YMMV, but I can see the difference between pages printed at 600 DPI and 1200 DPI pretty easily.
You are comparing a screen with a nearly infinite number of colors per pixels to a print with just 2 colors per pixel (either black or white for BW prints, the principle for full-colour prints is the same). The screen permits anti-aliasing, the print does not, that is why the print needs far more DPI to appear sharp to the human eye.
(as an aside: the minimum arc radius that we humans can see is not constant, but dependent on color, luminosity contrast, color contrast and brightness. And the person watching of course)
In the Netherlands passports are state property to. If your passport gets lost, you have to pay for a replacement (obviously) *plus* you get fined for losing government property!
They're only dragging their own name through the mud with this practice.
RIGHT! I do spend _some_ money on audio equipment, but practices like these means that I will never ever consider Denon equipment. If they sell $3 cables for $300, than what will be the quality of a $600 amplifier?
I imagine for example that in moving of large arms shipments around the Middle East for our troops that there's someone always in charge of the stuff, or that last touched it. Wouldn't a great place to start (and place the blame) be the last person that signed off on something like this? In anything bigger than a really tiny company, there should be very clear paper trails like this right?
Well, if you are stoopid enough to place your ballistic missile parts in the unclassified storage room, and then accidentally ship them to Taiwan, then you will have no problems at all with losing a few latops.
The firmware probably isn't going to be able to get the shutter to go any faster reliably.
Go and visit the CHDK site, and you will see that it does exacly that (for P&S cameras that is). only for extremely fast shutter speeds you wil have to drop the word 'reliable' because you can only reach these with the smallest diagram aperture.
I thought the whole point of sales tax was SUPPOSED to be that it supported the infrastructure (roads, etc.) needed to actually sell the product,
The whole point of sales tax is to lower income tax. Here in the old world we pay about 35 to 40% income tax PLUS 20% sales tax. If they would charge 55-60% right on the salary slip people would flip.
I've been trying without success to claim deductions for blackjack and hookers for years, so my advice is to just pay up.
Well, move over to the Netherlands. Hookers are tax deductable here, but only if you claim them as 'medical expenses'. Which you can do if you can prove that your physical disabilities prevent you from having normal sexual relationships (and no, having a pimpled face or a beer belly doesn't count).
The Naked Scientist actully just had a Podcast [MP3 Link] about music and science.
For people who like this stuff (I do, I will definitely check the Podcast out), there is a very nice but quite expensive book: Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals. Ha, just found out that you can read it on Google books! Not costly anymore at all.
The idea sounds good to me too, but 50lbs. sounds like too much to put at the top of a lamp. I have young kids, and I don't want them getting crushed when they knock this thing over
Don't worry, we'll fill the foot of the lamp with depleted uranium. No way they'll knock that over. Safe as milk.
The intent of copyright is to create a reason for innovation.
Says who? It certainly is not in the law book. What you - and a lot of others in this thread - do, is attributing a reason to the law and then attacking that reason.
You might as well state that, as most laws, copright law is a moral law. When somebody makes a chair, it is fair that he'd be paid for that. When somebody cuts your hair, it is fair that he'd be paid for that. When somebody teaches you a course, it is fair that he'd be paid for that. When somebody makes the music that you listen to, it is fair that he'd be paid for that.
The fact that you cannot 'copy' the chair, and as such either have to pay for it (considered morally right) or steal it (considered morally wrong) does not make it morally right to copy the music without payment. You see, you try to double negate your morals here: when it is not stealing (because they product is still there) it is ![morally wrong] so it must be [morally right]. I'm sorry, but that is not how morality works.
Whose fault is it they failed to make a product that gives people a reason to want to pay for it?
Come on, who want to pay for _any_ product? You only pay for products because you _have_ to pay. Nobody wants to pay for gasoline, but it makes people feel bad when they nick it from the neigbours car, that is why they fork over the money for it.
Just because you made it in the past doesn't entitle you to be paid for it in the future unless you figure out how to sell it.
Oh yes it does. The fact that I rented out my house for 50 years or so, doesn't give you any right to squat it. The fact that I sold my music for 50 years or so, doesn't give you any right to copy it. You know, you can look at this copright expiration date from another point of view as well: because we consider eternal copyright (where copyright would be passed along in the family, like real estate) immoral and impractical, copyright has an expiration date. But the question is not how _early_ to set this expiration date (because we all want everything for free) but how _late_ (because we find it morally right to compensate people for their work). That's why this European commissionar wants to expand copright to 95 years.
When you have no financial incentive to create more things, where are you to say that there is innovation?
Ok, that does is it: hand me over your pay check NOW. You now, it is for the better of humanity. The more financial incentive you have to work the next months, they better we all will be. What a load of bollocks! Who are you to tell people how to innovate? Mr. creative genius himself? You know, having a steady flow of income from past music/inventions/etc. might just give people the time and freedom to do innovative stuff. Or do they have to fill in multiple forms for subsidies at your governmental office, stating in advance what they are going to innovate?
Yep, and the demise of video 2000 had nothing to do with the lack of porn as well. It was superior to the other two, yes, but also the last one to be available to consumers. Both VHS and Betamax had large parts of the market by then, video 2000 as the third system never stood a change.
Amazon MP3's quality is good, better than iTunes but not quite on par with iTunes Plus. Tracks are encoded with LAME 3.97 at a high VBR bitrate (~230 kbps or so?).
Thanks! That was the information I was waiting for and that I could no find on the Amazon website. Most MP3 encoders suck because they discard phase information, but LAME keeps it intact. Here's another European customer awaiting the opening.
XS4ALL has its roots in a close-knit international internet community which played a large part in the creation of the internet. We therefore cherish and seek to protect the original values of the internet as a worldwide computer network that allows the free and uncensored exchange of data, information and ideas for everyone. XS4ALL therefore believes it has a special responsibility for the development of the internet.
The internet and society
The internet has given rise to a new digital society which calls for a new set of rules. XS4ALL promotes civil rights in this digital society. We are actively opposing the mandatory retention of all our customers' internet traffic data. We seek to initiate debates on freedom of speech and privacy on the internet.
Freedom of speech
XS4ALL believes that freedom of speech is an immense asset. Every voice must be able to be heard. It is a fundamental tenet of our democracy. XS4ALL considers that internet providers should not concern themselves with the views of their customers. For XS4ALL, it is the laws of the Netherlands that determine what customers can and cannot publish. We do not judge the content ourselves. Such a judgment should be made by an independent court and not by private companies. If it turns out that customers' content hosted by XS4ALL contravenes Dutch law, it intervenes rapidly and appropriately.
The original objective of internet for everyone has now been largely achieved, but the ideal of the free exchange of information, unimpeded by censorship, has not been realised 100%. The internet is increasingly being censored by governments.
That is done by blocking websites or, if they are hosted outside their sphere of influence, by forbidding certain search terms. The (current) Dutch government would not venture to conduct such forms of censorship, but in a certain sense censorship does take place even in the Netherlands.
There are known examples of internet service providers that have voluntarily blocked access to websites even though their content is neither prohibited nor unlawful. For some internet service providers, the fact that a website offends good taste is sufficient to shut it down. But whose good taste, and where do you draw the line?
XS4ALL is very concerned about such forms of self-regulation and believes that freedom of speech should have the protection it deserves under the Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
If you've got a progress bar that's consuming enough CPU that it is having an significantly adverse impact on an application's performance, it's either coded horribly wrong, or you're at the very limit of your hardware's maximum capability, and perhaps you should really consider upgrading.
Or you are running Mac OSX. But then even using the CLI won't save you - the amount of CPU power used by OSX for a simple scrolling terminal window is beyond belief.
It's an interesting idea but I think you (and folks in general) would be really surprised by the amount preprocessing required to etch an audio signal onto vinyl.
Every time discussions like these come by I re-read Pere Ubu's Notes on vinyl pressings, where among some other interesting remarks (also about the relative non-importance of 'sounding good' for musical expression) they state:
Stereo was a technology crippled fatally by the vinyl medium. We, therefore, resented vinyl. We had two ratings for the quality of vinyl pressings:
Slashdot Mirror
You are comparing a screen with a nearly infinite number of colors per pixels to a print with just 2 colors per pixel (either black or white for BW prints, the principle for full-colour prints is the same). The screen permits anti-aliasing, the print does not, that is why the print needs far more DPI to appear sharp to the human eye.
(as an aside: the minimum arc radius that we humans can see is not constant, but dependent on color, luminosity contrast, color contrast and brightness. And the person watching of course)
Are you affiliated to the makers of this Dutch lost handbag spacewalk?
Man, you've got a great memory. The only important numbers I remember are:
SYS 64738
SYS 49152
POKE 65535, (but which values again?)
In the Netherlands passports are state property to. If your passport gets lost, you have to pay for a replacement (obviously) *plus* you get fined for losing government property!
Ayatollah Khomeini was a great admirer of Plato as well. (really!) Part of Plato's republic ended up in the Iranian constitution.
There is 1.5 of that original minifigure standing right next to my laptop right now!
Your analogy makes no sense. Where's the car metaphor, for Pete's sake?
Here in the old world we pay about 35 to 40% income tax PLUS 20% sales tax. If they would charge 55-60% right on the salary slip people would flip.
Ha, just found out that you can read it on Google books! Not costly anymore at all.
Says who? It certainly is not in the law book. What you - and a lot of others in this thread - do, is attributing a reason to the law and then attacking that reason.
You might as well state that, as most laws, copright law is a moral law. When somebody makes a chair, it is fair that he'd be paid for that. When somebody cuts your hair, it is fair that he'd be paid for that. When somebody teaches you a course, it is fair that he'd be paid for that. When somebody makes the music that you listen to, it is fair that he'd be paid for that.
The fact that you cannot 'copy' the chair, and as such either have to pay for it (considered morally right) or steal it (considered morally wrong) does not make it morally right to copy the music without payment. You see, you try to double negate your morals here: when it is not stealing (because they product is still there) it is ![morally wrong] so it must be [morally right]. I'm sorry, but that is not how morality works.
Come on, who want to pay for _any_ product? You only pay for products because you _have_ to pay. Nobody wants to pay for gasoline, but it makes people feel bad when they nick it from the neigbours car, that is why they fork over the money for it.
Oh yes it does. The fact that I rented out my house for 50 years or so, doesn't give you any right to squat it. The fact that I sold my music for 50 years or so, doesn't give you any right to copy it. You know, you can look at this copright expiration date from another point of view as well: because we consider eternal copyright (where copyright would be passed along in the family, like real estate) immoral and impractical, copyright has an expiration date. But the question is not how _early_ to set this expiration date (because we all want everything for free) but how _late_ (because we find it morally right to compensate people for their work). That's why this European commissionar wants to expand copright to 95 years.
Ok, that does is it: hand me over your pay check NOW. You now, it is for the better of humanity. The more financial incentive you have to work the next months, they better we all will be. What a load of bollocks! Who are you to tell people how to innovate? Mr. creative genius himself? You know, having a steady flow of income from past music/inventions/etc. might just give people the time and freedom to do innovative stuff. Or do they have to fill in multiple forms for subsidies at your governmental office, stating in advance what they are going to innovate?
That really is a sad, sad picture.
Yep, and the demise of video 2000 had nothing to do with the lack of porn as well. It was superior to the other two, yes, but also the last one to be available to consumers. Both VHS and Betamax had large parts of the market by then, video 2000 as the third system never stood a change.
xs4all.nl is brave enough to face $cientology in a 10-year lasting court case. And winning!
Every time discussions like these come by I re-read Pere Ubu's Notes on vinyl pressings, where among some other interesting remarks (also about the relative non-importance of 'sounding good' for musical expression) they state:
Stereo was a technology crippled fatally by the vinyl medium. We, therefore, resented vinyl. We had two ratings for the quality of vinyl pressings:
1. Terrible
2. Okay, I suppose, but why bother?