The cost of this plan is admittedly large, as any major change in the nation's infrastructure would be. The plan estimates $420 billion in subsidies are needed from 2011 - 2050 to fund the infrastructure and technology advances to make solar power more cost-competitive.
If the figures are correct, we could have already paid the subsidies for the next 40 years to fund the infrastructure and technology advances needed if we hadn't invaded Iraq...
Hardly. Why should someone be required to get a license to follow someone or take pictures, but not to examine the contents of their hard drive which could contain more personal information than they would ever glean from a normal investigation?
If you cannot detect something at all with light or gravity effects, then it very likely isn't there. So, the whole dark matter thing is equivalent to calling in the gods to explain the unexplained with something even more inexplicable.
You really have it backwards. Dark Matter was postulated precisely to explain gravity effects that have been observed. Someone that found out that radium created heat and killed things around it might postulate that there was some form of energy causing this and call it "Invisible Energy" before knowing everything about it. Now we call it radioactive decay and this "Invisible Energy" we call radiation. Sometimes these theories might turn out to be wrong.
I've seen a lot of LCD TVs on sale and display at various stores. The one thing they all have in common is they all look like crap [...]
I just went to Best Buy today and was impressed with how far LCD TVs have come. Some of them looked better than some quality DLP TVs. That was just my opinion, I'm not trying to talk anyone into getting a TV but I love my 50" LCD projection TV that is only 720p. I have to get pretty close before I notice pixelization.
I saw an ad for one recently that was very proud of its "10-bit engine" capable of 1080 lines! Wow! Correct me if I'm wrong (like I have to ask) but that's basically the same picture you'll get on your 1024 x 768 monitor, but blown up to be 108 inches.
OK, I'll correct you. 1080 lines is the vertical resolution, so it's actually 1920x1080 widescreen (16:9 ratio). That's better resolution that most people's computer monitors, about the same as my Dell 24" which is 1920x1200 (16:10 ratio). My screen sits about 24" from my face, so it would be about the same viewing my Dell on my desk and viewing this monster from nine feet away (4.5 times the size means 4.5 times the distance to take up the same portion of my vision). If you are going to watch TV closer than nine feet from it, I suggest you get a TV that is smaller than nine feet itself. I think this TV is meant more for home theater enthusiasts that are probably sitting further than that... 1080p is really a large leap in resolution, think about it this way: If you watch standard definition TV (480 lines and it's interlaced) on a 27" screen, you would have to move up to a 73" screen to get the same lines per inch at 1080p. If you don't notice pixelization on your 27" TV watching standard definition TV, you can safely upgrade to a 73" HDTV in the same position and not notice pixelization when watching 1080p content.
I think the main reason they were making them this small was to fit in existing form factor products. For instance, now you could simply check 'blu-ray drive' when designing your laptop at Dell and they'll give you one instead of the standard DVD drive. This makes it interchangeable without having to design a special laptop housing just for the blu-ray drive.
However, we see device manufacturers producing products which overheat and die because they wanted that last 2mm of thinness instead of a long lasting and stable product or they put a really small battery in the device, substantially reducing uptime when running on battery, simply to save that few millimeters again
Then it was poor design. Making a device 2mm thicker will not solve battery or heat problems.
I can't find anywhere in the article where it says when this will happen. I just checked and these tracks aren't available on Amazon's MP3 music store yet... I was ready to buy over $100 worth of music if these artists have their music available...
What are you talking about? The notion of IE standards mode has been around for years, even back when it WAS the most "standards-compliant" browser out there (and even that term is iffy). Standards mode is not something the users have to enable; it's enabled by specifying a proper DOCTYPE in HTML pages; in other words, something web developers do to mark their page as being written according to standards, so it will be rendered according to standards.
You're partially right. Developers will have to insert an IE8-specific flag into their html to make IE8 operate in standards mode, but the user won't have to do anything so my point is invalid. Here's some FAQ:
For compatibility purposes IE8's rendering engine defaults to "quirks" or "standards" mode. Site developers will need to insert a new opt-in flag to request the page to render using "IE8 standards mode."
Since many sites will still have to support IE6 behavior, my guess is many people won't bother. At least I can get my standards-compliant page to look right on IE8 by inserting a vendor-specific tag into my code. I find it disturbing that they call the default "standards mode" and the mode that actually complies with web standards "IE8 standards mode"...
And you can't honestly tell me that they don't have a valid point about different types of standards.
I'm not saying that they don't have a point, I just found it disturbing that this article about IE8 adhering to actual web standards was laced with anti-standards rhetoric. I think it is great that IE8 passes the ACID2 test, and especially that it apparently happened as a side result of them working on standards compliance (even if a web page has to have a special tag to use this mode) and not because they had this one goal in mind. My complaint was about the tone of the article. While they are working on this "IE8 standards mode", it is clear that their main focus is "not breaking the existing web", i.e. maintaining compatibility with IE6 rendering quirks.
That doesn't seem like a lot of money, but is that the profit that they are allowed to make, or the value of goods that can be copied? For instance, this would hurt a lot more if Antigua decided to sell DVDs for 1/10th of a penny profit each:).
Thus their (Egyptian) legislation on the term is automatically accepted and enforced in all signatories to the Berne convention.
If you let the section finish:
(8) In any case, the term shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed; however, unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work.
The country where protection is claimed is where copyright is being infringed, not where the work was created. Therefore if I created pyramids and sphinx postcards in the U.S., the U.S. copyright terms would be used because that is where protection would have to be claimed. That term could not exceed the term in the country of authorship however, so you actually get the least term protection of 1) the country where the work was created and 2) the country where the work is being copied, not the most.
Why not outsource it? There are thousands of people willing to maintain digital copies of those movies FOR FREE! Just create and submit a torrent and you would be amazed at all the free storage you'd get...
From the slashdot summary I was thinking Microsoft turned over a new leaf and was going to support the standards better than any other browser out there. While the fact that they can pass ACID2 is great, I find it intensely disturbing that the page is peppered with anti-standards language.
For one, you apparently have to put IE8 into a "standards mode". Basically no one that will be using IE8 will ever see this experience since the only people that would probably bother to put it into standards mode are web developers. Therefore you will have the same complaints you always had, 'the page doesn't look right' and you can't force your customers to switch to standards mode because their MSN home page won't look right.
Showing the Acid2 page correctly is a good indication of being standards compliant, but Acid2 itself isn't a web standard or a web standards compliance test. The publisher of the test, the Web Standards Project, is an advocacy group, not a web standards defining body.
So this doesn't really mean anything, we just did it for fun...
When we look at the long lists of standards (even from just one standards body, like the W3C), which standards are the most important for us to support? The web has many kinds of standards - true industry standards, like those from the W3C, de facto standards, unilateral standards, open standards, and more. Some standards like RSS or OpenSearch lack a formal standards body yet work pretty well today across multiple implementations.
Standards are confusing, we cannot support them all. It's too confusing for the user to even think about so just use IE8 and when we don't support standards it is because there are too many... 'de facto' standards are things that WE make work in IE becaue most of the web users use IE so whatever we do is by definition standards compliant...
Many advances in web technologies, like the img tag, start out as unilateral extensions by a vendor. The X in AJAX, for example, has only started the formal standardization process relatively recently. As some comments have pointed out, CSS 2.1, one of the key standards that Acid2 exercises, is not "finalized" yet. Different individuals have different opinions about different standards. The important thing about the Acid2 test is that it reflects what one particular group of smart people "consider most important for the future of the web."
CSS 2.1 isn't "finalized" so why bother planning on supporting a proposed standard. The IMG tag is there because of 'embrace and extend' just like Microsoft is famous for (this was actually from when 'html' wasn't a standard yet in 1993, the first HTML RFC was in November 1995). Oh yeah, "opinions" must matter in standards...
As a consumer and a developer, I expect stuff to just work, and I also expect backwards compatibility. When I get a new version of my current browser, I expect all the sites that worked before will still work.
With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web.
So 'lookie here at this standards compliance test we passed' while they completely ignore it to keep from "breaking the existing web".
Sorry for this rant. I basically was excited to have IE actually render pages how they should look. I expected the article to say "We are excited to be making IE8 the most standards compliance browser because standards are important and we will be focusing on them". Most of the language though is hemming and hawing on standards, it's a very unclear message.
the acid test is not a standards compliance test... it's a test of how well browsers break on sites that DONT support standards.
Where are you coming from? This is from the about page:
Acid2 is a test page for web browsers published by The Web Standards Project (WaSP). It has been written to help browser vendors make sure their products correctly support features that web designers would like to use. These features are part of existing standards but haven't been interoperably supported by major browsers. Acid2 tries to change this by challenging browsers to render Acid2 correctly before shipping.
While true that it does not test the entire standard and it is not meant as such, it does test certain parts of the standards (or proposed standards) and how well the browsers support them, not how well they break on sites that aren't standards compliant.
And we're talking about $508 MILLION per year for television and marketing rights. That might not be a good reason for you, me, or the public, but it's a darn good reason for their bottom line...
It's hurting your most passionate fans for no good reason whatsoever.
What makes the world go round? The NCAA makes money from television and marketing rights. If people stop tuning in to watch games live because they can get up-to-the-minute reports online, then the NCAA loses money.
There's a reason that they give them away for free all the time. The money is in the ink. I'm sure oil companies would give cars away too if gas cost $8,000 a gallon. The cars would probably get 10 MPG and report the tank was running out when it was 1/2 full, causing you to replace the whole tank. "I don't wanna run out of gas on the way to work, I'd better change my tank now." They would create components so you could only use gas tanks created by them and not refill them yourselves.
And in 2009 they will have it with 64GB, and the year after 256GB...
That's just silly. Moore's law clearly states that capacity doubles every 18 months. So in Summer 2009 they will have 32GB and in spring 2011 they will have 64GB. They won't have 256GB until spring of 2014...
Not sure if it would be possible to nab Iam Holm as Bilbo, but here's hoping.
He's a little old to play the younger Bilbo. I think it would be as awkward as the old lady acting in the flashbacks during 'Grandma Does Dallas'... "Did you just get out of the bath? Why all the wrinkles?"
This is horrible case law. I get search warrants for the data on the machine. Therefore it should be held under the same rules as getting access to a safe or a house.
The problem is that they have the machine, and they have access to every bit of data on the machine. Look at it another way. Let's say you're an accountant for a mob boss, but you used some kind of code for drug deals in the secret accounting books. The police might be able to force you to unlock the safe, but can they force you to explain what '100p for Santa's snow' means in your code? Maybe it's $100,000 for cocaine. Do you have to explain it to them?
"I felt that by not taking evasive action as a father in the right direction, I might as well have taken my child to some swamp filled with alligators and had them tear him to pieces. It's no different."
Yes, being a good Christian and not murdering people is tantamount to feeding your son to hungry alligators. The logic is infallible! You couldn't have just warned and protected your kids, moved, or even bothered to take the time to figure out what his crimes really were (rape of adult women, not underage boys). The only sensible thing to do was murder him, I'm convinced.
He'll probably get off on some "extreme emotional duress" defense. The court should sterilize his whole family (including siblings and nephews/nieces) to get rid of these fanatical genes. If the court does anything less it'll be like they're sending my kid into a burning fire covered in gasoline.
Isn't it obvious? It wasn't relativity, the family lived an extra 22 milliseconds because they drove up a mountain and were closer to God. That's the only logical solution, I can't see this "gravity" you speak of. Every time someone has a problem with time physicists think they can solve it just by throwing a few nanoseconds at it. Ridiculous...
In other news, Ginsu announced today that their knives will no longer be able to cut anything but butter. They were unable to verify that when their knives were used for cutting they were not being used for murder, so they started dulling all of them.
Yes they are putting it in terms that show it in the beast light, but the terminology is valid. Think of it in reverse. Let's say you sign up for a year of X-Box Live Gold and pay in advance. Now let's say that Microsoft decides to give all the benefits of X-Box Live Gold to Silver members. Is that "Gold" membership now more valuable, less valuable, or the same value? You're getting all the same things you had before... Would a 12 month subscription be worth $49.99 to a new X-Box owner? What's the value when you could get everything for free?
Lets assume I sell cars (since slashdot loves/hates car analogies) and I also sell "extended warranties". I want more people to purchase the extended warranties, because they have much higher profit margins. The tires that come standard on all my cars are rated at 40,000 miles. If I announce that tomorrow, all cars purchased with extended warranties get 40,000 mile tires compared to our new standard 20,000 mile tires on non extended warranty cars, am I adding value?
The extended warranty is more valuable. If you buy the extended warranty after the change, you get everything the warranty promised before, plus better tires. If you had purchased the car prior to the change, buying an extended warranty would have given you the same tires as you had without the warranty. Look at it this way... Let's say the original car warranty was 60,000 miles total car, and the extended warranty upped that to 100,000 miles total car. Now let's say the car company drops the standard warranty to just 36,000 miles and keeps the extended warranty for the same price and 100,000 miles. You're still getting the same 100,000 miles protection when you purchase the extended warranty, but after the change it has more value because it adds 64,000 miles to the standard warranty instead of just 40,000 miles.
Slashdot Mirror
What are you talking about? There's already a device like that and a place to download the games...
Hardly. Why should someone be required to get a license to follow someone or take pictures, but not to examine the contents of their hard drive which could contain more personal information than they would ever glean from a normal investigation?
You really have it backwards. Dark Matter was postulated precisely to explain gravity effects that have been observed. Someone that found out that radium created heat and killed things around it might postulate that there was some form of energy causing this and call it "Invisible Energy" before knowing everything about it. Now we call it radioactive decay and this "Invisible Energy" we call radiation. Sometimes these theories might turn out to be wrong.
I just went to Best Buy today and was impressed with how far LCD TVs have come. Some of them looked better than some quality DLP TVs. That was just my opinion, I'm not trying to talk anyone into getting a TV but I love my 50" LCD projection TV that is only 720p. I have to get pretty close before I notice pixelization.
OK, I'll correct you. 1080 lines is the vertical resolution, so it's actually 1920x1080 widescreen (16:9 ratio). That's better resolution that most people's computer monitors, about the same as my Dell 24" which is 1920x1200 (16:10 ratio). My screen sits about 24" from my face, so it would be about the same viewing my Dell on my desk and viewing this monster from nine feet away (4.5 times the size means 4.5 times the distance to take up the same portion of my vision). If you are going to watch TV closer than nine feet from it, I suggest you get a TV that is smaller than nine feet itself. I think this TV is meant more for home theater enthusiasts that are probably sitting further than that... 1080p is really a large leap in resolution, think about it this way: If you watch standard definition TV (480 lines and it's interlaced) on a 27" screen, you would have to move up to a 73" screen to get the same lines per inch at 1080p. If you don't notice pixelization on your 27" TV watching standard definition TV, you can safely upgrade to a 73" HDTV in the same position and not notice pixelization when watching 1080p content.
I think the main reason they were making them this small was to fit in existing form factor products. For instance, now you could simply check 'blu-ray drive' when designing your laptop at Dell and they'll give you one instead of the standard DVD drive. This makes it interchangeable without having to design a special laptop housing just for the blu-ray drive.
Then it was poor design. Making a device 2mm thicker will not solve battery or heat problems.
I can't find anywhere in the article where it says when this will happen. I just checked and these tracks aren't available on Amazon's MP3 music store yet... I was ready to buy over $100 worth of music if these artists have their music available...
You're partially right. Developers will have to insert an IE8-specific flag into their html to make IE8 operate in standards mode, but the user won't have to do anything so my point is invalid. Here's some FAQ:
Since many sites will still have to support IE6 behavior, my guess is many people won't bother. At least I can get my standards-compliant page to look right on IE8 by inserting a vendor-specific tag into my code. I find it disturbing that they call the default "standards mode" and the mode that actually complies with web standards "IE8 standards mode"...
I'm not saying that they don't have a point, I just found it disturbing that this article about IE8 adhering to actual web standards was laced with anti-standards rhetoric. I think it is great that IE8 passes the ACID2 test, and especially that it apparently happened as a side result of them working on standards compliance (even if a web page has to have a special tag to use this mode) and not because they had this one goal in mind. My complaint was about the tone of the article. While they are working on this "IE8 standards mode", it is clear that their main focus is "not breaking the existing web", i.e. maintaining compatibility with IE6 rendering quirks.
That doesn't seem like a lot of money, but is that the profit that they are allowed to make, or the value of goods that can be copied? For instance, this would hurt a lot more if Antigua decided to sell DVDs for 1/10th of a penny profit each :).
The country where protection is claimed is where copyright is being infringed, not where the work was created. Therefore if I created pyramids and sphinx postcards in the U.S., the U.S. copyright terms would be used because that is where protection would have to be claimed. That term could not exceed the term in the country of authorship however, so you actually get the least term protection of 1) the country where the work was created and 2) the country where the work is being copied, not the most.
Why not outsource it? There are thousands of people willing to maintain digital copies of those movies FOR FREE! Just create and submit a torrent and you would be amazed at all the free storage you'd get...
From the slashdot summary I was thinking Microsoft turned over a new leaf and was going to support the standards better than any other browser out there. While the fact that they can pass ACID2 is great, I find it intensely disturbing that the page is peppered with anti-standards language.
For one, you apparently have to put IE8 into a "standards mode". Basically no one that will be using IE8 will ever see this experience since the only people that would probably bother to put it into standards mode are web developers. Therefore you will have the same complaints you always had, 'the page doesn't look right' and you can't force your customers to switch to standards mode because their MSN home page won't look right.
So this doesn't really mean anything, we just did it for fun...
Standards are confusing, we cannot support them all. It's too confusing for the user to even think about so just use IE8 and when we don't support standards it is because there are too many... 'de facto' standards are things that WE make work in IE becaue most of the web users use IE so whatever we do is by definition standards compliant...
CSS 2.1 isn't "finalized" so why bother planning on supporting a proposed standard. The IMG tag is there because of 'embrace and extend' just like Microsoft is famous for (this was actually from when 'html' wasn't a standard yet in 1993, the first HTML RFC was in November 1995). Oh yeah, "opinions" must matter in standards...
So 'lookie here at this standards compliance test we passed' while they completely ignore it to keep from "breaking the existing web".
Sorry for this rant. I basically was excited to have IE actually render pages how they should look. I expected the article to say "We are excited to be making IE8 the most standards compliance browser because standards are important and we will be focusing on them". Most of the language though is hemming and hawing on standards, it's a very unclear message.
Where are you coming from? This is from the about page:
While true that it does not test the entire standard and it is not meant as such, it does test certain parts of the standards (or proposed standards) and how well the browsers support them, not how well they break on sites that aren't standards compliant.
And we're talking about $508 MILLION per year for television and marketing rights. That might not be a good reason for you, me, or the public, but it's a darn good reason for their bottom line...
What makes the world go round? The NCAA makes money from television and marketing rights. If people stop tuning in to watch games live because they can get up-to-the-minute reports online, then the NCAA loses money.
There's a reason that they give them away for free all the time. The money is in the ink. I'm sure oil companies would give cars away too if gas cost $8,000 a gallon. The cars would probably get 10 MPG and report the tank was running out when it was 1/2 full, causing you to replace the whole tank. "I don't wanna run out of gas on the way to work, I'd better change my tank now." They would create components so you could only use gas tanks created by them and not refill them yourselves.
That's just silly. Moore's law clearly states that capacity doubles every 18 months. So in Summer 2009 they will have 32GB and in spring 2011 they will have 64GB. They won't have 256GB until spring of 2014...
Some people use reason to determine what is true, others believe any story they're told...
He's a little old to play the younger Bilbo. I think it would be as awkward as the old lady acting in the flashbacks during 'Grandma Does Dallas'... "Did you just get out of the bath? Why all the wrinkles?"
The problem is that they have the machine, and they have access to every bit of data on the machine. Look at it another way. Let's say you're an accountant for a mob boss, but you used some kind of code for drug deals in the secret accounting books. The police might be able to force you to unlock the safe, but can they force you to explain what '100p for Santa's snow' means in your code? Maybe it's $100,000 for cocaine. Do you have to explain it to them?
Yes, being a good Christian and not murdering people is tantamount to feeding your son to hungry alligators. The logic is infallible! You couldn't have just warned and protected your kids, moved, or even bothered to take the time to figure out what his crimes really were (rape of adult women, not underage boys). The only sensible thing to do was murder him, I'm convinced.
He'll probably get off on some "extreme emotional duress" defense. The court should sterilize his whole family (including siblings and nephews/nieces) to get rid of these fanatical genes. If the court does anything less it'll be like they're sending my kid into a burning fire covered in gasoline.
Isn't it obvious? It wasn't relativity, the family lived an extra 22 milliseconds because they drove up a mountain and were closer to God. That's the only logical solution, I can't see this "gravity" you speak of. Every time someone has a problem with time physicists think they can solve it just by throwing a few nanoseconds at it. Ridiculous...
In other news, Ginsu announced today that their knives will no longer be able to cut anything but butter. They were unable to verify that when their knives were used for cutting they were not being used for murder, so they started dulling all of them.
Yes they are putting it in terms that show it in the beast light, but the terminology is valid. Think of it in reverse. Let's say you sign up for a year of X-Box Live Gold and pay in advance. Now let's say that Microsoft decides to give all the benefits of X-Box Live Gold to Silver members. Is that "Gold" membership now more valuable, less valuable, or the same value? You're getting all the same things you had before... Would a 12 month subscription be worth $49.99 to a new X-Box owner? What's the value when you could get everything for free?
The extended warranty is more valuable. If you buy the extended warranty after the change, you get everything the warranty promised before, plus better tires. If you had purchased the car prior to the change, buying an extended warranty would have given you the same tires as you had without the warranty. Look at it this way... Let's say the original car warranty was 60,000 miles total car, and the extended warranty upped that to 100,000 miles total car. Now let's say the car company drops the standard warranty to just 36,000 miles and keeps the extended warranty for the same price and 100,000 miles. You're still getting the same 100,000 miles protection when you purchase the extended warranty, but after the change it has more value because it adds 64,000 miles to the standard warranty instead of just 40,000 miles.