I wonder if the paint ever wears out, or stops working after a certain number of cycles or amount of time.
Since my ebay-infected mother recently dug up our old toy cars to see whether some were in a condition to be sold before giving the rest of them away (there seems to be quite a number of collectors looking for 20 year old Matchbox cars):
It still works without problems after at least 15 years; though I don't remember using the colorchange more than a couple of "wow, that's cool"-times after I got it back then.
P.S. Don't expect to get much money for your children's Matchbox cars if they watched movies like "Smokey and the Bandit" or series like "The Fall Guy"..;-))
The amateuer/pro thing really depends on the sport (and the country).
Non topstar athletes might have some sort of additional support (a state sponsored coach, paid travel expenses) but often also a - maybe part time - job.
I know some cases where the athlete mentioned his/her employer's support in an interview ("..am happy and want to thank my friends, family and boss at $villageBank for giving me the the time to prepare yaddayadda").
In Germany it's also not that unusual to have "athlete soldiers" that enlist for a few years and get special support from the military (they also support male athletes if they get drafted).
But mainly there is the "Deutsche Sporthilfe" ("German sport help"), a foundation that pays prize money if you win international medals for example,
They also support "potential" winners by offering some services (e.g. help to get private lessons if you still go to school and missed some classes because you attended the Olympics or world championships) or compensation of a part of the sport related expenses.
Anyway, there are at least some real amateurs there; I went to school with a couple of them (field hockey players).:-)
They were all students and AFAIK two of them got a little sponsoring (saw them driving a Mercedes Smart plastered with "Team Athens 2004" labels) and years ago I heard of other "potentials" getting some support money. I don't remember how much, but the "Sporthilfe" states that they currently pay a total of 12 million Euros per year to 35000 athletes; and even if you don't subtract from that the somewhat bigger prize money for gold medal winners, thats only 340Euro per year and athlete. The maximum sum I found on their website was 350 Euro/month for people that are good enough to (constantly) qualify for their "elite program".
Though at least my former classmates got some cash (IIRC 15000 Euro) and some sponsored gifts (a cruise for example) after winning the gold medal;-)
And probably a little money for PR appearances during their "15 minutes"; but I think most of them were charitable things or autogram sessions at $localevent or invitations of the "paid weekend trip for the team to visit $event and we take a picture"-kind".
But definitely nothing to make a living; for example, I know of anotherone of that team that quit the national team directly afterwards because she needs the time to finish her studies of medicine.
To sum it up: in Germany some sports have pro league(s) (soccer, basketball, icehockey, maybe handball and volleyball), but most sports don't.
Most of the not-a-teamsport athletes are amateurs or amateurs with some sponsoring, but I think only very, very few are popular enough to be sponsored that they do not have another job to pay the bills (besides the handful ATP/WTA level tennis players or Formula One stars).
I can't name one that I am sure of, but I am sure that all of them will need a job (and hence at least some sort of education/job training while being an athlete) after they quit their athlete career.
I think some of the top ones might be fulltime athletes with sponsors that offer them a paid job training and maybe a job afterwards.
Actually, I see three "journalistic power house" stories on the front page at the moment:
this one, "Microsoft Receives Open Source VIP Blessing" and "Introverts Have More Brain Activity?"
Actually, I don't like the censoring of speech and didn't mean that one should be punished and one shouldn't.
But for me there are still differences:
One guy questions a popular religion. Another guy questions a popular view of history.
In both cases, they are punished for questioning a popular view.
FOR ME, on one side is a 17 yo dumbass "posting inflammatory remarks about Malay Muslims" , on the other a whole political organization dedicated to push their "revised" view of history and hate, working with other racist groups and parties whose supporters/members like to beat up, torture and kill foreigners.(*)
FOR ME religion is a point of view a personal belief.
For the "view of history": it isn't that far back in time!
We are not (YET!) talking about what happend in $WAR 3000 years ago.
You are still able to talk to concentration camp survivors (I did) , guards, SS troopers,
authenticate their diaries, can find photos and movies, German government documents, mass graves, you name it.
I am not in favor of the criminal offences, but I am definitely in favor of stopping the propagation of that crap as long as it isn't a matter of "One wrote X, one wrote Y. We will never know what happened. Let's teach both.".
So FOR ME, there is a difference in those cases.
(*) I know it's not really the same as there is the whole separation of church and state angle,
but it still reminds me of the evolution/creationism debate in the US:
talk about ID as much a you want in your blog, but don't try to force it into text books.
(Especially if there are still people and media around that can testify the species evolving;-))
Just wanted to add that the convicted nazi and self-claimed "historian" is the former director of the IHR (source for the parents link).
And "entrapment"? Give me a break:
Why does someone go to "discuss" his hate speech with a public prosecutor?
You know, someone who doesn't make the laws but might be required to enforce their violations if you cite your bullshit at your "discussion" with him?
Sounds more like attention whoring with intended public political martyrdom to me.
BTW. The verdict (still) isn't without controversy in Germany because of the free speech/censoring angle of "can you legally be prosecuted if you upload your content to a foreign server" and whether jail is the wrong kind of punishment.
Also, for me there is a difference between some 17 year old blogger and a guy trying to rewrite history for decades.
(Oh, and to address the "All Hail Europe": does the name Dimitry Sklyarov ring a bell?)
At my university faculties with high water consumption got those "waterless" urinals installed to save water(*).
THEY STINK!
I guess they aren't designed for the number of students using them
as you can hardly breath in the bathrooms now and your eyes start watering if you enter them.
Those "water savers" have driven me to only use the toilets and they are models that flush the whole tank.
Installing water tanks like the models with a "stop flushing"-button probably would have saved more water.
If you don't have windows or a superb ventilation system for the bathroom: don't install them or you will have to issue gas masks for people to survive the smell.
(*)
Well, had the bureaucrats bothered to ask the faculty before simply sending in the workers breaking out the old urinals one morning,
somebody might have told them that the unusual high water consumption in our building just MIGHT have something to do with the roofed over gardens in the inner courtyards and their automated irrigation system..;-)
Are driving schools located in most major cities, or does one have to travel to one and pay room and board?
Driving schools are rather small and both teach theory/rules (you have to take about 12 lessons, a first aid course and a final exam) and driving.
I live in a major city and there are at least 6 driving schools within a walking distance of 15 minutes;
using a bicylce there are probably 10-15 schools I can reach within 15 minutes;
using public transport..uh, probably lots more.
And even in a somewhat "rural" smaller city (about 5000 people) I often visit there are one or two schools.
Also, often there are additional options like getting picked up at home by the one having the lesson before you and you drive him/her home.
I also once saw a sign from a school that used a bus as a classroom on wheels for the theory lessons.
Think of a "lesson 4 of 12: next week, same time, same place (Tuesday, 7 p.m., someCentralPlace's parking lot)"-concept.
Say you have a new driver and a new car. How can this new driver practice driving if you need plates to practice driving but you need a licence to get plates?
Obviously by not using his own car?
AFAIK in the US you can get a learners permit and practice driving if someone with a licence is with you?
This is not possible in Germany an I suppose it is similar in the UK and other EU countries:
to get a licence in Germany, you have to go to a driving school, pay for driving lessons with an instructor and use a special driving school car ("normal" cars with a "driving school" sign and some alterations so that the instructor can for example hit the brakes too).
I think that this will probably cost them money.
If you know that you will be "caught" and have to pay everytime you speed, you probably won't do it if you really don't have to.
So my guess is that they will spend a lot of money to install such a system and afterwards will lose lots of money because of less people speeding.
I think it is more likely that the system will be used to create a giant toll system.
"if you find this thing cheaper anywhere, we will return to you the price difference". I've never tried if this actually works.
Well, for the one electronics chain that I know off that has the same policy, the catch is the definition of "anywhere".
That's "anywhere in a reasonable area" (probably the same city) so they don't have tom compete with online stores for example.
Also, most customers don't bother to check so it's a relatively cheap promise.
Example: Some older movie DVDs were/are almost twice as expensive than in the very big book store two floors below that already had them on their low/special price table.
I think it was a safe bet that most of their teenage customers wouldn't set a foot in the book store..;-)
Reminds me of another story concerning XBox-pricing.
One department store made a pricing error on the price tag for the few new XBoxes they had (IIRC price was about 50 Euro lower than the recommended price that everybody else used (was forced to use?)).
Instead of trying to buy there and probably make them aware of their error, some fellow students went to the big electronic/multimedia chain shop across the road that had a "we have the lowest price or else we pay the difference" policy.
"Even the shop across the road sells them for less! Go over and look yourself"
AFAIK this worked for a two or three days.
In short: after losing a match at Wimbledon he took comfort in a quick BJ from a Russian model who impregnated herself (BJ happened in a broom cupboard of a restaurant, hence the query terms) .
If you check out the link marked "Nominees", you will get
- probably an ODBC error;-) or
- this page, where you can select each category and read some short blurbs about every nominee.
I read that (remembered some of them in a "oh that was the name of the one who did foo" kinda way) and used that instead of the suggestions.
The only category left where I didn't care about a candidate was "business leader".
Oh, and don't vote for McCreevy as he is a bought hardcore supporter of SW patents.
And lets hope that more patent opposers than Harry Potter fans know about this vote..;-)
if I could buy the whole seriese sands canned laugh.
Having the seasons 1-8 (9 will be released in Dec, IIRC) on DVD behind me on the shelf:
you can have that right now.
I don't know about the RC1 release, but for the RC2s (1 or 2 seasons of mine are the German DVDs, most are from the UK) I can assure you that they all contain a "laughless" audio track.
Each RC2- season box contains 3 discs with 8 episodes each (sadly, no bonus materials) and sell (at amazon) around 25 pounds(UK) or 20-27 Euro (German, also cotaining laughterless English track).
Judging from the comments at amazon.com (20$ a season) you can turn off the laughter on the RC1s too;
at least on the early ones (I checked season 1,2 and 7; BUT 7 didn't list two english tracks so you might want to take a closer look).
So you can get them already for 0.85$-2$ per episode,.
Find a somewhat "sticky", transparent, preferably white glowing fluid (paint) or search for a receipt how to make one (sorry, I don't know any receipts or where/whether you can buy such paint; the people I heard this from were lab workers mixing their own).
The key is that it should be as "invisible" as possible under normal light.
Then paint the bones of your arms and hands on your skin.
This gets some cool effects if you turn to or reach into areas with UV lights..
if anyone actually prefers the audio format to traditional page flipping.
I prefer it in some situations:
while doing housework
while cycling on a hometrainer
sometimes in the bathtub (though I am more likely to read if the book wasn't expensive)
and since my player has a sleep timer: especially as bedtime story until I fall asleep:-)
also: if you have to be in the hospital and a) you can't really use your eyes due to the operation or b) you can't sleep for days because you are sweating like hell for an unknown reason or c) if your roommate snores (though it doesn't help much..)
wouldn't the author have saved a lot in fees by going OGG, or is acceptance too much of a concern?
Yes, I think he would have lost lots of sales.
Most people won't have heard of ogg and there are still not that many players (sold!) that support them.
As long as not even the iPod supports ogg..
According to my understanding of the mp3 licensing terms,
he either has to pay nothing (revenue<100000$) or he (more likely the publisher) has to pay 2% of the related revenue (but at least 2000$/year).
If the licensee is a publisher that also sells other content as mp3, the 2% becomes relevant and might not matter that much:
even if you don't consider all the lost sales because of an "incompatible" format like ogg, they still save the pressing of CDs.
The "American Gods" MP3 CD sells for ~23$ at amazon.com, so there are about 46 cents licensing fee.
I don't know the number of CDs for the unabridged audio CD, but since the book has more than 600 pages it is likely to have 16 or more CDs (estimate based on the unabridged Harry Potter audio books that have 17-23 CDs).
So they have 46 cents to pay and about 15 CDs less to press/package/transport/store, also needing less space and having less weight..
So perhaps they even save a few cents (compared to the audio CDs) and I'm sure that there will be more sales compared to an ogg version
- and less trouble with angry never-heard-of-ogg-customers that can't get their discs to play.
semi-offtopic: as someone who prefers CD-based players to HD/flash players:
I guess there are no mp3 players with DVD-drives out there?
Can't be that hard to manufacture but I guess there isn't enough demand for disc based players or they would eat too much into the profits of small HD-players..
The primary reason for his nomination was to pack him off to Brussels and as far away from Irish politics as was feasibly possible.
The same was said about the current EC president Jose Manuel Barroso (from Portugal).
And they wonder why so many EU citizens aren't glowing supporters of the EU..
SIOX is machine vision[..]maybe the Berlin guys improved on prior work, or maybe they just didn't know about it.
I probably should have replied to you instead of the parent; summary of my other post:
"the Berlin guys" are part of the same AI-workgroup that is behind the "FU Fighters" Robocup robot soccer team..
That 'SIOX' object selection stuff looks really really cute; you have to wonder if it would come in useful for machine vision/AI as well.
SIOX was developed for echalk.
And echalk is developed by people of the AI-working group at the CS department of the FU Berlin.
And that working group is also behind the successful robot soccer team FU Fighters who are currently World Champion in the small-size league of Robocup and vice-champion in the middle-size league.
So it wouldn't surprise me if parts of it are already in use for "machine vision/AI"..
I heard something about this being a requirement of a Hollywood union:
that they _have_ to list everybody ("truck drivers" was the "highlight" I noticed so far),
Btw.: sometimes end credits contain little gags;
I remember seeing cooking receipts mixed into the credits of "Hot Shots".
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if the paint ever wears out, or stops working after a certain number of cycles or amount of time.
;-))
Since my ebay-infected mother recently dug up our old toy cars to see whether some were in a condition to be sold before giving the rest of them away (there seems to be quite a number of collectors looking for 20 year old Matchbox cars):
It still works without problems after at least 15 years; though I don't remember using the colorchange more than a couple of "wow, that's cool"-times after I got it back then.
P.S. Don't expect to get much money for your children's Matchbox cars if they watched movies like "Smokey and the Bandit" or series like "The Fall Guy"..
The amateuer/pro thing really depends on the sport (and the country).
:-)
;-)
Non topstar athletes might have some sort of additional support (a state sponsored coach, paid travel expenses) but often also a - maybe part time - job.
I know some cases where the athlete mentioned his/her employer's support in an interview ("..am happy and want to thank my friends, family and boss at $villageBank for giving me the the time to prepare yaddayadda").
In Germany it's also not that unusual to have "athlete soldiers" that enlist for a few years and get special support from the military (they also support male athletes if they get drafted).
But mainly there is the "Deutsche Sporthilfe" ("German sport help"), a foundation that pays prize money if you win international medals for example,
They also support "potential" winners by offering some services (e.g. help to get private lessons if you still go to school and missed some classes because you attended the Olympics or world championships) or compensation of a part of the sport related expenses.
Anyway, there are at least some real amateurs there; I went to school with a couple of them (field hockey players).
They were all students and AFAIK two of them got a little sponsoring (saw them driving a Mercedes Smart plastered with "Team Athens 2004" labels) and years ago I heard of other "potentials" getting some support money. I don't remember how much, but the "Sporthilfe" states that they currently pay a total of 12 million Euros per year to 35000 athletes; and even if you don't subtract from that the somewhat bigger prize money for gold medal winners, thats only 340Euro per year and athlete. The maximum sum I found on their website was 350 Euro/month for people that are good enough to (constantly) qualify for their "elite program".
Though at least my former classmates got some cash (IIRC 15000 Euro) and some sponsored gifts (a cruise for example) after winning the gold medal
And probably a little money for PR appearances during their "15 minutes"; but I think most of them were charitable things or autogram sessions at $localevent or invitations of the "paid weekend trip for the team to visit $event and we take a picture"-kind".
But definitely nothing to make a living; for example, I know of anotherone of that team that quit the national team directly afterwards because she needs the time to finish her studies of medicine.
To sum it up: in Germany some sports have pro league(s) (soccer, basketball, icehockey, maybe handball and volleyball), but most sports don't.
Most of the not-a-teamsport athletes are amateurs or amateurs with some sponsoring, but I think only very, very few are popular enough to be sponsored that they do not have another job to pay the bills (besides the handful ATP/WTA level tennis players or Formula One stars).
I can't name one that I am sure of, but I am sure that all of them will need a job (and hence at least some sort of education/job training while being an athlete) after they quit their athlete career.
I think some of the top ones might be fulltime athletes with sponsors that offer them a paid job training and maybe a job afterwards.
Actually, I see three "journalistic power house" stories on the front page at the moment:
this one, "Microsoft Receives Open Source VIP Blessing" and "Introverts Have More Brain Activity?"
Actually, I don't like the censoring of speech and didn't mean that one should be punished and one shouldn't.
;-))
But for me there are still differences:
One guy questions a popular religion. Another guy questions a popular view of history.
In both cases, they are punished for questioning a popular view.
FOR ME, on one side is a 17 yo dumbass "posting inflammatory remarks about Malay Muslims" , on the other a whole political organization dedicated to push their "revised" view of history and hate, working with other racist groups and parties whose supporters/members like to beat up, torture and kill foreigners.(*)
FOR ME religion is a point of view a personal belief.
For the "view of history": it isn't that far back in time!
We are not (YET!) talking about what happend in $WAR 3000 years ago. You are still able to talk to concentration camp survivors (I did) , guards, SS troopers,
authenticate their diaries, can find photos and movies, German government documents, mass graves, you name it.
I am not in favor of the criminal offences, but I am definitely in favor of stopping the propagation of that crap as long as it isn't a matter of "One wrote X, one wrote Y. We will never know what happened. Let's teach both.".
So FOR ME, there is a difference in those cases.
(*) I know it's not really the same as there is the whole separation of church and state angle,
but it still reminds me of the evolution/creationism debate in the US:
talk about ID as much a you want in your blog, but don't try to force it into text books.
(Especially if there are still people and media around that can testify the species evolving
Just wanted to add that the convicted nazi and self-claimed "historian" is the former director of the IHR (source for the parents link).
And "entrapment"? Give me a break:
Why does someone go to "discuss" his hate speech with a public prosecutor?
You know, someone who doesn't make the laws but might be required to enforce their violations if you cite your bullshit at your "discussion" with him?
Sounds more like attention whoring with intended public political martyrdom to me.
BTW. The verdict (still) isn't without controversy in Germany because of the free speech/censoring angle of "can you legally be prosecuted if you upload your content to a foreign server" and whether jail is the wrong kind of punishment.
Also, for me there is a difference between some 17 year old blogger and a guy trying to rewrite history for decades.
(Oh, and to address the "All Hail Europe": does the name Dimitry Sklyarov ring a bell?)
At my university faculties with high water consumption got those "waterless" urinals installed to save water(*).
;-)
THEY STINK!
I guess they aren't designed for the number of students using them
as you can hardly breath in the bathrooms now and your eyes start watering if you enter them.
Those "water savers" have driven me to only use the toilets and they are models that flush the whole tank.
Installing water tanks like the models with a "stop flushing"-button probably would have saved more water.
If you don't have windows or a superb ventilation system for the bathroom: don't install them or you will have to issue gas masks for people to survive the smell.
(*) Well, had the bureaucrats bothered to ask the faculty before simply sending in the workers breaking out the old urinals one morning,
somebody might have told them that the unusual high water consumption in our building just MIGHT have something to do with the roofed over gardens in the inner courtyards and their automated irrigation system..
Are driving schools located in most major cities, or does one have to travel to one and pay room and board?
Driving schools are rather small and both teach theory/rules (you have to take about 12 lessons, a first aid course and a final exam) and driving.
I live in a major city and there are at least 6 driving schools within a walking distance of 15 minutes;
using a bicylce there are probably 10-15 schools I can reach within 15 minutes;
using public transport..uh, probably lots more.
And even in a somewhat "rural" smaller city (about 5000 people) I often visit there are one or two schools.
Also, often there are additional options like getting picked up at home by the one having the lesson before you and you drive him/her home.
I also once saw a sign from a school that used a bus as a classroom on wheels for the theory lessons.
Think of a "lesson 4 of 12: next week, same time, same place (Tuesday, 7 p.m., someCentralPlace's parking lot)"-concept.
Say you have a new driver and a new car. How can this new driver practice driving if you need plates to practice driving but you need a licence to get plates?
Obviously by not using his own car?
AFAIK in the US you can get a learners permit and practice driving if someone with a licence is with you?
This is not possible in Germany an I suppose it is similar in the UK and other EU countries:
to get a licence in Germany, you have to go to a driving school, pay for driving lessons with an instructor and use a special driving school car ("normal" cars with a "driving school" sign and some alterations so that the instructor can for example hit the brakes too).
I think that this will probably cost them money.
If you know that you will be "caught" and have to pay everytime you speed, you probably won't do it if you really don't have to.
So my guess is that they will spend a lot of money to install such a system and afterwards will lose lots of money because of less people speeding.
I think it is more likely that the system will be used to create a giant toll system.
"if you find this thing cheaper anywhere, we will return to you the price difference". I've never tried if this actually works.
;-)
Well, for the one electronics chain that I know off that has the same policy, the catch is the definition of "anywhere".
That's "anywhere in a reasonable area" (probably the same city) so they don't have tom compete with online stores for example.
Also, most customers don't bother to check so it's a relatively cheap promise.
Example: Some older movie DVDs were/are almost twice as expensive than in the very big book store two floors below that already had them on their low/special price table.
I think it was a safe bet that most of their teenage customers wouldn't set a foot in the book store..
Reminds me of another story concerning XBox-pricing.
One department store made a pricing error on the price tag for the few new XBoxes they had (IIRC price was about 50 Euro lower than the recommended price that everybody else used (was forced to use?)).
Instead of trying to buy there and probably make them aware of their error, some fellow students went to the big electronic/multimedia chain shop across the road that had a "we have the lowest price or else we pay the difference" policy.
"Even the shop across the road sells them for less! Go over and look yourself"
AFAIK this worked for a two or three days.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
A more famous case is the former German tennis star Boris Becker.
Just google for "Boris Becker" "broom cupboard"
In short: after losing a match at Wimbledon he took comfort in a quick BJ from a Russian model who impregnated herself (BJ happened in a broom cupboard of a restaurant, hence the query terms) .
If you check out the link marked "Nominees", you will get ;-) or
.. ;-)
- probably an ODBC error
- this page, where you can select each category and read some short blurbs about every nominee.
I read that (remembered some of them in a "oh that was the name of the one who did foo" kinda way) and used that instead of the suggestions.
The only category left where I didn't care about a candidate was "business leader".
Oh, and don't vote for McCreevy as he is a bought hardcore supporter of SW patents.
And lets hope that more patent opposers than Harry Potter fans know about this vote
if I could buy the whole seriese sands canned laugh.
Having the seasons 1-8 (9 will be released in Dec, IIRC) on DVD behind me on the shelf:
you can have that right now.
I don't know about the RC1 release, but for the RC2s (1 or 2 seasons of mine are the German DVDs, most are from the UK) I can assure you that they all contain a "laughless" audio track.
Each RC2- season box contains 3 discs with 8 episodes each (sadly, no bonus materials) and sell (at amazon) around 25 pounds(UK) or 20-27 Euro (German, also cotaining laughterless English track).
Judging from the comments at amazon.com (20$ a season) you can turn off the laughter on the RC1s too; at least on the early ones (I checked season 1,2 and 7; BUT 7 didn't list two english tracks so you might want to take a closer look).
So you can get them already for 0.85$-2$ per episode,.
Find a somewhat "sticky", transparent, preferably white glowing fluid (paint) or search for a receipt how to make one (sorry, I don't know any receipts or where/whether you can buy such paint; the people I heard this from were lab workers mixing their own).
The key is that it should be as "invisible" as possible under normal light.
Then paint the bones of your arms and hands on your skin.
This gets some cool effects if you turn to or reach into areas with UV lights..
I prefer it in some situations:
wouldn't the author have saved a lot in fees by going OGG, or is acceptance too much of a concern?
Yes, I think he would have lost lots of sales.
Most people won't have heard of ogg and there are still not that many players (sold!) that support them.
As long as not even the iPod supports ogg..
According to my understanding of the mp3 licensing terms,
he either has to pay nothing (revenue<100000$) or he (more likely the publisher) has to pay 2% of the related revenue (but at least 2000$/year).
If the licensee is a publisher that also sells other content as mp3, the 2% becomes relevant and might not matter that much:
even if you don't consider all the lost sales because of an "incompatible" format like ogg, they still save the pressing of CDs.
The "American Gods" MP3 CD sells for ~23$ at amazon.com, so there are about 46 cents licensing fee.
I don't know the number of CDs for the unabridged audio CD, but since the book has more than 600 pages it is likely to have 16 or more CDs (estimate based on the unabridged Harry Potter audio books that have 17-23 CDs).
So they have 46 cents to pay and about 15 CDs less to press/package/transport/store, also needing less space and having less weight..
So perhaps they even save a few cents (compared to the audio CDs) and I'm sure that there will be more sales compared to an ogg version
- and less trouble with angry never-heard-of-ogg-customers that can't get their discs to play.
semi-offtopic: as someone who prefers CD-based players to HD/flash players:
I guess there are no mp3 players with DVD-drives out there?
Can't be that hard to manufacture but I guess there isn't enough demand for disc based players or they would eat too much into the profits of small HD-players..
FYI: the first link seems to block slashdot as referer (at least at the moment)
(another case where the "prefbar" plugin for Mozilla with its "Send Referrer"-checkbox comes in handy..)
If you haven't already read the thread below, I would like to point you to Sanity's post and the AC reply for a possible answer..
The primary reason for his nomination was to pack him off to Brussels and as far away from Irish politics as was feasibly possible.
The same was said about the current EC president Jose Manuel Barroso (from Portugal).
And they wonder why so many EU citizens aren't glowing supporters of the EU..
SIOX is machine vision[..]maybe the Berlin guys improved on prior work, or maybe they just didn't know about it.
I probably should have replied to you instead of the parent; summary of my other post:
"the Berlin guys" are part of the same AI-workgroup that is behind the "FU Fighters" Robocup robot soccer team..
That 'SIOX' object selection stuff looks really really cute; you have to wonder if it would come in useful for machine vision/AI as well.
SIOX was developed for echalk.
And echalk is developed by people of the AI-working group at the CS department of the FU Berlin.
And that working group is also behind the successful robot soccer team FU Fighters who are currently World Champion in the small-size league of Robocup and vice-champion in the middle-size league.
So it wouldn't surprise me if parts of it are already in use for "machine vision/AI"..
I heard something about this being a requirement of a Hollywood union:
that they _have_ to list everybody ("truck drivers" was the "highlight" I noticed so far),
Btw.: sometimes end credits contain little gags;
I remember seeing cooking receipts mixed into the credits of "Hot Shots".
First large scale electromechanical calculators -
Harvard Mark I (US) - 1944
Colossus (UK) - 1944
I would also add:
Z3 (Ger) - 1941 (built by Konrad Zuse)
And if they do "Ebay it", you can be sure that it will be named "goldenpalace.com island" ;-)