This is an old thread but I thought I would point out that most camera phones I've dealt with do OK white balance under incandescent light, as they are calibrated for that range, but blow donkey balls under daylight or fluorescent, leaving green and blue everywhere....
I think it's just a matter of economy. Good WB is very difficult, computationally, and requires a lot of sampling and guessing and extra sensor elements, etc.
That said, my Nikon gear is almost perfect AWB under incandescent conditions.
It's not only the AMOUNT of light that is poorly handled by the mini sensors in these cameras... but the range of light. Dynamic range is the single quality differentiator between good sensors and poor ones. Almost all sensors these days have adequate resolution. My primary camera, as a professional, is only about 4 megapixels. I've made 30x40 prints that, while not having the absolute crispness and resolution of an old kodachrome slide, it is more than adequate.
The dynamic range on my sensor, is an order of magnitude better than the sensor on my high-end point-and-shoot, not to mention my camera phone.
When i shoot pictures in daylight conditions with the camera phone, they are absolutely terrible. Sun-light highlights are either totally blown out, leaving a glowing halo on everyone's forehead, or they are adjusted for and everything else goes dark, making the scene look like a shot on the back of the moon.
As a professional, I learned to find lighting that does not have sharp high contrast definitions, but your average consumer does not practice this technique, so dynamic range is even MORE important for a consumer than for a pro in some cases.
OK, I don't make my living doing photography today but I have for several years in the last decade.
There are two things that pop out. I am not addressing "professional" features such as manual settings, bounce-flash, strobe capability, interchangeable lenses, large aperture effects (depth of field blurring), shutter speed considerations, flash sync, etc, etc, etc which obviously favor the DSLR. But lets just look at the things that the every-day average consumer cares about.
1) The image quality issues with the Canon cameras was due almost entirely to poor white balance. The author described this is 'vibrancy' a few times, but while there was perhaps somewhat lower color saturation, increased saturation of those poorly white balanced photos would have made them look WORSE, not better. Why did the "real" cameras have such awful white balance? Is this a problem with Canon's processing? I have a bunch of Nikon gear and have had great luck with auto white balance, though I prefer to use custom white balance for important photos, obviously Auto is simple and good for snapshots. But given the consumer target of the article, auto is the target and I'm disappointed with Canon in this regard. Go get a Nikon. Or a Fuji. Or a Panasonic even... they have good auto white balance.
2) They chose an extremely SIMPLE scene that is not reflective of the use that most people have for their cameras. A close-up, small and flat-lit still life is a very poor scene for testing overall image quality. Set up a scene with various light levels across it. A room with a light in the corner, or a bar with neon signs everywhere.... or a daylight/shade mix. Watch the compact sensors in the small phones and even the point-and-shoot camera absolutely blow the highlights and completely submarine the shadows and you can see the value of the high quality sensors of the dSLR. How about making an element in the scene move... like a parent might shoot a kid at a baseball game. In the case of a small, static, flat-lit still life, the camera phone is obviously adaquate. In the case of high dynamic range, moving, dark or varied scenes, the camera phones, in my experience, just don't cut it.
As a professional, I have trained myself to see the dynamic range of a scene and work to minimize areas of the frame that will cause problems with digital sensors (even the best dSLR is not even close to old Chrome slide films) and have learned to avoid those elements. Your average consumer snaps the picture, despite the big shadow on grandma's face. Suddenly your Norwegian grandmother looks like a coal miner because of deep shadow on her face totally submarined by poor sensor dynamic range. This is perhaps the biggest issue I see with this comparison and something that should be addressed.
The trains that travel from France to Spain switch gauge on the fly. They hit a section of track that flips a switch, lifts the car onto sliding blocks, shifts the gauge and sets the car back down, all while traveling full speed. Takes 5-10 seconds I hear.
There are plenty of designs for flexible gauge rail cars. They are in use in Europe, where trains transfer from standard gauge to wide-gauge track at the Spanish border for example, and when they move into former Russian states, as another example.
This tunnel would have the unique ability to actually be a physical link between ALL 5 "main" continents. Currently, the Americas are seperated from Europe, Asia and Africa by water...
Actually, Prince William Sound is almost 1000 miles from the Bearing Strait and even such a large earthquate would require sensitive seismographs to measure that far away.
The southern coast of the Aluetians are on the so-called "ring of fire" which is prone to earthquakes, whereas the Bearing Strait is quite far away. The analogy would be a building in Colorado scuttled by a large California earthquake. It is about the same distance from San Fransisco to Denver (930 miles, or so) as it is from PWS to the likely site of the tunnel.
Well... Hmmm... I recall from Geology class that the rockies haven't moved in a hundred millions of years. In fact, they *used* to be on a fault line but have since (over many millions of years) moved inland. The applechains are the same, but are much older still (and worn down a lot more).
The relatively "new" mountains are the Sierra Nevada mountains, but still millions of years.
Imagine sometime in the future, people have robot butlers.
You knock and ask (in the robot's language) "may I be permitted to enter and use part of this house" and the robot says "you are permitted to use this portion of the house and its resources, here is your ticket and access to the house"
If the guy has a problem with his robot butler doing this, what is the right course of action?
Should he arrest you? Or should he get a new butler?
hmmmmmmmm...
That is the analogy. A door and a window are both presumed barriers, just as WEP on a router is. Neither is secure to someone who is willing to exert force on them. WPA may be akin to a door with the deadbolt engaged... still possible to break, but requiring a great deal more force.
To be honest, you have purchased a wireless device, you have purchased something that issues invitations to your network, plain and simple. If you don't want invitations to be sent to just anyone then, by all means, close the door (turn on WEP). If you want to foil most theifs, who would be willing to exert force upon your door, then lock the door (install WPA) and distribute keys to those who need access to your house.
With a good Yagi or parabolic antenna, I can pick up a standard AP signal from about 2 miles.
Do you have 2 miles in any direction of property? If I sit on my truck out on the highway and point an antenna at you, are you then saying that I have permission to use your wireless?
Would you be surprised to know that almost 50% of those arrested on child porn charges in 2007 are actually minors themselves?
Most people don't know that. It doesn't tend the make the news since minors charged of a crime don't get press releases in most cases.
I ran into that in a DoJ study on the issue. It cites broad statistics but doesn't reveal much in the way of details, citing "protecting children" *chuckles*
You, as a modern soldier, would be ordered to fire your Tomahawk cruise missile on a nondescript building with instructions that there are "terrorist leaders" housed inside. In reality, inside are 8,000 civilians hosting an anti-government debate and military planning session.
You, as a modern soldier, fly your B2 bomber into one of the few cities that are "controlled" by "terrorist factions" bent on the downfall of the US government. Military commanders have told you that your family, in a "government controlled" city are in danger from these reckless rebels. You are instructed to take out a "terrorist training facility" and kill 20,000 people when your 4 10,000 pound bombs destroys a nearby office building.
There is little need for "turning your guns" on someone in such a personal sense.
Pretty soon, our bomber fleets will be 50% remote controlled. A guy sitting safely in a hole in the ground in Wyoming will fly bombing runs over buildings without even knowing what it is he is bombing, or what city it is in (ala Ender's Game).
But even today, in face-to-face combat... could you tell the gang of hooded rebels WAS your uncle, even if you were 50 feet away, engaged in a raging fire-fight?
Look at Germany, where children turned in their parents to be sent to death and where family men went to work in the morning at a Gas Chamber, or at the SS headquarters and was highly regarded as a patriot.
In hindsight, their actions were monstrous, but they were highly decorated government heroes in public circles. Like someone else said, it is easy to think that Germans in the 1920s were "different types of being" than we are but its simply not true.
Sex crimes is the most rapidly growing category of incarcerated prisoners. If the rates continue for 30 years, more than 5% of the population of the US will be in prison for sex crimes and almost 10% of the population will be on the Sex Offender Registry.
They result in someone being punched or struck with a blunt object. It happens thousands of times per month and the person generally does it in a blind rage.
If there were a gun within arms reach, rather than a table-leg or other unweildy blunt object, it would likely be used.
I think if everyone were required to carry a gun, the murder rate in the US would triple. Almost all of them would be "heat of passion" murders that would have resulted in a bloody nose, or broken hand, if a gun were not within arms reach.
You are totally ignorant of history. We ARE from the same ancestors. Very few people were "kicked back across the ocean", only a few officers. Many enlisted redcoats actually stayed and were granted citizenship.
Our legal system is based upon English Common Law, though our constitution and bill of rights was unique at the time.
The simple fact is that our well trained army of about 1 million men could easily and without breaking a sweat, subdue all 299 million of the rest of the United States population, even if each one had a bolt-action rifle, given technology, resources, tactics and general training, if it came to that.
The argument of guns-for-revolution is based on antiquated concepts. As it is now and as it has always been, private organizations, companies, universities, offices, citizens, etc are free, within our law, even as it stood in 1810, to prohibit the posession of firearms on their property.
It was within my right and still is within my right to say "no guns allowed" and require that you leave them at the door. That is protected use of private property and the 2nd amendment does not apply.
Whether or not gun-toting citizens would stop violent crime is hard to say, but I would lean toward "no". that doesn't mean that gun ownership is baseless, or is not deserved... it just means that the argument of "shoot the criminals" is probably bunk. Western countries with strict gun control ALL (every single one) have far lower rates of violent crime than the US. The argument for preventing government corruption is mostly bunk too.
However, I support the 2nd amendment strictly on the grounds that it is a personal liberty. The government CANNOT and SHOULD NOT tell citizens what they can say, how they can dress and what they can carry, provided that it does not cause DIRECT harm to others. And by "direct" I don't mean It may potentially increase the risk that he may or may not be apt to..... because that's BS.
So, what I'm saying is that while I support people's rights to own and carry guns as I believe it is a fundamental freedom, I think your bullshit argument is crap.:-)
my kid wasn't really that interested in gaming until more recently and he's 14 now.
The reason is that we tossed a frisbee every afternoon at the park and went mountain biking on Saturday morning every week and I got him interested in building and racing R/C cars when he was 10 and playing hockey when he was 8 and by the end of the day, we sit down and catch a movie and he goes to bed (and I wander off to Slashdot).
Wow, profound. It was never an issue. But I never forbade anything either. When he played GTA2 at a friend's house at 8, he told me that he didn't like the game because it didn't feel right to run around running down innocent people in a stolen car. He still played now and then when I assured him that it was OK to play video games, but that he was a good person for having feelings like that and to hold onto those.
He still won't step on ants on the street, even though he watched R rated movies and played GTA at 8 years old.
Big surprise. It's not about the games a kid plays but the lessons he learns from his parents.
You know, a friend of mine works in corporate security and taught me to bump locks.
It really only takes about 5-6 seconds for an experienced guy to open a standard lock.
Almost nobody uses hardened locks unless you have a home-museum or rare collection of antiques or some such. Even the best hardened locks can be bumped in 30-60 seconds by an experienced lock picker.
The fact that some crooks are stupid does lean toward locking doors rather than leaving them unlocked, but the lock itself really isn't that much of a deterrent for a determined and/or skilled person.
If I were Ted Bundy, I would learn the art of lock picking.:-)
You assaulted a customer who was approaching the register to pay for your product? In order to sell more product?
You want to blacklist anyone who ever pirated music so that they are NOT ALLOWED to buy music with the idea that this will force people to buy more music? if someone downloads a song, then they are prohibited from ever again PAYING for a song, making music exclusively accessible through online pirating..... and this is supposed to make them... buy CDs? but wait... I thought that they were blacklisted..... I'm confused.
Obviously, you didn't write this, as it was plagiarized from the Internet, but the original author of this is as "boneheaded" as the RIAA. Can't you see that the idea is patently absurd. heh
In the city, a school will have 8-10 busses with 1 late for activities. For economic reasons, all of the busses are totally full in the case of elementary students. A route is about 40 minutes and then the bus is back at the school.
So to run 30 of them for 40 minutes and then send the drivers home for the rest of the day would be a bit silly, so they run 8 of them with 4 trips each to handle different schools.
Then there is always the practical matter of having the first grade students sitting with the 11th grade students. Since family is a pretty much absent concept to most western families, and "thinkofthechildren" is the order of the day, the 7 year olds would be "horribly traumatized" by the "inappropriate" conversations and actions from the older kids.
After all, if a gradeschool kid hears someone say the word "gay" he will be scarred for life. We all know that.
Economic reasons stemming from social decay? or something.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone modded this "overrated"
well pffft.
That's all.
Stew
This is an old thread but I thought I would point out that most camera phones I've dealt with do OK white balance under incandescent light, as they are calibrated for that range, but blow donkey balls under daylight or fluorescent, leaving green and blue everywhere....
I think it's just a matter of economy. Good WB is very difficult, computationally, and requires a lot of sampling and guessing and extra sensor elements, etc.
That said, my Nikon gear is almost perfect AWB under incandescent conditions.
Stew
It's not only the AMOUNT of light that is poorly handled by the mini sensors in these cameras... but the range of light. Dynamic range is the single quality differentiator between good sensors and poor ones. Almost all sensors these days have adequate resolution. My primary camera, as a professional, is only about 4 megapixels. I've made 30x40 prints that, while not having the absolute crispness and resolution of an old kodachrome slide, it is more than adequate.
:-)
The dynamic range on my sensor, is an order of magnitude better than the sensor on my high-end point-and-shoot, not to mention my camera phone.
When i shoot pictures in daylight conditions with the camera phone, they are absolutely terrible. Sun-light highlights are either totally blown out, leaving a glowing halo on everyone's forehead, or they are adjusted for and everything else goes dark, making the scene look like a shot on the back of the moon.
As a professional, I learned to find lighting that does not have sharp high contrast definitions, but your average consumer does not practice this technique, so dynamic range is even MORE important for a consumer than for a pro in some cases.
That's all
Stewed
OK, I don't make my living doing photography today but I have for several years in the last decade.
There are two things that pop out. I am not addressing "professional" features such as manual settings, bounce-flash, strobe capability, interchangeable lenses, large aperture effects (depth of field blurring), shutter speed considerations, flash sync, etc, etc, etc which obviously favor the DSLR. But lets just look at the things that the every-day average consumer cares about.
1) The image quality issues with the Canon cameras was due almost entirely to poor white balance. The author described this is 'vibrancy' a few times, but while there was perhaps somewhat lower color saturation, increased saturation of those poorly white balanced photos would have made them look WORSE, not better. Why did the "real" cameras have such awful white balance? Is this a problem with Canon's processing? I have a bunch of Nikon gear and have had great luck with auto white balance, though I prefer to use custom white balance for important photos, obviously Auto is simple and good for snapshots. But given the consumer target of the article, auto is the target and I'm disappointed with Canon in this regard. Go get a Nikon. Or a Fuji. Or a Panasonic even... they have good auto white balance.
2) They chose an extremely SIMPLE scene that is not reflective of the use that most people have for their cameras. A close-up, small and flat-lit still life is a very poor scene for testing overall image quality. Set up a scene with various light levels across it. A room with a light in the corner, or a bar with neon signs everywhere.... or a daylight/shade mix. Watch the compact sensors in the small phones and even the point-and-shoot camera absolutely blow the highlights and completely submarine the shadows and you can see the value of the high quality sensors of the dSLR. How about making an element in the scene move... like a parent might shoot a kid at a baseball game. In the case of a small, static, flat-lit still life, the camera phone is obviously adaquate. In the case of high dynamic range, moving, dark or varied scenes, the camera phones, in my experience, just don't cut it.
As a professional, I have trained myself to see the dynamic range of a scene and work to minimize areas of the frame that will cause problems with digital sensors (even the best dSLR is not even close to old Chrome slide films) and have learned to avoid those elements. Your average consumer snaps the picture, despite the big shadow on grandma's face. Suddenly your Norwegian grandmother looks like a coal miner because of deep shadow on her face totally submarined by poor sensor dynamic range. This is perhaps the biggest issue I see with this comparison and something that should be addressed.
Stew
The trains that travel from France to Spain switch gauge on the fly. They hit a section of track that flips a switch, lifts the car onto sliding blocks, shifts the gauge and sets the car back down, all while traveling full speed. Takes 5-10 seconds I hear.
Stew
There are plenty of designs for flexible gauge rail cars. They are in use in Europe, where trains transfer from standard gauge to wide-gauge track at the Spanish border for example, and when they move into former Russian states, as another example.
This tunnel would have the unique ability to actually be a physical link between ALL 5 "main" continents. Currently, the Americas are seperated from Europe, Asia and Africa by water...
Stew
All I can think of is an underwater slinky wrapped in latex.
Dunno if i could drive my car in it tho.
Stew
Actually, Prince William Sound is almost 1000 miles from the Bearing Strait and even such a large earthquate would require sensitive seismographs to measure that far away.
The southern coast of the Aluetians are on the so-called "ring of fire" which is prone to earthquakes, whereas the Bearing Strait is quite far away. The analogy would be a building in Colorado scuttled by a large California earthquake. It is about the same distance from San Fransisco to Denver (930 miles, or so) as it is from PWS to the likely site of the tunnel.
Stew
Well... Hmmm... I recall from Geology class that the rockies haven't moved in a hundred millions of years. In fact, they *used* to be on a fault line but have since (over many millions of years) moved inland. The applechains are the same, but are much older still (and worn down a lot more).
The relatively "new" mountains are the Sierra Nevada mountains, but still millions of years.
Stew
Hehehehhe wha?
Your light radiates out the window... and are you claiming it's a crime to uhm "use" the light (provided you are not trespassing?
I'll keep that in mind next time I'm taking out the trash and "using" my neighbor's lights to see where I am going.
eek, don't arrest me!
Stew
Imagine sometime in the future, people have robot butlers.
You knock and ask (in the robot's language) "may I be permitted to enter and use part of this house" and the robot says "you are permitted to use this portion of the house and its resources, here is your ticket and access to the house"
If the guy has a problem with his robot butler doing this, what is the right course of action?
Should he arrest you? Or should he get a new butler?
hmmmmmmmm...
That is the analogy. A door and a window are both presumed barriers, just as WEP on a router is. Neither is secure to someone who is willing to exert force on them. WPA may be akin to a door with the deadbolt engaged... still possible to break, but requiring a great deal more force.
To be honest, you have purchased a wireless device, you have purchased something that issues invitations to your network, plain and simple. If you don't want invitations to be sent to just anyone then, by all means, close the door (turn on WEP). If you want to foil most theifs, who would be willing to exert force upon your door, then lock the door (install WPA) and distribute keys to those who need access to your house.
These analogies are pretty simple.
Stew
With a good Yagi or parabolic antenna, I can pick up a standard AP signal from about 2 miles.
Do you have 2 miles in any direction of property? If I sit on my truck out on the highway and point an antenna at you, are you then saying that I have permission to use your wireless?
Cool. Be right over.
Stew
Would you be surprised to know that almost 50% of those arrested on child porn charges in 2007 are actually minors themselves?
Most people don't know that. It doesn't tend the make the news since minors charged of a crime don't get press releases in most cases.
I ran into that in a DoJ study on the issue. It cites broad statistics but doesn't reveal much in the way of details, citing "protecting children" *chuckles*
Stew
It's been said before....
You, as a modern soldier, would be ordered to fire your Tomahawk cruise missile on a nondescript building with instructions that there are "terrorist leaders" housed inside. In reality, inside are 8,000 civilians hosting an anti-government debate and military planning session.
You, as a modern soldier, fly your B2 bomber into one of the few cities that are "controlled" by "terrorist factions" bent on the downfall of the US government. Military commanders have told you that your family, in a "government controlled" city are in danger from these reckless rebels. You are instructed to take out a "terrorist training facility" and kill 20,000 people when your 4 10,000 pound bombs destroys a nearby office building.
There is little need for "turning your guns" on someone in such a personal sense.
Pretty soon, our bomber fleets will be 50% remote controlled. A guy sitting safely in a hole in the ground in Wyoming will fly bombing runs over buildings without even knowing what it is he is bombing, or what city it is in (ala Ender's Game).
But even today, in face-to-face combat... could you tell the gang of hooded rebels WAS your uncle, even if you were 50 feet away, engaged in a raging fire-fight?
Look at Germany, where children turned in their parents to be sent to death and where family men went to work in the morning at a Gas Chamber, or at the SS headquarters and was highly regarded as a patriot.
In hindsight, their actions were monstrous, but they were highly decorated government heroes in public circles. Like someone else said, it is easy to think that Germans in the 1920s were "different types of being" than we are but its simply not true.
Stew
Sex crimes is the most rapidly growing category of incarcerated prisoners. If the rates continue for 30 years, more than 5% of the population of the US will be in prison for sex crimes and almost 10% of the population will be on the Sex Offender Registry.
Yes, that's 1 in 10.
*sings* America! Fuck yeah!
No, "flare ups" happen all the time.
They result in someone being punched or struck with a blunt object. It happens thousands of times per month and the person generally does it in a blind rage.
If there were a gun within arms reach, rather than a table-leg or other unweildy blunt object, it would likely be used.
I think if everyone were required to carry a gun, the murder rate in the US would triple. Almost all of them would be "heat of passion" murders that would have resulted in a bloody nose, or broken hand, if a gun were not within arms reach.
Just my opinion.
Stew
Hahahahahahaha!!!
:-)
You are totally ignorant of history. We ARE from the same ancestors. Very few people were "kicked back across the ocean", only a few officers. Many enlisted redcoats actually stayed and were granted citizenship.
Our legal system is based upon English Common Law, though our constitution and bill of rights was unique at the time.
The simple fact is that our well trained army of about 1 million men could easily and without breaking a sweat, subdue all 299 million of the rest of the United States population, even if each one had a bolt-action rifle, given technology, resources, tactics and general training, if it came to that.
The argument of guns-for-revolution is based on antiquated concepts. As it is now and as it has always been, private organizations, companies, universities, offices, citizens, etc are free, within our law, even as it stood in 1810, to prohibit the posession of firearms on their property.
It was within my right and still is within my right to say "no guns allowed" and require that you leave them at the door. That is protected use of private property and the 2nd amendment does not apply.
Whether or not gun-toting citizens would stop violent crime is hard to say, but I would lean toward "no". that doesn't mean that gun ownership is baseless, or is not deserved... it just means that the argument of "shoot the criminals" is probably bunk. Western countries with strict gun control ALL (every single one) have far lower rates of violent crime than the US. The argument for preventing government corruption is mostly bunk too.
However, I support the 2nd amendment strictly on the grounds that it is a personal liberty. The government CANNOT and SHOULD NOT tell citizens what they can say, how they can dress and what they can carry, provided that it does not cause DIRECT harm to others. And by "direct" I don't mean It may potentially increase the risk that he may or may not be apt to..... because that's BS.
So, what I'm saying is that while I support people's rights to own and carry guns as I believe it is a fundamental freedom, I think your bullshit argument is crap.
Stew
Yes, and Leisure Suit Larry.... there is a special rig called the "strap on" which lets you strap Wii-mote on and uhhh be Larry.
lol
Uhm...
my kid wasn't really that interested in gaming until more recently and he's 14 now.
The reason is that we tossed a frisbee every afternoon at the park and went mountain biking on Saturday morning every week and I got him interested in building and racing R/C cars when he was 10 and playing hockey when he was 8 and by the end of the day, we sit down and catch a movie and he goes to bed (and I wander off to Slashdot).
Wow, profound. It was never an issue. But I never forbade anything either. When he played GTA2 at a friend's house at 8, he told me that he didn't like the game because it didn't feel right to run around running down innocent people in a stolen car. He still played now and then when I assured him that it was OK to play video games, but that he was a good person for having feelings like that and to hold onto those.
He still won't step on ants on the street, even though he watched R rated movies and played GTA at 8 years old.
Big surprise. It's not about the games a kid plays but the lessons he learns from his parents.
Stewed
You know, a friend of mine works in corporate security and taught me to bump locks.
:-)
It really only takes about 5-6 seconds for an experienced guy to open a standard lock.
Almost nobody uses hardened locks unless you have a home-museum or rare collection of antiques or some such. Even the best hardened locks can be bumped in 30-60 seconds by an experienced lock picker.
The fact that some crooks are stupid does lean toward locking doors rather than leaving them unlocked, but the lock itself really isn't that much of a deterrent for a determined and/or skilled person.
If I were Ted Bundy, I would learn the art of lock picking.
Stew
I believe the proper action for Craigslist is to simply ignore any non-official demands for information.
The only "official" way to demand information is a subpoena or search warrant.
I don't want them shooting off the personal details of every poster each time they get an email claiming to be from "Joe FBI".
Stew
This was an episode of "Law and Order: SVU"...
I don't think it was real.
Stew
The RIAA only exists as a cooperative braindump of the largest labels.
Labels such as Matador who actively refuse to be a part of the RIAA (and have gone to great lengths to show this) actually have strong sales growth.
Surprised?
heh
Stew
You assaulted a customer who was approaching the register to pay for your product? In order to sell more product?
You want to blacklist anyone who ever pirated music so that they are NOT ALLOWED to buy music with the idea that this will force people to buy more music? if someone downloads a song, then they are prohibited from ever again PAYING for a song, making music exclusively accessible through online pirating..... and this is supposed to make them... buy CDs? but wait... I thought that they were blacklisted..... I'm confused.
Obviously, you didn't write this, as it was plagiarized from the Internet, but the original author of this is as "boneheaded" as the RIAA. Can't you see that the idea is patently absurd. heh
Stew
In the city, a school will have 8-10 busses with 1 late for activities. For economic reasons, all of the busses are totally full in the case of elementary students. A route is about 40 minutes and then the bus is back at the school.
So to run 30 of them for 40 minutes and then send the drivers home for the rest of the day would be a bit silly, so they run 8 of them with 4 trips each to handle different schools.
Then there is always the practical matter of having the first grade students sitting with the 11th grade students. Since family is a pretty much absent concept to most western families, and "thinkofthechildren" is the order of the day, the 7 year olds would be "horribly traumatized" by the "inappropriate" conversations and actions from the older kids.
After all, if a gradeschool kid hears someone say the word "gay" he will be scarred for life. We all know that.
Economic reasons stemming from social decay? or something.
Stew