This recipe is terrible. The most glaring error is they don't specify the type of yeast. Is this an Ale or a Lager? There's a big difference beween the two. Given the room temperature fermenting, you'd assume an Ale, but some Lager yeasts can ferment at room temperature too. Among those two major yeast types there's a huge difference among the various strains that produces very different end products.
The recipe calls for armoma hops and bitter hops. The only difference between the two is the length of the boil. Bitter hops are boiled on the order of 30 minutes, Aroma hops are boiled on the order of 5 minutes. But no boil times are specified at all. The boiling time of hops impacts the hop level of the beer, which has a major impacts on the flavor of the beer.
If this recipe were code, it wouldn't compile. You'd have to guess at the yeast type and boil times for the hops. The massive 85 liter batch size isn't terribly usefull either. Most homebrewers do 5-6 gallon batches.
I'd assume the presentation was originally a talk given with slides. The PDF file is obviously just each individual slide in PDF format.
Really your complaint is the presentation hasn't been translated to a text based format, not about PDF files themself. The Slide show is merely meant to complement the actual talk, and wasn't meant as the main source of information.
my land line works 100% of the time. That's not 2 nines, or even 5 nines. 100% of the time
You must be just lucky as hell, or very young. There's plenty of times in my life where the phone hasn't worked for a day, sometimes two. In 10 years if the phone doesn't work for 1 day that's 3649/3650 or 99.97. That's not even 4 nines. Sorry buddy, but even land line service isn't perfect.
I don't have problems with ads, at least non-intrusive ones. I do have problems with cookies. I think that's a fairly typical reaction. I don't hear many people complaining about banner ads, but EVERYONE hates the frickin popups. Obviously this cookie business is getting to be like popups ads. People just aren't willing to tolerate this crap. Would you rather pay for it?
You seem to misunderstand the power relationship. Most people aren't willing to pay for unknown content. The question is rather would content providers rather no one go to their site?
Re:Had everyone seen all 10?
on
Top 10 Web Fads
·
· Score: 1
How did that "change the world" at all, let alone for the better?
It allows another opinion about how shows like Crossfire! are "hurting america" through the media filters that it normally wouldn't have gotten through. A lot of people know they hate shows like that, but that thought still needs a voice to spread. How many people saw Stewart on Crossfire! that had never thought about the effects of Crossfire! on public discourse? Many people mail off links to friends that exposes those friends to ideas they might not normally be exposed to.
Tucker Carlson may have lived another day, but that doesn't mean Stewart didn't do some good. Change builds slowly, and is then released in bursts.
Re:Had everyone seen all 10?
on
Top 10 Web Fads
·
· Score: 1
You're just really out of the loop. I don't recall seeing the Mahir site (or maybe I did and just thought it was dumb). The rest have all been wildly popular.
What I thought was missing was the Jon Stewart Crossfire! appearance. No one would have seen Stewart appear on Crossfire because, well the Daily Show audience and the Crossfire! audience don't have much crossover. But since the Daily Show audience are all web-savy, everyone got to see Jon Stewart demolish the idiots on Crossfire!
The great thing about the Internet is it's not like TV where you're limited to 5 second sound bites. Jon Stewart on Crossfire! is the perfect example of this. While I liked all the web-fads listed, I really hope there's more stuff like Stewart on Crossfire since that has a lot more power to change the world for the better than say hamsterdance.
Should web marketers really be surprised that constantly tagging people and most of the time and giving them no benefit at all makes them nervous? What if you had your hand stamped with invisible ink every time you went into a store, and received nothing for it? How many people would want to allow that?
The thing is that these marketers want something for nothing. I enable the "ask for each cookie" option in mozilla, and generally click "allow for session" on 99% of most sites because they offer me NOTHING in return for tagging me. On sites like Amazon.com I can add things to my wish list without logging in, or on slashdot I can login without typing in passwords. Tvguide.com will show me my local listings, cool. I've gotten a benefit from the site knowing who I am, so I'm much more likely to allow them to know that.
Most sites that hand out cookies give you nothing for identifying you. Why should I give them somthing they want for nothing? I certainly don't trust the average marketer to not do skeevy things like targeted pricing (looks like I visit bmw.com a lot.. I must be rich. Raise my prices by 10%).
It's time to retire the shuttle and just pay the russians to launch us until there is a suitable replacement.
Except for one small problem. The Russian progress has a max cargo lifting capacity of 3200 Kilograms. The Shuttle has a max cargo lifting capacity of 28,000 kg. The construction of the space station is largely being done by the Space Shuttle. My guess is that Progress doesn't have to capability to lift the modules designed for the space station. Seems like if Burt Rutan can get it right NASA should be able to too.
Why does everyone think they can compare a sub-orbital flight of 3 guys to lifting several tons of cargo into an orbital flight? Is your riding lawnmower at all similar to a tractor trailer capable of going across the continent?
It's great what Rutan did, but isn't simply nowhere near the same as creating a space station.
And what you're describing really contributes to the problem. Shouldn't textbooks get progressively better instead of being completely re-written?
If schools were able to switch textbooks when a new, better book was available, instead of when they wear out we'd get publishers to produce better textbooks. It's also much easier to change requirements and teaching methods when you know a new textbook is just around the corner when the current ones wear out.
The textbook replacement cries out for something like an ebook. Why? If designed right you'd get:
More rugged. Laptops have harddrives, keyboards, ports, etc. The more moving parts, and complexity the more likely it is to break. An ebook could eliminate all this via flash memory and touch screens. A gig of flash memory would likely be able to hold all the textbooks a kid would need for a year. Make it componentized so you could replace the touchscreen very easily.
Longer battery life. You really need very minimal processing power for an ebook, so you could use very low power processors. Battery lifetimes of 12-24 hours would be easy.
Lower OS complexity/OS access. If you make an ebook like an appliance and give the user only access to the core functions (no installing 3rd party apps for instance) then you solve all the problems of the OS being corrupted. Allow only data to be sent to/from the textbook.
Lower value to thieves. How many people really want an inexpensive ebook vs a laptop? If all you can do is read textbooks from it, it's a much smaller theft target.
What's the downside? Well the kids wouldn't be able to do homework on it. Big deal. They can't do homework on a printed textbook now.
The problem is the textbook publishers don't want to do it. For the most part they make money because textbooks wear out, not because the information in them needs changing/updating. How much has Calculus changed over the last 20 years? My guess is not at all. Science changes a little, maybe you'd need to update the information every 10 years (barring creationist lies). History textbooks probbably need more updating, but that's more due to changes in the political climate.
Here's something I never understood about "the conservatives". They're all against trusting the government when it comes to managing basic public resources like the water supply and roads, but somehow even after Watergate they still trust the government to not abuse their power for political purposes.
When I was a kid, the ticket at the theater was about $1.50, that was in the 60's...
$1.50 sounds to me like a lot of money in the 60s. Let's hop on over to http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm and adjust that 1.50 into 2005 dollars.
You don't specify which year of the 60s you're talking about, let's do a range of years:
1960: $9.85 1965: $9.26 1969: $7.95
So that $1.50 movie in the 60s is about the same cost as it is now, after adjusting for inflation. People tend to forget the huge inflation that happened in the 1970s. Sure movies are more expensive, but people also make a lot more money to keep up with increased cost of living.
Your opinion. You may not like the 10 second bites, but others do.
The argument wasn't about my personal like, or dislike of 10 second sound bites. The argument was that poor people use TV news as a primary news source, and would be deprived of that. An informed public is part of democracy, and is a public good. If TV news doesn't make the public more informed, the point is moot. I am glad you think that total ignorance is better then partial ignorance.
No, I think total ignorance is better than wrong information. Except most of those large networks are owned by even larger parent networks who DO want cable/satellite only TV systems because they can get a subscription fee AND get advertisement fee.
There's always going to be a segment of the market that can't afford cable TV, or don't think it's worth paying for. The networks will lose these people unless more people have converters.
We still have a large population of people who are illeterate - have jobs, pay their bills, and get their news from TV. Without that source of information (like verbal/visual news) they have little ways to know what is going on in this world.
I guess I'd rather people get no information on what's happening in the world than the 10 second sound bites and wildly innacurate stories that go out on TV news shows. I don't know if you know this, but people did survive before television. Ever heard of radio? There's even radio stations out there that only do news. Weird, huh? One of the MAJOR boastings of our election system is the TV media to get the politician's words to people. By removing TV's for 12% you are effecting 12% of the voting population.
I definately wish I could effect 100% of the voting population by getting them to not get information on politicians from TV. 12% wouldn't be a bad start. I would also like it to be known, that the broadcast TV media makes a lot of profit - even from broadcast TV
Now you've actually got a valid point. The large networks will never allow 12% of their viewship to disapear overnight. They'll lobby congress like crazy, have HUGE ad campaigns on all media to "don't let congress take TV away from you!", etc. If that fails (and I doubt it will) they'll find a way to make converters dirt cheap. So don't worry. Mega-corp has got your back!
Also, would you rather have 1 big ship that can be launched twice every year or 10 small ships that can be launched monthly with the same overall benefit?
You're asking the wrong question. The proper question is: Would you rather have one ship that has a 2% risk of complete destruction, or no ship at all? This is the question we're trying to answer. Bringing up some theoretical ship that doesn't exist is interesting, but not relevant to the discussion right now.
Try to understand that right now the main focus of the US (for better or worse) right now is Iraq. We're pouring money into the war right now, and no one wants to consider giving a ton of money to NASA to develop a new vehicle.
On the second page of the article gives this relevant fact:
Today, the United States doesn't make plutonium 238 and instead relies on aging stockpiles or imports from Russia. By agreement with the Russians, it cannot use the imported material -- some 35 pounds since the end of the Cold War -- for military purposes.
So what it sounds like is the goverment needs the plutonium for military applications, not for NASA since they can already get Pu-238 from Russia for NASA missions.
And I think that meets most any test for being medically unethical. I'm sure there's people willing to do it for a ton of money, but that doesn't make it right.
The FDA has to approve any medical studies conducted in the US. There's absolutely no way they'd approve a study of perfectly healthy people that are subjected to a test where there's a large unknown factor of whether they'd die, suffer permanent brain damage, etc. Replacing someones blood with saline, then taking them to "clinical death" for three hours is something that would only be tried if the patient was going to die anyway given current treatment and this procedure might save their life.
There is more than one form of stealing, you know.
But all forms of "stealing" involve someone taking something that doesn't belong to them. In this case the camera is sold to you free and clear. That's a transfer of ownership, and there's no stealing of any form involved assuming you pay for it.
It seems quite clear to me that they aren't selling these things to consumers, which I've already explained in my previous post.
And it's quite clear that you're wrong. Unless you sign an agreement that the camera isn't yours, it is yours. Right, so if I rent a u-haul for 150 miles, drive it for 1500 miles, and then turn back the odometer, that's not stealing, right?
You clearly don't understand that contracts are formal agreements between two parties. When I rent a truck/trailer from U-haul I have to sign a contract stating how I can use the truck/trailer and an agreed upon price. If I agree to use it for up to 150 miles, but instead use it for 1500 miles, I've broken the contract. There is no contract here. There is no implied contract. Your analogies amount to nothing because they don't apply.
According to this article you are only renting the camera, and are supposed to give it back when you're done.
And an article in todays Star Tribune http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/5475334.htm l says that there's no security deposit, and you don't have to return it if it's broken. That doesn't sound like a rental agreement to me. Coupled with the fact that there's no rental contract, I'd say "rental" is just a convienent word to use for people to describe the arrangement. So if I ask to borrow your car to drive 20 miles, and I don't sign anything, I can take your car on a 2000 mile trip, turn back your odometer, and get away with it?
This isn't an informal "borrow a car from a friend" relationship. This is a storefront where people buy things and if a contract is involved, it's spelled out quite clearly. In this case, they sell you the camera, and then hope you'll bring it back. A contract doesn't have to be signed in order to be binding.
No it doesn't but you do have to have at least a verbal agreement to have a binding contract. Unless they say whenever you buy one of these things "buy buying this product you agree to return it" then you have no obligation whatsoever to return it. Sure, you might get away with breaking it, but that doesn't mean you're not stealing.
Gee.. I thought stealing meant someone took something from you without you giving it to them, or selling it to them. Since CVS is actually selling these things to consumers, there's no "theft" involved. If you want to co-opt the word theft to your own personal definition, fine. But don't go around using it that way and expect people to agree with you.
By my calculations 417 kilobits/sec in 128 megabytes of flash would leave enough room for 42 minutes of video. That's pretty decent.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "steal it from CVS". Is CVS only renting the camera, and you're expected to return it? I don't see any references to that anywhere. Unless you have to sign something when you buy it saying you'll return it, that camera is yours to do with whatever you please. Don't blame hardware hackers if CVS chose a bad business model.
The video really isn't quite as bad as you're describing. Pict0004.avi is actually fairly decent (shot at the highest datarate) and is about the same quality as a VHS tape recorded at extended play.
Maybe that kind of quality isn't usefull to you, but for many people that kind of quality is decent enough to be usefull. For someone on a small budget, $30 ($20 with coupon) is actually affordable, where $200-$300 for a real digital camcorder isn't at all.
Yah, I read that too. The problem is the "control" group he found is just terrible. The Amish lead such a different lifestyle, eat different foods (probbably not a lot of foods with preservatives, pesiticides, etc probbably don't eat a lot of high sugar foods, etc) that focusing only on one of the differences (vaccinations) seems to make the whole study meaningless.
It could also be simply the Amish kids are diagnosed with Autism far less than non-Amish. Do the Amish go to the doctor as much?
The article is troubling, and I'd be interested to learn more about the whole controversy, but I can't say it's very definitive.
Yes, there are those who can do more than others, but that doesn't mean a damn thing regarding whether or not the deaf person has a perfectly valid reason to be accomodated under disability laws and by the rest of society.
You're right, but I never said otherwise. I was arguing against your supposition that all disabled people are equally disabled. This was originally intenended to prop up your claim that movie theaters should install subtitle devices for the deaf.
The underlying point is that life isn't equal, and it's not the governments job to make everything perfectly equal for anyone with a disability. Should all food manufacturers have to print all labels in brail for blind people? How about every label for every product sold? There are limits to what government should require businesses to go through. Requiring subtitles in movies is one of those. Sorry, but movies are a luxury, not a right. Only on Slashdot and Fark do I see such fine display of such attitudes qualities as this. Congratulations. You suck.
Only on slashdot does anyone have the relative anonymity, and the lack of care for "social rules" to argue with someone who's "disabled". Anyone disabled garners immediate sympathy in any kind of discussion, so no one wants to risk looking like an ass. On slashdot, everyone is an ass already, so who cares?
Slashdot Mirror
This recipe is terrible. The most glaring error is they don't specify the type of yeast. Is this an Ale or a Lager? There's a big difference beween the two. Given the room temperature fermenting, you'd assume an Ale, but some Lager yeasts can ferment at room temperature too. Among those two major yeast types there's a huge difference among the various strains that produces very different end products.
The recipe calls for armoma hops and bitter hops. The only difference between the two is the length of the boil. Bitter hops are boiled on the order of 30 minutes, Aroma hops are boiled on the order of 5 minutes. But no boil times are specified at all. The boiling time of hops impacts the hop level of the beer, which has a major impacts on the flavor of the beer.
If this recipe were code, it wouldn't compile. You'd have to guess at the yeast type and boil times for the hops. The massive 85 liter batch size isn't terribly usefull either. Most homebrewers do 5-6 gallon batches.
I'd assume the presentation was originally a talk given with slides. The PDF file is obviously just each individual slide in PDF format.
Really your complaint is the presentation hasn't been translated to a text based format, not about PDF files themself. The Slide show is merely meant to complement the actual talk, and wasn't meant as the main source of information.
my land line works 100% of the time. That's not 2 nines, or even 5 nines. 100% of the time
You must be just lucky as hell, or very young. There's plenty of times in my life where the phone hasn't worked for a day, sometimes two. In 10 years if the phone doesn't work for 1 day that's 3649/3650 or 99.97. That's not even 4 nines. Sorry buddy, but even land line service isn't perfect.
I don't have problems with ads, at least non-intrusive ones. I do have problems with cookies. I think that's a fairly typical reaction. I don't hear many people complaining about banner ads, but EVERYONE hates the frickin popups. Obviously this cookie business is getting to be like popups ads. People just aren't willing to tolerate this crap.
Would you rather pay for it?
You seem to misunderstand the power relationship. Most people aren't willing to pay for unknown content. The question is rather would content providers rather no one go to their site?
How did that "change the world" at all, let alone for the better?
It allows another opinion about how shows like Crossfire! are "hurting america" through the media filters that it normally wouldn't have gotten through. A lot of people know they hate shows like that, but that thought still needs a voice to spread. How many people saw Stewart on Crossfire! that had never thought about the effects of Crossfire! on public discourse? Many people mail off links to friends that exposes those friends to ideas they might not normally be exposed to.
Tucker Carlson may have lived another day, but that doesn't mean Stewart didn't do some good. Change builds slowly, and is then released in bursts.
You're just really out of the loop. I don't recall seeing the Mahir site (or maybe I did and just thought it was dumb). The rest have all been wildly popular.
What I thought was missing was the Jon Stewart Crossfire! appearance. No one would have seen Stewart appear on Crossfire because, well the Daily Show audience and the Crossfire! audience don't have much crossover. But since the Daily Show audience are all web-savy, everyone got to see Jon Stewart demolish the idiots on Crossfire!
The great thing about the Internet is it's not like TV where you're limited to 5 second sound bites. Jon Stewart on Crossfire! is the perfect example of this. While I liked all the web-fads listed, I really hope there's more stuff like Stewart on Crossfire since that has a lot more power to change the world for the better than say hamsterdance.
Should web marketers really be surprised that constantly tagging people and most of the time and giving them no benefit at all makes them nervous? What if you had your hand stamped with invisible ink every time you went into a store, and received nothing for it? How many people would want to allow that?
The thing is that these marketers want something for nothing. I enable the "ask for each cookie" option in mozilla, and generally click "allow for session" on 99% of most sites because they offer me NOTHING in return for tagging me. On sites like Amazon.com I can add things to my wish list without logging in, or on slashdot I can login without typing in passwords. Tvguide.com will show me my local listings, cool. I've gotten a benefit from the site knowing who I am, so I'm much more likely to allow them to know that.
Most sites that hand out cookies give you nothing for identifying you. Why should I give them somthing they want for nothing? I certainly don't trust the average marketer to not do skeevy things like targeted pricing (looks like I visit bmw.com a lot.. I must be rich. Raise my prices by 10%).
It's time to retire the shuttle and just pay the russians to launch us until there is a suitable replacement.
Except for one small problem. The Russian progress has a max cargo lifting capacity of 3200 Kilograms. The Shuttle has a max cargo lifting capacity of 28,000 kg. The construction of the space station is largely being done by the Space Shuttle. My guess is that Progress doesn't have to capability to lift the modules designed for the space station.
Seems like if Burt Rutan can get it right NASA should be able to too.
Why does everyone think they can compare a sub-orbital flight of 3 guys to lifting several tons of cargo into an orbital flight? Is your riding lawnmower at all similar to a tractor trailer capable of going across the continent?
It's great what Rutan did, but isn't simply nowhere near the same as creating a space station.
And what you're describing really contributes to the problem. Shouldn't textbooks get progressively better instead of being completely re-written?
If schools were able to switch textbooks when a new, better book was available, instead of when they wear out we'd get publishers to produce better textbooks. It's also much easier to change requirements and teaching methods when you know a new textbook is just around the corner when the current ones wear out.
The textbook replacement cries out for something like an ebook. Why? If designed right you'd get:
More rugged. Laptops have harddrives, keyboards, ports, etc. The more moving parts, and complexity the more likely it is to break. An ebook could eliminate all this via flash memory and touch screens. A gig of flash memory would likely be able to hold all the textbooks a kid would need for a year. Make it componentized so you could replace the touchscreen very easily.
Longer battery life. You really need very minimal processing power for an ebook, so you could use very low power processors. Battery lifetimes of 12-24 hours would be easy.
Lower OS complexity/OS access. If you make an ebook like an appliance and give the user only access to the core functions (no installing 3rd party apps for instance) then you solve all the problems of the OS being corrupted. Allow only data to be sent to/from the textbook.
Lower value to thieves. How many people really want an inexpensive ebook vs a laptop? If all you can do is read textbooks from it, it's a much smaller theft target.
What's the downside? Well the kids wouldn't be able to do homework on it. Big deal. They can't do homework on a printed textbook now.
The problem is the textbook publishers don't want to do it. For the most part they make money because textbooks wear out, not because the information in them needs changing/updating. How much has Calculus changed over the last 20 years? My guess is not at all. Science changes a little, maybe you'd need to update the information every 10 years (barring creationist lies). History textbooks probbably need more updating, but that's more due to changes in the political climate.
Here's something I never understood about "the conservatives". They're all against trusting the government when it comes to managing basic public resources like the water supply and roads, but somehow even after Watergate they still trust the government to not abuse their power for political purposes.
And if you ever wanted a reason to quit: http://www.peta.org/
Please see http://www.sho.com/site/ptbs/topics.do?topic=peta
Peta are a bunch of lying fanatics.
When I was a kid, the ticket at the theater was about $1.50, that was in the 60's...
$1.50 sounds to me like a lot of money in the 60s. Let's hop on over to http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm
and adjust that 1.50 into 2005 dollars.
You don't specify which year of the 60s you're talking about, let's do a range of years:
1960: $9.85
1965: $9.26
1969: $7.95
So that $1.50 movie in the 60s is about the same cost as it is now, after adjusting for inflation. People tend to forget the huge inflation that happened in the 1970s. Sure movies are more expensive, but people also make a lot more money to keep up with increased cost of living.
Your opinion. You may not like the 10 second bites, but others do.
The argument wasn't about my personal like, or dislike of 10 second sound bites. The argument was that poor people use TV news as a primary news source, and would be deprived of that. An informed public is part of democracy, and is a public good. If TV news doesn't make the public more informed, the point is moot.
I am glad you think that total ignorance is better then partial ignorance.
No, I think total ignorance is better than wrong information.
Except most of those large networks are owned by even larger parent networks who DO want cable/satellite only TV systems because they can get a subscription fee AND get advertisement fee.
There's always going to be a segment of the market that can't afford cable TV, or don't think it's worth paying for. The networks will lose these people unless more people have converters.
We still have a large population of people who are illeterate - have jobs, pay their bills, and get their news from TV. Without that source of information (like verbal/visual news) they have little ways to know what is going on in this world.
I guess I'd rather people get no information on what's happening in the world than the 10 second sound bites and wildly innacurate stories that go out on TV news shows. I don't know if you know this, but people did survive before television. Ever heard of radio? There's even radio stations out there that only do news. Weird, huh?
One of the MAJOR boastings of our election system is the TV media to get the politician's words to people. By removing TV's for 12% you are effecting 12% of the voting population.
I definately wish I could effect 100% of the voting population by getting them to not get information on politicians from TV. 12% wouldn't be a bad start.
I would also like it to be known, that the broadcast TV media makes a lot of profit - even from broadcast TV
Now you've actually got a valid point. The large networks will never allow 12% of their viewship to disapear overnight. They'll lobby congress like crazy, have HUGE ad campaigns on all media to "don't let congress take TV away from you!", etc. If that fails (and I doubt it will) they'll find a way to make converters dirt cheap. So don't worry. Mega-corp has got your back!
Also, would you rather have 1 big ship that can be launched twice every year or 10 small ships that can be launched monthly with the same overall benefit?
You're asking the wrong question. The proper question is: Would you rather have one ship that has a 2% risk of complete destruction, or no ship at all? This is the question we're trying to answer. Bringing up some theoretical ship that doesn't exist is interesting, but not relevant to the discussion right now.
Try to understand that right now the main focus of the US (for better or worse) right now is Iraq. We're pouring money into the war right now, and no one wants to consider giving a ton of money to NASA to develop a new vehicle.
So what it sounds like is the goverment needs the plutonium for military applications, not for NASA since they can already get Pu-238 from Russia for NASA missions.
And I think that meets most any test for being medically unethical. I'm sure there's people willing to do it for a ton of money, but that doesn't make it right.
The FDA has to approve any medical studies conducted in the US. There's absolutely no way they'd approve a study of perfectly healthy people that are subjected to a test where there's a large unknown factor of whether they'd die, suffer permanent brain damage, etc. Replacing someones blood with saline, then taking them to "clinical death" for three hours is something that would only be tried if the patient was going to die anyway given current treatment and this procedure might save their life.
This argument has become pointless as you have no understanding of contract law.
There is more than one form of stealing, you know.
But all forms of "stealing" involve someone taking something that doesn't belong to them. In this case the camera is sold to you free and clear. That's a transfer of ownership, and there's no stealing of any form involved assuming you pay for it.
It seems quite clear to me that they aren't selling these things to consumers, which I've already explained in my previous post.
And it's quite clear that you're wrong. Unless you sign an agreement that the camera isn't yours, it is yours.
Right, so if I rent a u-haul for 150 miles, drive it for 1500 miles, and then turn back the odometer, that's not stealing, right?
You clearly don't understand that contracts are formal agreements between two parties. When I rent a truck/trailer from U-haul I have to sign a contract stating how I can use the truck/trailer and an agreed upon price. If I agree to use it for up to 150 miles, but instead use it for 1500 miles, I've broken the contract. There is no contract here. There is no implied contract. Your analogies amount to nothing because they don't apply.
According to this article you are only renting the camera, and are supposed to give it back when you're done.
And an article in todays Star Tribune http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/5475334.ht
So if I ask to borrow your car to drive 20 miles, and I don't sign anything, I can take your car on a 2000 mile trip, turn back your odometer, and get away with it?
This isn't an informal "borrow a car from a friend" relationship. This is a storefront where people buy things and if a contract is involved, it's spelled out quite clearly. In this case, they sell you the camera, and then hope you'll bring it back.
A contract doesn't have to be signed in order to be binding.
No it doesn't but you do have to have at least a verbal agreement to have a binding contract. Unless they say whenever you buy one of these things "buy buying this product you agree to return it" then you have no obligation whatsoever to return it.
Sure, you might get away with breaking it, but that doesn't mean you're not stealing.
Gee.. I thought stealing meant someone took something from you without you giving it to them, or selling it to them. Since CVS is actually selling these things to consumers, there's no "theft" involved. If you want to co-opt the word theft to your own personal definition, fine. But don't go around using it that way and expect people to agree with you.
By my calculations 417 kilobits/sec in 128 megabytes of flash would leave enough room for 42 minutes of video. That's pretty decent.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "steal it from CVS". Is CVS only renting the camera, and you're expected to return it? I don't see any references to that anywhere. Unless you have to sign something when you buy it saying you'll return it, that camera is yours to do with whatever you please. Don't blame hardware hackers if CVS chose a bad business model.
The video really isn't quite as bad as you're describing. Pict0004.avi is actually fairly decent (shot at the highest datarate) and is about the same quality as a VHS tape recorded at extended play.
Maybe that kind of quality isn't usefull to you, but for many people that kind of quality is decent enough to be usefull. For someone on a small budget, $30 ($20 with coupon) is actually affordable, where $200-$300 for a real digital camcorder isn't at all.
Yah, I read that too. The problem is the "control" group he found is just terrible. The Amish lead such a different lifestyle, eat different foods (probbably not a lot of foods with preservatives, pesiticides, etc probbably don't eat a lot of high sugar foods, etc) that focusing only on one of the differences (vaccinations) seems to make the whole study meaningless.
It could also be simply the Amish kids are diagnosed with Autism far less than non-Amish. Do the Amish go to the doctor as much?
The article is troubling, and I'd be interested to learn more about the whole controversy, but I can't say it's very definitive.
Yes, there are those who can do more than others, but that doesn't mean a damn thing regarding whether or not the deaf person has a perfectly valid reason to be accomodated under disability laws and by the rest of society.
You're right, but I never said otherwise. I was arguing against your supposition that all disabled people are equally disabled. This was originally intenended to prop up your claim that movie theaters should install subtitle devices for the deaf.
The underlying point is that life isn't equal, and it's not the governments job to make everything perfectly equal for anyone with a disability. Should all food manufacturers have to print all labels in brail for blind people? How about every label for every product sold? There are limits to what government should require businesses to go through. Requiring subtitles in movies is one of those. Sorry, but movies are a luxury, not a right.
Only on Slashdot and Fark do I see such fine display of such attitudes qualities as this. Congratulations. You suck.
Only on slashdot does anyone have the relative anonymity, and the lack of care for "social rules" to argue with someone who's "disabled". Anyone disabled garners immediate sympathy in any kind of discussion, so no one wants to risk looking like an ass. On slashdot, everyone is an ass already, so who cares?