How can this thing tell the difference of me being stressed out because of my home life versus me being stressed out due to my work life?
Until it can distinguish between at least those two types of stress, then it's probably only useful for the HR dept. to help you in their "life programs" if your employer offers them.
There's also a difference between filing uncensored hardcore pornography into public record, and censoring (blurring, black box, smiley, you-name-it) the image strategically and filing that. It's more tasteful and it serves its purpose.
I'm not just talking about gay porn here, I'm talking super-violent images or anything else that would normally be considered "inappropriate" for the public record.
Now on the other hand, I think it's a double-standard that one could file a motion and attach a graphic image of violence and gore without reprimand, but a graphically explicit sexual image is problematic. The double-standard is applied to our laws though as well. Walking around nude in public is usually illegal, but walking around with a sandwich board of gored and mutilated fetuses to protest abortion is perfectly fine. Frankly I find the gore more offensive than the naked guy -- he's just kind of funny (is it really that cold out?)
Perhaps as a test we should get someone (preferably about 5') to dress up in a black trenchcoat with a black hat and a thin pointy mustache and carry a round black ball slightly smaller than the size of his head with a 5" lit and sparkling fuse.
I wonder how the Boston authorities would react to that? How about on Halloween?
I'm not sure what the point of your post is. It is definitely informative, but the guy in question was on the floor subdued by about 7 officers and he was handcuffed prior to being TASERd. The only thing wrong was he wouldn't shut up and was being very obnoxious.
The officers should have removed him (in handcuffs) from the hall instead of TASERing him on the floor like they did.
*I have no affiliation with this site, I simply did a search to find the "Verizon Can't Do Math" YouTube video, but it appears to have been removed and this site came up first in my results.
You'll find that it's not so much a hassle or a problem if you're upgrading your TV for reasons other than the latest trends and "bleeding edge" technology. Early adopters always get burned, if you need an example just look at the Apple iPhone's recent 30% price drop.
I'm one of those people who have an HDTV that does not have HDMI. Worse yet is that one of the first HD DVD players on the market was produced by my TV manufacturer to standards their own TV couldn't support. Toshiba produced my TV with component video and DVI, but their first HD DVD player was HDMI only! I was annoyed but it certainly didn't make me want to go buy another new TV.
I bought this TV (51" projection) as an upgrade from my existing TV (27" CRT) primarily for the widescreen aspect for watching movies and obviously for a bigger picture. The HDTV portion was a bonus because it seemed silly to try and find a projection TV that wasn't HD. However about four years after I bought the TV I finally had some HD content (OTA tuner) and it looks great.
The moral of the story is, new DRM, new technologies, and bigger better features do not necessarily drive people to continually repurchase items such as TVs (unless they have a lot of disposable income). I expect I will have this TV for several more years before I move to a flatter model to free up floor space - again, not because of HDMI or any other technology. I also expect by then that the panels used to make the flat TVs will have improved quite a lot in color representation, response rates, and so forth far beyond the numbers that exist today for the best and most expensive LCDs and plasmas.
I'm not trying to be righteous, I'm simply stating the facts. I don't view ads - it's not a valid way (to me) to support your site and if you want to block me then that's your choice, I don't need your content. If I needed it, then I'd pay you for it in a way that I deem fit (donations, subscription, merchandise, etc - not ads).
I think life was a lot less superficial before obtrusive ads came along. A product got its reputation by word of mouth because of its quality, not because it was the most obnoxious thing in the world that everyone knows about because they despise it.
Also, in my experience the content that is the most worthwhile also has a non-ad-based revenue stream or at the very least will accept donations. If someone decides that they only way they'll be supported is by ad revenue, then they are fooling themselves when they blame Adblock for their downfall.
I also use AdBlock Pro (and used to have Filterset.G as well) but my blocking philosophy goes something like this:
You're putting up content in the public arena where you're hoping people will see/read it. Your reasons are your own and I did not ask for your web site. I also did not ask for your ads (however unobtrusive you may think they are). I block every ad I possibly can because I don't want to see them. If you didn't put your site up with enough funds to keep it running or a business model that doesn't rely on ads, then I'm sorry but that's your oversight, not my problem.
If I come across a site that I really like and would like to see continue to exist (like Slashdot as a hypothetical) but does not have a viable business model other than a subscription service or ads, I will consider removing my block for your ads so you can get revenue from my visit or alternately I will subscribe to your site and keep the block in place. I have done that for a number of sites I really enjoy which are a labor of love for the creator but got too popular for his/her own good. However, in those cases the viewing community usually sticks up for the content provider via subscriptions or unblocking ads or outright donations.
If you're not getting money voluntarily then the market is simply not that interested in your product and I'm sorry to say you will be gone soon without a contingency plan that doesn't involve annoying your viewership. Ads are not my concern and not my problem, they're yours. I'm speaking as a person who's hosted his own site in the past without advertisements because I wanted to put up the site, not because I expected to get paid for it by people stumbling across it.
ISO has created over 16500 standards, and publishes ~1250 new ones each year. Yes, that means several new ones each day. Those include food safety, environmental protection, oil and gas, ship and automobile building, basically everything.
It makes me wonder what the value of having so many standards is. Isn't a standard supposed to be a single authoritative source / guideline on how to do something? If you have 500 competing standards or an organization whose sole purpose is to churn out standards then that dilutes the standards that come out of the organization, doesn't it?
Perhaps a simple example would be the Imperial measurement system versus the Metric system. If we had one global standard (Metric most likely) wouldn't that make life a lot easier for international joint ventures of engineering and such?
That the correlation was run at ALL implies that someone was 'looking for something' - suspect 1.
Are you suggesting that correlations cannot be run without someone "looking for something" to prove causality? If so, why would anyone ever use correlation in any sort of statistical analysis because it's merely a means to an end in the eye of the person running the correlation.
Bogus statistics example: 78% of 16-18 year old children consume large amounts of carbonated soda. 93% of 16-18 year old children attend high school. It therefore follows that there is a direct correlation between 16-18 year old children who drink carbonated soda and those that attend high school.
Please forgive my abysmal example of a correlation (because I'm really bad at doing real math and statistics) but it's there to show that anyone can create a correlation and assign it some number without having an ulterior motive. The implication of your statement above was that this correlation shouldn't have even been run except that it was to further the agenda of the author.
I think the correlation is interesting on its face, but I'm not about to use that as evidence in an international court to point fingers and shout "corruption!"
Linux has been going to take the desktop next year for how many years? So people don't like Vista, well they didn't like XP or win98 or... but they still bought it because all the paths lead to MS products.
No operating system takes over market share in a day (or even usually in a year). It's a gradual change and what we're seeing now is the beginning of a gradual change away from Microsoft as the only OS. Mac OS X has started to gain momentum but for the past 5 years or so they've been adding a few hundred (probably) new users a year who switched from Windows. Likewise desktop Linux has been gaining perhaps several dozen new desktop users from the Windows market share each year. At times there are bursts of new people (Ubuntu's surprising popularity is one, Apple's "switch" campaign is another) but the growth is steady. People are created every day, but most of the people switching to Linux or Mac OS X are probably not infants and therefore coming from some OS (most likely Windows).
I think it's untrue that people didn't like Windows 98. In my experience, that's the version that most people liked the most until XP -- but XP was more or less a forced upgrade and after an initial hesitation people warmed up to it. Conversely, many people I've spoken with who voluntarily tried Vista in its various betas including the final release still do not see any value in "upgrading" from XP. I agree eventually everyone staying with Windows will have to upgrade to Vista because XP will not be supported in software and protection from malicious attacks, but in terms of people disliking Windows I think there are two favorites: 98(SE in particular) and XP
Lastly, uptake of any new OS really must start with business. Most people probably learned to use Windows at work or school because that's what the computers there ran. If a majority of businesses decided it was more economically feasible to switch to SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and use OpenOffice.org with ODF instead of Windows Vista with Office 2007 then people would necessarily be required to learn how to use Linux (same goes for Mac OS X as the alternative workplace desktop). Chances are good then that you'd see several things: 1) an increased usage of Linux at home, 2) an increased demand for Linux-compatible software and hardware, 3) more software being written cross-platform (or at least more commercial software offerings for Linux), 4) Microsoft's market share drop sharply within a few years
The point of all this being, just because Microsoft "always has been" doesn't mean it always will be. There is a tipping point and it need not be sudden, but it exists and it will be reached. After that, it'll be a race for the most fit to fill the gap left by the Microsoft exodus. That's not to say Microsoft will go away. On the contrary, I'm sure Microsoft will always have it's attractors and detractors but it will not always have its market dominance and when it loses that it will need to change from arrogant to meek to win market back.
You know, some people don't *want* cable. Baffling, I know. Who would have thought there could be something more important in life than staring at TV?
But Zonk is clearly implying that there is nothing more important than his Heroes fix (which involves staring at TV) and since his preferred vector for this show is disappearing (iTunes) then he can easily use a less-preferred vector even if it goes against his choice.
Then again, he could choose not to watch TV at all and his problem would go away.
It all comes down to a false choice in his statement. He purports to only have one option - illegally download his show - because he can no longer buy it from iTunes. He off-handedly dismisses other options including purchasing it from wherever NBC will now license the downloads, watching the free episodes on NBC (albeit at a lower quality and with commercials), purchasing cable or satellite (because if he watches one show it's a pretty safe bet he watches more than one and thus is not getting cable/satellite for "only one show"), or going without that show entirely and doing something more productive with his time like read or go outside or spend time with non-zombified friends.
How is buying votes inconsistent with Microsoft's normal mode of operations? They have been found guilty of so many transgressions that this is just another minor one - maybe *that* is what is inconsistent...
They got caught. The rules clearly state if you get caught Microsoft will disavow all knowledge of your actions and cut you loose. Standard CIA^H^H^H Microsoft procedure actually.
I agree with your statements on patents in general, but we're talking about DARPA here...a government agency. The government is not supposed to be able to patent technologies or if they did, that would (should?) effectively make it unpatentable by private parties because the patent is collectively owned by all the taxpayers.
As for copyrights, I don't think the same rules should apply as patents but I do think that the copyright lengths should reflect those of patents (or be even shorter since copyrights are free) in order to encourage the arts and sciences.
It's not so much the caps that are the problem it's the fact that your broadband provider is selling 10x (or more) the bandwidth they have available working on the presumption that you will not actually use your full bandwidth most of the time.
This was all good and well when email (not spam) and simple web pages were the Internet norm, but with dynamic pages, streaming video, audio, other content, and unparalleled levels of email we need to stop over-selling the actual bandwidth available. If what we have isn't good enough to service the customers -- upgrade the infrastructure to something that can handled 30MiB/s down and 15MiBs up (or whatever)
Also, stop calling them "unlimited" plans with the simple truth is every provider limits your bandwidth usage either by threats or through packet shaping.
It's not dead until you consider that the people creating these documents are most likely using Microsoft Office and the default format to save in will be.doc -- what? that's not allowed, oh the next choice down the list is....ooxml. Saved!
50 years from now I hope there's still a copy of Windows XP around with Microsoft Office 2007 and the OOXML plug-in to read all the saved documents.
I can see no convincing reason why ODF would be anything close to a default choice in MS Office or why anyone in Massachusetts creating these documents would willfully go through any extra effort to save their document in ODF.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole trial is entertainment. I hope the stop for a bathroom break!
Cmdr. Sisko should set his watch ahead a few years... it's 2007, nearly 2008.
Did you happen to notice that the video you linked references the one I linked?
Not saying one's better than the other, just saying I liked to the TrueNuff.com video because arguably it was "first".
Photoshop is not a game
How can this thing tell the difference of me being stressed out because of my home life versus me being stressed out due to my work life?
Until it can distinguish between at least those two types of stress, then it's probably only useful for the HR dept. to help you in their "life programs" if your employer offers them.
Software being a reason for denying hardware support? Where have we seen this before?
There's also a difference between filing uncensored hardcore pornography into public record, and censoring (blurring, black box, smiley, you-name-it) the image strategically and filing that. It's more tasteful and it serves its purpose.
I'm not just talking about gay porn here, I'm talking super-violent images or anything else that would normally be considered "inappropriate" for the public record.
Now on the other hand, I think it's a double-standard that one could file a motion and attach a graphic image of violence and gore without reprimand, but a graphically explicit sexual image is problematic. The double-standard is applied to our laws though as well. Walking around nude in public is usually illegal, but walking around with a sandwich board of gored and mutilated fetuses to protest abortion is perfectly fine. Frankly I find the gore more offensive than the naked guy -- he's just kind of funny (is it really that cold out?)
Perhaps as a test we should get someone (preferably about 5') to dress up in a black trenchcoat with a black hat and a thin pointy mustache and carry a round black ball slightly smaller than the size of his head with a 5" lit and sparkling fuse.
I wonder how the Boston authorities would react to that? How about on Halloween?
(.)(.)
^emoticons, making perl regex NSFW for 24 years!
s/24/25/; // <-- NSFW!!
There, fixed that for you. :)
I'm not sure what the point of your post is. It is definitely informative, but the guy in question was on the floor subdued by about 7 officers and he was handcuffed prior to being TASERd. The only thing wrong was he wouldn't shut up and was being very obnoxious.
The officers should have removed him (in handcuffs) from the hall instead of TASERing him on the floor like they did.
check out* http://verizonmath.com/
*I have no affiliation with this site, I simply did a search to find the "Verizon Can't Do Math" YouTube video, but it appears to have been removed and this site came up first in my results.
You'll find that it's not so much a hassle or a problem if you're upgrading your TV for reasons other than the latest trends and "bleeding edge" technology. Early adopters always get burned, if you need an example just look at the Apple iPhone's recent 30% price drop.
I'm one of those people who have an HDTV that does not have HDMI. Worse yet is that one of the first HD DVD players on the market was produced by my TV manufacturer to standards their own TV couldn't support. Toshiba produced my TV with component video and DVI, but their first HD DVD player was HDMI only! I was annoyed but it certainly didn't make me want to go buy another new TV.
I bought this TV (51" projection) as an upgrade from my existing TV (27" CRT) primarily for the widescreen aspect for watching movies and obviously for a bigger picture. The HDTV portion was a bonus because it seemed silly to try and find a projection TV that wasn't HD. However about four years after I bought the TV I finally had some HD content (OTA tuner) and it looks great.
The moral of the story is, new DRM, new technologies, and bigger better features do not necessarily drive people to continually repurchase items such as TVs (unless they have a lot of disposable income). I expect I will have this TV for several more years before I move to a flatter model to free up floor space - again, not because of HDMI or any other technology. I also expect by then that the panels used to make the flat TVs will have improved quite a lot in color representation, response rates, and so forth far beyond the numbers that exist today for the best and most expensive LCDs and plasmas.
I'm not trying to be righteous, I'm simply stating the facts. I don't view ads - it's not a valid way (to me) to support your site and if you want to block me then that's your choice, I don't need your content. If I needed it, then I'd pay you for it in a way that I deem fit (donations, subscription, merchandise, etc - not ads).
I think life was a lot less superficial before obtrusive ads came along. A product got its reputation by word of mouth because of its quality, not because it was the most obnoxious thing in the world that everyone knows about because they despise it.
Also, in my experience the content that is the most worthwhile also has a non-ad-based revenue stream or at the very least will accept donations. If someone decides that they only way they'll be supported is by ad revenue, then they are fooling themselves when they blame Adblock for their downfall.
I also use AdBlock Pro (and used to have Filterset.G as well) but my blocking philosophy goes something like this:
You're putting up content in the public arena where you're hoping people will see/read it. Your reasons are your own and I did not ask for your web site. I also did not ask for your ads (however unobtrusive you may think they are). I block every ad I possibly can because I don't want to see them. If you didn't put your site up with enough funds to keep it running or a business model that doesn't rely on ads, then I'm sorry but that's your oversight, not my problem.
If I come across a site that I really like and would like to see continue to exist (like Slashdot as a hypothetical) but does not have a viable business model other than a subscription service or ads, I will consider removing my block for your ads so you can get revenue from my visit or alternately I will subscribe to your site and keep the block in place. I have done that for a number of sites I really enjoy which are a labor of love for the creator but got too popular for his/her own good. However, in those cases the viewing community usually sticks up for the content provider via subscriptions or unblocking ads or outright donations.
If you're not getting money voluntarily then the market is simply not that interested in your product and I'm sorry to say you will be gone soon without a contingency plan that doesn't involve annoying your viewership. Ads are not my concern and not my problem, they're yours. I'm speaking as a person who's hosted his own site in the past without advertisements because I wanted to put up the site, not because I expected to get paid for it by people stumbling across it.
Yes, that was uncalled for.
It makes me wonder what the value of having so many standards is. Isn't a standard supposed to be a single authoritative source / guideline on how to do something? If you have 500 competing standards or an organization whose sole purpose is to churn out standards then that dilutes the standards that come out of the organization, doesn't it?
Perhaps a simple example would be the Imperial measurement system versus the Metric system. If we had one global standard (Metric most likely) wouldn't that make life a lot easier for international joint ventures of engineering and such?
Dictionary.com says:
standard-noun
1. something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison; an approved model.
Are you suggesting that correlations cannot be run without someone "looking for something" to prove causality? If so, why would anyone ever use correlation in any sort of statistical analysis because it's merely a means to an end in the eye of the person running the correlation.
Bogus statistics example: 78% of 16-18 year old children consume large amounts of carbonated soda. 93% of 16-18 year old children attend high school. It therefore follows that there is a direct correlation between 16-18 year old children who drink carbonated soda and those that attend high school.
Please forgive my abysmal example of a correlation (because I'm really bad at doing real math and statistics) but it's there to show that anyone can create a correlation and assign it some number without having an ulterior motive. The implication of your statement above was that this correlation shouldn't have even been run except that it was to further the agenda of the author.
I think the correlation is interesting on its face, but I'm not about to use that as evidence in an international court to point fingers and shout "corruption!"
No operating system takes over market share in a day (or even usually in a year). It's a gradual change and what we're seeing now is the beginning of a gradual change away from Microsoft as the only OS. Mac OS X has started to gain momentum but for the past 5 years or so they've been adding a few hundred (probably) new users a year who switched from Windows. Likewise desktop Linux has been gaining perhaps several dozen new desktop users from the Windows market share each year. At times there are bursts of new people (Ubuntu's surprising popularity is one, Apple's "switch" campaign is another) but the growth is steady. People are created every day, but most of the people switching to Linux or Mac OS X are probably not infants and therefore coming from some OS (most likely Windows).
I think it's untrue that people didn't like Windows 98. In my experience, that's the version that most people liked the most until XP -- but XP was more or less a forced upgrade and after an initial hesitation people warmed up to it. Conversely, many people I've spoken with who voluntarily tried Vista in its various betas including the final release still do not see any value in "upgrading" from XP. I agree eventually everyone staying with Windows will have to upgrade to Vista because XP will not be supported in software and protection from malicious attacks, but in terms of people disliking Windows I think there are two favorites: 98(SE in particular) and XP
Lastly, uptake of any new OS really must start with business. Most people probably learned to use Windows at work or school because that's what the computers there ran. If a majority of businesses decided it was more economically feasible to switch to SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) and use OpenOffice.org with ODF instead of Windows Vista with Office 2007 then people would necessarily be required to learn how to use Linux (same goes for Mac OS X as the alternative workplace desktop). Chances are good then that you'd see several things: 1) an increased usage of Linux at home, 2) an increased demand for Linux-compatible software and hardware, 3) more software being written cross-platform (or at least more commercial software offerings for Linux), 4) Microsoft's market share drop sharply within a few years
The point of all this being, just because Microsoft "always has been" doesn't mean it always will be. There is a tipping point and it need not be sudden, but it exists and it will be reached. After that, it'll be a race for the most fit to fill the gap left by the Microsoft exodus. That's not to say Microsoft will go away. On the contrary, I'm sure Microsoft will always have it's attractors and detractors but it will not always have its market dominance and when it loses that it will need to change from arrogant to meek to win market back.
But Zonk is clearly implying that there is nothing more important than his Heroes fix (which involves staring at TV) and since his preferred vector for this show is disappearing (iTunes) then he can easily use a less-preferred vector even if it goes against his choice.
Then again, he could choose not to watch TV at all and his problem would go away.
It all comes down to a false choice in his statement. He purports to only have one option - illegally download his show - because he can no longer buy it from iTunes. He off-handedly dismisses other options including purchasing it from wherever NBC will now license the downloads, watching the free episodes on NBC (albeit at a lower quality and with commercials), purchasing cable or satellite (because if he watches one show it's a pretty safe bet he watches more than one and thus is not getting cable/satellite for "only one show"), or going without that show entirely and doing something more productive with his time like read or go outside or spend time with non-zombified friends.
They got caught. The rules clearly state if you get caught Microsoft will disavow all knowledge of your actions and cut you loose. Standard CIA^H^H^H Microsoft procedure actually.
I agree with your statements on patents in general, but we're talking about DARPA here...a government agency. The government is not supposed to be able to patent technologies or if they did, that would (should?) effectively make it unpatentable by private parties because the patent is collectively owned by all the taxpayers.
As for copyrights, I don't think the same rules should apply as patents but I do think that the copyright lengths should reflect those of patents (or be even shorter since copyrights are free) in order to encourage the arts and sciences.
At least we still have reality on our side...since it's well know that it has a liberal bias.
It's not so much the caps that are the problem it's the fact that your broadband provider is selling 10x (or more) the bandwidth they have available working on the presumption that you will not actually use your full bandwidth most of the time.
This was all good and well when email (not spam) and simple web pages were the Internet norm, but with dynamic pages, streaming video, audio, other content, and unparalleled levels of email we need to stop over-selling the actual bandwidth available. If what we have isn't good enough to service the customers -- upgrade the infrastructure to something that can handled 30MiB/s down and 15MiBs up (or whatever)
Also, stop calling them "unlimited" plans with the simple truth is every provider limits your bandwidth usage either by threats or through packet shaping.
No, I'll just turn the stereo up so loud that I can hear it from the bathroom. :)
It's not dead until you consider that the people creating these documents are most likely using Microsoft Office and the default format to save in will be .doc -- what? that's not allowed, oh the next choice down the list is....ooxml. Saved!
50 years from now I hope there's still a copy of Windows XP around with Microsoft Office 2007 and the OOXML plug-in to read all the saved documents.
I can see no convincing reason why ODF would be anything close to a default choice in MS Office or why anyone in Massachusetts creating these documents would willfully go through any extra effort to save their document in ODF.