Being a non-American, I know that bush won by 2%, but I don't know what the actual numbers are (voters for any particular candidate). How many voting mistakes/alterations would have to be made for that 2% to become 0% or -2%
Which actually brings me to an idea. What if the disc were instead a sphere, and moved within a 3d plane. You could have read heads at 3 axes, and perhaps some non-read strips where something would be used to rotate the sphere (assuming that it wouldn't be held in air by magnetic suspension and rotated in a similar way).
Would you be able to store more data on a sphere than a single-platter disc? How about stability, as one has greater mass but perhaps better balance (no wobble).
I'm not a hard-drive architect, but perhaps somebody else could comment on this?
I do wonder about the legality of this. If ability for a return is part of the sales clause given when an item is sold, how can they not accept the return except in cases of obvious neglect/damage etc?
However, I don't think that this system is bad, just not used correctly in the current form. If there's a bad customer (one of those who constantly returns items, or buys a TV for Superbowl Sunday and then returns it on Monday, etc) stores should be able to track him or her. However, deny the purchase, not the return. If a store takes my money, they're taking my business - including the possibility of a return.
If they are worried enough about my bad return-record to not take my money in the first place, more power to 'em, but let's not try and have our cake and eat it too.
Sorry, but I can't think of anyone willing to get into a fistfight with a customer over their minimum wage retail cashiering job.
When would this happen? Maybe if you had a really bad customer, or if you're in a small non-mall outlet. Most malls do have security, and if somebody is getting out-of-hand you can always call in the big boys to have them deal with.
I find that the problem is anybody considering these issues simply doesn't look at the big picture. In most instances, they tunnel-vision on a particular group, quite often the most vocal.
Given your abortion issue, what do you think of. Teenage girls with unwanted kids from ranges to adult. The ones often ignored are the odd cases, a young girl impregnated by a molesting uncle, or a very young girl just old enough to become pregnant who is raped.
Personally, I think that rather than just lobbying a particular party, one should be researching the far consequences of these laws. Should such a ban come into a affect that would, in fact, block legal abortion for those in such extreme circumstances? Not enough people vote, but many people do and then leave their soapbox as "well, erm, I voted for X whose stance is Y."
Go a little farther. Start a webpage declaring your reasons, perhaps you'll get flamed but then that just means people are watching (and perhaps sometimes flamers have valid points). Write an article for the news. Google image indexes are just fine, but what use are they without backup info. The regular page/search search should still be able to find one several sites on the issues at hand, and if you don't see enough site around perhaps you'd be best off making your own and trying to get a good pagerank?
Dude, I'd have to throw the original duke 3d in between Doom 1 and Quake. For a sprite game, it was still a very big breath of fresh air over previous FPS's, notibly due to Duke's dialog, the ability to jump/duck/mouselook (other games I believe had mouselook but missed other winning features). Moving sectors, doors, and other things made duke very memorable, and multiplay was probably amongst the best FPS'ing moment I can remember from any game.
I liked how you mentioned that. As a tech in schools, I find it sad how much focus is given to games as being promoters of violence, etc.
As somebody who enjoyed playing doom in the school labs, quake in college, and many other FPS's otherwise - I'd still consider myself much a pacifist. Cocking the virtual shotgun doesn't necessarily give one an urge to grab a real one...
Of course, nowadays there are alternatives such as perhaps worms (although it still has guns) and others that - while fun - are less violent. Even they seem to suffer from the black reputation that schools seem to give PC gaming.
One thing I noticed about this movie: there were no ads for cars, etc beforehand (once the lights dimmed, anyhow), and there were no MPAA "piracy is hurting the small guys" ads.
I'm not sure if these are usual added by the theatre or the film company - the MPAA probably is from those before the theatre at any rate... but I'm wondering why this movie was special enough to be adless.
Perhaps a good movie on behalf of pixar and their affiliates, or just a random event? Perhaps other theatres still had ads. Did anyone else see the movie and have preceding advertisements?
I remember reading about a program which - using scanned images of records, could actually gauge the pit depth and play the record back from the digital image. Probably not entirely accurate, but it's rather amazing some people with a little spare time are able to do to keep their favorite media alive beyond the original hardware.
That being said, I've always wondered about how games get transferred over from old console systems. I know there's hardware to interface with PC's etc, but is it home-made or the same stuff that the big-boys use?
Of course nowadays we've got it easy, emulators play the original media for PSX games, etc
They've already crippled the technology, and hampered the tools.
Go ahead, make a copy of your DVD. Oh wait, youcan't
Don't think that for a moment that the movie/music companies are being thoughtful by taking their stand against lawbreakers, it's because they've already written laws (through bribery) and got otherwise-legitimate companies shut down - and in the case of ISPS their hands were tied (common carrier, etc).
Like myself, whom have pirated movies in the past, watched them, and forgotten them... later find the movies for a reasonable price on the shelf, and because we remember greatly enjoying the movie it then became a purchase
I just bought "Spaceballs" for a reasonable price of $10 the other day. I probably wouldn't have looked twice at the thing if my roomate hadn't pirated it when I'd seen it years ago...
Most likely, and probably there will be consequences for the store. What scores me though, is that if sufficient hype is generated and/or enough keeners actually bought the early release for such heavily inflated prices, we might start seeing a trend. If game manufacturers or stores get the idea that they can sell pre-releases at 3x-4x the street value, we'll probably see them trying this as part of business in the future.
HL2 is great and all, but don't feed the sharks guys!
We care because:
MS-based Multimedia OS==DRM. DRV==restriction. Restriction==it doesn't work for us, or at least not the way we want to
It's called a bandwagon. If more companies keep jumping on it, then it tends to become the default path-of-choice. Do you really want 99% of media products out there to be laden with MS DRM?
Ummm, no offence but for most languages that I understand well enough, I could probably manage to unmuck a program regardless of the variable names. In fact, one of the thing one deals with quite often when going through other peoples code is odd syntax and variable naming conventions.
It wouldn't be much worse than if he use variables all named such as $a1, $a2, $b1, $b2... all little replace magic and they should be nicely tidied up.
Now if the comments are also in an alternate language... of course many people don't comment/doc anyhow.
I had a similar experience while on holidays in Australia (I was looking to help my friend upgrade her PC). I was asking about if they had any video cards with an NVidia chipset (linux compatability and all), and the salesdrone walked to the shelves, pulls down an ATI Radeon, and says "I think this one should have it."
Yeah... walked out of that store in a hurry, managed not to call the saleperson an idiot to his face.
Didn't FTP address the same issue though. I seem to remember many FTP sites getting nuked for linking to illegal downloads. Quite likely this might depend on who your host is though
I definately agree that apps not having individual volume settings is a pain. Currently my primary beef is with instant messaging programs (GAIM/MSN) that have annoyingly loud sounds when I have my volume upped for maximum music enjoyment. I got around that but setting customized "message" etc sounds with a lower-volume less-irritating noise, but still it would be a nice feature.
But that's sidetracked. XMMS does allow you to set the volume within the app if you use ALSA.
Preferences-->Output Plugin-->Configure-->Use software volume control
I think that perhaps this takes more CPU, but I doubt that on newer PC's this is going to be anything in any way signficant.
I'm not sure how well wireless would handle this without security/interference/bandwidth issues, but how about infrared. Why not make a hub that would allow you to plug in your keyboard, mouse, headphones (or output to stereo), and perhaps a USB port or two. Have one cord for the receiving hub to power the devices, or perhaps a Li+ battery pack
If you have a hub to plug into, and a plug to receiv the signal, it would probably do very nicely at cutting down cord issues (the sending unit having a single thick cord splitting to the various devices at the back of your PC, and vise-versa for the receiver and peripherals).
Wireless headphones simply don't compare to wired. You're introducing interference, loss-of-signal, etc etc. Most of this is simply due to the noise-to-signal ratio I believe - think basically of all the problems one experiences with a cordless phone or radio. Expensive units might sound better, but still can't compete on a per-price ratio with wired models.
However, I've often wondered about infrared. Technically so long as you have a strong line-of-sight you should be OK. If you walk in from of the speaker yeah it'll cut out, but proper positioning should help this. Bandwidth isn't too much an issue, laptop Fast-infrared reaches speeds up to 4Mbps so that should handle enough digital-audio goodness for most audiophiles.
Now, assuming that you go from CD-->Infrared (without converting to digital-->analogue jack-->digital dongle-->infrared-->infrared-->analgue) quality shouldn't be diminished
On the subject of dongles though, anyone know if such a thing exists? I can buy wireless/infrared headphones anywhere but what I'd really like is something similar that I can plug the received/sending unit onto the RCA inputs for my stereo and output from my PC.
I'd actually rather go with the cartels. Since I'm not actually a drug user I'm not forced to buy their product. With Monsanto I might end up paying for it even through no fault of my own...
Of course, as a personal opinion the cartels are worse (slave-type labour, murderous business, etc)...
Generally sex with a minor is counted on a per-instance (or per person at least) basis. So if you were indecently involved with one minor, one count, with more than one, two counts, etc.
With spam, instances could be counted in the millions, or at least thousands. You could do it 4+ ways:
a) # of individual recipients
b) # of actual emails sent
c) # of different types of spam sent
d) # of different instances spam sent (assuming it isn't constant non-stop)
So really, the cumulative penalties to spammers, if applied in an appropriate manner, could be very large indeed
It aims to prevent US companies from obtaining/garnering information about Canadian citizens. However, it is known that the FBI and CSIS, previously restricted from spying on the own citizens, would spy on each others'.
But the overall attitude of those in power in the US have affected non-citizens too. Before, I wouldn't think twice about taking a holiday in the US, now if I book flights I'd prefer not even to pass through.
Who knows, if the friend-of-a-friend-of-my-cousin happens to be a known terrorist, I might end up being carted away and locked in a US cell somewhere....
I think there is a principal of terminal stupidity. At some point, too great a stupidity factor is probably going to lead to death (a Darwin award, if you will).
Thus, death=Luck-Stupidity, except really you've got another outside factor which can be fuzzy:
death=Luck-stupidity +/- stupidity-of-other-people (depending on whether the stupidity of others offsets or enhances your own stupidity).
Oh, and death here doesn't necessarily mean physical, it could be the death of a corporation, where cumulative stupidity is only offset by blind luck and the idiocy of their consumers...
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Being a non-American, I know that bush won by 2%, but I don't know what the actual numbers are (voters for any particular candidate). How many voting mistakes/alterations would have to be made for that 2% to become 0% or -2%
Which actually brings me to an idea. What if the disc were instead a sphere, and moved within a 3d plane. You could have read heads at 3 axes, and perhaps some non-read strips where something would be used to rotate the sphere (assuming that it wouldn't be held in air by magnetic suspension and rotated in a similar way).
Would you be able to store more data on a sphere than a single-platter disc? How about stability, as one has greater mass but perhaps better balance (no wobble).
I'm not a hard-drive architect, but perhaps somebody else could comment on this?
I do wonder about the legality of this. If ability for a return is part of the sales clause given when an item is sold, how can they not accept the return except in cases of obvious neglect/damage etc?
However, I don't think that this system is bad, just not used correctly in the current form. If there's a bad customer (one of those who constantly returns items, or buys a TV for Superbowl Sunday and then returns it on Monday, etc) stores should be able to track him or her. However, deny the purchase, not the return. If a store takes my money, they're taking my business - including the possibility of a return.
If they are worried enough about my bad return-record to not take my money in the first place, more power to 'em, but let's not try and have our cake and eat it too.
Sorry, but I can't think of anyone willing to get into a fistfight with a customer over their minimum wage retail cashiering job.
When would this happen? Maybe if you had a really bad customer, or if you're in a small non-mall outlet. Most malls do have security, and if somebody is getting out-of-hand you can always call in the big boys to have them deal with.
I find that the problem is anybody considering these issues simply doesn't look at the big picture. In most instances, they tunnel-vision on a particular group, quite often the most vocal.
Given your abortion issue, what do you think of. Teenage girls with unwanted kids from ranges to adult. The ones often ignored are the odd cases, a young girl impregnated by a molesting uncle, or a very young girl just old enough to become pregnant who is raped.
Personally, I think that rather than just lobbying a particular party, one should be researching the far consequences of these laws. Should such a ban come into a affect that would, in fact, block legal abortion for those in such extreme circumstances? Not enough people vote, but many people do and then leave their soapbox as "well, erm, I voted for X whose stance is Y."
Go a little farther. Start a webpage declaring your reasons, perhaps you'll get flamed but then that just means people are watching (and perhaps sometimes flamers have valid points). Write an article for the news. Google image indexes are just fine, but what use are they without backup info. The regular page/search search should still be able to find one several sites on the issues at hand, and if you don't see enough site around perhaps you'd be best off making your own and trying to get a good pagerank?
Dude, I'd have to throw the original duke 3d in between Doom 1 and Quake. For a sprite game, it was still a very big breath of fresh air over previous FPS's, notibly due to Duke's dialog, the ability to jump/duck/mouselook (other games I believe had mouselook but missed other winning features). Moving sectors, doors, and other things made duke very memorable, and multiplay was probably amongst the best FPS'ing moment I can remember from any game.
I liked how you mentioned that. As a tech in schools, I find it sad how much focus is given to games as being promoters of violence, etc.
As somebody who enjoyed playing doom in the school labs, quake in college, and many other FPS's otherwise - I'd still consider myself much a pacifist. Cocking the virtual shotgun doesn't necessarily give one an urge to grab a real one...
Of course, nowadays there are alternatives such as perhaps worms (although it still has guns) and others that - while fun - are less violent. Even they seem to suffer from the black reputation that schools seem to give PC gaming.
One thing I noticed about this movie: there were no ads for cars, etc beforehand (once the lights dimmed, anyhow), and there were no MPAA "piracy is hurting the small guys" ads.
I'm not sure if these are usual added by the theatre or the film company - the MPAA probably is from those before the theatre at any rate... but I'm wondering why this movie was special enough to be adless.
Perhaps a good movie on behalf of pixar and their affiliates, or just a random event? Perhaps other theatres still had ads. Did anyone else see the movie and have preceding advertisements?
I remember reading about a program which - using scanned images of records, could actually gauge the pit depth and play the record back from the digital image. Probably not entirely accurate, but it's rather amazing some people with a little spare time are able to do to keep their favorite media alive beyond the original hardware.
That being said, I've always wondered about how games get transferred over from old console systems. I know there's hardware to interface with PC's etc, but is it home-made or the same stuff that the big-boys use?
Of course nowadays we've got it easy, emulators play the original media for PSX games, etc
They've already crippled the technology, and hampered the tools.
Go ahead, make a copy of your DVD. Oh wait, you can't
Don't think that for a moment that the movie/music companies are being thoughtful by taking their stand against lawbreakers, it's because they've already written laws (through bribery) and got otherwise-legitimate companies shut down - and in the case of ISPS their hands were tied (common carrier, etc).
Like myself, whom have pirated movies in the past, watched them, and forgotten them... later find the movies for a reasonable price on the shelf, and because we remember greatly enjoying the movie it then became a purchase
I just bought "Spaceballs" for a reasonable price of $10 the other day. I probably wouldn't have looked twice at the thing if my roomate hadn't pirated it when I'd seen it years ago...
Most likely, and probably there will be consequences for the store. What scores me though, is that if sufficient hype is generated and/or enough keeners actually bought the early release for such heavily inflated prices, we might start seeing a trend. If game manufacturers or stores get the idea that they can sell pre-releases at 3x-4x the street value, we'll probably see them trying this as part of business in the future.
HL2 is great and all, but don't feed the sharks guys!
We care because:
MS-based Multimedia OS==DRM. DRV==restriction.
Restriction==it doesn't work for us, or at least not the way we want to
It's called a bandwagon. If more companies keep jumping on it, then it tends to become the default path-of-choice. Do you really want 99% of media products out there to be laden with MS DRM?
Ummm, no offence but for most languages that I understand well enough, I could probably manage to unmuck a program regardless of the variable names. In fact, one of the thing one deals with quite often when going through other peoples code is odd syntax and variable naming conventions.
It wouldn't be much worse than if he use variables all named such as $a1, $a2, $b1, $b2... all little replace magic and they should be nicely tidied up.
Now if the comments are also in an alternate language... of course many people don't comment/doc anyhow.
I had a similar experience while on holidays in Australia (I was looking to help my friend upgrade her PC). I was asking about if they had any video cards with an NVidia chipset (linux compatability and all), and the salesdrone walked to the shelves, pulls down an ATI Radeon, and says "I think this one should have it."
Yeah... walked out of that store in a hurry, managed not to call the saleperson an idiot to his face.
Didn't FTP address the same issue though. I seem to remember many FTP sites getting nuked for linking to illegal downloads. Quite likely this might depend on who your host is though
Given that BT requires a link to a .torrent, how hard is it for companies to send a C&D to the ISP/owner of any site hosting illegal .torrent links?
I definately agree that apps not having individual volume settings is a pain. Currently my primary beef is with instant messaging programs (GAIM/MSN) that have annoyingly loud sounds when I have my volume upped for maximum music enjoyment. I got around that but setting customized "message" etc sounds with a lower-volume less-irritating noise, but still it would be a nice feature.
But that's sidetracked. XMMS does allow you to set the volume within the app if you use ALSA.
Preferences-->Output Plugin-->Configure-->Use software volume control
I think that perhaps this takes more CPU, but I doubt that on newer PC's this is going to be anything in any way signficant.
I'm not sure how well wireless would handle this without security/interference/bandwidth issues, but how about infrared. Why not make a hub that would allow you to plug in your keyboard, mouse, headphones (or output to stereo), and perhaps a USB port or two. Have one cord for the receiving hub to power the devices, or perhaps a Li+ battery pack
If you have a hub to plug into, and a plug to receiv the signal, it would probably do very nicely at cutting down cord issues (the sending unit having a single thick cord splitting to the various devices at the back of your PC, and vise-versa for the receiver and peripherals).
Wireless headphones simply don't compare to wired. You're introducing interference, loss-of-signal, etc etc. Most of this is simply due to the noise-to-signal ratio I believe - think basically of all the problems one experiences with a cordless phone or radio. Expensive units might sound better, but still can't compete on a per-price ratio with wired models.
However, I've often wondered about infrared. Technically so long as you have a strong line-of-sight you should be OK. If you walk in from of the speaker yeah it'll cut out, but proper positioning should help this. Bandwidth isn't too much an issue, laptop Fast-infrared reaches speeds up to 4Mbps so that should handle enough digital-audio goodness for most audiophiles.
Now, assuming that you go from CD-->Infrared (without converting to digital-->analogue jack-->digital dongle-->infrared-->infrared-->analgue) quality shouldn't be diminished
On the subject of dongles though, anyone know if such a thing exists? I can buy wireless/infrared headphones anywhere but what I'd really like is something similar that I can plug the received/sending unit onto the RCA inputs for my stereo and output from my PC.
I'd actually rather go with the cartels. Since I'm not actually a drug user I'm not forced to buy their product. With Monsanto I might end up paying for it even through no fault of my own...
Of course, as a personal opinion the cartels are worse (slave-type labour, murderous business, etc)...
Generally sex with a minor is counted on a per-instance (or per person at least) basis. So if you were indecently involved with one minor, one count, with more than one, two counts, etc.
With spam, instances could be counted in the millions, or at least thousands. You could do it 4+ ways:
a) # of individual recipients
b) # of actual emails sent
c) # of different types of spam sent
d) # of different instances spam sent (assuming it isn't constant non-stop)
So really, the cumulative penalties to spammers, if applied in an appropriate manner, could be very large indeed
It aims to prevent US companies from obtaining/garnering information about Canadian citizens. However, it is known that the FBI and CSIS, previously restricted from spying on the own citizens, would spy on each others'.
Is this now also illegal?
But the overall attitude of those in power in the US have affected non-citizens too. Before, I wouldn't think twice about taking a holiday in the US, now if I book flights I'd prefer not even to pass through.
Who knows, if the friend-of-a-friend-of-my-cousin happens to be a known terrorist, I might end up being carted away and locked in a US cell somewhere....
I think there is a principal of terminal stupidity. At some point, too great a stupidity factor is probably going to lead to death (a Darwin award, if you will).
Thus, death=Luck-Stupidity, except really you've got another outside factor which can be fuzzy:
death=Luck-stupidity +/- stupidity-of-other-people (depending on whether the stupidity of others offsets or enhances your own stupidity).
Oh, and death here doesn't necessarily mean physical, it could be the death of a corporation, where cumulative stupidity is only offset by blind luck and the idiocy of their consumers...