Heh, you're not investing in either of them, whereas I just said "fuck it" and bought BOTH of them.
I DESPISE the blu-ray player. It takes forever to boot, forever to respond to controls, forever to do anything. It locks up constantly during certain movies, but performs well for others. Power-on to start of movie is generally 5-7 minutes, depending on how long it decides to take to boot up and read the disc, and then another 10-15 minutes for the usually non-skippable previews.
The HD-DVD player responds INSTANTLY to commands, including power-on, power-off, door open and close, and to remote keys, and I have not found a movie yet where I couldn't just skip to the damn movie instead of being forced to sit through 15 minutes of previews for movies I saw 3 years ago.
Some have argued that HD-DVD isn't truly a native 1080 format, but I don't buy that. All of the HD-DVD discs I have state plainly that they are 1080 native format. My TV is only 768 pixels anyway, so it doesn't matter all that much. Some have argued that the HD-DVD hardware downsamples to 720 before upsampling back to 1080, but I have yet to see proof of that.
I still think HD-DVD is the technically superior platform (note I did not say format), but Sony just has a bigger marketing machine, and more willingness to cut back-door deals with studio execs to get them to dump the HD-DVD format.
Hardware wise, HD-DVD wins hands down until I can get to the beginning of a BluRay movie in under 1 minute from the power button.
Don't conventional fuels have approximately the same cost of refining and transportation as biofuels? I mean, does the tanker that drives the BioDiesel to my house get worse mileage because it's carrying Bio instead of Dino?
Nitro Glycerine is not the only liquid explosive. Further, it has not been conclusively shown that an explosive is required to bring down an airplane. One thing that could be causal is combustion, and that said, a bottle of any inflammable liquid and a match would probably be sufficient to cause a mid-air catastrophe. Nobody said the plane had to be destroyed mid-air. It just has to be put in a condition that it will suffer uncontrolled descent terminated by sudden inelastic collision with another object (usually the Earth).
The FIOS terms of service are not dissimilar to Comcast's, so why am I doing myself better to get an inferior service?
Comcast = Pseudo-Static IP (90 days or so), no blocked ports FIOS = IP Changes every 4 hours, PPPoE, Ports Blocked
Ideally, I wish Vz would allow companies like DCA.net to sell FIOS and managed Layer-3 services. I had DCA.net+Vz DSL a while back and it was awesome - had my own/28 subnet, liberal ToS (it was commercial), and the whole bit.
Comcast is shooting themselves in the foot by putting content filtering in the ToS. This voids their common-carrier status and now it can be argued in court that they are a content provider, not a common carrier.
For example, if someone sends my kid some pr0n, I can argue in a civil case that Comcast was negligent in enforcing their terms of service, thereby directly causing my child to be violated. If they have the technology to shape specific types of traffic based on CONTENT, and if they can tell whether something is pr0n or not, and they regulate said CONTENT in their ToS, then they take upon themselves the responsibility for any CONTENT that might be in violation of the law.
Other ISPs have been smart in their "hands off" attitude to regulating specific content for this very reason. They do not want to be on the hook for people using their network for illegal activity. By promising this kind of regulation, they are taking de facto responsibility for ANYTHING that happens as a result of content that traverses their network, even if that traffic neither originates nor terminates on their network.
If you have an argument, then provide me with a project location, date, and mission, and I will give you a list of the tax abatements you received to go towards paying for it.
To answer your question, it depends on the kind of beer.
Yes, the vast majority of people consuming Miester Brau, Budweiser, and other piss-water beers are doing so to get drunk. Most people never learn to appreciate good beer and wine.
But, real, honest-to-God beer actually does taste good. Also, for a particular food, there is a particular beer that finishes the taste, creating very enjoyable complex flavor bouquets on the palate.
As far as MJ goes, I agree with the OP that there really isn't any benefit to using it. I have lived with more than one pot smoker, and with all of them, they would constantly complain about having so much shit to do, but sat their asses on the couch laughing at the snow on the TV for most of the afternoon.
With any "substance", there are abuse problems: alcohol, drugs, food, exercise, sex, you name it. The line must be drawn when your addiction crosses the line of affecting only your life to the side of affecting more than just your own. When there is an entire class of addicted people who become burdens on the rest of the public rather than contributors, then something must be done about it. That is the balance between personal liberty and public good that must be maintained. We have laws governing alcohol, drugs, and sex. Laws governing food are starting to appear, and I am sure it won't be more than a couple more decades before we start passing laws limiting exercise for the clinically underweight. The growth of the nanny state will only continue.
Laws and prohibition are only temporary solutions to an immediate problem. Long-lasting solutions can only come from personal and societal habit change. Our founding fathers knew this, which is why they often spoke of personal responsibility, but the current political leaders want us to outsource personal responsibility to the government. Hah..
You would have a valid argument if you actually had to pay to increase the bandwidth capacity out of your own pockets. But, the reality is that most infrastructure improvements are paid for by the taxpayers in the form of MASSIVE tax abatements. I would challenge you to find a single infrastructure project by any ISP, anywhere in the US, that was not subsidized or paid-for outright by tax abatements.
"Look for him to govern like Bush, taking a stand on whatever looks popular at the moment."
Are you insane? If Bush were governing on whatever looked popular at the moment, we would have been out of Iraq years ago, we would have scrapped "No Child Left Behind" by now, and god only knows what else.
You're right about McCain though, he's a two-faced liar that talks out of both sides of his mouth and just wants as much attention as he can get.
Personally, I like Romney. Despite your obvious seething hatred for the republicans (and probably anyone else who does not agree with your viewpoint), Romney's record doesn't lie. He took Massachusetts from deficit to ginormous surplus by running the government like a business, culling wasteful programs and instead using that money to subsidize health care so that every citizen of the State has health care.
That's right. If you want Universal Health Care in a non-socialist way, Romney is your man, and his executive experience is exactly what we need to protect ourselves from economic terrorism moving forward.
HOWEVER, 99% of the responsibility to protect ourselves from terrorism, both military and economic, lies with YOU and ME, and every other "average joe" citizen. It is our responsibility as citizens to stop the free fall of the dollar by buying American-made goods, driving less and using less foreign oil, and otherwise stop the torrential flow of US currency outside of this country. That's the only way we're going to be able to take our stand economically.
Hey may have never voted FOR those things, but he has certainly seldom voted AGAINST them.
If you look at Ron Paul's record on spending bill voting, there are practically more "No Vote" than "NO" or "YES" records. He ducks issues by voting "present" but neither voting for nor against a bill that is the slightest bit controversial.
We cannot have a President that refuses to take positions. Talk is cheap, and it is easy to _say_ things. A President is supposed to DO not SAY.
One bill he did vote against was the bill that established a time line for getting out of Iraq - so he says he wants to get out of Iraq (because that's the popular opinion du jour) but won't vote that way...
First of all, Slashdot should be telling us who we can and can't talk about. Of course, this is one of the fundamental facets of liberalism (to which Slashdot fervently subscribes) - control of speech.
That said:
Romney: Would be a good President, and I hope would run it like a business that is supposed to have clean books and a balanced budget. He has flip-flopped on some issues, but his record of taking Massachusetts from deficit to surplus stands, and that is precisely what we need in the immediate term to combat the free-falling dollar and declining value of US assets across the world.
Huckabee: Just doesn't have it right in my mind. I am not inspired by his brand of religious evangelism, and am quite frankly scared of that kind of religious zeal threatening the separation clause. He also has no plan to improve the state of our economy on a global landscape.
McCain: Is not a republican by any stretch of the imagination
Paul: Is far more concerned with legalizing drugs than he is with coming to the amazing realization that, despite the fantasy land in which he lives where the US can be completely isolationist, the reality of the situation is that there are numerous kids in the sand box and they all have to play nice together.
And Hitler would never invade Poland, Islamic fascists would never try to attack US soil, and there's no way in hell it's a bad idea to help a rich nigerian oil tycoon launder some money through your bank account.
I'll bet somewhere in this "agreement" is a provision that allows big government contractors like Lockheed and L3 to outsource sensitive classified projects to Indian engineering outsourcing firms.
Science and Engineering in the US are dead. They died when we stopped teaching Math and Science to our kids back in the 90's.
We need to immediately pass legislation banning and criminalizing this blatant discriminatory behavior. DNA strands should be forced by law to associate with all different kinds of DNA strands, regardless of the biological, chemical, and social consequences!
What is really appalling to me is how Paypal and eBay are seemingly exempt from the rule of law.
If someone breaks into my house, steals my stuff, and puts it in their house, I am not allowed to just go into the thief's house and steal it back. I am required to give them the due process of law, file criminal charges, provide evidence to the prosecution, and let the jury decide.
If criminal A breaks into the house of victim B, stashes the stuff in victim C's house before moving it to their own house, victim C's landlord can't just decree that victim C has to pay back victim B for the loss.
Wouldn't surprise me if Finjan were the author of the rootkit. After all, we all know that the percentage of viruses created by contractors hired by virus software companies is not zero.
... why do foreign students fall over themselves to study here and take that knowledge back home, where the vast majority of them become college professors?
Now, our K-12 education is another story. My niece's English teacher could not name the three different types of conjunction. For Pete's sake, what the hell? One of our problems is tenure in schools. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of bad teachers. It is even harder to get rid of the WORST teachers. Any time someone suggests making teacher pay merit-based, and culling the herd of under and unqualified teachers, the unions go apeshit and scare the politicians into making sure it doesn't happen.
None of my high school teachers were competent to teach the subjects they were charged with. Luckily I did enough studying on my own to learn the things that would be on the state tests, because the teachers surely didn't. My Electrical Engineer dad also helped make sure I learned the things I needed to learn about math and science. I could learn more from him in 20 minutes than I could in a whole week of math class in school.
When my job gets shipped off to India, I've decided that I am going to "retire" into teaching and just suck it up and take the $25k/yr and try to make a difference. Of course, there are so many barriers - have to find a non-union district (I may be willing to take a $50k pay cut, but I am intransigent in my refusal to join a union) - have to get all the certifications - so on.
We'll see how that works out. I will probably be the monkey that gets the shit beat out of him for trying to get the banana at the top of the ladder.
I work up here in PA for a different division of that company, but our div has an office on Bell Rd, just a couple blocks away from DVT. It's a fun place to visit... lots of toys just laying around everywhere..
I can think of several reasons not related to civil liability to go ahead and replace the batteries
1) The cost of the VRAD equipment is astronomical when you consider the labor of sorting out hundreds upon hundreds of burnt copper and fiber cables and replacing them at union labor rates 2) The cost of losing customers due to the unreliability caused by failing VRAD modules 3) The indirect cost of investors worrying about future revenue, depressing share price
The batteries from Avestor were NOT cheap, as has been insinuated elsewhere in this thread. As much as people bitch about telecom companies doing things "on the cheap" to make money, it's not true. The cost of servicing "cheap shit" in the field is far higher than simply buying "good shit" in the first place. This is why Comcast uses cable that costs $2-$3/ft in underground utility installations, rather than using cheap RG-9X from Home Depot.
The same logic goes for the batteries. They would much rather pay $500 for a battery than pay $250 for a battery and then another $500 to have a union contractor go out and replace it with another $250 battery - or God forbid, another $20K to replace the whole VRAD module when it spontaneously goes into low Earth orbit. That's what we call "cheap insurance."
In this case, it just so happened that the "cheap insurance" didn't work out.
Needless to say, AT&T will not be able to recover anything from them. Hopefully none of the NiCd replacements explode - being incredibly toxic to the environment and all...
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, you're not investing in either of them, whereas I just said "fuck it" and bought BOTH of them.
I DESPISE the blu-ray player. It takes forever to boot, forever to respond to controls, forever to do anything. It locks up constantly during certain movies, but performs well for others. Power-on to start of movie is generally 5-7 minutes, depending on how long it decides to take to boot up and read the disc, and then another 10-15 minutes for the usually non-skippable previews.
The HD-DVD player responds INSTANTLY to commands, including power-on, power-off, door open and close, and to remote keys, and I have not found a movie yet where I couldn't just skip to the damn movie instead of being forced to sit through 15 minutes of previews for movies I saw 3 years ago.
Some have argued that HD-DVD isn't truly a native 1080 format, but I don't buy that. All of the HD-DVD discs I have state plainly that they are 1080 native format. My TV is only 768 pixels anyway, so it doesn't matter all that much. Some have argued that the HD-DVD hardware downsamples to 720 before upsampling back to 1080, but I have yet to see proof of that.
I still think HD-DVD is the technically superior platform (note I did not say format), but Sony just has a bigger marketing machine, and more willingness to cut back-door deals with studio execs to get them to dump the HD-DVD format.
Hardware wise, HD-DVD wins hands down until I can get to the beginning of a BluRay movie in under 1 minute from the power button.
Yeah, it sucked that they lost the format war over the original audio CD and the cassette tape...
Oh wait... Sony/Philips WON those..
Don't conventional fuels have approximately the same cost of refining and transportation as biofuels? I mean, does the tanker that drives the BioDiesel to my house get worse mileage because it's carrying Bio instead of Dino?
"If terrorists can't get to the cockpit, then they cannot take over a craft."
:-)
The exception being the Boeing 787, on which the Flight Management System shares a physical network with the Passenger Access Network.
FSX Anyone?
Nitro Glycerine is not the only liquid explosive. Further, it has not been conclusively shown that an explosive is required to bring down an airplane. One thing that could be causal is combustion, and that said, a bottle of any inflammable liquid and a match would probably be sufficient to cause a mid-air catastrophe. Nobody said the plane had to be destroyed mid-air. It just has to be put in a condition that it will suffer uncontrolled descent terminated by sudden inelastic collision with another object (usually the Earth).
The FIOS terms of service are not dissimilar to Comcast's, so why am I doing myself better to get an inferior service?
/28 subnet, liberal ToS (it was commercial), and the whole bit.
Comcast = Pseudo-Static IP (90 days or so), no blocked ports
FIOS = IP Changes every 4 hours, PPPoE, Ports Blocked
Ideally, I wish Vz would allow companies like DCA.net to sell FIOS and managed Layer-3 services. I had DCA.net+Vz DSL a while back and it was awesome - had my own
Comcast is shooting themselves in the foot by putting content filtering in the ToS. This voids their common-carrier status and now it can be argued in court that they are a content provider, not a common carrier.
For example, if someone sends my kid some pr0n, I can argue in a civil case that Comcast was negligent in enforcing their terms of service, thereby directly causing my child to be violated. If they have the technology to shape specific types of traffic based on CONTENT, and if they can tell whether something is pr0n or not, and they regulate said CONTENT in their ToS, then they take upon themselves the responsibility for any CONTENT that might be in violation of the law.
Other ISPs have been smart in their "hands off" attitude to regulating specific content for this very reason. They do not want to be on the hook for people using their network for illegal activity. By promising this kind of regulation, they are taking de facto responsibility for ANYTHING that happens as a result of content that traverses their network, even if that traffic neither originates nor terminates on their network.
If you have an argument, then provide me with a project location, date, and mission, and I will give you a list of the tax abatements you received to go towards paying for it.
To answer your question, it depends on the kind of beer.
Yes, the vast majority of people consuming Miester Brau, Budweiser, and other piss-water beers are doing so to get drunk. Most people never learn to appreciate good beer and wine.
But, real, honest-to-God beer actually does taste good. Also, for a particular food, there is a particular beer that finishes the taste, creating very enjoyable complex flavor bouquets on the palate.
As far as MJ goes, I agree with the OP that there really isn't any benefit to using it. I have lived with more than one pot smoker, and with all of them, they would constantly complain about having so much shit to do, but sat their asses on the couch laughing at the snow on the TV for most of the afternoon.
With any "substance", there are abuse problems: alcohol, drugs, food, exercise, sex, you name it. The line must be drawn when your addiction crosses the line of affecting only your life to the side of affecting more than just your own. When there is an entire class of addicted people who become burdens on the rest of the public rather than contributors, then something must be done about it. That is the balance between personal liberty and public good that must be maintained. We have laws governing alcohol, drugs, and sex. Laws governing food are starting to appear, and I am sure it won't be more than a couple more decades before we start passing laws limiting exercise for the clinically underweight. The growth of the nanny state will only continue.
Laws and prohibition are only temporary solutions to an immediate problem. Long-lasting solutions can only come from personal and societal habit change. Our founding fathers knew this, which is why they often spoke of personal responsibility, but the current political leaders want us to outsource personal responsibility to the government. Hah..
You would have a valid argument if you actually had to pay to increase the bandwidth capacity out of your own pockets. But, the reality is that most infrastructure improvements are paid for by the taxpayers in the form of MASSIVE tax abatements. I would challenge you to find a single infrastructure project by any ISP, anywhere in the US, that was not subsidized or paid-for outright by tax abatements.
"Look for him to govern like Bush, taking a stand on whatever looks popular at the moment."
Are you insane? If Bush were governing on whatever looked popular at the moment, we would have been out of Iraq years ago, we would have scrapped "No Child Left Behind" by now, and god only knows what else.
You're right about McCain though, he's a two-faced liar that talks out of both sides of his mouth and just wants as much attention as he can get.
Personally, I like Romney. Despite your obvious seething hatred for the republicans (and probably anyone else who does not agree with your viewpoint), Romney's record doesn't lie. He took Massachusetts from deficit to ginormous surplus by running the government like a business, culling wasteful programs and instead using that money to subsidize health care so that every citizen of the State has health care.
That's right. If you want Universal Health Care in a non-socialist way, Romney is your man, and his executive experience is exactly what we need to protect ourselves from economic terrorism moving forward.
HOWEVER, 99% of the responsibility to protect ourselves from terrorism, both military and economic, lies with YOU and ME, and every other "average joe" citizen. It is our responsibility as citizens to stop the free fall of the dollar by buying American-made goods, driving less and using less foreign oil, and otherwise stop the torrential flow of US currency outside of this country. That's the only way we're going to be able to take our stand economically.
Hey may have never voted FOR those things, but he has certainly seldom voted AGAINST them.
If you look at Ron Paul's record on spending bill voting, there are practically more "No Vote" than "NO" or "YES" records. He ducks issues by voting "present" but neither voting for nor against a bill that is the slightest bit controversial.
We cannot have a President that refuses to take positions. Talk is cheap, and it is easy to _say_ things. A President is supposed to DO not SAY.
One bill he did vote against was the bill that established a time line for getting out of Iraq - so he says he wants to get out of Iraq (because that's the popular opinion du jour) but won't vote that way...
First of all, Slashdot should be telling us who we can and can't talk about. Of course, this is one of the fundamental facets of liberalism (to which Slashdot fervently subscribes) - control of speech.
That said:
Romney: Would be a good President, and I hope would run it like a business that is supposed to have clean books and a balanced budget. He has flip-flopped on some issues, but his record of taking Massachusetts from deficit to surplus stands, and that is precisely what we need in the immediate term to combat the free-falling dollar and declining value of US assets across the world.
Huckabee: Just doesn't have it right in my mind. I am not inspired by his brand of religious evangelism, and am quite frankly scared of that kind of religious zeal threatening the separation clause. He also has no plan to improve the state of our economy on a global landscape.
McCain: Is not a republican by any stretch of the imagination
Paul: Is far more concerned with legalizing drugs than he is with coming to the amazing realization that, despite the fantasy land in which he lives where the US can be completely isolationist, the reality of the situation is that there are numerous kids in the sand box and they all have to play nice together.
It's too bad there isn't a single candidate running today who can truthfully make those claims.
And Hitler would never invade Poland, Islamic fascists would never try to attack US soil, and there's no way in hell it's a bad idea to help a rich nigerian oil tycoon launder some money through your bank account.
Microsoft offers 40% more than the stock is worth, and Yahoo MGT says that "undervalues the company."
Riiiiiiight.
A lot of people made a shitload of money on the news last week, but I guess that wasn't enough for these greedy folks.
I'll bet somewhere in this "agreement" is a provision that allows big government contractors like Lockheed and L3 to outsource sensitive classified projects to Indian engineering outsourcing firms.
Science and Engineering in the US are dead. They died when we stopped teaching Math and Science to our kids back in the 90's.
So much innovation - so many firsts - so much longevity.... It was a great console
We need to immediately pass legislation banning and criminalizing this blatant discriminatory behavior. DNA strands should be forced by law to associate with all different kinds of DNA strands, regardless of the biological, chemical, and social consequences!
What is really appalling to me is how Paypal and eBay are seemingly exempt from the rule of law.
If someone breaks into my house, steals my stuff, and puts it in their house, I am not allowed to just go into the thief's house and steal it back. I am required to give them the due process of law, file criminal charges, provide evidence to the prosecution, and let the jury decide.
If criminal A breaks into the house of victim B, stashes the stuff in victim C's house before moving it to their own house, victim C's landlord can't just decree that victim C has to pay back victim B for the loss.
This is exactly what paypal is doing.
Wouldn't surprise me if Finjan were the author of the rootkit. After all, we all know that the percentage of viruses created by contractors hired by virus software companies is not zero.
... why do foreign students fall over themselves to study here and take that knowledge back home, where the vast majority of them become college professors?
Now, our K-12 education is another story. My niece's English teacher could not name the three different types of conjunction. For Pete's sake, what the hell? One of our problems is tenure in schools. It is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of bad teachers. It is even harder to get rid of the WORST teachers. Any time someone suggests making teacher pay merit-based, and culling the herd of under and unqualified teachers, the unions go apeshit and scare the politicians into making sure it doesn't happen.
None of my high school teachers were competent to teach the subjects they were charged with. Luckily I did enough studying on my own to learn the things that would be on the state tests, because the teachers surely didn't. My Electrical Engineer dad also helped make sure I learned the things I needed to learn about math and science. I could learn more from him in 20 minutes than I could in a whole week of math class in school.
When my job gets shipped off to India, I've decided that I am going to "retire" into teaching and just suck it up and take the $25k/yr and try to make a difference. Of course, there are so many barriers - have to find a non-union district (I may be willing to take a $50k pay cut, but I am intransigent in my refusal to join a union) - have to get all the certifications - so on.
We'll see how that works out. I will probably be the monkey that gets the shit beat out of him for trying to get the banana at the top of the ladder.
Yay for KDVT :-)
I work up here in PA for a different division of that company, but our div has an office on Bell Rd, just a couple blocks away from DVT. It's a fun place to visit... lots of toys just laying around everywhere..
I can think of several reasons not related to civil liability to go ahead and replace the batteries
1) The cost of the VRAD equipment is astronomical when you consider the labor of sorting out hundreds upon hundreds of burnt copper and fiber cables and replacing them at union labor rates
2) The cost of losing customers due to the unreliability caused by failing VRAD modules
3) The indirect cost of investors worrying about future revenue, depressing share price
The batteries from Avestor were NOT cheap, as has been insinuated elsewhere in this thread. As much as people bitch about telecom companies doing things "on the cheap" to make money, it's not true. The cost of servicing "cheap shit" in the field is far higher than simply buying "good shit" in the first place. This is why Comcast uses cable that costs $2-$3/ft in underground utility installations, rather than using cheap RG-9X from Home Depot.
The same logic goes for the batteries. They would much rather pay $500 for a battery than pay $250 for a battery and then another $500 to have a union contractor go out and replace it with another $250 battery - or God forbid, another $20K to replace the whole VRAD module when it spontaneously goes into low Earth orbit. That's what we call "cheap insurance."
In this case, it just so happened that the "cheap insurance" didn't work out.
I wonder why...
Needless to say, AT&T will not be able to recover anything from them. Hopefully none of the NiCd replacements explode - being incredibly toxic to the environment and all...