"Fair enough. However, China is insignificant in terms of the War on Terror. Sure, they have nukes and they're a dictatorship. But the chinese didn't attack us on 9/11, Arabs did."
No, a small portion there of, based mostly out of our ally Saudi Arabia and Afghanastan did. Iraq was not--repeat after me, NOT--involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001 in ANY WAY, SHAPE, or FORM. If the invasion was *truely* about terrorism, Saudi Arabia would have been a higher target.
I'm not counting digital shots. Most of the pictures I take with digital are "snapshot" type pictures that in no way require a particularily good camera. SLRs are good for specialty photos: photos in difficult conditions (low light; this is where I've found them most useful), artistic shots, etc. Using an SLR for snapshots is, IMHO, overkill. I don't want to sit there focusing then fiddling with the f-stop and exposure time until the meter is satisfied everytime I want a quick photo. (Yes, I can set the settings in a sec or two usually, but I still don't particularly feel like doing it.) Then digital is splendid.
"My recommendation? Up your budget quite a bit. Check out the Canon Digital Rebel. Yes, its about $1k with a pretty good generic lens. But that may be less than you'd spend over a year with a $200-300 film camera, plus decent film, plus developing. Think TCO not just initial purchase price."
My estimates show that you can go through about 50 rolls of film before you'd break even. And that's only if you look at the price, and don't care if you don't have hard copies. (Printing shots on photo paper costs about the same as developing film.) That'd be one a week for a year, which seems high unless you're *really* serious. In which case I agree. But I would kill for an SLR because there's enough cases where a point-and-shoot camera won't do at all. (I seem to take an abnormal number of low-light shots.) Yet I don't think I've gone through that many rolls of film in my life.
"which can be blown up to 20X30 and can be printed to absolute perfection in your basement at that size then you better go to film."
Not to be pedantic, but most 35mm film won't do this. 8x10 is about as big you can go with 35mm film and before really noticing granularity. Next time you're at a wedding or other place there's a professional photographer, take a look at the film they use. It's typically I think about 4", and that *can* be blown up to 20x30.
Maybe I should mention specifics about those photos: they were taken from Penn State campus with a Minolta X-700. F-stop was 1.7, exposure was around 20 seconds (depending on how accurate my counting was), film was ASA 100 Kodak (!).
"Most professionals are moving to digital because the quality is now just as good for most situations."
Note you said "professionals". People who want to start photography don't have the resources professionals do. If I want to take great photographs, in many cases that rules out most point-and-shoot cameras. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a bad shot from one of these because the aperature is set for your average shot and isn't adjustable, and I take a picture in low light and it has to keep the shutter open forever leading to a blurry shot. (BTW: anything 1/30th sec. or more is "forever", and 1/60th can be if you don't have somethnig to brace against.) Yet I've taken pics with an SLR in much less light that came out dandy because I could set the f-stop to 1.7 and speed up the shutter by a factor of 4 or so. I could *never* have taken thesepictures of the aurora with anything but an SLR.
"Digital is the best choice for a beginner because you can do a lot more experimenting without spending a fortune on things like film and developing."
You just spend a fortune on the initial camera. Amazon's store (Electronics > Camera & Photo > Categories > Film Cameras > SLR Cameras > Manual SLR Cameras) has cameras centered about $250, with one $161. The least expensive digital SLR I've seen is I think ~$800. The difference then is about 50 rolls of film. I don't think I've shot that many in my life.
Actually, I have a pretty nice Yamaha keyboard. (And I'd still argue that playing music on a electronic keyboard, unless it's a very very nice one, doesn't rival a real piano.) I was thinking more along the lines of orchestral music though. It's kinda hard to fit a symphony orchestra in your living room.
"My point is that rather than just being a consumer of culture, start participating in it, and find out that it's as much fun to make the music as it is to listen to the music, even if both have a certain time and place where best applied. Actually, in the end, you'll wind up with a much larger apprecation for music in general, which will lead you to not being suckered into buying $20 cd's by the latest generic Radio band.:)"
For the most part I agree. Making your own music is very fun, rewarding, etc. I'm just trying to say that there are some things that no matter how talented you are, you just can't do. The closest I can come to listening to say the 1812 Overture without buying a recording is through a MIDI file. Sorry, but you don't just get the same feeling. There's really no way around getting CDs.
"But the Best: Start makin' your own damn music. Serously. It's tons of fun. You can get a guitar for $100 bucks, learn some Beatles tunes, and have way more fun in the long run than that $100 Beatles box set. Then make up your own stupid songs, pretend you're a rock star, and have a total blast in your Den."
Of course, this only works for some types of music. It's a little less effective when it comes to, say, Beethoven.
What that should have said was "copyrights don't expire based on nonenforcement." Though the original statement still holds if our congress keeps up at the rate it's going....
"The person filing the suit still has to prove their case, it doesn't matter what they're called. You can't file suit in the US and expect the defendant to have to prove their innocence/non-liability."
You ignored the message to say the wording doesn't matter. Good job.
Gator is suing, hence they have the burden of proof. They have to prove libel. They have to prove that calling Gator spyware is libel. The defendant isn't proving anything with the "give us a list" argument.
"I find myself around people who said 'kids need to read books, any books are better than none.' I tend to disagree, feeling that children should be exposed to quality books, of wide variety of types."
I agree with those who say reading some books is better than no books. I'd also argue that probably few people are being distracted by Potter and just reading them instead of other books. I suspect you'd find many more cases of people reading Potter then expanding their repetoire to other books (Narnia and Tolkein to use your examples) than ditching such books for potter.
Would you prefer to pay taxes for me to sit at a desk and sleep? Even I can't keep solid concentration throughout a school day. I need some release. As far as I can tell, the other options open are: homework (requires concentration, so it's out for at least a fair amount of the time), read in the library (almost all reading requires concentration), sit at a desk and stare into space, or sleep. If it was lunch you could talk to friends, which is what I normally did then. That's about all the options.
Computers in classrooms in my high school were mostly one of two things: one computer in a room, or a lab. For rooms with just one computer, students rarely used it. It was used by teachers for attendence, email, etc. I see no reason to keep the Internet from these, especially as the teachers can read email the day and thus better keep up.
For labs, there were mixed results. I will admit it wasted a fair portion of time. The guy who sat next to me when I was in AP Comp Sci spent a fair amount of time on Earth 2025 and Utopia. I did as well. (To be fair though, we both got things done with plenty of time to spare.) On the other hand, it was very useful to several people. I can't of course really speak for what other people did, but it was invaluable when I was playing with Win32 programming and needed to look up API functions. The teacher was also quite good at spotting when people were surfing, and would tell you to stop. (She was a bit more relaxed if you had everything in then though.)
I would still argue that it should not be closed by default. My experience has been that it's nice to be able to use an off period--study hall or lunch--and check out Slashdot, maybe email, even a flash game, etc. As long is this isn't disruptive to people doing work, I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed. I'm a firm believer in the "if you want to spend your time playing flash pong, go right ahead; if you can't afford to it'll show in your grade" philosophy.
The rules were very much in line here with this. If there was a class, you probably couldn't use the computers at all. If you weren't, the rest of the computers were taken, and someone else wanted to do work, you had to yield.
This would give people, probably some of which didn't have access at home, mostly free reign (minus Bess-blocked sites) to play around, while not disrupting people who were doing work. I think it worked well.
The issue here appears to be not one from the end user's perspective, but that the telephone service providers are using their data networks to send phone calls instead of the traditional POTS network.
I should say too that my point is not nearly as strong when applied to elementary school. You don't really do research reports or anything (at least I don't think I really did, maybe a small one or two), so the benefits of the Internet are much lessened. I think though that even in middle school there's no question access should be provided.
It's not just liberals who are responsible, conservatives have an equal share. Which party is the one that advocates not teaching evolution because it isn't provable science? Are most people who tried to ban the Harry Potter books, probably the most read book amongst young kids in a long long time, conservatives or liberals? See, the blame is equally spread.
"As for the web, IM, chatrooms, etc, one has to be blind not to recognize this as entertaintment which is not the purpose of the school. I would not have internet connections from classroom computers. Local network is fine, but one would have to prove than (s)he really needs Internet access for that project before the access is granted."
You would have killed my grade. Our school library is too small to carry that much on any specific topic unless it is one that is explicitly studied in several courses. The internet is an astounding tool.
For instance, senior year I had a semester class entirely devoted to researching, writing, and presenting one research topic. The grade was based on a topic proposal, early bibliography, outline, rough draft, final copy, and presentation. My report (~35 pages of stuff I personally wrote, plus several pages of supporting photographs and a three page memo as appendices) was on the Challenger disaster. The school library system had exactly one book on this, and it was a secondary source and somewhat small. Many of my sources I got off the internet. (As distinct from "internet sources.") I searched NARA, NASA's photo galleries, etc. My main source was the Rogers Report, which is on NASA's website. In short, without the internet I would have been dead in the water. Once we actually got started researching, virtually all our classes were free periods spent in the library. Not having the Internet would have meant I would not have been able to use this time for what it was meant for.
I'm not saying that Internet access can't be misused or isn't misused. But IMO it's a far too valuable source to just cut off because some people choose to do so.
"PDFs created by publishers are greatly flawed in that the layout is frozen, instead of being dependent on the qualities of the output device. If I'm reading on a computer, there should be no page breaks."
It depends on your purpose. If I'm printing some reference material (for instance, the make manual; ignore the fact that there is probably a more suitable for printing PDF version available directly from GNU), I would print it to PDF first. Why? So I can see how it will look. A lot of archival things I want to look as much like the original as possible. If I'm reading the report on the Columbia disaster, I want to read it in PDF so I can see how it was organized in print. I don't want to read the HTML version (like what NASA has for the Challenger's Rogers Report).
Now, of course there are a lot of things for which PDF is unsuited, but there are many many cases where it is very helpful.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but `' are also called quotation marks. At least in the US. Dunno about other places. Probably are there to, considering most other countries use `' for speech.
Also, this strengthens the point your parent was making; some people make the distinction between single and double quotation marks as between sort of tongue-in-cheekish use and quoting someone.
RTFC(omment) to which I was replying. The superparent of my original post: "at least here in the US, you CAN turn off GPS+ on your phone... even though it still works for 911..". This discussion thread isn't directly about the article in question.
I would assume that it works local to your cell. Like if you press the keys 9-1-1-send, it will send your GPSed location. If you dial another number, it won't. To change that setting, unless there's a back door, would require physical access to the phone.
Slashdot Mirror
"Fair enough. However, China is insignificant in terms of the War on Terror. Sure, they have nukes and they're a dictatorship. But the chinese didn't attack us on 9/11, Arabs did."
No, a small portion there of, based mostly out of our ally Saudi Arabia and Afghanastan did. Iraq was not--repeat after me, NOT--involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001 in ANY WAY, SHAPE, or FORM. If the invasion was *truely* about terrorism, Saudi Arabia would have been a higher target.
You misunderstand or are misinformed. The point of the tax on media is that the government is convinced many people will be pirating stuff with it.
I'm not counting digital shots. Most of the pictures I take with digital are "snapshot" type pictures that in no way require a particularily good camera. SLRs are good for specialty photos: photos in difficult conditions (low light; this is where I've found them most useful), artistic shots, etc. Using an SLR for snapshots is, IMHO, overkill. I don't want to sit there focusing then fiddling with the f-stop and exposure time until the meter is satisfied everytime I want a quick photo. (Yes, I can set the settings in a sec or two usually, but I still don't particularly feel like doing it.) Then digital is splendid.
"My recommendation? Up your budget quite a bit. Check out the Canon Digital Rebel. Yes, its about $1k with a pretty good generic lens. But that may be less than you'd spend over a year with a $200-300 film camera, plus decent film, plus developing. Think TCO not just initial purchase price."
My estimates show that you can go through about 50 rolls of film before you'd break even. And that's only if you look at the price, and don't care if you don't have hard copies. (Printing shots on photo paper costs about the same as developing film.) That'd be one a week for a year, which seems high unless you're *really* serious. In which case I agree. But I would kill for an SLR because there's enough cases where a point-and-shoot camera won't do at all. (I seem to take an abnormal number of low-light shots.) Yet I don't think I've gone through that many rolls of film in my life.
"which can be blown up to 20X30 and can be printed to absolute perfection in your basement at that size then you better go to film."
Not to be pedantic, but most 35mm film won't do this. 8x10 is about as big you can go with 35mm film and before really noticing granularity. Next time you're at a wedding or other place there's a professional photographer, take a look at the film they use. It's typically I think about 4", and that *can* be blown up to 20x30.
Maybe I should mention specifics about those photos: they were taken from Penn State campus with a Minolta X-700. F-stop was 1.7, exposure was around 20 seconds (depending on how accurate my counting was), film was ASA 100 Kodak (!).
"Most professionals are moving to digital because the quality is now just as good for most situations."
Note you said "professionals". People who want to start photography don't have the resources professionals do. If I want to take great photographs, in many cases that rules out most point-and-shoot cameras. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a bad shot from one of these because the aperature is set for your average shot and isn't adjustable, and I take a picture in low light and it has to keep the shutter open forever leading to a blurry shot. (BTW: anything 1/30th sec. or more is "forever", and 1/60th can be if you don't have somethnig to brace against.) Yet I've taken pics with an SLR in much less light that came out dandy because I could set the f-stop to 1.7 and speed up the shutter by a factor of 4 or so. I could *never* have taken these pictures of the aurora with anything but an SLR.
"Digital is the best choice for a beginner because you can do a lot more experimenting without spending a fortune on things like film and developing."
You just spend a fortune on the initial camera. Amazon's store (Electronics > Camera & Photo > Categories > Film Cameras > SLR Cameras > Manual SLR Cameras) has cameras centered about $250, with one $161. The least expensive digital SLR I've seen is I think ~$800. The difference then is about 50 rolls of film. I don't think I've shot that many in my life.
"No it's not. Buy a Casio with full sized keys."
:)"
Actually, I have a pretty nice Yamaha keyboard. (And I'd still argue that playing music on a electronic keyboard, unless it's a very very nice one, doesn't rival a real piano.) I was thinking more along the lines of orchestral music though. It's kinda hard to fit a symphony orchestra in your living room.
"My point is that rather than just being a consumer of culture, start participating in it, and find out that it's as much fun to make the music as it is to listen to the music, even if both have a certain time and place where best applied. Actually, in the end, you'll wind up with a much larger apprecation for music in general, which will lead you to not being suckered into buying $20 cd's by the latest generic Radio band.
For the most part I agree. Making your own music is very fun, rewarding, etc. I'm just trying to say that there are some things that no matter how talented you are, you just can't do. The closest I can come to listening to say the 1812 Overture without buying a recording is through a MIDI file. Sorry, but you don't just get the same feeling. There's really no way around getting CDs.
"But the Best: Start makin' your own damn music. Serously. It's tons of fun. You can get a guitar for $100 bucks, learn some Beatles tunes, and have way more fun in the long run than that $100 Beatles box set. Then make up your own stupid songs, pretend you're a rock star, and have a total blast in your Den."
Of course, this only works for some types of music. It's a little less effective when it comes to, say, Beethoven.
What that should have said was "copyrights don't expire based on nonenforcement." Though the original statement still holds if our congress keeps up at the rate it's going....
"Bad reporting? Lying lawyers?"
One of the two. Copyrights don't expire.
"The person filing the suit still has to prove their case, it doesn't matter what they're called. You can't file suit in the US and expect the defendant to have to prove their innocence/non-liability."
You ignored the message to say the wording doesn't matter. Good job.
Gator is suing, hence they have the burden of proof. They have to prove libel. They have to prove that calling Gator spyware is libel. The defendant isn't proving anything with the "give us a list" argument.
"I find myself around people who said 'kids need to read books, any books are better than none.' I tend to disagree, feeling that children should be exposed to quality books, of wide variety of types."
I agree with those who say reading some books is better than no books. I'd also argue that probably few people are being distracted by Potter and just reading them instead of other books. I suspect you'd find many more cases of people reading Potter then expanding their repetoire to other books (Narnia and Tolkein to use your examples) than ditching such books for potter.
Would you prefer to pay taxes for me to sit at a desk and sleep? Even I can't keep solid concentration throughout a school day. I need some release. As far as I can tell, the other options open are: homework (requires concentration, so it's out for at least a fair amount of the time), read in the library (almost all reading requires concentration), sit at a desk and stare into space, or sleep. If it was lunch you could talk to friends, which is what I normally did then. That's about all the options.
Computers in classrooms in my high school were mostly one of two things: one computer in a room, or a lab. For rooms with just one computer, students rarely used it. It was used by teachers for attendence, email, etc. I see no reason to keep the Internet from these, especially as the teachers can read email the day and thus better keep up.
For labs, there were mixed results. I will admit it wasted a fair portion of time. The guy who sat next to me when I was in AP Comp Sci spent a fair amount of time on Earth 2025 and Utopia. I did as well. (To be fair though, we both got things done with plenty of time to spare.) On the other hand, it was very useful to several people. I can't of course really speak for what other people did, but it was invaluable when I was playing with Win32 programming and needed to look up API functions. The teacher was also quite good at spotting when people were surfing, and would tell you to stop. (She was a bit more relaxed if you had everything in then though.)
I would still argue that it should not be closed by default. My experience has been that it's nice to be able to use an off period--study hall or lunch--and check out Slashdot, maybe email, even a flash game, etc. As long is this isn't disruptive to people doing work, I don't see why it shouldn't be allowed. I'm a firm believer in the "if you want to spend your time playing flash pong, go right ahead; if you can't afford to it'll show in your grade" philosophy.
The rules were very much in line here with this. If there was a class, you probably couldn't use the computers at all. If you weren't, the rest of the computers were taken, and someone else wanted to do work, you had to yield.
This would give people, probably some of which didn't have access at home, mostly free reign (minus Bess-blocked sites) to play around, while not disrupting people who were doing work. I think it worked well.
The issue here appears to be not one from the end user's perspective, but that the telephone service providers are using their data networks to send phone calls instead of the traditional POTS network.
I should say too that my point is not nearly as strong when applied to elementary school. You don't really do research reports or anything (at least I don't think I really did, maybe a small one or two), so the benefits of the Internet are much lessened. I think though that even in middle school there's no question access should be provided.
It's not just liberals who are responsible, conservatives have an equal share. Which party is the one that advocates not teaching evolution because it isn't provable science? Are most people who tried to ban the Harry Potter books, probably the most read book amongst young kids in a long long time, conservatives or liberals? See, the blame is equally spread.
:-p
Which is why I should be in charge.
"As for the web, IM, chatrooms, etc, one has to be blind not to recognize this as entertaintment which is not the purpose of the school. I would not have internet connections from classroom computers. Local network is fine, but one would have to prove than (s)he really needs Internet access for that project before the access is granted."
You would have killed my grade. Our school library is too small to carry that much on any specific topic unless it is one that is explicitly studied in several courses. The internet is an astounding tool.
For instance, senior year I had a semester class entirely devoted to researching, writing, and presenting one research topic. The grade was based on a topic proposal, early bibliography, outline, rough draft, final copy, and presentation. My report (~35 pages of stuff I personally wrote, plus several pages of supporting photographs and a three page memo as appendices) was on the Challenger disaster. The school library system had exactly one book on this, and it was a secondary source and somewhat small. Many of my sources I got off the internet. (As distinct from "internet sources.") I searched NARA, NASA's photo galleries, etc. My main source was the Rogers Report, which is on NASA's website. In short, without the internet I would have been dead in the water. Once we actually got started researching, virtually all our classes were free periods spent in the library. Not having the Internet would have meant I would not have been able to use this time for what it was meant for.
I'm not saying that Internet access can't be misused or isn't misused. But IMO it's a far too valuable source to just cut off because some people choose to do so.
"PDFs created by publishers are greatly flawed in that the layout is frozen, instead of being dependent on the qualities of the output device. If I'm reading on a computer, there should be no page breaks."
It depends on your purpose. If I'm printing some reference material (for instance, the make manual; ignore the fact that there is probably a more suitable for printing PDF version available directly from GNU), I would print it to PDF first. Why? So I can see how it will look. A lot of archival things I want to look as much like the original as possible. If I'm reading the report on the Columbia disaster, I want to read it in PDF so I can see how it was organized in print. I don't want to read the HTML version (like what NASA has for the Challenger's Rogers Report).
Now, of course there are a lot of things for which PDF is unsuited, but there are many many cases where it is very helpful.
Of course, between IE, Opera, and Mozilla the only one that apparently can save as MHT is IE. So that option is out.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but `' are also called quotation marks. At least in the US. Dunno about other places. Probably are there to, considering most other countries use `' for speech.
Also, this strengthens the point your parent was making; some people make the distinction between single and double quotation marks as between sort of tongue-in-cheekish use and quoting someone.
RTFC(omment) to which I was replying. The superparent of my original post: "at least here in the US, you CAN turn off GPS+ on your phone... even though it still works for 911..". This discussion thread isn't directly about the article in question.
I would assume that it works local to your cell. Like if you press the keys 9-1-1-send, it will send your GPSed location. If you dial another number, it won't. To change that setting, unless there's a back door, would require physical access to the phone.