Having a laptop go to sleep when you close the lid is far from 'impossible' under linux. My iBook does that just fine, thanks to pbbuttonsd (which has many other power management features as well). Typically I get 4 hours out of a battery, and can go even longer if I'm not using the cd/dvd drive.
I am using the 2.6 kernel, if that makes any difference to anyone reading this.
All the keys can do is go up and down. That's it. They can't go side to side, or in and out, or round and round. If you can record the velocity of that key over time (and it's position of course) you have all the data you can have.
I remember thinking about this before, and I'm inclined to think you are right, now that you mention position. But yes, from this information you must perform calculations very rapidly in order to extrapolate both the feedback the simulated instrument would give and the sound that would be produced. That is probably too difficult to do with current technology. Unless it were done in hardware, which would doubtless be quite expensive, since if dedicated circuitry was required to do it at all, you'd have to build and test a lot of dedicated circuitry before getting it right. A good mathematical model would be the way to start, and the way to obtain that would be by taking accurate measurements.
I think electronic organs have a lot of potential as instruments, not only to sound like a pipe organ, but also to build on what a pipe organ can do. Unfortunately there aren't too many engineers working on this kind of thing because there is no money in it. Generally most purchases of electronic organs are made simply because they are cheaper than pipe organs.
As an organist, I'm going to have to point out that you really don't know what you are talking about. The solution of just measuring the key velocity over time does not work as a model for a tracker action organ.
The problem on a tracker action organ is not one of a piano, where the velocity of the key determines the velocity of the hammer, which in turn determines the sound. No, the key operates a level action, which opens a pallet (like a valve for admitting air to the pipe), which is held in place by a spring. So as you press the key, the resistance changes throughout the travel of the key. There is also an effect of wind pressure on the pallet. Depending on the size/shape of the pallet, and other variables in the wind system, this produces a feel we call 'pluck,' basically the resistance to getting it open.
Moreover, the speed at which the pallet is closed has a nontrivial effect on the sound. So you need to model that too. At the very least you would have to measure the position of the key, and have a mechanical mechanism change the resistance all the time in order to simulate the feel of the pallet.
But that's not really the half of it, if you think about it, to really model the opening of the valve to admit air, you are going to get into fluid dynamics, especially if modeling the shape of a specific pallet under a specific amount of wind pressure (opened and closed in a specific way) is a concern to you.
And yes, we like mechanical action organs because they allow us a greater degree of control over the sound than electronic action ones (both of which have pipes, I refer to the KEY action), almost a sensation of 'wind at one's fingertips.' Really, the pipe organ is a wind instrument that happens to be played by means of a lever action of some sort. A good player with a good touch at a well-regulated mechanical action can manipulate the flow of wind to produce a more expressive effect than the same player with an electronic action (that always opens and closes the pallets in the same way no matter what). The effect is audible, it is important, and it is not easy to electronically simulate.
I often feel the same way about comments that are so long that they end up having a 'read more' link on them. Often such posts end with an absurd conclusion, though what was presented initially seemed reasonable (almost as if the first half of the comment was 'bait'). Usually the rants are pretty easy to spot, and it's easy to avoid reading them. If not the tone the extended length usually gives them away.
In this case, not so rantish, or quite as long, but yes, there is an opinion that you may not agree with at the root of it. Essentially, I believe that we as a society should at least try to create equal opportunities for people, and that this inevitably will entail some redistribution of wealth. I'm not advocating the sort of handouts or aggressive taxation you probably oppose and appear to mock me for supporting. Naturally there are reasons why simply socking it the relatively well off in order to help the less well off creates social problems, among them people dependent on handouts, and capable people discouraged from being productive since so much of their income is confiscated.
I do wish the school funding was fairer in Ohio, and my desire for equal educational opportunity is the reason. Nearly everything is better handled by the private sector, but there are some things that can't be provided by any other entity than the government, and I think this kind of social justice is one of those things. How much effort the government needs to put into providing this depends of course on where you think the whim of fortune ends and personal responsibility begins.
If the taxpayers that actually who actually live in areas that need funds for roads and schools don't care enough to pay for them, then why should I care if they have substandard schools and pothole filled roads?
Here in Ohio at least, the school funding situation is more complicated than that. You see, schools are paid for by a property tax. The obvious problem is that regions of the state where property is worth more can raise more tax revenues this way, while still having a lower tax! Meanwhile poorer areas generally have much higher property taxes to pay for schools, while at the same time raising less revenue. Can you reasonably say that people in the poorer areas do not care about schools enough to pay for them? They are paying a much higher rate, but it is still not enough for them to be able to afford good schools.
There has been a huge debate about this in Ohio, reaching the State Supreme Court (which did decide the situation is unfair, but the legislature refuses to fix it, but that's another story). People from the wealthier areas make the exact same argument you do, for the exact same selfish reasons. Basically what you advocate is inferior government services to the poor. If they can't pay, why should you care?
Sorry, but I disagree with your position that all taxes you pay should either indirectly benefit everybody or directly benefit you. Some of what you pay is going to have to be for the good of other people. Whether or not you are altruistic or not, I don't care, because I believe there are people who have less than they deserve and that society is obligated to help them out. Especially where things like education are concerned, because that is the best way of allowing them to help themselves if they want to.
You may find this difficult to comprehend, but if done correctly, a little wealth redistribution goes a long way towards benefitting everybody, anyway.
Well, I can say that in their current position, it looks like record companies can ensure that online music distribution never becomes the main distribution medium. They are the ones setting the prices at which the music must be sold. As soon as the 'middle man', in this case Apple, starts getting too powerful, all they have to do is raise the cost of the music to Apple, thereby starving them of money. The whole point of the article is that Steve Jobs is just offering his company up for slaughter by the record companies. Apple will never become the primary provider of content if they have to compete with the record companies on their terms.
Now, whether this will actually happen, I dunno. I think Apple's strategy is a little more short term than this...
What is the deal with this, anyway? I've never seen an URL like this before. Looks like a combination of an URL and an email address. Obviously what is happening is that the link actually leads to the ip address and not www.citibank.com. However, I realized this only because of the context of the conversation here, not because I knew what it was beforehand.
Is the reason you can still use www.citibank.com because on that IP address (which is fake) there is a listening web server that accepts connections for www.citibank.com, even though it is not really www.citibank.com?
Man, this might have fooled me, and I'm considerably savvier than the average person. I might have wondered about the odd domain in the browser. Doing a DNS lookup of the real www.citibank.com would give away the scam, but generally I assumed that domains cannot be hijacked this way.
Someone with less knowledge of computers would be most unlikely to think the `@` symbol was anything more unusual than anything else in a domain name. Let's stay ahead of the scammers, people. Inform your less experienced friends and relatives.
15,000 rpm, eh? Bet it sounds like a jet taking off. Honestly, yes, the disk is the slowest thing in your system. In most of my usage, however, I don't use the disk very much. What do you need it for? Well, there's launching programs, loading the binary into memory. I do that about once and then leave the programs running all day. I'm satisfied with the launch times, especially given how easily and quickly I can switch between processes that are already in memory.
What else is there? Every now and then you need to load or save a data file. If you are doing multimedia where you have a lot of raw data to read and write off the disk, having a super fast one would doubtless make a huge difference in performance (provided the system bus could handle it, but that's another matter). But not for me, my files aren't very big and I don't perform these operations nearly enough to care.
Now, what would make my system appear much slower would be if I had less RAM, causing virtual memory (swapping fast RAM to much slower disk) to be necessary. That would really make things grind to a halt. Yes, I'm trying to make a point here. Maybe for you that 15,000rpm disk is important enough to be able to justify the cost, but the first performance upgrade most users are going to need and will be able to see immediate results from is adding another stick or two of RAM. It's cheaper too!
I think for most people a disk that fast is overkill, just trying to shave a second or two (maybe a lot less) off an infrequently performed operation. Sure, it feels faster using it, and maybe that improves your mood or something, but perceptions aside, it really isn't that much faster. It would be nice if you had a computer that could do everything you could ever require of it all at once, instantly, but back in reality you have to ask yourself how much of a premium you are willing to pay for a tiny pinch of time.
Is systemic. These being 'persistent' worlds, they permit somebody to spend all their time in them, 16 hours a day if they like (although that is an extreme example). Yet the only way to get anywhere faster in the game is to spend more time at it.
Ordinary, casual gamers are forced to compete with everyone else in the game for the status/level of accomplishment they want, and to do this they have to run on a treadmill that just keeps getting steeper. Most people cannot devote 8 hours a day to the game, for the average person, even an hour every day works out to quit a lot.
Anybody who doesn't have some kind of obsession with in game achievements (which are NOT IMPORTANT, it's supposed to be a game, fun, not a substitute for real life), is eventually going to throw up their hands, questioning "How many rats do I have to kill?!" What happens is that the distance between the levels/goals you want to achieve keeps getting broader, yet the activities to reach them don't get consistently more challenging. It's just the same old repetition, and once it goes on long enough without you getting anywhere, you have to question the legitimacy of your goal. Is getting there really fun, or are you only trying to get there to get ahead of other people? If it's the latter, the game is probably adding more stress to your life than it relieves.
For the people on top, who essentially have free run of the game, it is fun, but to get to their level you have to spend ungodly amounts of time in the game, to the point where it is overwhelming your entire life. But that's the only way to get there. If they didn't do it, someone else would. Remember what I said about status in-game being the result of a competition between all the players, with those who spend the most time winning?
Everybody wants to feel like a winner, in life or even in any game where there is competition. But you have to ask yourself at some point, do I want to be a winner at point and click killing? The best trader of nonexistent commodities? How much are you willing to sacrifice for these things? For most people, MMORPGs make the sacrifice far too great.
Yeah, but they never talk about things that aren't around, or abstract concepts. Are they sentient? They don't seem to have cognition, just the ability to name concrete things and actions.
I was fooled by the sign language thing for a while too until I explored in more detail what apes talk about. My conclusion is that they that lack the abstraction ability that humans have, even if they are self aware. It's definitely a lower form of sentience, if it is sentience at all.
Actually, Poland was pretty much run by the Soviets during the Cold War. They were quite behind the Iron Curtain, certainly east of East Germany, which was where the Iron Curtain ended. I don't consider 'Eastern Bloc' and 'Former Soviet Country' to mean two different things, dunno about anybody else.
I don't know about NiftyTelnet, but if you're on OS X, the plain command line ssh (openssh) should do it. If it doesn't work at first, try ssh -X to force X tunneling.
This explanation is a bit vague, enough to be somewhat inaccurate. If you execute ssh from the Terminal in OS X, X forwarding will not work no matter what you do. You have to run Apple's X11 application, then run an Xterm, then do 'ssh -X wherever'. That is how it is if you are just using the X11 implementation Apple provided you with, not if you installed it yourself. Dunno about the latter situation.
The distinction of 'server' versus 'desktop' processors is just another marketing term. I tend to look at the price of the chips to see if they should reasonably be compared, and frankly, the G5 looks to me to cost just as much as the Opteron, at least. You can say 'server' and 'desktop' all you want, but that won't make reality different. You even throw in the word 'workstation' to describe the Opteron (and the Xeon). So since the G5 is a really powerful 'desktop' computer, with performance comparable to a 'workstation', it must be really good! I'm not saying the performance is bad, but come on, when I want to see how fast a processor calculates, I want to see how fast it flips bits, all right? We use numbers to describe the speed of the various kinds of bit flipping, not these meaningless words that avoid the issue.
I use Apple products, and I think they are generally of good quality. But it has been obvious to me for some time that their marketing department lies. Well, no big deal, that is more or less what marketing is. What really bothers me about the platform is that there are so many clueless zealots out there who take the lies as gospel truth. And who also think when they see my laptop that I am one of the brethren, and can join in the repetition of whatever term Apple has labeled a standard technology with, the mocking of other platforms, etc. When in reality, I just don't care. That's right, I'm a platform agnostic, and as far as I can tell, the G5 is not clearly the fastest processor in the same price range as other processors. The performance is comparable (stronger floating point than the x86 processor, but weaker int), but not far and away faster.
You can repeat the Apple marketing mantra all you want, but the fact remains that for about the same price I can put together a 64-bit x86 system today that is in the same performance category as the G5. We'll see how much IBM can increase the Mhz, but for now, saying the G5 is the fastest 'desktop' system ever simply in order to exclude the competition is just blindly believing whatever Apple Computer tells you. The benchmarks say nothing so spectacular, no sense redoing them ad naseum.
Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines today. I want to remake the internet. Only this time, I want the users to be the ones who own and operate all the infrastructure - Everybody runs a node, and each person gets to decide what they will allow to be routed through their node. Don't like my decision? Nobody is forcing you to use my node, and this is unlicensed spectrum anyway. Heck, if you want access to my node (or to get access to my server on my node), you might even have to be someone I know, or be prepared to crack some much more serious encryption than WEP.
That's right, wireless is the answer. We'll start small, local networks, then gradually expand. I know there are problems with the tech, but we have to start somewhere.
I'll be busy connecting one building to the adjacent one on campus using a network that never touches the old internet and then repeating the process if you need me...
The FCC and many other Federal government regulatory agencies are created by laws passed by Congress. These agencies enforce other laws passed by Congress. Congress makes all the laws, and cannot delegate that authority. Congress also has the power to question the actions of agencies it creates, and they frequently do, by holding hearings.
If an agency is behaving in a way Congress does not like, it is probably because the laws they are allowed to enforce are permitting them to do so. But since Congress holds all the lawmaking power, they can rapidly bring a government agency into line by changing the laws that are allowing the behavior they want to stop.
Basically, the FCC is not finished, nothing nearly so drastic - for that to happen Congress would have to cut off their money, which is possible but very unlikely, as there is a need for some sort of agency to regulate the airwaves. But if the measure to reverse their decision passes both houses of Congress and is signed by the president, then it becomes law and the FCC is bound by it.
No, the American system is not quite like the British Parliamentary system, where the government is permitted to completely collapse at any moment. Foof!
Congress is allowed to make laws that create regulatory bodies that enforce other laws. Like the FBI, IRS, or the FCC, for instance. This is not an abuse of power, merely a delegation of their regulatory authority. However, there have been conflicts in the past concerning whether agencies of the Federal government were encroaching upon the rights of states to regulate things that happen exclusively within the borders of a single state. This conflict is not new, but I doubt it applies here as broadcasting often takes place across state lines, is operated by companies existing in several states, etc.
Trust me, the FCC is still quite subservient to Congress, which is why Congress held hearings questioning what they were doing, and the Senate, if not Congress as a whole, has decided to overrule them if possible. Congress can do other things that are more subtle to punish an agency like the FCC if they are so inclined, since Congress holds the purse strings for government spending. That the President has a veto is just part of the system of checks and balances.
One thing Congress cannot delegate is their law-making power. I wish I could remember the Supreme Court decision, but I only recall that this was decided during the 1930s after a conflict with one of FDR's agencies created to regulate industry (which was creating regulations in addition to enforcing them). Perhaps that was your point here. This may in fact be the source of the current concern the Senate has with the FCC. The FCC may be enforcing the laws in a way that the Senate feels is distorting their intentions, in which case Congress as a meta-regulatory body has to step in and correct the FCC, by changing laws. True enough, only Congress can make laws.
I'm sorry, allow me to rephrase that: "the level of poverty in rural areas, and Oberlin in particular, is much, much higher than in urban areas." I didn't mean "unbelievably poor" in the absolute sense, just relative to the rest of the USA.
I think what you really mean, is relative to the people who live on either coast.
The movie theatre charges something like $4
Shit, did the price go up? I thought it was three for the little one screen theater downtown. Maybe it is four. Incidentally, I think it is a much better deal - I've paid $10 in theatres that were just as crappy but located somewhere else. Just because something costs more doesn't always mean it is better.
Many stores use mechanical cash registers!
Gibson's does, but I think they are trying to maintain an antique flavor, more than out of economic necessity. They recently expanded their store, practically doubling the floorspace. Gibson's is a rather unusual case (being a tiny little grocery store very close to the college) - I am willing to bet that almost all their sales come from students who don't realize or care how high the prices are there compared to other places. Giving the appearance of poverty likely helps their cause. I doubt there is anyone else in the area still using mechanical registers.
As for the credit card thing, I would ask which grocery store you went to. There is one on the outskirts of town by the McDonald's (I think I forgot the name, it is Missler's?) but I don't think most of the residents shop there, since there is one much closer to the population center of town that has better stuff at lower prices (I really forgot the name of that one) . I've never seen many cars at the place I think is Missler's, while the other store does a brisk business. I had no trouble with my card there, but I can't vouch for Missler's, as I haven't shopped there in a long time.
You're right, in the grand scheme of the entire world, they're not poor.
Hell, I think even in the grand scheme of the state of Ohio, they're not poor. There are certainly much poorer regions of the state. Maybe they are not making the median national income, maybe. Also, to bring up a point you made in your initial post, the reasons for their lower income (which may not be as low as you think it is) probably have little to do with their being 'resistant to change', ie more socially conservative than San Fransisco residents!
As long as your name is not Kyle, been worthwhile talking to you. If by some strange chance it is Kyle, please inform me that I might add you to my foes list.
My girlfriend goes to Oberlin College, in the tiny town of Oberlin, OH. The people there are unbelievably poor
No, actually they aren't, just not nearly as rich as someone who can afford to pay $36,000+ per year in tuition and expenses. Damn, but I am sick of dealing with the arrogant, spoiled children of wealthy people at Oberlin. Calling the citizens of the Oberlin town 'poor' is just another example of how warped their perspective really is due to their sheltered upbringings. One common mistake they make is exaggerated shock at the 'poor' people who don't drive brand new luxury cars and eat every meal in restaurants. Then again, when you attend a college that raised the tuition more than the entire tuition of a typical state school last year, I suppose you must have a different take on poverty.
Seriously, there are kids at Oberlin who have a meal plan (required, ~$1000) that they do not eat from, due to a preference for restaurant fare. They also do a lot of cocaine, and every quarter they show up at the mailroom to pick up their dividend checks, dressed in their usual hippy garb.
The local population must look unbelievably poor to them.
They have perfect pitch.. ALL of them... I believe it has something to do with how their language is spoken.
What idiot marked this a troll? Probably an editor. Actually, it is true that speakers of highly inflected Eastern languages like Korean, Chinese, and Vietnamese (I guess, though Vietnamese is outside my experience) have a much easier time with the perception of musical pitch. They have to a develop a more accurate ability to perceive pitch because shifts in pitch and tone differentiate precise meanings in their language, rather than simply conveying shifts in emotion like Western languages, which are not so precise in their inflection.
As an (almost) unrelated aside, another concert peeve of mine - Volume.
You do realize that the people who run the mix boards are frequently failed musicians, right? A lot of the time, they are the ones who drove themselves somewhat deaf playing too loud. With all the great technology they have these days, there is simply no excuse for bad sound. Yet it still happens because nobody else wants to ride on a tour bus and make bad pay just to feel like they are a successful musician.
PS: "Perfect pitch" to me means "being able to identify notes by ear without a reference" rather than "being able to sing on-key" (though I guess the two usually go together).
Nah. Relative pitch (the ability to perceive the differences between intervals) is sufficient to be able to sing pitches accurately within a key and even when moving through many keys. As for being able to identify notes without a reference, that's not really true either. Paul Hindemith, the well-known German composer and music educator, wrote that so called 'perfect pitch' was merely a function of the performer's memory - that is the reference. There is a lot of controversy and smoke and mirrors surrounding the subject, but I think Hindemith was right. When you work with music for many hours each day for an extended period of time, you remember what the notes sound like. Simple as that. Train your perception, and you can perform feats with it.
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Having a laptop go to sleep when you close the lid is far from 'impossible' under linux. My iBook does that just fine, thanks to pbbuttonsd (which has many other power management features as well). Typically I get 4 hours out of a battery, and can go even longer if I'm not using the cd/dvd drive.
I am using the 2.6 kernel, if that makes any difference to anyone reading this.
I remember thinking about this before, and I'm inclined to think you are right, now that you mention position. But yes, from this information you must perform calculations very rapidly in order to extrapolate both the feedback the simulated instrument would give and the sound that would be produced. That is probably too difficult to do with current technology. Unless it were done in hardware, which would doubtless be quite expensive, since if dedicated circuitry was required to do it at all, you'd have to build and test a lot of dedicated circuitry before getting it right. A good mathematical model would be the way to start, and the way to obtain that would be by taking accurate measurements.
I think electronic organs have a lot of potential as instruments, not only to sound like a pipe organ, but also to build on what a pipe organ can do. Unfortunately there aren't too many engineers working on this kind of thing because there is no money in it. Generally most purchases of electronic organs are made simply because they are cheaper than pipe organs.
The problem on a tracker action organ is not one of a piano, where the velocity of the key determines the velocity of the hammer, which in turn determines the sound. No, the key operates a level action, which opens a pallet (like a valve for admitting air to the pipe), which is held in place by a spring. So as you press the key, the resistance changes throughout the travel of the key. There is also an effect of wind pressure on the pallet. Depending on the size/shape of the pallet, and other variables in the wind system, this produces a feel we call 'pluck,' basically the resistance to getting it open.
Moreover, the speed at which the pallet is closed has a nontrivial effect on the sound. So you need to model that too. At the very least you would have to measure the position of the key, and have a mechanical mechanism change the resistance all the time in order to simulate the feel of the pallet.
But that's not really the half of it, if you think about it, to really model the opening of the valve to admit air, you are going to get into fluid dynamics, especially if modeling the shape of a specific pallet under a specific amount of wind pressure (opened and closed in a specific way) is a concern to you.
And yes, we like mechanical action organs because they allow us a greater degree of control over the sound than electronic action ones (both of which have pipes, I refer to the KEY action), almost a sensation of 'wind at one's fingertips.' Really, the pipe organ is a wind instrument that happens to be played by means of a lever action of some sort. A good player with a good touch at a well-regulated mechanical action can manipulate the flow of wind to produce a more expressive effect than the same player with an electronic action (that always opens and closes the pallets in the same way no matter what). The effect is audible, it is important, and it is not easy to electronically simulate.
Is this necessary on all filesystems, or just windows ones?
So motion powered watches were invented before, then? Or did it have some kind of magic spring?
I often feel the same way about comments that are so long that they end up having a 'read more' link on them. Often such posts end with an absurd conclusion, though what was presented initially seemed reasonable (almost as if the first half of the comment was 'bait'). Usually the rants are pretty easy to spot, and it's easy to avoid reading them. If not the tone the extended length usually gives them away.
In this case, not so rantish, or quite as long, but yes, there is an opinion that you may not agree with at the root of it. Essentially, I believe that we as a society should at least try to create equal opportunities for people, and that this inevitably will entail some redistribution of wealth. I'm not advocating the sort of handouts or aggressive taxation you probably oppose and appear to mock me for supporting. Naturally there are reasons why simply socking it the relatively well off in order to help the less well off creates social problems, among them people dependent on handouts, and capable people discouraged from being productive since so much of their income is confiscated.
I do wish the school funding was fairer in Ohio, and my desire for equal educational opportunity is the reason. Nearly everything is better handled by the private sector, but there are some things that can't be provided by any other entity than the government, and I think this kind of social justice is one of those things. How much effort the government needs to put into providing this depends of course on where you think the whim of fortune ends and personal responsibility begins.
Like this post? It's pretty long, too.
Wow, that's nearly eight hours a day, every single day of the year. What do you do for a living?
Here in Ohio at least, the school funding situation is more complicated than that. You see, schools are paid for by a property tax. The obvious problem is that regions of the state where property is worth more can raise more tax revenues this way, while still having a lower tax! Meanwhile poorer areas generally have much higher property taxes to pay for schools, while at the same time raising less revenue. Can you reasonably say that people in the poorer areas do not care about schools enough to pay for them? They are paying a much higher rate, but it is still not enough for them to be able to afford good schools.
There has been a huge debate about this in Ohio, reaching the State Supreme Court (which did decide the situation is unfair, but the legislature refuses to fix it, but that's another story). People from the wealthier areas make the exact same argument you do, for the exact same selfish reasons. Basically what you advocate is inferior government services to the poor. If they can't pay, why should you care?
Sorry, but I disagree with your position that all taxes you pay should either indirectly benefit everybody or directly benefit you. Some of what you pay is going to have to be for the good of other people. Whether or not you are altruistic or not, I don't care, because I believe there are people who have less than they deserve and that society is obligated to help them out. Especially where things like education are concerned, because that is the best way of allowing them to help themselves if they want to.
You may find this difficult to comprehend, but if done correctly, a little wealth redistribution goes a long way towards benefitting everybody, anyway.
Well, I can say that in their current position, it looks like record companies can ensure that online music distribution never becomes the main distribution medium. They are the ones setting the prices at which the music must be sold. As soon as the 'middle man', in this case Apple, starts getting too powerful, all they have to do is raise the cost of the music to Apple, thereby starving them of money. The whole point of the article is that Steve Jobs is just offering his company up for slaughter by the record companies. Apple will never become the primary provider of content if they have to compete with the record companies on their terms.
Now, whether this will actually happen, I dunno. I think Apple's strategy is a little more short term than this...
What is the deal with this, anyway? I've never seen an URL like this before. Looks like a combination of an URL and an email address. Obviously what is happening is that the link actually leads to the ip address and not www.citibank.com. However, I realized this only because of the context of the conversation here, not because I knew what it was beforehand.
Is the reason you can still use www.citibank.com because on that IP address (which is fake) there is a listening web server that accepts connections for www.citibank.com, even though it is not really www.citibank.com?
Man, this might have fooled me, and I'm considerably savvier than the average person. I might have wondered about the odd domain in the browser. Doing a DNS lookup of the real www.citibank.com would give away the scam, but generally I assumed that domains cannot be hijacked this way.
Someone with less knowledge of computers would be most unlikely to think the `@` symbol was anything more unusual than anything else in a domain name. Let's stay ahead of the scammers, people. Inform your less experienced friends and relatives.
15,000 rpm, eh? Bet it sounds like a jet taking off. Honestly, yes, the disk is the slowest thing in your system. In most of my usage, however, I don't use the disk very much. What do you need it for? Well, there's launching programs, loading the binary into memory. I do that about once and then leave the programs running all day. I'm satisfied with the launch times, especially given how easily and quickly I can switch between processes that are already in memory.
What else is there? Every now and then you need to load or save a data file. If you are doing multimedia where you have a lot of raw data to read and write off the disk, having a super fast one would doubtless make a huge difference in performance (provided the system bus could handle it, but that's another matter). But not for me, my files aren't very big and I don't perform these operations nearly enough to care.
Now, what would make my system appear much slower would be if I had less RAM, causing virtual memory (swapping fast RAM to much slower disk) to be necessary. That would really make things grind to a halt. Yes, I'm trying to make a point here. Maybe for you that 15,000rpm disk is important enough to be able to justify the cost, but the first performance upgrade most users are going to need and will be able to see immediate results from is adding another stick or two of RAM. It's cheaper too!
I think for most people a disk that fast is overkill, just trying to shave a second or two (maybe a lot less) off an infrequently performed operation. Sure, it feels faster using it, and maybe that improves your mood or something, but perceptions aside, it really isn't that much faster. It would be nice if you had a computer that could do everything you could ever require of it all at once, instantly, but back in reality you have to ask yourself how much of a premium you are willing to pay for a tiny pinch of time.
Is systemic. These being 'persistent' worlds, they permit somebody to spend all their time in them, 16 hours a day if they like (although that is an extreme example). Yet the only way to get anywhere faster in the game is to spend more time at it.
Ordinary, casual gamers are forced to compete with everyone else in the game for the status/level of accomplishment they want, and to do this they have to run on a treadmill that just keeps getting steeper. Most people cannot devote 8 hours a day to the game, for the average person, even an hour every day works out to quit a lot.
Anybody who doesn't have some kind of obsession with in game achievements (which are NOT IMPORTANT, it's supposed to be a game, fun, not a substitute for real life), is eventually going to throw up their hands, questioning "How many rats do I have to kill?!" What happens is that the distance between the levels/goals you want to achieve keeps getting broader, yet the activities to reach them don't get consistently more challenging. It's just the same old repetition, and once it goes on long enough without you getting anywhere, you have to question the legitimacy of your goal. Is getting there really fun, or are you only trying to get there to get ahead of other people? If it's the latter, the game is probably adding more stress to your life than it relieves.
For the people on top, who essentially have free run of the game, it is fun, but to get to their level you have to spend ungodly amounts of time in the game, to the point where it is overwhelming your entire life. But that's the only way to get there. If they didn't do it, someone else would. Remember what I said about status in-game being the result of a competition between all the players, with those who spend the most time winning?
Everybody wants to feel like a winner, in life or even in any game where there is competition. But you have to ask yourself at some point, do I want to be a winner at point and click killing? The best trader of nonexistent commodities? How much are you willing to sacrifice for these things? For most people, MMORPGs make the sacrifice far too great.
Yeah, but they never talk about things that aren't around, or abstract concepts. Are they sentient? They don't seem to have cognition, just the ability to name concrete things and actions.
I was fooled by the sign language thing for a while too until I explored in more detail what apes talk about. My conclusion is that they that lack the abstraction ability that humans have, even if they are self aware. It's definitely a lower form of sentience, if it is sentience at all.
Actually, Poland was pretty much run by the Soviets during the Cold War. They were quite behind the Iron Curtain, certainly east of East Germany, which was where the Iron Curtain ended. I don't consider 'Eastern Bloc' and 'Former Soviet Country' to mean two different things, dunno about anybody else.
This explanation is a bit vague, enough to be somewhat inaccurate. If you execute ssh from the Terminal in OS X, X forwarding will not work no matter what you do. You have to run Apple's X11 application, then run an Xterm, then do 'ssh -X wherever'. That is how it is if you are just using the X11 implementation Apple provided you with, not if you installed it yourself. Dunno about the latter situation.
I do it this way all the time, very useful.
The distinction of 'server' versus 'desktop' processors is just another marketing term. I tend to look at the price of the chips to see if they should reasonably be compared, and frankly, the G5 looks to me to cost just as much as the Opteron, at least. You can say 'server' and 'desktop' all you want, but that won't make reality different. You even throw in the word 'workstation' to describe the Opteron (and the Xeon). So since the G5 is a really powerful 'desktop' computer, with performance comparable to a 'workstation', it must be really good! I'm not saying the performance is bad, but come on, when I want to see how fast a processor calculates, I want to see how fast it flips bits, all right? We use numbers to describe the speed of the various kinds of bit flipping, not these meaningless words that avoid the issue.
I use Apple products, and I think they are generally of good quality. But it has been obvious to me for some time that their marketing department lies. Well, no big deal, that is more or less what marketing is. What really bothers me about the platform is that there are so many clueless zealots out there who take the lies as gospel truth. And who also think when they see my laptop that I am one of the brethren, and can join in the repetition of whatever term Apple has labeled a standard technology with, the mocking of other platforms, etc. When in reality, I just don't care. That's right, I'm a platform agnostic, and as far as I can tell, the G5 is not clearly the fastest processor in the same price range as other processors. The performance is comparable (stronger floating point than the x86 processor, but weaker int), but not far and away faster.
You can repeat the Apple marketing mantra all you want, but the fact remains that for about the same price I can put together a 64-bit x86 system today that is in the same performance category as the G5. We'll see how much IBM can increase the Mhz, but for now, saying the G5 is the fastest 'desktop' system ever simply in order to exclude the competition is just blindly believing whatever Apple Computer tells you. The benchmarks say nothing so spectacular, no sense redoing them ad naseum.
Yeah, I was thinking along similar lines today. I want to remake the internet. Only this time, I want the users to be the ones who own and operate all the infrastructure - Everybody runs a node, and each person gets to decide what they will allow to be routed through their node. Don't like my decision? Nobody is forcing you to use my node, and this is unlicensed spectrum anyway. Heck, if you want access to my node (or to get access to my server on my node), you might even have to be someone I know, or be prepared to crack some much more serious encryption than WEP.
That's right, wireless is the answer. We'll start small, local networks, then gradually expand. I know there are problems with the tech, but we have to start somewhere.
I'll be busy connecting one building to the adjacent one on campus using a network that never touches the old internet and then repeating the process if you need me...
The FCC and many other Federal government regulatory agencies are created by laws passed by Congress. These agencies enforce other laws passed by Congress. Congress makes all the laws, and cannot delegate that authority. Congress also has the power to question the actions of agencies it creates, and they frequently do, by holding hearings.
If an agency is behaving in a way Congress does not like, it is probably because the laws they are allowed to enforce are permitting them to do so. But since Congress holds all the lawmaking power, they can rapidly bring a government agency into line by changing the laws that are allowing the behavior they want to stop.
Basically, the FCC is not finished, nothing nearly so drastic - for that to happen Congress would have to cut off their money, which is possible but very unlikely, as there is a need for some sort of agency to regulate the airwaves. But if the measure to reverse their decision passes both houses of Congress and is signed by the president, then it becomes law and the FCC is bound by it.
No, the American system is not quite like the British Parliamentary system, where the government is permitted to completely collapse at any moment. Foof!
Congress is allowed to make laws that create regulatory bodies that enforce other laws. Like the FBI, IRS, or the FCC, for instance. This is not an abuse of power, merely a delegation of their regulatory authority. However, there have been conflicts in the past concerning whether agencies of the Federal government were encroaching upon the rights of states to regulate things that happen exclusively within the borders of a single state. This conflict is not new, but I doubt it applies here as broadcasting often takes place across state lines, is operated by companies existing in several states, etc.
Trust me, the FCC is still quite subservient to Congress, which is why Congress held hearings questioning what they were doing, and the Senate, if not Congress as a whole, has decided to overrule them if possible. Congress can do other things that are more subtle to punish an agency like the FCC if they are so inclined, since Congress holds the purse strings for government spending. That the President has a veto is just part of the system of checks and balances.
One thing Congress cannot delegate is their law-making power. I wish I could remember the Supreme Court decision, but I only recall that this was decided during the 1930s after a conflict with one of FDR's agencies created to regulate industry (which was creating regulations in addition to enforcing them). Perhaps that was your point here. This may in fact be the source of the current concern the Senate has with the FCC. The FCC may be enforcing the laws in a way that the Senate feels is distorting their intentions, in which case Congress as a meta-regulatory body has to step in and correct the FCC, by changing laws. True enough, only Congress can make laws.
Would it truly be a pleasant world, that we would need our perceptions continually altered in order to endure it?
I think what you really mean, is relative to the people who live on either coast.
Shit, did the price go up? I thought it was three for the little one screen theater downtown. Maybe it is four. Incidentally, I think it is a much better deal - I've paid $10 in theatres that were just as crappy but located somewhere else. Just because something costs more doesn't always mean it is better.
Gibson's does, but I think they are trying to maintain an antique flavor, more than out of economic necessity. They recently expanded their store, practically doubling the floorspace. Gibson's is a rather unusual case (being a tiny little grocery store very close to the college) - I am willing to bet that almost all their sales come from students who don't realize or care how high the prices are there compared to other places. Giving the appearance of poverty likely helps their cause. I doubt there is anyone else in the area still using mechanical registers.
As for the credit card thing, I would ask which grocery store you went to. There is one on the outskirts of town by the McDonald's (I think I forgot the name, it is Missler's?) but I don't think most of the residents shop there, since there is one much closer to the population center of town that has better stuff at lower prices (I really forgot the name of that one) . I've never seen many cars at the place I think is Missler's, while the other store does a brisk business. I had no trouble with my card there, but I can't vouch for Missler's, as I haven't shopped there in a long time.
Hell, I think even in the grand scheme of the state of Ohio, they're not poor. There are certainly much poorer regions of the state. Maybe they are not making the median national income, maybe. Also, to bring up a point you made in your initial post, the reasons for their lower income (which may not be as low as you think it is) probably have little to do with their being 'resistant to change', ie more socially conservative than San Fransisco residents!
As long as your name is not Kyle, been worthwhile talking to you. If by some strange chance it is Kyle, please inform me that I might add you to my foes list.
No, actually they aren't, just not nearly as rich as someone who can afford to pay $36,000+ per year in tuition and expenses. Damn, but I am sick of dealing with the arrogant, spoiled children of wealthy people at Oberlin. Calling the citizens of the Oberlin town 'poor' is just another example of how warped their perspective really is due to their sheltered upbringings. One common mistake they make is exaggerated shock at the 'poor' people who don't drive brand new luxury cars and eat every meal in restaurants. Then again, when you attend a college that raised the tuition more than the entire tuition of a typical state school last year, I suppose you must have a different take on poverty.
Seriously, there are kids at Oberlin who have a meal plan (required, ~$1000) that they do not eat from, due to a preference for restaurant fare. They also do a lot of cocaine, and every quarter they show up at the mailroom to pick up their dividend checks, dressed in their usual hippy garb.
The local population must look unbelievably poor to them.