It might be true that games are not very engrossing for a random person. It takes some investment to appreciate the oeuvre. Some movie/novel genres are also very much a matter of taste.
However, for the true devotee (games or chick pr0n romance novels), the material is _extremely_ engrossing. Addictive in many cases.
It is difficult to measure engrossment between different individuals, or across a population. The only [superficial] measurement I would propose is price/hour entertainment. Stand-alone games seem around $10/h, movies around $5/hr, and novels $3/h.
Could this be due to limitations under US Law, specificially the Commerce Control List or State Dept ITAR rules?
Many people don't know, but the US exerts complete juristication and control over exports. I would have thought MS-Vista falls under the "publicly available" software exemption, but this wouldn't cover ITAR rules on munitions (incl encryption).
So? Lawyers are creative, and don't need an iron-clad case to sue. One obvious suit is from a non-Crackberry user who sent email that wound up on a Crackberry. Say an order to a broker. Sure, the broker is _mostly_ liable for not executing the order. But RIM can certainly be made party to the suit, and it's liability adjudged.
Well, it was bound to happen with a centralized/heirarchical service model. Perhaps RIM will learn and go decentralized. Perhaps not.
More interesting will be the addicts reaction. Some people really hang on the devices and get addicted to their Crackberries. I wonder how they will adjust (most people will do just fine) and what lawsuits will result. Or if the plantiffs are too worred about simply having their service cancelled!
... what did you expect? Complaince with the spirit of court orders? MSFT won't even comply with the letter! And they're not shy of using their monopoly position to leverage other monopolies (highly illegal).
For inexplicable reasons, people persistantly think of MSFT as a benevolent technically-oriented company which is profitable because it serves the market and gives people what they want.
It is not and has never been. MSFT is a commercial marketing enterprise with considerable talents both as marketers and in contractual/legal arrangements. Their technical talents are very meagre. Most software they have bought from others or essentially contracted (even if inhouse).
They are also an adjudged monopolist (only the remedies were thrown out on appeal, _not_ the findings!) who have been entirely predatory "red-in-tooth-and-claw" and unfairly successful.
Thank you for the additional details. I'm glad to see this is sufficiently recognized that rough standards have evolved (must vary by locale). This not only compensates the victim, but also gives the police some pause and highlights the need for caution.
Yes, I'm aware of the pretty windows dressing. However, magistrates ask questions, rather than weigh both sides. And there is much more credibility assigned to prosecutors. The French Civil Service is very high status and has high credibility.
What it really boils down to is that a person may be nominally "innocent until proven guilty", but that burden of proff isn't very high. A suggestion of a plausible case is enough. Then the person has to prove innocence.
... just look at France (where guilty is the rule). People because very mistrustful of authorities and evade them and laws as much as possible. A lot of potentially productive activity is stillborne by fear [prior restraint].
This is a clear case of police malfeasance, however accidental, there was serious harm. Police are in the business of making people pay for their mistakes and harm to others. Will they accept their own? Or evade it? Criminals prey upon civilians. Police prey upon criminals. What should happen when police reach too far down the food-chain?
Ideally, the police chief admits wrongdoing and reaches some financial settlement, min 10 k$.
If this _doesn't_ happen, the police have loudly shouted they're nothing but bullies and will attack whomever they wish.
I do not think the RIAA is capable of seeing their policy of "vigorous enforcement" is any kind of mistake. It is what their organization has lived on for 100+ years. Old, successful organizations almost never change.
The RIAA has never been about making sense or playing "fair". NEVER in 100+ years. Long before personal copying became possible, the RIAA members have been writing the most egregious contracts with artists. Robber baron-esque. Industrial feudalism wherein workers get wages counted up from minimum, and employers get most of the value-added. Milking their distribution oligopoly. Not even really capitalism. Listen to some performers talk about their labels. Not all are simply sour grapes.
Then in the 1970s the RIAA fought home recording onto tape. The RIAA have always been middlemen who use heavy-handed legalistic tactics to achieve their goals. "know your enemy" [Sun Tzu]
This mostly looks like a commercial product for a convention hall or stadium. There are much bigger ones, usually based on discrete RGB LEDs. One local store has one about 15' (180") diagonal.
This looks like a very nice stand by a mid-level adminstrator. People in universities usually get a lot of freedom, a carryover from acedemic freedom (allowed to teachers, not students!).
Unfortunately, if the university's adminsitration isn't behind her (and they might well be, viz acedemic freedom), she could get reversed and reprimanded. Worse since the Regents ulimately report to the NC Legislature. Still, acedemics _can_ be cantankerous. And are expected to be or tenure would not be granted.
These sorts of statistics are misleading, and evoke Mark Twain: "Figures don't lie, but liars figure." I'm not sure what they measured, or how they determine sex. First names are reliable in the aggregate (not for individuals!) but only show account ownership. I suspect a large number of single moms own accounts that are mostly used by their children.
\
I'm personally glad to see the online world better reflect the real wolrd with proportionate representation from all groups. But I wouldn't trust simple surveys. I'd rather see something from the US Bureau of the Census asking "how many times in the past month" and "how long average session".
Agreed that actual, planned redundancy cost more than people are willing to pay. Fortunately, it is not needed. Almost all ISPs/hosters/corps of any size are multi-homed, and the traffic will just divert if one comes down. Sure, the paths will be longer, latencies higher and traffic slowed. But not stopped.
What special skills or tactics do you believe "The Terrorists" [whomever they might be] possess? The Internet already copes with a deluge of spam, 'bots and trojans and varous DoS attacks. Not to mention the flash crowds.
It might be hackneyed, but please remember the internet was designed to withstand hundreds of nuclear warheads. Half of any class of nodes can go down and the rest keep running.
Sounds mostly like a "trial balloon", an idea floated up without any real expectation it will be implemented. Perhaps for scare value. The logic is quite erronious: labels have been losing sales not due to competition/substitution from downloads, but from a lack of new, fresh product to sell. They've cut their A&R budgets and are milking their catalogs. Sales would drop even with zero downloading.
In any case, the implementation is sure to be a nightmare: families with shared accounts, botnets, and false-positive identification will make enforcement difficult, even if the ISPs actually wanted to comply. Which I doubt they do. Do ISPs have "common carrier" status is *.au? If so, they will be loathe to jeopardize it.
polycarbonate -- unfortunately not
on
Can CDs Be Recycled?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
CDs are made of polycarbonate resin, Recycling Class (7) that finds little use. See and here.
While I generally agree with the parent, AC is more efficient than 2:1 or 3:1 . An older SEER 10 AC unit is then 2.94 W [heat] removed per 1 W [electric]. The newer SEER 13 units are 3.8 W/W.
I did not say cooling as 2-5% of operating cost. I said cooling is 2-5% of computer power. That means the fans or pumps only.
As you point out, total system cooling can be significant when AC is involved. But this will NOT change with oil-cooling. 98% of the heat will still be generated and have to be removed by the same AC units unless someone mounts external radiators.
Power consumption for cooling might well be reduced by 50%, but this is perhaps 2-5% of the total. How can overall power be reduced? The CPU consumes the same, wet or dry. PSU ditto.
"log off", how do you do that on an HTTP session? The TCP connection will eventually be closed, but I'm not sure when short of browser shutdown. You could visit Google or some other homepage, but I doubt one page visit will close the connection.
The Eu directives are quite stark and member nations can't easily bypass them. Or at least, not without consequences of appearing to throw out the whole union.
In this case, the snooping would appear to be more than warrented by employee productivity or asset/network integrity. Very targetted, and unarguably an abuse of employer power. Something dreaded in the EU and prohibited by a whole host of laws.
I would hope that even in the US this sort of inter-personal grudge nursing would be similarly identified as malfeasance. The snoopers boss ought to fire her for abuse of company assets and damage to reputation. Snooping is never free.
The photo standard for human visual acuity is 10 line-pairs per mm at normal still picture viewing distance (about one meter). 0.1 mil. But 20:20 is only 0.3 mil (1 minute of arc). A 50" diag 16:9 screen is 24.5" vertical. 1080 lines gives 0.58mm each. At 8' range this is 0.24 mil, within 20:20, but not within photo standards.
Of course, we are looking at moving pictures, which have different, more subjective requirements. A lot depends on content and "immersion". Many people watch these horribly small LCDs (portable and aircraft) with often only 240 lines. Judged for picture quality, they're extremely poor. Yet people still watch, so the content must be compelling enjough to overlook the technical flaws. I personally sometimes experience the reverse effect at HiDef -- the details start to distract from the content!
Slashdot Mirror
However, for the true devotee (games or chick pr0n romance novels), the material is _extremely_ engrossing. Addictive in many cases.
It is difficult to measure engrossment between different individuals, or across a population. The only [superficial] measurement I would propose is price/hour entertainment. Stand-alone games seem around $10/h, movies around $5/hr, and novels $3/h.
Many people don't know, but the US exerts complete juristication and control over exports. I would have thought MS-Vista falls under the "publicly available" software exemption, but this wouldn't cover ITAR rules on munitions (incl encryption).
More interesting will be the addicts reaction. Some people really hang on the devices and get addicted to their Crackberries. I wonder how they will adjust (most people will do just fine) and what lawsuits will result. Or if the plantiffs are too worred about simply having their service cancelled!
For inexplicable reasons, people persistantly think of MSFT as a benevolent technically-oriented company which is profitable because it serves the market and gives people what they want.
It is not and has never been. MSFT is a commercial marketing enterprise with considerable talents both as marketers and in contractual/legal arrangements. Their technical talents are very meagre. Most software they have bought from others or essentially contracted (even if inhouse).
They are also an adjudged monopolist (only the remedies were thrown out on appeal, _not_ the findings!) who have been entirely predatory "red-in-tooth-and-claw" and unfairly successful.
What it really boils down to is that a person may be nominally "innocent until proven guilty", but that burden of proff isn't very high. A suggestion of a plausible case is enough. Then the person has to prove innocence.
This is a clear case of police malfeasance, however accidental, there was serious harm. Police are in the business of making people pay for their mistakes and harm to others. Will they accept their own? Or evade it? Criminals prey upon civilians. Police prey upon criminals. What should happen when police reach too far down the food-chain?
Ideally, the police chief admits wrongdoing and reaches some financial settlement, min 10 k$. If this _doesn't_ happen, the police have loudly shouted they're nothing but bullies and will attack whomever they wish.
Then in the 1970s the RIAA fought home recording onto tape. The RIAA have always been middlemen who use heavy-handed legalistic tactics to achieve their goals. "know your enemy" [Sun Tzu]
Unfortunately, if the university's adminsitration isn't behind her (and they might well be, viz acedemic freedom), she could get reversed and reprimanded. Worse since the Regents ulimately report to the NC Legislature. Still, acedemics _can_ be cantankerous. And are expected to be or tenure would not be granted.
\ I'm personally glad to see the online world better reflect the real wolrd with proportionate representation from all groups. But I wouldn't trust simple surveys. I'd rather see something from the US Bureau of the Census asking "how many times in the past month" and "how long average session".
It might be hackneyed, but please remember the internet was designed to withstand hundreds of nuclear warheads. Half of any class of nodes can go down and the rest keep running.
In any case, the implementation is sure to be a nightmare: families with shared accounts, botnets, and false-positive identification will make enforcement difficult, even if the ISPs actually wanted to comply. Which I doubt they do. Do ISPs have "common carrier" status is *.au? If so, they will be loathe to jeopardize it.
As you point out, total system cooling can be significant when AC is involved. But this will NOT change with oil-cooling. 98% of the heat will still be generated and have to be removed by the same AC units unless someone mounts external radiators.
In this case, the snooping would appear to be more than warrented by employee productivity or asset/network integrity. Very targetted, and unarguably an abuse of employer power. Something dreaded in the EU and prohibited by a whole host of laws.
I would hope that even in the US this sort of inter-personal grudge nursing would be similarly identified as malfeasance. The snoopers boss ought to fire her for abuse of company assets and damage to reputation. Snooping is never free.
Clearing cookies is great, but I'm not sure whether you're clearing cookies that will be saved, or cookies already saved.
Of course, we are looking at moving pictures, which have different, more subjective requirements. A lot depends on content and "immersion". Many people watch these horribly small LCDs (portable and aircraft) with often only 240 lines. Judged for picture quality, they're extremely poor. Yet people still watch, so the content must be compelling enjough to overlook the technical flaws. I personally sometimes experience the reverse effect at HiDef -- the details start to distract from the content!
I could just scp /etc, but that loses many of the upgrades, so I have to edit manually.