play with - you can de-mystify a lot of electronics just by poking around.
"Many of my toys are 12vDC, of the round pin variety. Polarity is totally random, as is size of the center pin, but many are compatible. If they're going to standardize, this is probably where to go."
I keep a well-used voltage tester handy for exactly this reason. This, coupled with an ultra-fine point sharpie marker (those marked "fine" are ballpoints, not markers) means I can mark the volt, amps and polarity somewhere on the device and mark the charger with the device is belongs to - it's amazing how few chargers are marked that way by the manufacturer.
Rounding out the equipment pack is a hard-to-find 12 VDC car lighter multi voltage converter that has a polarity switch. If a compatible plug isn't already on the converter it isn't hard to figure out which wires to splice. I put on a USB plug, but for items with entirely proprietary connectors you have to sacrifice a wall wart.
If valuable items came mainly from crafting instead of being farmed or obtained from drops the game would change dramatically. They included a bit of this in the use of dark iron items for the molten core, but then dropped the ball. The whole drop system is kind of weird when you think about it. There really wasn't much of a point to being a weapon smith, for example. Why set up a crafting system if it doesn't end up really being relevant to game play?
No, I don't think they see it as a real problem. If they set up a way to buy gold legitimately, it would limit the price farmers could charge and largely drive them out of business. It wouldn't completely eliminate the problems but it could make it a lot less profitable.
You seem to have missed the fact that I DON'T play anymore, in part because I got sick of their approach to farming and grinding.
Frankly after 3 readings I still can't figure out your point.
Bah! In my day we had blankets made out of asbestos so the cigarettes we smoked in bed wouldn't burn holes. We had lead paint on our tableware and lead in our water supply pipes. We put mercury solutions on our cuts, brushed our teeth with PCB's and washed our hair with dioxin. We spent every day in the sun without sunblock and it was GOOD for us.
Kids these days have it too easy.
The folks that like showing off and have and their egos at stake are a minor problem and easily avoidable - that's what guilds are for. The thing that made me leave WoW was the fact that the economy never really got easier despite getting epic gear. After playing the game for well over a year, it got really tiresome to constantly HAVE to grind, grind and grind some more just to pay for repairs, potions, etc.. I can understand making players do it when leveling up for the first time but not forever. That was a major aspect of the game I just never enjoyed and it was not possible for me to simply focus those aspects of the game I DID enjoy - raiding and group play with friends.
The whole farming industry would disappear overnight if they would just sell gold as part of the game. They can't get rid of it, they can't even really make a dent in it, so why not control it? In one fell swoop you rid the game of thousands of non-players AND open a huge stream of revenue for the company. Know why they won't do it? Farmers pay for accounts and it lets Blizzard pad out the numbers.
The hamster wheel gets rusty after a while, especially when watching gold farmers scoop up the resources you are forced to need just to play the game.
This is interesting and I'm sorry I was too busy to read it over the weekend.
LSB could indeed help pave the way for a truly open market of apps. The only thing is, people need to eat, so if you want them to devote serious time and effort someone, somewhere needs to pay them. Unless you have a big donor like Shuttleworth or Sun, the money has to come from somewhere and the open market beckons. Please understand that ideally, free versions of most software will eventually dominate and that the immediate goal is increased market share from present.
The sort of thing I'd like to see is a license that guarantees FOSS/GPL in the end but allows dev's to make some money for their efforts. The current (chair-throwing) system is broken so we need something else. We already have a lot of windows utilities where a decent home version is free but an expanded and/or commercial version costs some money - perhaps something like this could grease the wheels. LSB could facilitate that. I just think that the as you pointed out, the FOSS community is a bit too libertarian minded to address this question.
The thing that gets overlooked is the value of support. Support is expensive, which is why SAP does so well. Enterprise software is really a different market, but if you want to get someone to spend time troubleshooting you probably have to pay them.
Hear, hear. It's mind boggling that anyone could think that the first amendment shouldn't apply. I always thought the fairness doctrine was horseshit. The news always had a slant - they just had to whitewash it a bit so it wouldn't seem partisan.
It's obvious to anyone that fox is "conservative", the Huffington Post is "liberal", etc.. Is it really such a burden to expect people to use their brains?
We truly get the government we deserve if such large percentages believe that expressed opinions need to be legislated and controlled.
There's a flip side to this that goes the the heart of the controversies. Without a doubt, the overriding strength of linux is the ability of configure it any way you want. However, the general population of end users don't want or need that level of flexibility; they just want the damn thing to work. Here's where Ubuntu shines.
The one big remaining problem is packages and software. For all the virtues of FOSS and GPL, in the end you're dependent on volunteers and/or sponsorship. At the end of the day, the choice for a given distro is to either develop your own packages or to use another distro's packages.
As distasteful as is may be to the FOSS community, I think the ability to walk into a store and buy a piece of software that works with basically any linux distro is the key to wider adoption and marketshare. The hard core kernel junkies will disagree, but there's basically no reason to be dependent on on your distro for software. Currently it's a closed market and it's not possible to develop software that will work out of the box with any distribution without customization - you still need the community to port your products to a given distro's package manager. What company is going to invest time and money developing when they can't really control their own compatibilities and release dates?
As powerful as FOSS/GPL can be, you have to allow companies to make money if you want them on board and developing, especially when market share is as small as it is currently.
It kind of depends on what they saw. I get the impression the guy's house was a mess. If they saw bottles labeled "nitric acid" dripping all over a box labeled "cellulose" their suspicion would be more than justified. Were I his neighbor, I may be rather glad. What if there had been a fire? The guy was definitely not storing his material properly.
When I was a kid the cops raided a neighbor's house and found live hand grenades, mortar shells, thousands of rounds of ammo, guns of all sorts including automatic weapons, etc. The guy was actually a collector and firearms expert who had been used as a consultant by the city of Philadelphia. He got raided because he pissed off some city official who dropped the hammer. Power politics? Yes, but ask the people who lived next door (it was a twin home, too) if they were glad about it. What if there had been a fire? There was enough ordnance to take out a city block. Sometimes public safety wins out.
Yes yes, mixing ammonia and bleach produces chloramine gas, which is a strong irritant and people have died from inhaling it.
Don't be afraid to say it. Truth is more important since we aren't all idiots.
Plastic keys FTW!!
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/08/medeco-locks-cr.html
I won't argue that you have success: go with what works. Perhaps less actual scratch removal is needed than one might supposed. If you need to actually remove scratches, you'd have to polish it like an optical lens or something.
When polishing basically anything, the usual procedure is to use successively finer grades of abrasive polishing agents to the point where the last one is really not abrasive at all. The idea is to physically remove enough surface material to flatten out scratches. I can't help but think that common automotive buffing and polishing compounds would work on CD or DVD plastic. Buffing compound is usually more abrasive, so if you used buffing compound followed by polishing compound and then the wax it should work great. An orbital car polisher has a buffer face sized almost perfectly for buffing a CD. You'd need fresh bonnets for each step and I think carnauba wax might be best as opposed to a polymer based wax to prevent inadvertent chemical reactions. AFAIK a final wax layer is to prevent surface oxidation and fill in (as you mentioned) microscopic scratches to create a smooth, shiny surface - I don't think it actually removes scratches but the polishing pad itself might be enough to remove the remaining microscopic scratches.
The ability of an optical drive to successfully read through a scratch will vary significantly from drive to drive. Has your waxing method worked on a variety of drives?
Heh, that's the problem isn't it? Plus, when I see how many people drive like blind lunatics, I'm forced to conclude that the only way to commute in a metal box, aka a car. In my area, things are fairly spread out and I don't see how you could expand public transportation to accommodate everyone.
That everyone should live close to work is a lovely dream, but what about families where both parents work?
The key thing is that the message is getting to the right ears. NYCL's work puts him in a unique position to put the pieces together to show the bigger picture. Hopefully things will improve as a result, at least until the RIAA and MPAA get the law changed. And yes, I'm THAT pessimistic about it.
There's still slavery in the US and Europe. AFAIK it's mostly prostitution & porn. If you see porn vids from eastern Europe there's a good chance you're watching a slave being raped. It's pretty common all over the so-called developed world.
In developing areas it's all over the place, too. Slavery in the US prior to the civil war in part took advantage of existing indigenous slave markets. Everybody's guilty and it's disgusting.
Actually, I heard of a study about 10 years ago that found that US catholics are on average, better educated and wealthier than average. Don't recall the specifics but it doesn't surprise me. Who really gives a crap anymore if you're catholic in the US?
If your area had a great public school, it would put pressure on the catholic schools since fewer people would want their kids to attend. It's a shame, but in our area that hasn't happened. The local public schools are pretty good. It's a heavily catholic area so there's a big base to draw on.
Re: science - the catholic church seems to have embraced science in a way other religions have not. The last I heard, they regarded science as a method of exploring God's creation. I don't have a problem with that - it's kind of a clever way to get around the creation issue. As the previous poster mentioned, they appear to have learned their lesson with Galileo. Good to see the world's largest christian denomination isn't choosing to hide it's head in the sand.