One thing that we're all still wondering is how will people control the thing? I haven't seen one explanation for how the center "wheel" (if that's what it is) works.
I think it was confirmed a while back (via an FCC filing or something) that it's not actually a wheel, just four buttons arranged to look like a wheel. The clickwheel without the wheel part.
Makes sense, as Apple does have a patent on the clickwheel design, and I was wondering how MS was going to get around it when I saw this. Simple enough; the wheel is not a wheel.
Did you RTFA? The Core 360 doesn't include a game like this Wii will, so add $50-60 to buy a game with the 360 Core and it's closest competitor is ~$100 more.
Only the case if you actually like/want Wii Sports. This is not Mario we're talking about; it's hardly a universally appealing game. It's more of a tech demo for what you can do with the Wii controller. I personally would prefer they left it out and lowered the price.
But do you think if they had left it out that the console would be lowered to $199? No; in fact, it's probably not costing them much at all to put it in, and my bet is they're only doing so to help justify a price tag that they'd already arrived at. So it's not worth $50, or even $30 or $20. It's a budget title if I ever saw one, and it's not even worth a budget price if you don't want it at all.
In that case, then it's still a $50 difference between the Wii and 360, given that you need to buy a game for either one.
What a wonderful way to reward laziness. And hey, while you're at it, pad your pockets through your podcast? Ridiculous.
I see someone's apparently never been to college.
What happens when a family member takes ill or dies? What happens if you get sick? Or break your leg? Or (as I did a couple months ago) suffer a spontaneous lung collapse?
If you're working, you call in sick, go on leave if necessary, go back to work when you can and no harm done.
In college, you miss a class and in some cases, you fail the course. It doesn't matter why you missed it; if you don't know the material, you have no hope of passing. You have now wasted potentially thousands of dollars, several months worth of your time and have a permanent black mark on your record, which will affect your later job prospects. All because you might have been walking down the street one day and slipped on the sidewalk.
I went to college; obviously, I know there are days when kids just don't feel like going to class. But you know what? There are days when 40-year-olds don't feel like going to work either. The difference is, most white-collar workers can call in sick, take a personal day or vacation day. (In fact, personal days and vacation days are *intended* to reward "laziness" as you put it - people need downtime.) College students officially get no unscheduled days off, for any reason. (Some professors are more relaxed than others, but my university had no such thing as "sick days". And anyway, if you miss important material, there's no hope of passing final exams.)
And just in case you're still sitting in judgment of college students' "laziness", consider the fact that many college students have classes six days a week, year round, from 8AM to 10PM, and on the off day they're doing homework. This was the way my student life was at NYU. My last 2 years, I got about 3 hours of sleep every single night, and some nights I got none. You're going to judge somebody even if they do just feel like taking a day off now and then?
These kids are ungrateful jerks for complaining over $2.50, though. I would have given my left nut for the chance to pay $2.50 for a missed lecture when I was in college. No such technology even existed back then to do so (unless the prof. wanted to spend all his off hours making analog cassette copies for his students).
Mostly they would only pay so much for a 35mm camera, however good, and in both digital and 35mm it's the lens quality (the significant contributor to cost, at the high end) that becomes the limiting factor. Isn't it?
It depends. Certainly you can't just stick any lens on an 8mp camera and expect it'll give you the full resolution that the sensor is capable of.
But even most cheap (and I do mean cheap, sub-$100) zoom lenses are capable of maxing out the resolution of an APS-C-sized 8mp sensor at least at the sweet spot of their focal length. Prime lenses are almost universally capable of resolving far more detail than even 35mm film can provide. You have to remember that the optics used on DSLR's were initially developed for 35mm film, and had to be good enough for professionals that were blowing images up to poster size. Not all consumer-level lenses are capable of such detail, but the technology did trickle down.
The bottom line is that lenses are generally not the limiting factor in resolution on DSLR cameras. They are often part of the problem in cheaper pocket cams, but when you're buying a camera from a company that made their names in 35mm, and sticking a lens on it designed for 35mm (or adapted from 35mm, as Canon's and Nikon's digital lenses are) with technology that has been perfected over many years, then it is a rare case when the lens does not outperform the sensor.
I'll also say that while there are some differences in the optics between the pro-level and consumer-level lenses made by Canon, Nikon, Sigma, and other major lens manufacturers, most of the difference is in construction quality and features, not necessarily in the quality of the glass. Canon's 50mm 1.8 prime lens, for example, is a sub-$100 lens that can resolve upwards of 125 lp/mm - higher than some of their professional L-series lenses at that focal length. (Though that number alone won't tell you much about overall lens performance, but it does serve as an example of how good the glass *can* be in a cheap lens, and often is.)
Actually, i have, a few times. unfortuntly, the screen does not stay up long enough to actually read what it says (thus the cluckey PS comment, i assume.)
This is a problem if you've got file system errors, but most of the time Windows can tell you exactly what the problem was after the reboot. The Mac OS does not do this that I've been able to find. But if you allow Windows to report the problem to Microsoft (which there are arguments against), it will then give you a web page telling you what caused your crash and giving basic instructions on how to fix it.
This is most useful in deducing device driver problems, which are the cause of probably 100% of the few crashes I've had on XP. It's pretty easy to avoid crashes in the future if Windows is telling you straight up that your network card's drivers are the problem. Get new drivers or a new NIC, problem solved.
But it is true that Windows rarely crashes. Or maybe it's more accurate to say it either never crashes or it always does, but mostly it never does. As most crashes (in my experience) are caused by unsigned drivers, you're either going to have a problem or you're not. But mostly you're not. And if you do, fixing it is usually as simple as just updating the driver.
The relevant statistic: "The International Federation of Phonographic Industries estimates there's currently 40 illegal downloads to every single legal one."
So there are 40 times more illegal downloads than legal ones (note that this does not contradict recent reports that 35% of downloaders are using legal services - they just also use illegal ones, and they download more illegally). And have you bothered actually searching any of the file sharing networks? Almost everything available is LAME-encoded mp3. A few are WMA, but they don't get much of a swarm. Almost nothing is available in AAC.
If you start with the premise that illegal downloads outnumber legal ones by 40:1, and you see that most of the illegal downloads are mp3, then it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that most downloads - whether legal or illegal - are mp3.
That, of course, also doesn't take into account all the people (like me) that have ripped their entire CD collections to mp3, either because we did it before buying an iPod (you know, iTunes was hardly the first CD ripper) or because we made a conscious decision to do it. It also doesn't take into account legal mp3 download services such as eMusic, or those of us subscribing to a legal service such as Napster and then converting those wma tracks to mp3 with FairUse4WM.
There was also a statistic floating around a while back (and you can google for it, I don't remember where it came from) that said that iPod users, on average, downloaded 21 tracks from iTunes. That's not even 2 albums worth per iPod owner. Do you really think all these people are walking around with gigabytes full of empty space on their iPods? No, they're loading it up with mp3's they've ripped themselves, or gotten from legal download sites (and possibly converted), or, god forbid, gotten from a file sharing network or "questionable" overseas download sites.
mp3 is hardly dead. It will, in fact, never be dead. Too many people already have thousands of songs ripped to the format (and many did before the iPod was even a glint in Steve Jobs' eye), and there's just no incentive for them to re-rip. So every player must support mp3 to be successful (Sony's failure proved that), meaning there is simply no way to force the format's obsolescence.
As far as lossy compression goes, there is simply no other format that matters. (Sorry to you OSS guys, but vorbis just isn't very ubiquitous.) No lossy format will ever replace mp3. What may eventually replace it is a lossless compression format, and that's really the only opportunity for the record labels to make DRM successful. Start releasing albums in Apple Lossless via iTunes and then maybe you'll get some DRM acceptance, because it's difficult to find lossless files on file sharing networks.
Oh, and as to the original article at question here - surprise! Products sell better at Christmas than during the dead of summer. Did anybody bother to look at the quarterly results year over year rather than quarter to quarter?
But if so few people have HDMI capable TV's... er, why support it in the first place?
For the same reason the PS1 and PS2 supported s-video.
And btw, the PS1, PS2 and Xbox didn't come with s-video cables either, even though they supported it. The point is you put the cable in the box that's basically the lowest common denominator supported by all TV's, and then if someone wants to upgrade it, they can.
There's also the obvious question of if you're going to pay $600 for a console, would you rather Sony put $600 worth of actual machine into the box, or $600 worth of add-on junk that a lot of people aren't even going to be able to use?
But this is really nothing new, and I have no idea why it's become such a story the past couple days (it was on Joystiq too, and probably other sites) other than the fact that it's become de rigeur to bash the PS3 lately. Consoles never come with the best cable; they come with the cable supported by the most TV's.
The bigger, more important thing to note is that the PS3 has a standard HDMI port, meaning you can buy any HDMI cable for it. Why no bashing of the Xbox 360 for requiring a proprietary, MS-licensed cable at an inflated price?
btw, the PS3 will come with component cables, not just composite. Another sign of bias on the part of the submitter here...
Imagine if one of the actors from a Jackass TV show died in one of their stunts. Sad, tradgic, et al -- and, again, funny.
Wow, and here I thought finding Jackass funny to begin with was the embodiment of all that's wrong with society. You've taken it to a whole new level here.
Really wish I hadn't let my mod points expire last night - I'd be giving out a whole bunch of negatives in this thread so far.
Have a little respect, people. A guy died. He has a family, he presumably has friends. He doesn't deserved to be laughed at, and they don't deserve it either.
I used to think most people could actually separate real life from fantasy. But some of you obviously are mistaking a man for his TV persona and a real death for some sort of carnival act.
Re:Keep Mozilla Simple
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Marketing Mozilla
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· Score: 4, Insightful
So I say, if they can incorporate clever extensions as default options that enhance the everyday browsing experience, like tabs or better bookmarks or even bittorrent (a transparent download enhancement?), that makes perfect sense.
Well, I would argue that bittorrent has nothing to do with web browsing, and that it's exactly the type of application you were talking about in the Mozilla suite that shouldn't have been there. I mean, if you're adding bittorrent, why not an emule client? Why not a binary newsreader? Why not all the other ways people download things? And hey, while we're at it, people get files through email too! And then suddenly you're right back where we started with the bloated Mozilla suite.
The problem is everybody seems to say the same thing, "oh, Firefox should just be a web browser, except for this one extra feature that I think would fit in perfectly!" But that "one extra feature" is different for everybody, and if you include one, there's going to be a temptation to try to include them all. This is how feature bloat starts, and it's exactly what happened to Mozilla.
The Firefox team needs to stay focused like a laser beam on Firefox's core function. It's what differentiates Firefox from every other browser. I don't see what the point is in even trying to compete with IE, honestly, especially if it degrades the experience. I mean if the way to compete with IE is to make the browser as bad as IE and as bad as the Mozilla suite, then what are we actually gaining? It's as if a great indie rock band decides they want more fans, so they emulate Britney Spears. I mean, maybe that'll get them more fans, but it's sure not going to make the music any better.
People use Firefox because they don't want all these "features". If I want tons of features and I don't want to use IE, I can just use Opera. I use Firefox because it's a lightweight browser that does nothing but browse and does it well. I do agree that enhancements to the browsing experience can be added (e.g. tabbed browsing), but every single feature being considered needs to pass that litmus test first and foremost. When somebody proposes a feature, everybody needs to ask first "is this directly related to web browsing?" and second "will the majority of users want this?" If the answer to *either* of those questions is "no", then the feature should not be added.
I'm pretty sure most homeowners know about CFL's, and a lot of them probably have one or two already. (So where's that city of 1.5 million that's now being powered by all that saved electricity?) My house came with a couple that the previous owner had put in about three years ago.
The problem with these is the same as with any other flourescent light. Namely, they make ugly light and they hurt your eyes. Until that changes (read: never), don't expect people to be replacing their incandescents. It's not just a question of economics; light quality is just as much a health issue as air or water quality. Flourescents have been proven to cause a variety of sight-related issues, including eye strain and headaches.
But the good news is LED light bulbs are getting better and more common. Here's an example of what's available. No, I don't work for an LED manufacturer or seller, and no, I don't think LED bulbs are quite there yet. But they promise to provide a dramatic decrease in energy costs (about 1/10 the energy of even a CFL) and they can provide pure white, steady light (which CFL's, by their nature, cannot do). They are the future, and they're now starting to be carried by big box stores like Lowes and Home Depot.
CFL's have been around for a long time and their lack of success isn't because of cost or because people don't know about them. It's because people don't want them. That's a different thing. News articles can do a lot to raise awareness, but they can't do much when that awareness already exists and people have made up their minds.
Standard copyright myth #17: US copyright law grants "fair use rights".
It doesn't.
Sounds like someone needs to read section 107 of US copyright law, which is titled "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use" and states:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include-- (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
Yes, US copyright law specifically grants fair use rights.
It does bring up two things that really are myths, though:
#1. That the examples cited above are the *only* applications of fair use. Note that the law itself uses the words "including" and "such as" - the courts are free to interpret other examples of fair use, and indeed have. The criteria for determining what is and isn't fair use are what matters, not the examples.
#2. That the DMCA restricts and contradicts the fair use law. It doesn't. In fact, under the section 1201, entitled "Circumvention of copyright protection systems", you will find this nugget:
(c) OTHER RIGHTS, ETC., NOT AFFECTED- (1) Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.
In other words, it is only illegal to circumvent DRM if you are doing so to infringe copyright. It is not illegal to circumvent DRM for purposes that would otherwise fall under fair use.
This is all part of copyright law. Fair use is not some idea that the EFF invented because they want to have free music. This is part of the contract that copyright holders have with the government; it is written into law and has been tested repeatedly in court.
I can't believe that portable MP3 players are going to be cash cows for much longer. They're cheap, basic, simple electronic commodities at this point. Upload MP3's to them, press play, you have music. No big deal.
Not exactly the type of comment I'd expect to see in relation to a story about Dell exiting the mp3 player market.
If your argument is that mp3 players are commodities at this point, you've been proven wrong by the very story you're writing about.
The thing is, while it may be easy to copy the site, what's not so easy is getting people to care. The reason why sites like Ebay and YouTube stay popular over the long-term (and that is my prediction about YouTube - it's only going to get bigger) is that it is a self-sustaining marketplace. In Ebay's case, sellers go where the buyers are, and buyers go where the sellers are. In YouTube's case, same thing - video posters go where the viewers are, and the viewers go where those posting the most video are.
People spend hours just surfing around video there, searching for various things. You can find *anything* on YouTube - it's not just about home movies. I just found David Lynch's short-lived comedy series "On the Air" there a day ago, for example - this is a show I *never* thought I'd see again. I see stuff like this all the time there, and I rarely see similar things elsewhere. It's gotten to the point where if you want to find some piece of video, no matter how obscure, you just immediately go to YouTube because you know it's there. Why even bother with anywhere else?
Of course, YouTube has some potential pitfalls, but then so does all of its competitors. Most of what's on the site is infringing copyright. They have ridiculous bandwidth costs. And the quality is not very good. So it is possible they could fall, but if they do, it won't be because some competitor copied their site and did X thing a little bit better. They're going to have to implode of their own accord or through some legal matter in order to turn over the reigns.
Um, which is [one reason] why we have to worry more. More people know about it.
Oh please. Has anybody ever put complete blind faith in the fact that they have locks on their doors as a guarantee that robbers can never get in to their house?
There is a lot of fear-mongering going on right now about this technique (and this is the second article posted on Slashdot about it in the past couple weeks). But all of this misses the fundamental point: locks have never been enough to keep thieves out.
What is generally enough to keep thieves out is a) basic human morality, and b) the law. Otherwise we'd all be getting robbed every single night - after all, most of us live within earshot of hundreds of other human beings.
Now, if this technique has suddenly caused you to lose faith in both of those things, then I don't know what to tell you - most people don't rest their entire faith in humanity on the sanctity of a door lock. And if you didn't have faith in those things before, then why did you think a lock was going to protect you in the first place? I would think a loaded shotgun under your pillow would be more your style.
The bottom line is this. If you've been robbed before, your locks didn't do you a hell of a lot of good even before this. And if you haven't been robbed before, there's no more chance that you will now. Because the reason you haven't been robbed isn't because thieves didn't think they could get past your door lock - there are a myriad of ways to get into a house for someone that wants to. The reason you haven't been robbed is because the law forbids it and basic human decency says people shouldn't do it.
Yes, there are thieves out there, and I'm not saying you shouldn't bother to have locks - if for no other reason than to keep snooping mailmen or nosy neighbors out. But knowing how to bump and actually breaking into a house are two totally different things. And unlike "script kiddies", breaking and entering is a crime that's taken very seriously - it is usually a felony - and the physical evidence is usually easy enough to trace, especially for an inexperienced thief.
Turn Based games like Civ do tend to have a lot more micro-management than RTS titles, but either does require quite a bit of mouse work. That said, is there any viable alternative?
I don't think it's about alternatives, and I don't think there's anything wrong with Civ's interface.
I think the point is RTS games and turn-based games are fundamentally different. It's a pretty egregious mistake to call Civ an RTS and to say it has too many clicks on that basis, IMO, which makes the whole story here (or at least the headline and summary) basically moot.
Some RTS games may very well require too many clicks. The whole point is the action is happening in real-time, so you want to minimize your work load as much as possible. The interface needs to be streamlined so that you can get done what you need to do quickly.
Turn-based games, though, are under no such constraints, and in fact part of the reason people still play them is because you don't need to be in such a hurry and can play completely at your own pace.
The bottom line is they are two different genres that are often chosen by gamers for completely opposite reasons. Those who want action-oriented strategy buy RTS games; those who want more depth and planning buy turn-based games. It is a huge mistake to suggest that turn-based games need to be more like real-time games, which is in effect what's being suggested by lumping both genres in together. Both genres in fact exist to counterbalance each other.
I do remember playing the original Myth and feeling like I literally just didn't have enough time to deal with the interface before my guys got slaughtered. So this is a big concern in real RTS games. But using Civilization as an example of what's wrong with the RTS genre is just incorrect on many different levels.
Consumers don't want vorbis or mp3, they want music.
I'm pretty sure they want mp3. Depending on which server you hit at that link, you'll get anywhere from 785,000,000 to 1,085,000,000 results.
Vorbis, on the other hand, has only around 12,000,000 results.
I think in this case, it's wrong to assume that customers don't know or care what format they're using. In order to even *have* mp3's, most people would have had to make a conscious decision to either rip or acquire them that way - because none of the major label-supported download services offer that format (I know, Emusic does), and the two biggest library/ripping apps (iTunes and WMP) rip to other formats by default.
In fact, the "industry" has been actively trying to kill off mp3 for years now, because of the DRM issue. Windows Media 8 or 9 didn't even include mp3 ripping as an option at all until people complained, and then the initial "fix" only let you rip at up to 64kbps. Apple and MS have both been hyping their own formats as sounding better than mp3 (which is, on average, bullshit). And the record industry won't put any of their music on the market in the format.
Device manufacturers, though, have learned the hard way that not supporting mp3 is a death knell. Sony was forced to support it after their non-mp3 DAPs failed to even make a dent in the market. And this was back when it still wasn't clear who was going to win the DAP war; Apple was the early leader but it still seemed like anyone's game. Sony threw their chance away by not supporting mp3 from the start; they've never recovered from that blunder. The lead Apple built while Sony's early players languished on the market is now pretty much insurmountable.
Meanwhile, MS is about to dump their unsuccessful Windows Media format with the Zune; or at least, they haven't committed to it one way or another. They will be supporting mp3, however, because you don't beat the iPod by refusing to support the biggest format out there.
All of this shows that consumers sure do know what format they want their music in and that format is mp3. In fact, most people still buy CD's and rip their own music to mp3 themselves.
Device manufacturers will start to support vorbis I'd imagine when the public decides that's what it wants to use... which means never.
I know some people have some sort of philosophical/political attachment to ogg vorbis as a non-proprietary codec. But you should take your victories where you can, and you should look at the popularity of mp3 in that light. It may be a proprietary format but for users, it is also an unencumbered, universally-supported format. Users are choosing it over the even more tightly controlled formats favored by Microsoft, Apple and the RIAA. And they're bucking predictions of mp3's demise that have been made by analysts for years and continue to be made today. It's just never going to happen.
Re:Americans traveling to other countries.
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E-Passport In the Works
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Well, we 'take' 2 weeks (or 1 week, or whatever) a year. We do not 'get' 2 weeks a year. Americans can arrange their vacation vs. work time quite easily. As a nation, though, our cultural habits come down to preferring about 2 weeks per year.
Are you kidding me? "As a nation", we take what we can get. And all we can get is 2 weeks per year or less.
I don't think there's a man, woman or child alive that wouldn't want more than 2 weeks vacation. This is not a "cultural habit", this is just the dynamic of our employer/employee relationship. Employers want to ride their employees as hard as they can and employees are just doing all they can not to get fired.
Of course, us backwards wierdo liberal faggy Europeans get 6 weeks holiday.
Wow, who pays for that?
If the entire society accepts that this is normal, then no one pays for it.
Let's face it - the world works the way it does because we accept that the world works that way. If it worked differently, we'd accept that too. I mean, who's "paying" for the fact that you're sleeping 8 hours a day rather than working? You, and the rest of American society (at least to this point) has drawn the line at having at least enough time off every day to sleep. Nobody "pays" for that; that's just the way society has chosen to work. Could companies make more money if all of their employees worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Sure. But you don't "pay" for something that never existed in the first place. That downtime is just downtime, not a debt that needs to be paid.
We Americans are overworked. We work more hours, on average, than any other nation in the world (yes, including places like Japan, which lets its employees have an average of 25 non-weekend days off per year). But it's not by and large because we want to, it's because we're demanded to and because employers have decided for us that this is the cultural norm. Someday, maybe we'll get in step with the rest of the world and realize that there are more important things in life than work.
Most people in the United States support the wiretapping program.
Most people in the United States supported slavery too.
The public at large cannot always be trusted to support the moral or ethical side of an issue, nor can they be trusted to maintain logic or consistency in their beliefs. I think it was Ben Franklin that said (paraphrasing now), "Being in the majority means that most people agree with you; it does not mean that you are right."
That's why we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights, which is intended to be a semi-permanent document that does not change with the "whims of the people". It *can* be changed, and in fact it was changed to outlaw slavery once and for all, but it is intentionally difficult to do. And if the Constitution says that this program is against the law of the land, then that's that. Public support is irrelevant.
What I was a bit surprised to read in this ruling was that the judge said the President of the United States had willfully and knowingly broken the Fourth Amendment. That's an impeachable offense; in fact, pretty much the worst kind of impeachable offense. Now, there are a lot of things that people on the other side of the aisle have said Bush could be impeached for, but this is the first time that I know of that we have a legal ruling by a federal judge that documents an actual offense for which the President could be held legally accountable. This federal judge has basically labeled the President a high criminal in a legally binding decision.
The question is, will anything be done about it? I guess we'll know in November. As we've seen, politics matters a lot more than ethics or legality to the current congress.
Normally I would say "yes," but if you've seen the videom the guy confessed. Now I don't know about you (and IANAL), but when you confess to a crime, doesn't that usually count as an admission of guilt?
Confessions are never taken at face value by any judge or jury worth its salt, nor should they be. I've been reading a lot about this guy over the last day (almost impossible not to, with the news coverage) and he sure seems like a guy who's been obsessed with the whole case for a while and also has been convicted of sex crimes in the past. He's obviously not all there in the head. Doesn't mean he didn't do it, but it's looking more and more like a big hoax to me: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/17/D8JI9JDG0 .html
Karr told investigators he drugged and had sex with the 6-year-old beauty queen before accidentally killing her, a senior Thai police officer said Thursday. An autopsy done a day after her body was found said a blood screening showed no drugs or alcohol in her body but said she had vaginal abrasions.
His ex-wife also seems to have an alibi for him, saying he was with her in a different state when this murder occurred. Now, it seems to me that if your ex-wife is giving you an alibi when you're already a convicted sex offender, she's probably telling the truth. What possible motive could she have other than to just see justice done? (Which in this case would mean catching the right guy, not just some guy who says he did it.)
We'll see. But I think a lot of you here are proving the point of the original article in this thread - you're jumping to conclusions about guilt when right now, there is more saying this guy is innocent than otherwise. (And anyway, you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, in part because of things like false confessions.)
Apple likes to quote market share of the higher-penetration countries, but their worldwide market share of dedicated music player devices is closer to 25%
What the hell does this even mean? "dedicated music player devices"? I guess that includes transistor radios, boomboxes, cassette tape players, and turntables? Obviously, if you include all music players ever made in any category, Apple's market share is going to be a lot lower than the numbers they quote. But that hardly matters; they're not competing against those products. It would be like saying Microsoft's global market share in "operating systems for electrical devices" is only 10%. Well, they're only actually *in* the computer market, so all those other devices are pretty meaningless in that context.
Apple's worldwide market share for DAPs is way over 25%. The iPod is the #1 mp3 player in more than just the United States. But this trademark issue is only being applied in the United States anyway, so the point is pretty much moot as it is.
Actually I'm quite surprised at how much foreign (japanese in particular) rock is represented on YouTube already.
I agree. I'm a huge Puffy fan (as in the Japanese band, not the US cartoon) and literally every single one of their videos that I know of and probably about 50% of all their other TV appearances (minus a bunch of papapapapuffy episodes) are already on YouTube. The recent ones were even put there by their US record label. I gotta say, it's this breaking down of national barriers that's what I love about YouTube - I couldn't care less about seeing the latest Fergie video, but YouTube lets me see stuff from halfway around the world that I'd never have a chance to otherwise. (Of course, most of Puffy's videos are on DVD already, but not the new ones, and not any of their other live TV appearances.)
All I want is some better quality, and I'll still buy DVD's for that. The danger that I see in this is that record labels and bands stop releasing things that you can actually own in favor of this model where you can just stream anything you want from a web site. a) I don't want to be beholden to a web site for absolutely everything, b) I want better quality, and c) I will pay good money to own music videos from bands that I really, really like. So while I'm a big fan of YouTube as an addition to what the labels already do, I just hope it doesn't end up being a replacement for physical media, good quality or ownership.
"poeple doing medical billing use software that requires all letter keypresses must be in caps"
Perhaps they are part of the problem. Who writes software that requires all caps?
Why do people keep saying this? The fact is it doesn't matter.
I've got to think the people who take this line are either a) still college students, or b) unemployed. When you actually have a job, you don't walk up to your supervisor and say "I think this is stupid, so I'm going to do things in a completely different way than you told me to and a completely different way than everybody else who works here, not to mention a way that is incompatible with everything else everybody does in every other department at this company." You tell me what that's going to accomplish.
There is software like this out there, and maybe more to the point, there are procedures out there at various companies that you may or may not agree with. But you still have to follow them.
In the case of medical software, if my wife - who is a nurse - entered a medication order in the hospital computer in lower-case, you know what happens? That patient doesn't get any medication. Is that what you're arguing should happen just because some programmer wrote code that you don't like?
Slashdot Mirror
One thing that we're all still wondering is how will people control the thing? I haven't seen one explanation for how the center "wheel" (if that's what it is) works.
I think it was confirmed a while back (via an FCC filing or something) that it's not actually a wheel, just four buttons arranged to look like a wheel. The clickwheel without the wheel part.
Makes sense, as Apple does have a patent on the clickwheel design, and I was wondering how MS was going to get around it when I saw this. Simple enough; the wheel is not a wheel.
Did you RTFA? The Core 360 doesn't include a game like this Wii will, so add $50-60 to buy a game with the 360 Core and it's closest competitor is ~$100 more.
Only the case if you actually like/want Wii Sports. This is not Mario we're talking about; it's hardly a universally appealing game. It's more of a tech demo for what you can do with the Wii controller. I personally would prefer they left it out and lowered the price.
But do you think if they had left it out that the console would be lowered to $199? No; in fact, it's probably not costing them much at all to put it in, and my bet is they're only doing so to help justify a price tag that they'd already arrived at. So it's not worth $50, or even $30 or $20. It's a budget title if I ever saw one, and it's not even worth a budget price if you don't want it at all.
In that case, then it's still a $50 difference between the Wii and 360, given that you need to buy a game for either one.
What a wonderful way to reward laziness. And hey, while you're at it, pad your pockets through your podcast? Ridiculous.
I see someone's apparently never been to college.
What happens when a family member takes ill or dies? What happens if you get sick? Or break your leg? Or (as I did a couple months ago) suffer a spontaneous lung collapse?
If you're working, you call in sick, go on leave if necessary, go back to work when you can and no harm done.
In college, you miss a class and in some cases, you fail the course. It doesn't matter why you missed it; if you don't know the material, you have no hope of passing. You have now wasted potentially thousands of dollars, several months worth of your time and have a permanent black mark on your record, which will affect your later job prospects. All because you might have been walking down the street one day and slipped on the sidewalk.
I went to college; obviously, I know there are days when kids just don't feel like going to class. But you know what? There are days when 40-year-olds don't feel like going to work either. The difference is, most white-collar workers can call in sick, take a personal day or vacation day. (In fact, personal days and vacation days are *intended* to reward "laziness" as you put it - people need downtime.) College students officially get no unscheduled days off, for any reason. (Some professors are more relaxed than others, but my university had no such thing as "sick days". And anyway, if you miss important material, there's no hope of passing final exams.)
And just in case you're still sitting in judgment of college students' "laziness", consider the fact that many college students have classes six days a week, year round, from 8AM to 10PM, and on the off day they're doing homework. This was the way my student life was at NYU. My last 2 years, I got about 3 hours of sleep every single night, and some nights I got none. You're going to judge somebody even if they do just feel like taking a day off now and then?
These kids are ungrateful jerks for complaining over $2.50, though. I would have given my left nut for the chance to pay $2.50 for a missed lecture when I was in college. No such technology even existed back then to do so (unless the prof. wanted to spend all his off hours making analog cassette copies for his students).
Mostly they would only pay so much for a 35mm camera, however good, and in both digital and 35mm it's the lens quality (the significant contributor to cost, at the high end) that becomes the limiting factor. Isn't it?
It depends. Certainly you can't just stick any lens on an 8mp camera and expect it'll give you the full resolution that the sensor is capable of.
But even most cheap (and I do mean cheap, sub-$100) zoom lenses are capable of maxing out the resolution of an APS-C-sized 8mp sensor at least at the sweet spot of their focal length. Prime lenses are almost universally capable of resolving far more detail than even 35mm film can provide. You have to remember that the optics used on DSLR's were initially developed for 35mm film, and had to be good enough for professionals that were blowing images up to poster size. Not all consumer-level lenses are capable of such detail, but the technology did trickle down.
The bottom line is that lenses are generally not the limiting factor in resolution on DSLR cameras. They are often part of the problem in cheaper pocket cams, but when you're buying a camera from a company that made their names in 35mm, and sticking a lens on it designed for 35mm (or adapted from 35mm, as Canon's and Nikon's digital lenses are) with technology that has been perfected over many years, then it is a rare case when the lens does not outperform the sensor.
I'll also say that while there are some differences in the optics between the pro-level and consumer-level lenses made by Canon, Nikon, Sigma, and other major lens manufacturers, most of the difference is in construction quality and features, not necessarily in the quality of the glass. Canon's 50mm 1.8 prime lens, for example, is a sub-$100 lens that can resolve upwards of 125 lp/mm - higher than some of their professional L-series lenses at that focal length. (Though that number alone won't tell you much about overall lens performance, but it does serve as an example of how good the glass *can* be in a cheap lens, and often is.)
Actually, i have, a few times. unfortuntly, the screen does not stay up long enough to actually read what it says (thus the cluckey PS comment, i assume.)
This is a problem if you've got file system errors, but most of the time Windows can tell you exactly what the problem was after the reboot. The Mac OS does not do this that I've been able to find. But if you allow Windows to report the problem to Microsoft (which there are arguments against), it will then give you a web page telling you what caused your crash and giving basic instructions on how to fix it.
This is most useful in deducing device driver problems, which are the cause of probably 100% of the few crashes I've had on XP. It's pretty easy to avoid crashes in the future if Windows is telling you straight up that your network card's drivers are the problem. Get new drivers or a new NIC, problem solved.
But it is true that Windows rarely crashes. Or maybe it's more accurate to say it either never crashes or it always does, but mostly it never does. As most crashes (in my experience) are caused by unsigned drivers, you're either going to have a problem or you're not. But mostly you're not. And if you do, fixing it is usually as simple as just updating the driver.
Can you elaborate? Give me some statics, because I'm not seeing much mp3 exchange going on any more,
g _launch/
Are you kidding? Here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/29/spiralfro
The relevant statistic: "The International Federation of Phonographic Industries estimates there's currently 40 illegal downloads to every single legal one."
So there are 40 times more illegal downloads than legal ones (note that this does not contradict recent reports that 35% of downloaders are using legal services - they just also use illegal ones, and they download more illegally). And have you bothered actually searching any of the file sharing networks? Almost everything available is LAME-encoded mp3. A few are WMA, but they don't get much of a swarm. Almost nothing is available in AAC.
If you start with the premise that illegal downloads outnumber legal ones by 40:1, and you see that most of the illegal downloads are mp3, then it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that most downloads - whether legal or illegal - are mp3.
That, of course, also doesn't take into account all the people (like me) that have ripped their entire CD collections to mp3, either because we did it before buying an iPod (you know, iTunes was hardly the first CD ripper) or because we made a conscious decision to do it. It also doesn't take into account legal mp3 download services such as eMusic, or those of us subscribing to a legal service such as Napster and then converting those wma tracks to mp3 with FairUse4WM.
There was also a statistic floating around a while back (and you can google for it, I don't remember where it came from) that said that iPod users, on average, downloaded 21 tracks from iTunes. That's not even 2 albums worth per iPod owner. Do you really think all these people are walking around with gigabytes full of empty space on their iPods? No, they're loading it up with mp3's they've ripped themselves, or gotten from legal download sites (and possibly converted), or, god forbid, gotten from a file sharing network or "questionable" overseas download sites.
mp3 is hardly dead. It will, in fact, never be dead. Too many people already have thousands of songs ripped to the format (and many did before the iPod was even a glint in Steve Jobs' eye), and there's just no incentive for them to re-rip. So every player must support mp3 to be successful (Sony's failure proved that), meaning there is simply no way to force the format's obsolescence.
As far as lossy compression goes, there is simply no other format that matters. (Sorry to you OSS guys, but vorbis just isn't very ubiquitous.) No lossy format will ever replace mp3. What may eventually replace it is a lossless compression format, and that's really the only opportunity for the record labels to make DRM successful. Start releasing albums in Apple Lossless via iTunes and then maybe you'll get some DRM acceptance, because it's difficult to find lossless files on file sharing networks.
Oh, and as to the original article at question here - surprise! Products sell better at Christmas than during the dead of summer. Did anybody bother to look at the quarterly results year over year rather than quarter to quarter?
But if so few people have HDMI capable TV's ... er, why support it in the first place?
For the same reason the PS1 and PS2 supported s-video.
And btw, the PS1, PS2 and Xbox didn't come with s-video cables either, even though they supported it. The point is you put the cable in the box that's basically the lowest common denominator supported by all TV's, and then if someone wants to upgrade it, they can.
There's also the obvious question of if you're going to pay $600 for a console, would you rather Sony put $600 worth of actual machine into the box, or $600 worth of add-on junk that a lot of people aren't even going to be able to use?
But this is really nothing new, and I have no idea why it's become such a story the past couple days (it was on Joystiq too, and probably other sites) other than the fact that it's become de rigeur to bash the PS3 lately. Consoles never come with the best cable; they come with the cable supported by the most TV's.
The bigger, more important thing to note is that the PS3 has a standard HDMI port, meaning you can buy any HDMI cable for it. Why no bashing of the Xbox 360 for requiring a proprietary, MS-licensed cable at an inflated price?
btw, the PS3 will come with component cables, not just composite. Another sign of bias on the part of the submitter here...
Imagine if one of the actors from a Jackass TV show died in one of their stunts. Sad, tradgic, et al -- and, again, funny.
Wow, and here I thought finding Jackass funny to begin with was the embodiment of all that's wrong with society. You've taken it to a whole new level here.
Really wish I hadn't let my mod points expire last night - I'd be giving out a whole bunch of negatives in this thread so far.
Have a little respect, people. A guy died. He has a family, he presumably has friends. He doesn't deserved to be laughed at, and they don't deserve it either.
I used to think most people could actually separate real life from fantasy. But some of you obviously are mistaking a man for his TV persona and a real death for some sort of carnival act.
So I say, if they can incorporate clever extensions as default options that enhance the everyday browsing experience, like tabs or better bookmarks or even bittorrent (a transparent download enhancement?), that makes perfect sense.
Well, I would argue that bittorrent has nothing to do with web browsing, and that it's exactly the type of application you were talking about in the Mozilla suite that shouldn't have been there. I mean, if you're adding bittorrent, why not an emule client? Why not a binary newsreader? Why not all the other ways people download things? And hey, while we're at it, people get files through email too! And then suddenly you're right back where we started with the bloated Mozilla suite.
The problem is everybody seems to say the same thing, "oh, Firefox should just be a web browser, except for this one extra feature that I think would fit in perfectly!" But that "one extra feature" is different for everybody, and if you include one, there's going to be a temptation to try to include them all. This is how feature bloat starts, and it's exactly what happened to Mozilla.
The Firefox team needs to stay focused like a laser beam on Firefox's core function. It's what differentiates Firefox from every other browser. I don't see what the point is in even trying to compete with IE, honestly, especially if it degrades the experience. I mean if the way to compete with IE is to make the browser as bad as IE and as bad as the Mozilla suite, then what are we actually gaining? It's as if a great indie rock band decides they want more fans, so they emulate Britney Spears. I mean, maybe that'll get them more fans, but it's sure not going to make the music any better.
People use Firefox because they don't want all these "features". If I want tons of features and I don't want to use IE, I can just use Opera. I use Firefox because it's a lightweight browser that does nothing but browse and does it well. I do agree that enhancements to the browsing experience can be added (e.g. tabbed browsing), but every single feature being considered needs to pass that litmus test first and foremost. When somebody proposes a feature, everybody needs to ask first "is this directly related to web browsing?" and second "will the majority of users want this?" If the answer to *either* of those questions is "no", then the feature should not be added.
I'm pretty sure most homeowners know about CFL's, and a lot of them probably have one or two already. (So where's that city of 1.5 million that's now being powered by all that saved electricity?) My house came with a couple that the previous owner had put in about three years ago.
The problem with these is the same as with any other flourescent light. Namely, they make ugly light and they hurt your eyes. Until that changes (read: never), don't expect people to be replacing their incandescents. It's not just a question of economics; light quality is just as much a health issue as air or water quality. Flourescents have been proven to cause a variety of sight-related issues, including eye strain and headaches.
But the good news is LED light bulbs are getting better and more common. Here's an example of what's available. No, I don't work for an LED manufacturer or seller, and no, I don't think LED bulbs are quite there yet. But they promise to provide a dramatic decrease in energy costs (about 1/10 the energy of even a CFL) and they can provide pure white, steady light (which CFL's, by their nature, cannot do). They are the future, and they're now starting to be carried by big box stores like Lowes and Home Depot.
CFL's have been around for a long time and their lack of success isn't because of cost or because people don't know about them. It's because people don't want them. That's a different thing. News articles can do a lot to raise awareness, but they can't do much when that awareness already exists and people have made up their minds.
It doesn't.
Sounds like someone needs to read section 107 of US copyright law, which is titled "Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use" and states:
Yes, US copyright law specifically grants fair use rights.
It does bring up two things that really are myths, though:
#1. That the examples cited above are the *only* applications of fair use. Note that the law itself uses the words "including" and "such as" - the courts are free to interpret other examples of fair use, and indeed have. The criteria for determining what is and isn't fair use are what matters, not the examples.
#2. That the DMCA restricts and contradicts the fair use law. It doesn't. In fact, under the section 1201, entitled "Circumvention of copyright protection systems", you will find this nugget:
In other words, it is only illegal to circumvent DRM if you are doing so to infringe copyright. It is not illegal to circumvent DRM for purposes that would otherwise fall under fair use.
This is all part of copyright law. Fair use is not some idea that the EFF invented because they want to have free music. This is part of the contract that copyright holders have with the government; it is written into law and has been tested repeatedly in court.
Bah, and I bet these same 'experts' say that the toilet is best used for going to the bathroom and nothing else.
Seriously. Why let all that perfectly good water go to waste? Bring some ice and a couple mixers and you've got yourself a party!
I can't believe that portable MP3 players are going to be cash cows for much longer. They're cheap, basic, simple electronic commodities at this point. Upload MP3's to them, press play, you have music. No big deal.
Not exactly the type of comment I'd expect to see in relation to a story about Dell exiting the mp3 player market.
If your argument is that mp3 players are commodities at this point, you've been proven wrong by the very story you're writing about.
It's WAY TOO EASY to copy what youtube is doing.
People said the same thing about Ebay.
The thing is, while it may be easy to copy the site, what's not so easy is getting people to care. The reason why sites like Ebay and YouTube stay popular over the long-term (and that is my prediction about YouTube - it's only going to get bigger) is that it is a self-sustaining marketplace. In Ebay's case, sellers go where the buyers are, and buyers go where the sellers are. In YouTube's case, same thing - video posters go where the viewers are, and the viewers go where those posting the most video are.
People spend hours just surfing around video there, searching for various things. You can find *anything* on YouTube - it's not just about home movies. I just found David Lynch's short-lived comedy series "On the Air" there a day ago, for example - this is a show I *never* thought I'd see again. I see stuff like this all the time there, and I rarely see similar things elsewhere. It's gotten to the point where if you want to find some piece of video, no matter how obscure, you just immediately go to YouTube because you know it's there. Why even bother with anywhere else?
Of course, YouTube has some potential pitfalls, but then so does all of its competitors. Most of what's on the site is infringing copyright. They have ridiculous bandwidth costs. And the quality is not very good. So it is possible they could fall, but if they do, it won't be because some competitor copied their site and did X thing a little bit better. They're going to have to implode of their own accord or through some legal matter in order to turn over the reigns.
Um, which is [one reason] why we have to worry more. More people know about it.
Oh please. Has anybody ever put complete blind faith in the fact that they have locks on their doors as a guarantee that robbers can never get in to their house?
There is a lot of fear-mongering going on right now about this technique (and this is the second article posted on Slashdot about it in the past couple weeks). But all of this misses the fundamental point: locks have never been enough to keep thieves out.
What is generally enough to keep thieves out is a) basic human morality, and b) the law. Otherwise we'd all be getting robbed every single night - after all, most of us live within earshot of hundreds of other human beings.
Now, if this technique has suddenly caused you to lose faith in both of those things, then I don't know what to tell you - most people don't rest their entire faith in humanity on the sanctity of a door lock. And if you didn't have faith in those things before, then why did you think a lock was going to protect you in the first place? I would think a loaded shotgun under your pillow would be more your style.
The bottom line is this. If you've been robbed before, your locks didn't do you a hell of a lot of good even before this. And if you haven't been robbed before, there's no more chance that you will now. Because the reason you haven't been robbed isn't because thieves didn't think they could get past your door lock - there are a myriad of ways to get into a house for someone that wants to. The reason you haven't been robbed is because the law forbids it and basic human decency says people shouldn't do it.
Yes, there are thieves out there, and I'm not saying you shouldn't bother to have locks - if for no other reason than to keep snooping mailmen or nosy neighbors out. But knowing how to bump and actually breaking into a house are two totally different things. And unlike "script kiddies", breaking and entering is a crime that's taken very seriously - it is usually a felony - and the physical evidence is usually easy enough to trace, especially for an inexperienced thief.
Turn Based games like Civ do tend to have a lot more micro-management than RTS titles, but either does require quite a bit of mouse work. That said, is there any viable alternative?
I don't think it's about alternatives, and I don't think there's anything wrong with Civ's interface.
I think the point is RTS games and turn-based games are fundamentally different. It's a pretty egregious mistake to call Civ an RTS and to say it has too many clicks on that basis, IMO, which makes the whole story here (or at least the headline and summary) basically moot.
Some RTS games may very well require too many clicks. The whole point is the action is happening in real-time, so you want to minimize your work load as much as possible. The interface needs to be streamlined so that you can get done what you need to do quickly.
Turn-based games, though, are under no such constraints, and in fact part of the reason people still play them is because you don't need to be in such a hurry and can play completely at your own pace.
The bottom line is they are two different genres that are often chosen by gamers for completely opposite reasons. Those who want action-oriented strategy buy RTS games; those who want more depth and planning buy turn-based games. It is a huge mistake to suggest that turn-based games need to be more like real-time games, which is in effect what's being suggested by lumping both genres in together. Both genres in fact exist to counterbalance each other.
I do remember playing the original Myth and feeling like I literally just didn't have enough time to deal with the interface before my guys got slaughtered. So this is a big concern in real RTS games. But using Civilization as an example of what's wrong with the RTS genre is just incorrect on many different levels.
Consumers don't want vorbis or mp3, they want music.
I'm pretty sure they want mp3. Depending on which server you hit at that link, you'll get anywhere from 785,000,000 to 1,085,000,000 results.
Vorbis, on the other hand, has only around 12,000,000 results.
I think in this case, it's wrong to assume that customers don't know or care what format they're using. In order to even *have* mp3's, most people would have had to make a conscious decision to either rip or acquire them that way - because none of the major label-supported download services offer that format (I know, Emusic does), and the two biggest library/ripping apps (iTunes and WMP) rip to other formats by default.
In fact, the "industry" has been actively trying to kill off mp3 for years now, because of the DRM issue. Windows Media 8 or 9 didn't even include mp3 ripping as an option at all until people complained, and then the initial "fix" only let you rip at up to 64kbps. Apple and MS have both been hyping their own formats as sounding better than mp3 (which is, on average, bullshit). And the record industry won't put any of their music on the market in the format.
Device manufacturers, though, have learned the hard way that not supporting mp3 is a death knell. Sony was forced to support it after their non-mp3 DAPs failed to even make a dent in the market. And this was back when it still wasn't clear who was going to win the DAP war; Apple was the early leader but it still seemed like anyone's game. Sony threw their chance away by not supporting mp3 from the start; they've never recovered from that blunder. The lead Apple built while Sony's early players languished on the market is now pretty much insurmountable.
Meanwhile, MS is about to dump their unsuccessful Windows Media format with the Zune; or at least, they haven't committed to it one way or another. They will be supporting mp3, however, because you don't beat the iPod by refusing to support the biggest format out there.
All of this shows that consumers sure do know what format they want their music in and that format is mp3. In fact, most people still buy CD's and rip their own music to mp3 themselves.
Device manufacturers will start to support vorbis I'd imagine when the public decides that's what it wants to use... which means never.
I know some people have some sort of philosophical/political attachment to ogg vorbis as a non-proprietary codec. But you should take your victories where you can, and you should look at the popularity of mp3 in that light. It may be a proprietary format but for users, it is also an unencumbered, universally-supported format. Users are choosing it over the even more tightly controlled formats favored by Microsoft, Apple and the RIAA. And they're bucking predictions of mp3's demise that have been made by analysts for years and continue to be made today. It's just never going to happen.
Well, we 'take' 2 weeks (or 1 week, or whatever) a year. We do not 'get' 2 weeks a year. Americans can arrange their vacation vs. work time quite easily. As a nation, though, our cultural habits come down to preferring about 2 weeks per year.
Are you kidding me? "As a nation", we take what we can get. And all we can get is 2 weeks per year or less.
I don't think there's a man, woman or child alive that wouldn't want more than 2 weeks vacation. This is not a "cultural habit", this is just the dynamic of our employer/employee relationship. Employers want to ride their employees as hard as they can and employees are just doing all they can not to get fired.
Of course, us backwards wierdo liberal faggy Europeans get 6 weeks holiday.
Wow, who pays for that?
If the entire society accepts that this is normal, then no one pays for it.
Let's face it - the world works the way it does because we accept that the world works that way. If it worked differently, we'd accept that too. I mean, who's "paying" for the fact that you're sleeping 8 hours a day rather than working? You, and the rest of American society (at least to this point) has drawn the line at having at least enough time off every day to sleep. Nobody "pays" for that; that's just the way society has chosen to work. Could companies make more money if all of their employees worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Sure. But you don't "pay" for something that never existed in the first place. That downtime is just downtime, not a debt that needs to be paid.
We Americans are overworked. We work more hours, on average, than any other nation in the world (yes, including places like Japan, which lets its employees have an average of 25 non-weekend days off per year). But it's not by and large because we want to, it's because we're demanded to and because employers have decided for us that this is the cultural norm. Someday, maybe we'll get in step with the rest of the world and realize that there are more important things in life than work.
I just can't see a whole lot of practical application for motion sensing in the way that Sony has designed it.
I personally think it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for throwing your controller at the TV.
Most people in the United States support the wiretapping program.
Most people in the United States supported slavery too.
The public at large cannot always be trusted to support the moral or ethical side of an issue, nor can they be trusted to maintain logic or consistency in their beliefs. I think it was Ben Franklin that said (paraphrasing now), "Being in the majority means that most people agree with you; it does not mean that you are right."
That's why we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights, which is intended to be a semi-permanent document that does not change with the "whims of the people". It *can* be changed, and in fact it was changed to outlaw slavery once and for all, but it is intentionally difficult to do. And if the Constitution says that this program is against the law of the land, then that's that. Public support is irrelevant.
What I was a bit surprised to read in this ruling was that the judge said the President of the United States had willfully and knowingly broken the Fourth Amendment. That's an impeachable offense; in fact, pretty much the worst kind of impeachable offense. Now, there are a lot of things that people on the other side of the aisle have said Bush could be impeached for, but this is the first time that I know of that we have a legal ruling by a federal judge that documents an actual offense for which the President could be held legally accountable. This federal judge has basically labeled the President a high criminal in a legally binding decision.
The question is, will anything be done about it? I guess we'll know in November. As we've seen, politics matters a lot more than ethics or legality to the current congress.
Confessions are never taken at face value by any judge or jury worth its salt, nor should they be. I've been reading a lot about this guy over the last day (almost impossible not to, with the news coverage) and he sure seems like a guy who's been obsessed with the whole case for a while and also has been convicted of sex crimes in the past. He's obviously not all there in the head. Doesn't mean he didn't do it, but it's looking more and more like a big hoax to me: http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/08/17/D8JI9JDG
His ex-wife also seems to have an alibi for him, saying he was with her in a different state when this murder occurred. Now, it seems to me that if your ex-wife is giving you an alibi when you're already a convicted sex offender, she's probably telling the truth. What possible motive could she have other than to just see justice done? (Which in this case would mean catching the right guy, not just some guy who says he did it.)
We'll see. But I think a lot of you here are proving the point of the original article in this thread - you're jumping to conclusions about guilt when right now, there is more saying this guy is innocent than otherwise. (And anyway, you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, in part because of things like false confessions.)
Apple likes to quote market share of the higher-penetration countries, but their worldwide market share of dedicated music player devices is closer to 25%
What the hell does this even mean? "dedicated music player devices"? I guess that includes transistor radios, boomboxes, cassette tape players, and turntables? Obviously, if you include all music players ever made in any category, Apple's market share is going to be a lot lower than the numbers they quote. But that hardly matters; they're not competing against those products. It would be like saying Microsoft's global market share in "operating systems for electrical devices" is only 10%. Well, they're only actually *in* the computer market, so all those other devices are pretty meaningless in that context.
Apple's worldwide market share for DAPs is way over 25%. The iPod is the #1 mp3 player in more than just the United States. But this trademark issue is only being applied in the United States anyway, so the point is pretty much moot as it is.
More importantly, can Dell get 4.1 million of these? And kind of quickly?
I'm not sure you want to have a nuclear energy source sitting on your lap for very long. Not good for the missus, if you know what I mean.
Actually I'm quite surprised at how much foreign (japanese in particular) rock is represented on YouTube already.
I agree. I'm a huge Puffy fan (as in the Japanese band, not the US cartoon) and literally every single one of their videos that I know of and probably about 50% of all their other TV appearances (minus a bunch of papapapapuffy episodes) are already on YouTube. The recent ones were even put there by their US record label. I gotta say, it's this breaking down of national barriers that's what I love about YouTube - I couldn't care less about seeing the latest Fergie video, but YouTube lets me see stuff from halfway around the world that I'd never have a chance to otherwise. (Of course, most of Puffy's videos are on DVD already, but not the new ones, and not any of their other live TV appearances.)
All I want is some better quality, and I'll still buy DVD's for that. The danger that I see in this is that record labels and bands stop releasing things that you can actually own in favor of this model where you can just stream anything you want from a web site. a) I don't want to be beholden to a web site for absolutely everything, b) I want better quality, and c) I will pay good money to own music videos from bands that I really, really like. So while I'm a big fan of YouTube as an addition to what the labels already do, I just hope it doesn't end up being a replacement for physical media, good quality or ownership.
"poeple doing medical billing use software that requires all letter keypresses must be in caps"
Perhaps they are part of the problem. Who writes software that requires all caps?
Why do people keep saying this? The fact is it doesn't matter.
I've got to think the people who take this line are either a) still college students, or b) unemployed. When you actually have a job, you don't walk up to your supervisor and say "I think this is stupid, so I'm going to do things in a completely different way than you told me to and a completely different way than everybody else who works here, not to mention a way that is incompatible with everything else everybody does in every other department at this company." You tell me what that's going to accomplish.
There is software like this out there, and maybe more to the point, there are procedures out there at various companies that you may or may not agree with. But you still have to follow them.
In the case of medical software, if my wife - who is a nurse - entered a medication order in the hospital computer in lower-case, you know what happens? That patient doesn't get any medication. Is that what you're arguing should happen just because some programmer wrote code that you don't like?