No one stole anything through pirate bay, they may have committed copyright infringement, but that is an entirely different thing.
Not even that. The Pirate Bay is charged with "assisting copyright infringement of 24 albums, 9 movies and 4 games", nothing more, nothing less. According to the Swedish constitution that's the only thing that should be taken in consideration by the court. Anything else they may have done except assisting copyright infringement of those specified 24 albums, 9 movies and 4 games is completely off-topic in the trial. Also, all fines and damages compensation are required to be in line with proven losses and it's against the constitution to use general deterrence, to make examples of specific deviants.
One thing we learned during the TPB trial and the debates of the new surveillance laws (FRA, IPRED, datalagringsdirektivet) is that the Swedish constitution isn't enforced at all. We have a "constitution deputation" but what they say are only to be regarded as "recommendations" and weighted with the opinions of other deputations. Previously this wasn't a problem because courts and law makers have pretty much followed the constitution anyway but the last few years it has become clear that we desperately need a constitutional court with full veto.
Yes, but the lawyer naively thought that the law was going to be interpreted by the letter, the way it had always (officially) been done in modern day Sweden. They just underestimated the power of angry multinational mega-corporations and their lobbying/bribing/truth-twisting skills. The trial was very un-Swedish in many ways. TECHNICALLY they didn't break any Swedish laws and the lawyers approached it in a purely technocratical way. Usually that would had worked. Unfortunately, everything turned into messy discussions of intents, unproven figures of lost sales, attitudes and the like. This while there was MASSIVE pressure from very very strong international interests.
I'm sure that there are even more people with iPhones and Blackberries today than it was before Android came along. Android didn't destroy iPhone and Blackberry. If anything, it explosively expanded the market. It made them smaller in comparision but not in number of sales.
Almost. In february 2010 it was supposed to be released "in the first half of 2010". Then "sorry, in October 2010". Then I don't know but it's not released yet AFAIK.
The main reason for going higher than 16 bit, 44.1 khz is when you want to manipulate the audio, for example mixing, pitching and applying various effects.
Imagine that you have a 1600x1200 pixel screen. You have one 1600x1200 pixel image and one 4000x3000 pixel original. On your screen both images look identical. Now apply a spherize filter effect. The 1600x1200 pixel image will become pixelated on the parts where it's stretched out but the 4000x3000 pixel image will still look good.
The same theory applies to audio also.
There's no real reason to go higher than CD quality for the final mix that you're only going to listen to. Not even the best hearing audiophiles with a $10000000 stereo will be able to tell the difference in a double blind test.
Yeah, I used to listen to Pandora all the time in Sweden until they started with that idiotic IP-blocking. Before I could just enter a random valid US zip code to get access. Using proxies is such a messy and fragile solution. Come one, Pandora, the web is global! I do use Spotify and Grooveshark quite a lot but Pandora was the best when it came to discovering new music.
CoPilot and my standalone Navigon GPS do a decent job actually (CoPilot better than Navigon). I find their maps much clearer than Google Navigation. It's easier to distinct which road is which when there are several ones close to each other. They also tell me the next move if it's closer than 300 meters or so. "Now turn left, then after 200 meters turn right." The biggest problem I had with Google Navigation in Stockholm was that it wanted me to drive in the wrong direction on a one-way street. Surely there was a reason for that "this area is not yet supported" popup.:)
Not sure about Germany, France, etc but it doesn't work at all in Sweden. It just pops up a dialog saying that navigation isn't supported in this area. There is a hacked version available that removes this restriction and lets me use navigation anyway but it doesn't work very good at all, at least not in central Stockholm where there are lots of one-way streets and quick turns where you have to already be in the correct lane to get a chance to make the next turn.
Good (!) GPS navigation software that works in Europe. More specifically TomTom and Garmin. Android has Sygic Aura, NDrive, Navigon, Wisepilot (and a bunch of rebranded variants), iGO MyWay (though not officially available to the general public), CoPilot, Waze, AndNav and some more. All of them are good at various things but all of them also have various minor and major flaws. I have used the trials on all of them and CoPilot is the best by far, but it doesn't have live traffic data in Sweden:( I want TomTom damnit.
I truly think that you are wrong in this case. Bahnhof is different. It was started in 1994 by Oscar Swartz, a prominent liberal (not socialist) gay political activist and Pirate Party supporter. CEO Jon Karlung is also a liberal (who used to be editor-in-chief on Sweden's largest (?) porno magazine Aktuell Rapport in the 90s). Bahnhof is one of the few companies that is actually run by liberal ideologists and they are as interested in freedom (as in not giving more power to the government) as they are in running a successful company. They are all total nerds and they spent tons of money to make their office bunker (!) look like it's from a cyberpunk movie.
In most other cases I would agree with you though...
"Meal as a pill" almost exists, in the form of nutrition bars. Not the supplemental bars that athletes use but the complete "everything you need except water and most calories" bars that you can quite safely eat exclusively for several weeks in a row. Most commonly used for VLCD diets when you eat only 600-800 kcal/day for 1-2 months. I've tried it and you are actually (very) hungry only the first 3 days or so. Then your stomach gets used to the lack of volume and since you get about all the nutrients you need your body isn't screaming for more.
So you'll have no problem posting all your passwords, social security number, bank account numbers, and so on publicly, then. Right?
Not the same. This is more like calling the emperor naked. The bad guys already know that "security" is often just a theatre. This is just a blunt way to raise awareness of that fact and force vendors to start taking security more seriously.
I'm pretty sure it was impossible to get audio over HDMI and accelerated video playback in Linux (about) 2 years ago with ATI/AMD, but with NVidia I could at least get accelerated video and "spdif over hdmi" although not LPCM until about a year ago. But yeah, hardware wise ATI/AMD was way ahead.
Why is a Linux media center amusing? I don't care about plastic discs. I rip them, add them to XBMC and put the discs away. My media center doesn't need to play them directly but if the need should arise for some reason I can always just play it in my PS3.
Does "everything" include hardware accelerated video playback, multichannel LPCM-audio over HDMI and 64-bit support?
I haven't looked at the state of AMD video card support in Linux for a while but as recently as a couple of years ago, NVidia was the pretty much the only usable option for media centers.
You haven't actually seen an ebook reader, have you? Their screens pretty much look like printed paper. Especially the new higher contrast (and faster) Pearl screens in the Sony PRS-350/650/950, the Kindle 3 and DX Graphite.
Personally I think the whole "it's your own damn fault for not being paranoid" culture of the 21st century has gone way too far. I shouldn't be required to read fine print legalese every time I buy something just to make sure I'm not getting screwed. What happened to "the customer is always right"?
Do those who have their purchased books removed at least get their money back? Otherwise it's plain theft. The real kind of theft, not copyright infringement. No license "agreements" can change that.
I have a Kindle but I wouldn't dream of putting myself in this position. I only buy DRM free (often watermarked though) books that I can convert to mobi format and read on the Kindle, and there are tons of free books out there as well.
Oh, my next ebook reader will NOT be a Kindle, that's for sure.
I used to be an Amazon fan but I've started to hate them more and more. Bookstores shouldn't censor content based on some stupid conservative "morals", only follow what is absolutely required by law.
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No one stole anything through pirate bay, they may have committed copyright infringement, but that is an entirely different thing.
Not even that. The Pirate Bay is charged with "assisting copyright infringement of 24 albums, 9 movies and 4 games", nothing more, nothing less. According to the Swedish constitution that's the only thing that should be taken in consideration by the court. Anything else they may have done except assisting copyright infringement of those specified 24 albums, 9 movies and 4 games is completely off-topic in the trial. Also, all fines and damages compensation are required to be in line with proven losses and it's against the constitution to use general deterrence, to make examples of specific deviants.
One thing we learned during the TPB trial and the debates of the new surveillance laws (FRA, IPRED, datalagringsdirektivet) is that the Swedish constitution isn't enforced at all. We have a "constitution deputation" but what they say are only to be regarded as "recommendations" and weighted with the opinions of other deputations. Previously this wasn't a problem because courts and law makers have pretty much followed the constitution anyway but the last few years it has become clear that we desperately need a constitutional court with full veto.
Yes, but the lawyer naively thought that the law was going to be interpreted by the letter, the way it had always (officially) been done in modern day Sweden. They just underestimated the power of angry multinational mega-corporations and their lobbying/bribing/truth-twisting skills. The trial was very un-Swedish in many ways. TECHNICALLY they didn't break any Swedish laws and the lawyers approached it in a purely technocratical way. Usually that would had worked. Unfortunately, everything turned into messy discussions of intents, unproven figures of lost sales, attitudes and the like. This while there was MASSIVE pressure from very very strong international interests.
I'm sure that there are even more people with iPhones and Blackberries today than it was before Android came along. Android didn't destroy iPhone and Blackberry. If anything, it explosively expanded the market. It made them smaller in comparision but not in number of sales.
Just wait until a postman steal your stamps and kill your children! We must stop using stamps, think of the children!!!
Correcting myself. It seems that WebOS 2 supports Flash out of the box. The infinite delay is for a WebOS 1 version.
Almost. In february 2010 it was supposed to be released "in the first half of 2010". Then "sorry, in October 2010". Then I don't know but it's not released yet AFAIK.
The main reason for going higher than 16 bit, 44.1 khz is when you want to manipulate the audio, for example mixing, pitching and applying various effects.
Imagine that you have a 1600x1200 pixel screen. You have one 1600x1200 pixel image and one 4000x3000 pixel original. On your screen both images look identical. Now apply a spherize filter effect. The 1600x1200 pixel image will become pixelated on the parts where it's stretched out but the 4000x3000 pixel image will still look good.
The same theory applies to audio also.
There's no real reason to go higher than CD quality for the final mix that you're only going to listen to. Not even the best hearing audiophiles with a $10000000 stereo will be able to tell the difference in a double blind test.
Yeah, I used to listen to Pandora all the time in Sweden until they started with that idiotic IP-blocking. Before I could just enter a random valid US zip code to get access. Using proxies is such a messy and fragile solution. Come one, Pandora, the web is global! I do use Spotify and Grooveshark quite a lot but Pandora was the best when it came to discovering new music.
Grooveshark costs money for the mobile version also...
CoPilot and my standalone Navigon GPS do a decent job actually (CoPilot better than Navigon). I find their maps much clearer than Google Navigation. It's easier to distinct which road is which when there are several ones close to each other. They also tell me the next move if it's closer than 300 meters or so. "Now turn left, then after 200 meters turn right." The biggest problem I had with Google Navigation in Stockholm was that it wanted me to drive in the wrong direction on a one-way street. Surely there was a reason for that "this area is not yet supported" popup. :)
Not sure about Germany, France, etc but it doesn't work at all in Sweden. It just pops up a dialog saying that navigation isn't supported in this area. There is a hacked version available that removes this restriction and lets me use navigation anyway but it doesn't work very good at all, at least not in central Stockholm where there are lots of one-way streets and quick turns where you have to already be in the correct lane to get a chance to make the next turn.
Good (!) GPS navigation software that works in Europe. More specifically TomTom and Garmin. Android has Sygic Aura, NDrive, Navigon, Wisepilot (and a bunch of rebranded variants), iGO MyWay (though not officially available to the general public), CoPilot, Waze, AndNav and some more. All of them are good at various things but all of them also have various minor and major flaws. I have used the trials on all of them and CoPilot is the best by far, but it doesn't have live traffic data in Sweden :( I want TomTom damnit.
I truly think that you are wrong in this case. Bahnhof is different. It was started in 1994 by Oscar Swartz, a prominent liberal (not socialist) gay political activist and Pirate Party supporter. CEO Jon Karlung is also a liberal (who used to be editor-in-chief on Sweden's largest (?) porno magazine Aktuell Rapport in the 90s). Bahnhof is one of the few companies that is actually run by liberal ideologists and they are as interested in freedom (as in not giving more power to the government) as they are in running a successful company. They are all total nerds and they spent tons of money to make their office bunker (!) look like it's from a cyberpunk movie.
In most other cases I would agree with you though...
I think it should be called Office Sweet, dude.
Wait, isn't she one of the chicks that was banging the Wikileaks guy?
Since Anna Troberg is a lesbian that's not very likely...
"Meal as a pill" almost exists, in the form of nutrition bars. Not the supplemental bars that athletes use but the complete "everything you need except water and most calories" bars that you can quite safely eat exclusively for several weeks in a row. Most commonly used for VLCD diets when you eat only 600-800 kcal/day for 1-2 months. I've tried it and you are actually (very) hungry only the first 3 days or so. Then your stomach gets used to the lack of volume and since you get about all the nutrients you need your body isn't screaming for more.
What ever happened by competing for business by enticing customers through a combination of innovation, product, value, service and marketing?
Ammagawd, that is SO last century!
So you'll have no problem posting all your passwords, social security number, bank account numbers, and so on publicly, then. Right?
Not the same. This is more like calling the emperor naked. The bad guys already know that "security" is often just a theatre. This is just a blunt way to raise awareness of that fact and force vendors to start taking security more seriously.
I used a Macbook Pro from 2006 running Leopard (10.5), maybe that has to do something with it. I'm not sure what graphics card it has.
Firefox 4.0b7 works, yes, but it's slow as hell. The Chrome 9 beta is about 10 times faster. At least on OSX.
I'm pretty sure it was impossible to get audio over HDMI and accelerated video playback in Linux (about) 2 years ago with ATI/AMD, but with NVidia I could at least get accelerated video and "spdif over hdmi" although not LPCM until about a year ago. But yeah, hardware wise ATI/AMD was way ahead.
Why is a Linux media center amusing? I don't care about plastic discs. I rip them, add them to XBMC and put the discs away. My media center doesn't need to play them directly but if the need should arise for some reason I can always just play it in my PS3.
Does "everything" include hardware accelerated video playback, multichannel LPCM-audio over HDMI and 64-bit support?
I haven't looked at the state of AMD video card support in Linux for a while but as recently as a couple of years ago, NVidia was the pretty much the only usable option for media centers.
You haven't actually seen an ebook reader, have you? Their screens pretty much look like printed paper. Especially the new higher contrast (and faster) Pearl screens in the Sony PRS-350/650/950, the Kindle 3 and DX Graphite.
Personally I think the whole "it's your own damn fault for not being paranoid" culture of the 21st century has gone way too far. I shouldn't be required to read fine print legalese every time I buy something just to make sure I'm not getting screwed. What happened to "the customer is always right"?
Do those who have their purchased books removed at least get their money back? Otherwise it's plain theft. The real kind of theft, not copyright infringement. No license "agreements" can change that.
I have a Kindle but I wouldn't dream of putting myself in this position. I only buy DRM free (often watermarked though) books that I can convert to mobi format and read on the Kindle, and there are tons of free books out there as well. Oh, my next ebook reader will NOT be a Kindle, that's for sure.
I used to be an Amazon fan but I've started to hate them more and more. Bookstores shouldn't censor content based on some stupid conservative "morals", only follow what is absolutely required by law.