"I understand some of the privacy pundits bitching all around about how this is an "invasion of privacy." However, the 5 seconds leading up to a crash can provide important data for the manufacturers and accident investagators...particularly if the driver of the car is killed in the crash."
I agree that crash data is good to have. And I think crash data is certainly more reliable that eyewitness reports. My concern is that crash data wasn't designed to be infallible enough for the court of law, it was designed for aggregate data collection, with some sort of reliability tolerance built in, because the manufacturers don't want to spend the money for 100% reliable systems, and why would they?
This isn't quite as scary as a for-profit company operating red-light-cameras, but I would still like the courts to treat this data as fallible.
6) RIAA members released fewer albums, stopped selling CD singles, and spent less on marketing over this period.
7)I'm not even conviced that total music sales are down. RIAA members' sales are down, indie labels' sales are up. Gee, maybe MP3 P2P is creating demand in ways that the Radio used to before it was dominated by big Corporate formats.
"I don't see how collecting all of this data is going to help."
If you have convinced yourself that the system has little or no utility for its stated purpose, perhaps you should consider that it might be designed for a purpose not stated. If everyone is guilty of something, then selective enforcement becomes a political tool.
Now I'm going to let my conspiracy theory wander for a moment here: If all the commercial information becomes a form of government intelligence, then to reach the goal of total awareness, they would have to do away with untraceable cash transactions "for the good of national security." Some kind of encrypted unique ID embedded in your body (say the hand or head) which you are required to have to buy or sell anything would certainly help track down those "terrorists" who hate our freedoms and as a by-product would greatly reduce all kinds of commercial fraud and identity theft. I mean that's just common sense, right? See Rev. 13:16-17
"They believe code produced for Project Monterey has made it into Linux. This still seems sketchy since it would assume that IBM signed some agreement before hand that they had no rights to the code (which they were co-developing with SCO and some other company IBM bought) outside of that particular project."
I have no firsthand knowledge, but I think that the company you are speaking of that partnered on AIX was Sequent. I have been told that the IBM/Sequent developers that worked on AIX with SCO went on to work at the IBM funded Open Source Development Labs. I'm not clear if the timeline fits what SCO is alleging, but these developers would have had the means, opportunity, and motive to put elements from the SCO code that they worked with into Linux. I'm not saying they did, because I wouldn't know.
But even if they can hurt IBM for contract violation, I still don't see how they can hurt Linux. They distributed Linux even after they found code they claim is theirs in it. So either they turned the code free themselves at that point, or they violated the GPL and Linus, et al can sue them for copyright violation. That GPL is such a thing of beauty.
I agree with all your points. I also hate the fact that if a passenger vehicle is a "truck" it does not need to meet the same efficiency standards as a "car". I generally hate SUV's more and more every time I see one sitting next to me weighing twice as much as my car with their bumper at the level of my head. I would dearly love to stick it to those gas guzzlers.
However if you double the gas tax to make up for electric vehicles, you are also going to stick it to the citizens who can only afford an old $1000 car, which won't be electric. Taxing the gas guzzlers and the poor more to make up for people who can afford a Hybrid or a future Fuel Cell Electric is a bad fix. Right now, with so few Hybrids and electrics on the road, I would say Oregon should go ahead and raise the gas tax to cover the shortfall in road maintainance funds. In an electric car future, we are going to need another plan, but I don't want GPS to be a part of that plan.
The simple answer as to the difference is that movie ratings are not law.
On a related note, I have to say that I don't think the movie ratings board does a good job, so I would not hold that up as an example of how software ratings should work. For an example, look at the way Clerks was treated for bad language while depictions of sex and violence in big-studio movies get a pass.
"Well, and do they suppose voters are going to be overjoyed by not only being charged lots of taxes for driving, but also to have their every move tracked by GPS? The money comes out of their wallet either way."
I think "they" are counting on voters hating this idea. This is only a study of alternatives to the gas tax, it isn't even in commitee. I think the point is to get voters to accept a higher gas tax because the proposed alternatives are so very much worse.
The one legitimate point addressed by a milage tax is that electric vehicles don't pay their fair share in road maintainance costs under a fuel tax. That isn't an appreciable problem now, but it might become one if we are lucky. A milage*weight tax IS the most fair, but you are never going to convice me to put a GPS snooping system in my car, and a fair tax would overy burden commercial dump trucks.
"I want this to be a big farking huge giant mess that pisses every Internet user in the entire country off and has them asking: Why can't I sell my anymore? How dare the government tell me I can't do this? You mean a bunch of *lawyers* can just take away the Internet?
I am afraid that even if you get your wish and the entire country gets pissed off, right after they think "Someone should fix this." they will go back to worrying about "Will J-Lo and Ben stay together?" or "Will the Nets get swept?" or something equally important. Seriously, do you think anyone can get elected on a "End stupid IP laws" plank? Are eBay users going to start contributing more to election campaigns than Bechtel or Enron or the Association of Trial Lawyers? I'm sorry I'm so cynical, but I've been paying attetion lately, and nobody (in the US) seems to care that the Sectretary of State (God bless him) sat before UN assembly and lied about the reasons the US needed to invade Iraq. Personally, I think that is a bigger lie than "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" but what are ya gonna do?
Changing the ball in some way so that a robo-player could know where it is without a vision system certainly WOULD simplify the problem. However, if you do that, you are no longer playing foosball. You have changed the design problem to accomodate the solution and failed to address the real goal of making a foosball robot. Now OTOH, if you can design a system to sense where the ball is that doesn't use vision and doesn't alter the ball or significantly alter the table, well that would be pretty cool too. But I think part of the reason to build a foosball robot is as a development platform and/or demonstration for vision systems, so the design problem is difficult on purpose.
I have to take issue with:"the ball comes towards you, makes contact with the bat (which has its own trajectory) and almost instantaneouly leaves in another direction. Pretty simple physics."
The "almost" in "almost instantaneously" is what allows a player to impart a great deal of spin on the ball. I'm just an adequate player but my family kill-shot doesn't just have a lot of top-spin, it has enough side spin to curve about 5 inches in the air, jump sideways when it hits the table, and bounce from the opponent's paddle (should they get the block in place) at around 30 degrees off of true when that spinning inertia resolves on their paddle. Yes, even the aerodynamics is just physics, and math IS what computers are all about, but I would opine that it is anything but simple. I don't think any computer vision system is going to be able to be able to read that spin in the near future. You have to play the player, not just the ball.
But I read your point that ping-pong and foosball are as different as apples and oranges because in foosball one gets to strike the ball multiple times and/or remain in contact with it, and it is a good point.
Well, of course you are right and technology drives movies. But I think the hope is that when video game technology matures enough it will be possible to make Big Hits without any "new" technology just like with movies.
So I went to the top selling movies of all time list to quote some examples of big hits that didn't use "new" tech. Titanic: has a digital ship, but scanning further down the list...big effects...effects...digital legs...digital...effects...digital...AH HAH here we go clear down the list at #17: Home Alone. One out of 17 isn't saying much is it? Okay here is another one at #28 a small budget affair "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."
Wow, I wanted to disagree with you a little bit, but looking at that list I just can't. Look at all the sequels, remakes, imitations, and parodies on that list. The only comforting thing about that list is that even as bad as that list is, I CAN find some good movies on it. Just not very many. Can you believe crap like The Mummy Returns and Armageddon are #45 and #46 on the all time box office! We are gonna see boring crap on the video game scene forevermore. It is our fate.
Does anyone else find it humorous that the correct number is actually HIGHER than the one cited?
On a different note, after NASA has sent the shuttle up to Low Earth Orbit over a hundred times, is there much to be accomplished in going another hundred times? I'm in favor of manned space exploration, but I don't see the ISS and the shuttles as exploration. They look like a solution searching for a problem.
"I don't know about the software for Windows but I assume it syncs back the playlists from the Nomad."
You can pass playlists (and their associated song files) either direction with the Nomad. You can also create playlists directly on the Nomad while it is hooked up to the PC, which I do because it is easier to create playlists in the Playcenter interface with keyboard and mouse than it is to create the playlist on roaming Nomad with the small screen and 5 buttons.
But there is no rating feature.
My biggest gripe with the Nomad is that the Random and Shuffle features aren't random at all. If you start the same playlist from the same song, you will always get them in the same "random" order. It is easy enough to start in a different place, but you need to edit the playlist itself and change the order if it gets predictable. A minor gripe, I guess.
I was all set to start sending junk mail back to the senders, as heavy as possible. I had a whole stack ready for the mailbox. But then I stopped and thought about it: of all the kinds of advertising, telemarketing, commercial email, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, flyers, billboards, etc. Magaines, newspapers and junk mail bother me the least.
I bought a shredder and shred any junk mail with my name on it, then all the shredded and unshredded mail go into curbside recycling. It probably costs me a couple minutes a month. Sure, some trees were harmed in the making of these ads, but if I minimize that by recycling, there isn't much of a downside to junk mail. So I don't really want to make junk mail more expensive for businesses and drive them to some other form of more annoying advertising.
The one that "got to me" the most would have to be the Alien mod for Doom. On my uncle's advice, I played it late at night with all the lights off. As scary as the imps in the dark catacombs were, as scary as the Half-Life headcrabs were, those were cheap compared to the Aliens mod. To this day I can disctinctly rember crawling down this little air vent, a very very long pitch-black air vent. Knowing there would be a face sucker in there somewhere. Knowing...crawl...crawl...crawl...stop... breathe...crawl. Tension mounting. Oh it was agonizing. Then the flash of white bony legs flying at your face and me jumping out of my chair and flailing at the mouse. Ouch. Sh1t. Heart racing, take deep breaths calm down. Will there be another one?
The game that engrossed me for the longest time has to be Counter-Strike. It is such elemental competition with real people using technique, tactics, and strategy. I played it so much it got instinctual, and I would know what the players on both teams were doing just from glancing at the radar, listening, and the little timer in my head that would say "they should have been here by now." It was also the most satisfying game, when I could rush the weak side and come up behind the pack of enemies, mowing down 3 or 4 and single-handedly determining the outcome.
But the game that changed my real life the most has to be the original Gran Turismo, because it completely changed the way I feel about cars and the way I drive. I drive far, far safer now, partially because I have another outlet for my "need for speed" and partially because it was realisitic enough that any crack up on the track ruined your race. It conditioned me to not make mistakes, and drive the car inside its envelope. I also learned a great deal about cars and how they work. I'm also far less interested in having my dailey-driver car fast and/or sporty. Street cars aren't fast and really fast cars are not practical for the street, so why pretend. Race cars are for racing and street cars are for transportation. If you drive your street car like it is in a race, it is just going to wear out/break.
Since most motorcyles are air-cooled, they can't sit in traffic jams. I've been told by people who know that (at least in Oregon and Washington) motorcyles are allowed to pass between cars or on the shoulder during a jam. The sidewalk would be a no-no, but if someone is threatening you it seems like a good idea. I hope most cops and judges would be understanding.
I suppose I'm being overly critical here, but isn't the Tek printer a Phaser rather than a laser printer? What I mean is the Tek printer uses a wax-based ink, doesn't it? I don't think Phaser printers are a good representation of laser printers, since they are fundamentally different. I think the ink/toner is unusually inexpensive. Our Tek printers seem to break less than the other printers we have around the office. And they make really pretty, vivid colors, but you can't write on or highlight wax very well, and it melts running through a hot copier. I think Tek got a heck of a good deal selling their printer division to Xerox for a giant pile of cash (not stock), but that's just my opinion.
At first I ripped all my CDs to MP3 at 162Kbps. For much of the music that was fine, but there were some types that just didn't sound right. Particularly music that had sound at many different frequencies at the same time. When the bass would thump, it sounded like the treble cut out. Icky. Irritating even. So I upgraded the HDD, dug the CDs out of storage, and re-ripped that stuff at 192 and that sounded good-enough to me.
So my worry is that ACC files at 162, while perhaps better than MP3 files at 162, still won't be good enough.
I hope that when Apple gets done loading their library onto the servers, they will go back and add 192Kbps files for those with the bandwidth and HDD space for it. At the same price of course.
That works, of course. But the author's solution of intercepting the audiostream on the way to the speakers skips the slow step of actually burning the.wav to media. I think Apple just expects that it is more convenient to keep the ACC on an iPod, so that is what more people will do. Apple might be right. If I had a Mac and and iPod, I wouldn't bother doing the conversion.
"You're taking music for which RIAA owns the copyright..."
I respect you for calling copyright violation what it is, instead of calling it stealing.
I also think the music industry is doing many things wrong, but warning people who are violating copyright is not one of them. Now on the other hand, if they are sending warnings to everyone who is sharing files, even people who are only sharing files for which they hold the copyright, then I would say there is something wrong with that. To me that is like Ebay refusing to sell anything on CD-R because they presume it is illicit. But warning/threatening people who are actually breaking the law seems fair to me.
You probably aren't listening any more, but since you have been articulate and refrain from name-calling (which is far too rare) I'm going to try to continue this exchange of ideas.
" Saying that because you use the public roads you cannot just hire someone to be your gardner or mechanic based on anything except gov't approved criteria does not make sense to me"
What I was trying to say is that the roads are part of the economy. So if you accept that to drive on public roads, one must obey traffic laws, can you accept that to use the public economy, one must obey those laws? So to operate a business and benefit from the SEC, FDIC, and Federal monetary policy that keeps interest and inflation rates stable, and all the other ways that the society, the government and the economy are intertwined, one must pay taxes, obey lots of labor laws, pay more taxes, obey other operating laws (like providing handicapped access if applicable) etc. I think that is a moral justification for a law that says "You may not dicriminate on the basis of race in your hiring."
I also think it is a bit unfair for you to characterize this as "gov't approved criteria." I think we are a long way from exchanging a list of prohibited things for a list of allowed things. But I respectfully acknowledge your warning against social engineering that would lead to thought control.
Okay that gets me off on a tangent. Totally off-topic now. You know what I see as thought control? Laws that would make burning the US flag in protest illegal. You see, incinerating an old flag as trash wouldn't be illegal, nor any other disposal of flags or images of flags. It is only illegal if it is burnt in protest. It is the thought that they want to make illegal. That is not what America is about.
I have a Libertarian friend and we have this kind of
arguement frequently. For us, I think it has come down to a belief in social engineering, or in his case not believing in social engineering. He thinks individual freedom is paramount. I think that if society is harmed by something, and workable laws can reduce it without giving up more than is gained, then they are good laws. He would argue that speed limits are unnecessary, and government should just hold the individual responsible for their actions if they get in an accident and let them drive as fast as they want. I maintain that we can scientifically impose restrictions and see their results and conclude that they have a large positive effect.
I say that if you just let people drive as fast as they want and have accidents and kill people and then go to jail, WE ALL are worse off. I think if you let companies not hire blacks or latinos then WE ALL are worse off. So their freedom to hire certain people infringes on everyone else's liberty and pursuit of happiness.
I think there is a contract here: If you are going to be part of our society and use our roads and our public utilities and our schools and our emergency services and have a government that protects our interests abroad and profit from the innumerable other benefits of our society, then there are actions that would harm society that we demand you not take. So on that basis, I think it is fair for government to demand that business not hire employees based on race.
I also think that while Monster may or may not be breaking any law, they are being asinine.
"Remember when you walk into a store and they " reserve the right to kick you out for any reason?" Yeah, same idea."
You do realize that just because they put of a sign, doesn't mean that they really have that right, don't you? Self appointed rights have all the legal authority of tissue paper.
Some kinds of discrimination are just fine, and some are judged by society to be immoral, and a further subset are judged by lawmakers to be illegal. Just because it is a free service or private property, doesn't mean some laws don't apply.
Slashdot Mirror
"I understand some of the privacy pundits bitching all around about how this is an "invasion of privacy." However, the 5 seconds leading up to a crash can provide important data for the manufacturers and accident investagators...particularly if the driver of the car is killed in the crash."
I agree that crash data is good to have. And I think crash data is certainly more reliable that eyewitness reports. My concern is that crash data wasn't designed to be infallible enough for the court of law, it was designed for aggregate data collection, with some sort of reliability tolerance built in, because the manufacturers don't want to spend the money for 100% reliable systems, and why would they?
This isn't quite as scary as a for-profit company operating red-light-cameras, but I would still like the courts to treat this data as fallible.
6) RIAA members released fewer albums, stopped selling CD singles, and spent less on marketing over this period.
7)I'm not even conviced that total music sales are down. RIAA members' sales are down, indie labels' sales are up. Gee, maybe MP3 P2P is creating demand in ways that the Radio used to before it was dominated by big Corporate formats.
"I don't see how collecting all of this data is going to help."
If you have convinced yourself that the system has little or no utility for its stated purpose, perhaps you should consider that it might be designed for a purpose not stated. If everyone is guilty of something, then selective enforcement becomes a political tool.
Now I'm going to let my conspiracy theory wander for a moment here: If all the commercial information becomes a form of government intelligence, then to reach the goal of total awareness, they would have to do away with untraceable cash transactions "for the good of national security." Some kind of encrypted unique ID embedded in your body (say the hand or head) which you are required to have to buy or sell anything would certainly help track down those "terrorists" who hate our freedoms and as a by-product would greatly reduce all kinds of commercial fraud and identity theft. I mean that's just common sense, right? See Rev. 13:16-17
"They believe code produced for Project Monterey has made it into Linux. This still seems sketchy since it would assume that IBM signed some agreement before hand that they had no rights to the code (which they were co-developing with SCO and some other company IBM bought) outside of that particular project."
I have no firsthand knowledge, but I think that the company you are speaking of that partnered on AIX was Sequent. I have been told that the IBM/Sequent developers that worked on AIX with SCO went on to work at the IBM funded Open Source Development Labs. I'm not clear if the timeline fits what SCO is alleging, but these developers would have had the means, opportunity, and motive to put elements from the SCO code that they worked with into Linux. I'm not saying they did, because I wouldn't know.
But even if they can hurt IBM for contract violation, I still don't see how they can hurt Linux. They distributed Linux even after they found code they claim is theirs in it. So either they turned the code free themselves at that point, or they violated the GPL and Linus, et al can sue them for copyright violation. That GPL is such a thing of beauty.
I agree with all your points. I also hate the fact that if a passenger vehicle is a "truck" it does not need to meet the same efficiency standards as a "car". I generally hate SUV's more and more every time I see one sitting next to me weighing twice as much as my car with their bumper at the level of my head. I would dearly love to stick it to those gas guzzlers.
However if you double the gas tax to make up for electric vehicles, you are also going to stick it to the citizens who can only afford an old $1000 car, which won't be electric. Taxing the gas guzzlers and the poor more to make up for people who can afford a Hybrid or a future Fuel Cell Electric is a bad fix. Right now, with so few Hybrids and electrics on the road, I would say Oregon should go ahead and raise the gas tax to cover the shortfall in road maintainance funds. In an electric car future, we are going to need another plan, but I don't want GPS to be a part of that plan.
The simple answer as to the difference is that movie ratings are not law.
On a related note, I have to say that I don't think the movie ratings board does a good job, so I would not hold that up as an example of how software ratings should work. For an example, look at the way Clerks was treated for bad language while depictions of sex and violence in big-studio movies get a pass.
"Well, and do they suppose voters are going to be overjoyed by not only being charged lots of taxes for driving, but also to have their every move tracked by GPS? The money comes out of their wallet either way."
I think "they" are counting on voters hating this idea. This is only a study of alternatives to the gas tax, it isn't even in commitee. I think the point is to get voters to accept a higher gas tax because the proposed alternatives are so very much worse.
The one legitimate point addressed by a milage tax is that electric vehicles don't pay their fair share in road maintainance costs under a fuel tax. That isn't an appreciable problem now, but it might become one if we are lucky. A milage*weight tax IS the most fair, but you are never going to convice me to put a GPS snooping system in my car, and a fair tax would overy burden commercial dump trucks.
"I want this to be a big farking huge giant mess that pisses every Internet user in the entire country off and has them asking: Why can't I sell my anymore? How dare the government tell me I can't do this? You mean a bunch of *lawyers* can just take away the Internet?
I am afraid that even if you get your wish and the entire country gets pissed off, right after they think "Someone should fix this." they will go back to worrying about "Will J-Lo and Ben stay together?" or "Will the Nets get swept?" or something equally important. Seriously, do you think anyone can get elected on a "End stupid IP laws" plank? Are eBay users going to start contributing more to election campaigns than Bechtel or Enron or the Association of Trial Lawyers? I'm sorry I'm so cynical, but I've been paying attetion lately, and nobody (in the US) seems to care that the Sectretary of State (God bless him) sat before UN assembly and lied about the reasons the US needed to invade Iraq. Personally, I think that is a bigger lie than "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" but what are ya gonna do?
Changing the ball in some way so that a robo-player could know where it is without a vision system certainly WOULD simplify the problem. However, if you do that, you are no longer playing foosball. You have changed the design problem to accomodate the solution and failed to address the real goal of making a foosball robot. Now OTOH, if you can design a system to sense where the ball is that doesn't use vision and doesn't alter the ball or significantly alter the table, well that would be pretty cool too. But I think part of the reason to build a foosball robot is as a development platform and/or demonstration for vision systems, so the design problem is difficult on purpose.
I have to take issue with:"the ball comes towards you, makes contact with the bat (which has its own trajectory) and almost instantaneouly leaves in another direction. Pretty simple physics."
The "almost" in "almost instantaneously" is what allows a player to impart a great deal of spin on the ball. I'm just an adequate player but my family kill-shot doesn't just have a lot of top-spin, it has enough side spin to curve about 5 inches in the air, jump sideways when it hits the table, and bounce from the opponent's paddle (should they get the block in place) at around 30 degrees off of true when that spinning inertia resolves on their paddle. Yes, even the aerodynamics is just physics, and math IS what computers are all about, but I would opine that it is anything but simple. I don't think any computer vision system is going to be able to be able to read that spin in the near future. You have to play the player, not just the ball.
But I read your point that ping-pong and foosball are as different as apples and oranges because in foosball one gets to strike the ball multiple times and/or remain in contact with it, and it is a good point.
Well, of course you are right and technology drives movies. But I think the hope is that when video game technology matures enough it will be possible to make Big Hits without any "new" technology just like with movies.
So I went to the top selling movies of all time list to quote some examples of big hits that didn't use "new" tech. Titanic: has a digital ship, but scanning further down the list...big effects...effects...digital legs...digital...effects...digital...AH HAH here we go clear down the list at #17: Home Alone. One out of 17 isn't saying much is it? Okay here is another one at #28 a small budget affair "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."
Wow, I wanted to disagree with you a little bit, but looking at that list I just can't. Look at all the sequels, remakes, imitations, and parodies on that list. The only comforting thing about that list is that even as bad as that list is, I CAN find some good movies on it. Just not very many. Can you believe crap like The Mummy Returns and Armageddon are #45 and #46 on the all time box office! We are gonna see boring crap on the video game scene forevermore. It is our fate.
Does anyone else find it humorous that the correct number is actually HIGHER than the one cited?
On a different note, after NASA has sent the shuttle up to Low Earth Orbit over a hundred times, is there much to be accomplished in going another hundred times? I'm in favor of manned space exploration, but I don't see the ISS and the shuttles as exploration. They look like a solution searching for a problem.
I think using binoculars to project an image onto a piece of paper gives a better picture than a pinhole camera, but it is the same idea.
Projected images are so much safer than looking through anything, plus more than one person can look at a projected image at the same time.
"I don't know about the software for Windows but I assume it syncs back the playlists from the Nomad."
You can pass playlists (and their associated song files) either direction with the Nomad. You can also create playlists directly on the Nomad while it is hooked up to the PC, which I do because it is easier to create playlists in the Playcenter interface with keyboard and mouse than it is to create the playlist on roaming Nomad with the small screen and 5 buttons.
But there is no rating feature.
My biggest gripe with the Nomad is that the Random and Shuffle features aren't random at all. If you start the same playlist from the same song, you will always get them in the same "random" order. It is easy enough to start in a different place, but you need to edit the playlist itself and change the order if it gets predictable. A minor gripe, I guess.
I was all set to start sending junk mail back to the senders, as heavy as possible. I had a whole stack ready for the mailbox. But then I stopped and thought about it: of all the kinds of advertising, telemarketing, commercial email, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, flyers, billboards, etc. Magaines, newspapers and junk mail bother me the least.
I bought a shredder and shred any junk mail with my name on it, then all the shredded and unshredded mail go into curbside recycling. It probably costs me a couple minutes a month. Sure, some trees were harmed in the making of these ads, but if I minimize that by recycling, there isn't much of a downside to junk mail. So I don't really want to make junk mail more expensive for businesses and drive them to some other form of more annoying advertising.
The one that "got to me" the most would have to be the Alien mod for Doom. On my uncle's advice, I played it late at night with all the lights off. As scary as the imps in the dark catacombs were, as scary as the Half-Life headcrabs were, those were cheap compared to the Aliens mod. To this day I can disctinctly rember crawling down this little air vent, a very very long pitch-black air vent. Knowing there would be a face sucker in there somewhere. Knowing...crawl...crawl...crawl...stop... breathe...crawl. Tension mounting. Oh it was agonizing. Then the flash of white bony legs flying at your face and me jumping out of my chair and flailing at the mouse. Ouch. Sh1t. Heart racing, take deep breaths calm down. Will there be another one?
The game that engrossed me for the longest time has to be Counter-Strike. It is such elemental competition with real people using technique, tactics, and strategy. I played it so much it got instinctual, and I would know what the players on both teams were doing just from glancing at the radar, listening, and the little timer in my head that would say "they should have been here by now." It was also the most satisfying game, when I could rush the weak side and come up behind the pack of enemies, mowing down 3 or 4 and single-handedly determining the outcome.
But the game that changed my real life the most has to be the original Gran Turismo, because it completely changed the way I feel about cars and the way I drive. I drive far, far safer now, partially because I have another outlet for my "need for speed" and partially because it was realisitic enough that any crack up on the track ruined your race. It conditioned me to not make mistakes, and drive the car inside its envelope. I also learned a great deal about cars and how they work. I'm also far less interested in having my dailey-driver car fast and/or sporty. Street cars aren't fast and really fast cars are not practical for the street, so why pretend. Race cars are for racing and street cars are for transportation. If you drive your street car like it is in a race, it is just going to wear out/break.
Since most motorcyles are air-cooled, they can't sit in traffic jams. I've been told by people who know that (at least in Oregon and Washington) motorcyles are allowed to pass between cars or on the shoulder during a jam. The sidewalk would be a no-no, but if someone is threatening you it seems like a good idea. I hope most cops and judges would be understanding.
"but I haven't yet seen anyone come up with a way to skip the interstitials (there's that word again!) on, say, salon.com.)"
Oh, that is an easy one: buy a subscription. All the ads go away. Seriously, it is worth it.
I suppose I'm being overly critical here, but isn't the Tek printer a Phaser rather than a laser printer? What I mean is the Tek printer uses a wax-based ink, doesn't it? I don't think Phaser printers are a good representation of laser printers, since they are fundamentally different. I think the ink/toner is unusually inexpensive. Our Tek printers seem to break less than the other printers we have around the office. And they make really pretty, vivid colors, but you can't write on or highlight wax very well, and it melts running through a hot copier. I think Tek got a heck of a good deal selling their printer division to Xerox for a giant pile of cash (not stock), but that's just my opinion.
At first I ripped all my CDs to MP3 at 162Kbps. For much of the music that was fine, but there were some types that just didn't sound right. Particularly music that had sound at many different frequencies at the same time. When the bass would thump, it sounded like the treble cut out. Icky. Irritating even. So I upgraded the HDD, dug the CDs out of storage, and re-ripped that stuff at 192 and that sounded good-enough to me.
So my worry is that ACC files at 162, while perhaps better than MP3 files at 162, still won't be good enough.
I hope that when Apple gets done loading their library onto the servers, they will go back and add 192Kbps files for those with the bandwidth and HDD space for it. At the same price of course.
That works, of course. But the author's solution of intercepting the audiostream on the way to the speakers skips the slow step of actually burning the .wav to media. I think Apple just expects that it is more convenient to keep the ACC on an iPod, so that is what more people will do. Apple might be right. If I had a Mac and and iPod, I wouldn't bother doing the conversion.
"You're taking music for which RIAA owns the copyright..."
I respect you for calling copyright violation what it is, instead of calling it stealing.
I also think the music industry is doing many things wrong, but warning people who are violating copyright is not one of them. Now on the other hand, if they are sending warnings to everyone who is sharing files, even people who are only sharing files for which they hold the copyright, then I would say there is something wrong with that. To me that is like Ebay refusing to sell anything on CD-R because they presume it is illicit. But warning/threatening people who are actually breaking the law seems fair to me.
You probably aren't listening any more, but since you have been articulate and refrain from name-calling (which is far too rare) I'm going to try to continue this exchange of ideas.
" Saying that because you use the public roads you cannot just hire someone to be your gardner or mechanic based on anything except gov't approved criteria does not make sense to me"
What I was trying to say is that the roads are part of the economy. So if you accept that to drive on public roads, one must obey traffic laws, can you accept that to use the public economy, one must obey those laws? So to operate a business and benefit from the SEC, FDIC, and Federal monetary policy that keeps interest and inflation rates stable, and all the other ways that the society, the government and the economy are intertwined, one must pay taxes, obey lots of labor laws, pay more taxes, obey other operating laws (like providing handicapped access if applicable) etc. I think that is a moral justification for a law that says "You may not dicriminate on the basis of race in your hiring."
I also think it is a bit unfair for you to characterize this as "gov't approved criteria." I think we are a long way from exchanging a list of prohibited things for a list of allowed things. But I respectfully acknowledge your warning against social engineering that would lead to thought control.
Okay that gets me off on a tangent. Totally off-topic now. You know what I see as thought control? Laws that would make burning the US flag in protest illegal. You see, incinerating an old flag as trash wouldn't be illegal, nor any other disposal of flags or images of flags. It is only illegal if it is burnt in protest. It is the thought that they want to make illegal. That is not what America is about.
I have a Libertarian friend and we have this kind of arguement frequently. For us, I think it has come down to a belief in social engineering, or in his case not believing in social engineering. He thinks individual freedom is paramount. I think that if society is harmed by something, and workable laws can reduce it without giving up more than is gained, then they are good laws. He would argue that speed limits are unnecessary, and government should just hold the individual responsible for their actions if they get in an accident and let them drive as fast as they want. I maintain that we can scientifically impose restrictions and see their results and conclude that they have a large positive effect.
I say that if you just let people drive as fast as they want and have accidents and kill people and then go to jail, WE ALL are worse off. I think if you let companies not hire blacks or latinos then WE ALL are worse off. So their freedom to hire certain people infringes on everyone else's liberty and pursuit of happiness.
I think there is a contract here: If you are going to be part of our society and use our roads and our public utilities and our schools and our emergency services and have a government that protects our interests abroad and profit from the innumerable other benefits of our society, then there are actions that would harm society that we demand you not take. So on that basis, I think it is fair for government to demand that business not hire employees based on race.
I also think that while Monster may or may not be breaking any law, they are being asinine.
"Remember when you walk into a store and they " reserve the right to kick you out for any reason?" Yeah, same idea."
You do realize that just because they put of a sign, doesn't mean that they really have that right, don't you? Self appointed rights have all the legal authority of tissue paper.
Some kinds of discrimination are just fine, and some are judged by society to be immoral, and a further subset are judged by lawmakers to be illegal. Just because it is a free service or private property, doesn't mean some laws don't apply.