* Downloads are harder to buy than picking up a CD at the supermarket, and life is too short to do online grunt work.
I have to disagree with this statement in the context of iTMS - it takes less time for me to buy a single track on iTMS than it takes me to walk from the front door of the store to the area where CDs are sold. Buying a complete album takes about as much time as picking up the CD in the store, waiting in line, and completing the purchase, but I can actually do something else while downloading the content, so it's a more efficient use of my time.
It's not limited to movies either - my wife and I derive actual entertainment from watching "The King of Queens" by playing "spot the product placements".
More interesting still is that the plane is about a foot or so longer while flying at operational speed than on the ground, owing to the frictional heat. This is the reason for the grooves in the fuselage - they allow the skin to expand uniformly instead of trying to curl up. The SR's also leak fuel like sieves until they can get up to speed and the tanks seal properly, thus one of the first actions taken after takeoff is a midair refuelling, shortly followed by the proverbial leap to hyperspace.
The resolutions of the different DLP systems in use in the US can vary, as TI offers different micromirror chips in different resolutions for large-venue and cinema applications.
Having had the good fortune to see "Attack of the Clones" and a number of other films at the local DLP theater (at 1280x1080 IIRC), I agree with your assessment - if you look closely, you can see the pixels and aliasing, although I don't find it particularly objectionable. Overall, I find it a better experience than real film.
Are there any capitalists who aren't scumbags, or is a large business automatically evil?
Large corporations are not necessarily "evil", however one wants to define that term, but in my experience the vast majority of publicly-held companies are amoral, meaning there is no real sense of right/wrong. There is only a sense of what increases the bottom line. These are the kinds of companies that will, for instance, continue to spew pollution as the fines for it are cheaper than actually lowering emissions. Another example would be of an automaker that saves money by settling with plaintiffs as opposed to making a safer vehicle. In general, the law doesn't mean a whole lot to them if it's cheaper to break it than to follow it, even if they get caught. I wouldn't categorically say that all large companies are evil, but I would say that it's a safe bet that most will do whatever makes them the most money, regardless of right or wrong, and unfortunately the upper management of said companies could be considered to be in breach of their fiduciary duty if they didn't.
That's not *quite* accurate - it's speculated that Eta Carinae will become a gamma-ray burster when it finally does end its life as a supernova, and that the gamma-ray radiation could be deadly out to a distance of several thousand light-years, but with a caveat - the really intense radiation will expand in a ring from the star's equator. The equator points away from us by about 45 degrees or so, so we'll be spared the worst of it. It will still certainly be a big explosion, and Eta Carinae will be the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon, but the off-axis radiation will likely only be harmful to satellites and such at our distance.
If you get charged, it's a RESTOCKING FEE to cover the price of shipping back the movie that they ordered to replace the one that your selfish ass kept for over a week past it's due date.
Is there some kind of evidence you can point to as to what exactly the fee is covering? Unless you work in Blockbuster's corporate finance department, I don't think you can say with authority exactly *what* that fee pays for. I also don't imagine that after the 7 days is up, they automatically re-order another copy of whatever it is that you rented, especially if it's a low-demand item. They'd end up burying themselves in excess inventory if they did.
While the new policy is better for the consumer than the old policy, saying "there are no late fees" is playing games with semantics. If Blockbuster were really legit about the "no late fees" thing, they'd let the movie stay out for the 30 days and not charge it as a purchase until after then. I don't believe that's reasonable, given that they will probably lose money on future rentals of that video during the 30 days.
I think they could probably make everyone happy simply by saying "no late fees if returned within 7 days of the due date, and a late fee of $1.25 if returned between 7 and 30 days late" - there's no confusion that way, and it's an entirely truthful statement. Charge the late fee (and call it that) as such, and don't charge the customer the full cost of the video until after the 30 days is up, after which they could make a pretty fair case that they didn't expect to have the video returned.
Or at the very least, Congress should be required to spend more time working on the legislation itself than naming it.
I agree that these contrived names are ridiculous. I'm quite capable of parsing and reading basic English, and in spite of the legislature's best efforts I'd imagine that most people with decent reading comprehension skills could grasp what the new law covers without needing some stupid name that sounds like it was created by a fourth-grader.
And most of the mass piracy operations are well-funded enough such that the new Macrovision protection isn't going to make a bit of difference. Like so many other DRM schemes, this will prevent the average Joe from making a backup or sharing with one or two friends, and do absolutely nothing about the large-scale operations that are really costing them money.
Let's turn that into a real question then - why is adherence to industry standards apparently not a priority for Microsoft, and why should I believe this attitude is better for me as an end user?
The only way I can figure you got ~1mm accuracy is if you used a ground station as a known point of reference to correct the skew.
Bingo. If you're anywhere near a Coast Guard beacon station (which is to say most of the continental U.S. and outlying waters), you can simply use a unit that supports DGPS and still get 5 meter horizontal resolution on a really bad day, although 1-2 meter resolution is more likely for real-time performance. I would imagine that the almost all of the GPS units used by survey crews are integrating DGPS units, and if given enough time to collect data I have no doubt they could be accurate to within a very few millimeters.
I've got a DGPS-capable Garmin, but haven't really seen the need to fork over the $500 or so that they want for the external DGPS antenna.
For instance, when DC banned handguns, all handgun crime disappeared
D.C. didn't actually ban handguns, just instituted a law that said they had to be registered. Of course, the city hasn't allowed the registration of any new handguns since Feb. 5, 1977, but there are still a few legal weapons out there. I think D.C.'s crime rate speaks for itself, and I was *very* uncomfortable not being able to carry my G30 there recently.
That was a nice demonstration of the many different parts of speech that "fuck" can assume (made all the more impressive by the AC tag), but to say that tort reform only screws the little guy is simplistic at best.
When you sue a company pro se for a piddling amount in small claims court only to have that company turn around and sue you for a much larger amount in retribution, knowing full well you can't afford to defend against the action and knowing it will force you to drop the original suit, you might think differently. Don't forget that corporations have the same right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and they're generally a lot better at it than the average Joe. There's all kinds of games to be played with the legal system, and under the current system if you already have a legal staff on your payroll, it can become trivially easy to force a plaintiff of limited means to back down simply by burying them in paperwork, sometimes to the point of forcing them into bankruptcy even if they win the case.
I didn't miss it - I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of the American federal government's views on such things, as the they participated in the Nuremberg trials that convicted several high-ranking Nazis that were to some degree personally responsible for the Holocaust.
Apologies for the confusion, but you did bring up a valid point.
That didn't seem to apply to Lon Horiuchi after shooting and killing Vicki Weaver during the Ruby Ridge incident. The federal government basically told the state of Idaho to kiss off when they attempted to bring Horiuchi up on state manslaughter charges. The federal government's reasoning was that federal employees are not personally responsible when their actions are performed in the course of their employment, and also that federal employees are bound only by federal law and consequently immune from state law. Horiuchi is also effectively immune from civil actions by virtue of a "discretionary function exemption", which more or less says that we have to accept that the government employee was using their best judgement, which absolves them from liability even in the case of a total fuck-up like Horiuchi's.
I find it interesting that "He/I was just following orders" wasn't a valid legal defense for the Nazis, but apparently is for the professional murderers in the employ of the U.S. government.
It's also been my experience that many who are deeply involved in the sciences are as political as they are scientific, and woe be to him that tries to present a new way of looking at something that contradicts what someone has spent years promoting, or who presents a theory that makes someone look bad. Google for "Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis" for an example of what I mean.
Scientists can be some of the most arrogant assholes out there, and have been throughout history.
I'm not criticizing your actions, but I sincerely don't understand why people pay money for a game sometimes months in advance of its release. Stores were really pushing the pre-orders for Halo 2 and Doom 3, but both titles were readily available in my area the day of release.
Like I said, I'm not dissing those who pre-order, I just don't get why.
Slashdot Mirror
And then Worldspan, Navitaire, Shares, and other GDS's came along and more or less ate Sabre's lunch in the airline industry...
I would too. Fortunately "Attack of the Clones", along with all of the other Star Wars movies, was rated PG. :-)
* Downloads are harder to buy than picking up a CD at the supermarket, and life is too short to do online grunt work.
I have to disagree with this statement in the context of iTMS - it takes less time for me to buy a single track on iTMS than it takes me to walk from the front door of the store to the area where CDs are sold. Buying a complete album takes about as much time as picking up the CD in the store, waiting in line, and completing the purchase, but I can actually do something else while downloading the content, so it's a more efficient use of my time.
It's not limited to movies either - my wife and I derive actual entertainment from watching "The King of Queens" by playing "spot the product placements".
More interesting still is that the plane is about a foot or so longer while flying at operational speed than on the ground, owing to the frictional heat. This is the reason for the grooves in the fuselage - they allow the skin to expand uniformly instead of trying to curl up. The SR's also leak fuel like sieves until they can get up to speed and the tanks seal properly, thus one of the first actions taken after takeoff is a midair refuelling, shortly followed by the proverbial leap to hyperspace.
Kelly Johnson was one extremely smart guy.
[applause]
The resolutions of the different DLP systems in use in the US can vary, as TI offers different micromirror chips in different resolutions for large-venue and cinema applications. Having had the good fortune to see "Attack of the Clones" and a number of other films at the local DLP theater (at 1280x1080 IIRC), I agree with your assessment - if you look closely, you can see the pixels and aliasing, although I don't find it particularly objectionable. Overall, I find it a better experience than real film.
Are there any capitalists who aren't scumbags, or is a large business automatically evil?
Large corporations are not necessarily "evil", however one wants to define that term, but in my experience the vast majority of publicly-held companies are amoral, meaning there is no real sense of right/wrong. There is only a sense of what increases the bottom line. These are the kinds of companies that will, for instance, continue to spew pollution as the fines for it are cheaper than actually lowering emissions. Another example would be of an automaker that saves money by settling with plaintiffs as opposed to making a safer vehicle. In general, the law doesn't mean a whole lot to them if it's cheaper to break it than to follow it, even if they get caught. I wouldn't categorically say that all large companies are evil, but I would say that it's a safe bet that most will do whatever makes them the most money, regardless of right or wrong, and unfortunately the upper management of said companies could be considered to be in breach of their fiduciary duty if they didn't.
Astrology != astronomy
That's not *quite* accurate - it's speculated that Eta Carinae will become a gamma-ray burster when it finally does end its life as a supernova, and that the gamma-ray radiation could be deadly out to a distance of several thousand light-years, but with a caveat - the really intense radiation will expand in a ring from the star's equator. The equator points away from us by about 45 degrees or so, so we'll be spared the worst of it. It will still certainly be a big explosion, and Eta Carinae will be the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon, but the off-axis radiation will likely only be harmful to satellites and such at our distance.
If you get charged, it's a RESTOCKING FEE to cover the price of shipping back the movie that they ordered to replace the one that your selfish ass kept for over a week past it's due date.
Is there some kind of evidence you can point to as to what exactly the fee is covering? Unless you work in Blockbuster's corporate finance department, I don't think you can say with authority exactly *what* that fee pays for. I also don't imagine that after the 7 days is up, they automatically re-order another copy of whatever it is that you rented, especially if it's a low-demand item. They'd end up burying themselves in excess inventory if they did.
While the new policy is better for the consumer than the old policy, saying "there are no late fees" is playing games with semantics. If Blockbuster were really legit about the "no late fees" thing, they'd let the movie stay out for the 30 days and not charge it as a purchase until after then. I don't believe that's reasonable, given that they will probably lose money on future rentals of that video during the 30 days.
I think they could probably make everyone happy simply by saying "no late fees if returned within 7 days of the due date, and a late fee of $1.25 if returned between 7 and 30 days late" - there's no confusion that way, and it's an entirely truthful statement. Charge the late fee (and call it that) as such, and don't charge the customer the full cost of the video until after the 30 days is up, after which they could make a pretty fair case that they didn't expect to have the video returned.
Or at the very least, Congress should be required to spend more time working on the legislation itself than naming it.
I agree that these contrived names are ridiculous. I'm quite capable of parsing and reading basic English, and in spite of the legislature's best efforts I'd imagine that most people with decent reading comprehension skills could grasp what the new law covers without needing some stupid name that sounds like it was created by a fourth-grader.
And most of the mass piracy operations are well-funded enough such that the new Macrovision protection isn't going to make a bit of difference. Like so many other DRM schemes, this will prevent the average Joe from making a backup or sharing with one or two friends, and do absolutely nothing about the large-scale operations that are really costing them money.
Let's turn that into a real question then - why is adherence to industry standards apparently not a priority for Microsoft, and why should I believe this attitude is better for me as an end user?
Not if the location of the lighthouse is off a bit, and the location of the big-ass underwater rock was mapped relative to the lighthouse. :-)
The only way I can figure you got ~1mm accuracy is if you used a ground station as a known point of reference to correct the skew.
Bingo. If you're anywhere near a Coast Guard beacon station (which is to say most of the continental U.S. and outlying waters), you can simply use a unit that supports DGPS and still get 5 meter horizontal resolution on a really bad day, although 1-2 meter resolution is more likely for real-time performance. I would imagine that the almost all of the GPS units used by survey crews are integrating DGPS units, and if given enough time to collect data I have no doubt they could be accurate to within a very few millimeters.
I've got a DGPS-capable Garmin, but haven't really seen the need to fork over the $500 or so that they want for the external DGPS antenna.
Great link, thanks!
For instance, when DC banned handguns, all handgun crime disappeared
D.C. didn't actually ban handguns, just instituted a law that said they had to be registered. Of course, the city hasn't allowed the registration of any new handguns since Feb. 5, 1977, but there are still a few legal weapons out there. I think D.C.'s crime rate speaks for itself, and I was *very* uncomfortable not being able to carry my G30 there recently.
That was a nice demonstration of the many different parts of speech that "fuck" can assume (made all the more impressive by the AC tag), but to say that tort reform only screws the little guy is simplistic at best.
When you sue a company pro se for a piddling amount in small claims court only to have that company turn around and sue you for a much larger amount in retribution, knowing full well you can't afford to defend against the action and knowing it will force you to drop the original suit, you might think differently. Don't forget that corporations have the same right to petition the government for redress of grievances, and they're generally a lot better at it than the average Joe. There's all kinds of games to be played with the legal system, and under the current system if you already have a legal staff on your payroll, it can become trivially easy to force a plaintiff of limited means to back down simply by burying them in paperwork, sometimes to the point of forcing them into bankruptcy even if they win the case.
I didn't miss it - I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of the American federal government's views on such things, as the they participated in the Nuremberg trials that convicted several high-ranking Nazis that were to some degree personally responsible for the Holocaust.
Apologies for the confusion, but you did bring up a valid point.
That didn't seem to apply to Lon Horiuchi after shooting and killing Vicki Weaver during the Ruby Ridge incident. The federal government basically told the state of Idaho to kiss off when they attempted to bring Horiuchi up on state manslaughter charges. The federal government's reasoning was that federal employees are not personally responsible when their actions are performed in the course of their employment, and also that federal employees are bound only by federal law and consequently immune from state law. Horiuchi is also effectively immune from civil actions by virtue of a "discretionary function exemption", which more or less says that we have to accept that the government employee was using their best judgement, which absolves them from liability even in the case of a total fuck-up like Horiuchi's.
I find it interesting that "He/I was just following orders" wasn't a valid legal defense for the Nazis, but apparently is for the professional murderers in the employ of the U.S. government.
It's also been my experience that many who are deeply involved in the sciences are as political as they are scientific, and woe be to him that tries to present a new way of looking at something that contradicts what someone has spent years promoting, or who presents a theory that makes someone look bad. Google for "Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis" for an example of what I mean.
Scientists can be some of the most arrogant assholes out there, and have been throughout history.
Genocide? Yup, Baton Rouge
Y'know, I thought that last bowl of gumbo tasted a bit different...
I'm not criticizing your actions, but I sincerely don't understand why people pay money for a game sometimes months in advance of its release. Stores were really pushing the pre-orders for Halo 2 and Doom 3, but both titles were readily available in my area the day of release.
Like I said, I'm not dissing those who pre-order, I just don't get why.