What people don't know is that the UK, although it uses UTC for half of the year, and that the line of 0 longitude goes through Grenwich, it has no actual bearing on time. Britain's don't care that we have a control over GMT/UTC - we honestly don't give a crap - it's just people assume that we do because we standardised time to our meridian.
What I personally want is what most of the posters here want, I want a universal time, so it is the same time everywhere - no time zones. However, I'd also like to adopt the "Beat" system that Swatch invented (as long as it's not patented, and accepted as a free standard). The weeks/months idea needs aboloshing as well - I'd prefer having 365/366 days in a year, no divisions. People will abbreviate it by themselves, so they'll say "see you in a (week)" and mean in 10 days, so it's easy to change.
The advantage of this system is that you can easily see that 10,000 beats is 10 days, and saying that you are releasing data in 4 weeks is easily convertable.
I have no respect for National institutions such as the US congress that think they can mess with standard weights and measures - scientists know what they're talking about, and something like this should be consulted upon at something like the UN. It's fairly major!
The most interesting thing about Apple's adverts are that without Microsoft perceiving them as a threat - people would have only thought of the iPod/iTunes as a Windows app, there have now been Apple computer adverts, and people are starting to research... The Apple move to Intel may actually make things seem like there is a credible alternative. Linux will not be an alternative until _everything_ in both Word and Excel works in OO.o, or Crossover office becomes cheaper and on the software shelves.
This has already started to happen... For the first time EVER, I saw a Windows advert on the TV (I live in the UK) that's WINDOWS, not those irritating "Get Microsoft, or your kids will be 'tards" adverts that play, and in the past week or so, about 10 people have asked me why Microsoft have put an advert for Windows - and all have asked me what the alternative is, if they're so scared to be advertising over here. Every single person who has asked me that question, I have showed them Ubuntu, and every single one has been impressed, up to the point when you show them that OpenOffice.org doesn't do drawing diagrams correctly...
Microsoft may not be threatened by Linux in the home market, but by advertising their products, they are in fact telling people that they have to advertise because they are either making so much money they can burn some, or that they are losing market share to competitors...
I think you've hit the nail on the head - the US is the laughing stock of the world when it comes to "rights", where everything is geared towards the corporation as opposed to what's fair to all (although that does sound a little commie...)
Put simply, what I think a lot of people are thinking in the US and over here in the EU is that Patent law needs to be scrapped, and that Copyright law needs to be changed slightly to allow a maximum licence period of say 10 years. After those 10 years, you don't have the rights to your product anymore, unless you file a claim with the (let's call it copyright office) requesting an extention, the only circumstances for extention being part of the 10 years was research, and you want the full 10 years of retail.
The only problem I see is certain US senators hi-jacking the bill with items to increase the power of corporations in media - for example making IP crime a criminal offence.
Either way, the patent experiment has failed. Copyright has been hi-jacked by corporations like Disney. Things need winding back 150 years and going back to then - sure, there was trade secrets then, but there are trade secrets such as the alleged formula for Coka Cola anyway...
But that quote doesn't make sense. Sure, you theoretically would not be able to see something until you've passed it, but that's ignoring the fact that the light has already been emitted. If anything, you would see exactly the same as if you were standing still - negating brain activity of course. Think about it, what you are seeing on your screen is what happened a few picoseconds ago - if you move closer to it, you're seeing things sooner, and you saw the update faster while you moved closer, but you won't lose sight of it, even if you're travelling at light speed!
Also, if you WERE travelling faster than light, it's more likely that in fact the planet you were hurtling towards wouldn't see you until you hit them, then they would see you retreating backwards at a very fast speed - the stories are backwards - the standing still observer sees things backwards - you would see everything speeded up (negating dilation)
How about a Klingon series? How would a Vulcan do in a Klingon culture?
I personally would like to see a Trek series where each Season bore no resemblance to the past - Short Stories if you will...
For instance, how about a series, where for season one, the story follows the Klingons from the point of view of Gowron, and the Duras element, with occasional battles between the Sisters followers and the Council at the end of it? It could unearth some really interesting elements, I think.
Then, Season Two goes into the Romulan empire, pre-Nemesis era, with the struggle of the Remans, maybe starting with how the situation got to be that way.
Season Three would follow the beginnings of Vulcan emotion suppresion, moving from a war-like race to a culture of peace (supposedly).
I think it could work well, with each Season lasting just a half-season length (12 episodes?) and telling the stories with the knowledge that you're not going to please everyone with one concept, so why not have many?
Oh, and get rid of Brannon/Braga, get the cast in on the writing (Blalock seems to know what she's talking about...) and generally think about situations that people can relate to, rather than doing a piss-poor job of "nine-elevening" everything in sight...
The one thing I don't get about Vint Cerf is... What does he think of the phrase "Surfing the web"? Because ever since I found out he invented TCP/IP, I call it "Cerfing the internet" =)
Maybe this is a really stupid question, but is there an Open Source Software Foundation? Because I really do hate the name Free Software Foundation, as you immiediately have to explain the usage of the word free, as in freedom. I don't want free software as in monetary terms, I want free software as in "do what the hell you want with it, within reason" and a an OSS Foundation would be far more attractive in a corporate environment, methinks.
You? Running the remains of our empire? [rolls head back and laughs]
Canada - a British Colony, generally happier, less crime, less zealots.
Britain didn't give you the empire - it gave the people whose country they resided in the power to control themselves - and they're better for it, mostly. India, Australia and Canada being prime examples.
British people aren't "Bamboozled" by PC's - they just don't understand all the jargon associated with it - the same people probably don't know what an encephelocardiogram is, or a head gasket, or fiscal policy - all they care about is - does it work for them?
If you think we're stupid - go look at your own country, you kill people for killing people!
I'm probably going to be modded seriously down for being a troll on this one, but I think that GPG/PGP is the answer to most of our problems with email.
If someone wants to send you an email, they encode it with their private key. If you know them, you'll have given them a low trust level, at least. That's effectively a whitelist. All the zero-trust email is automatically low-priority. If you're expecting an important email, you would normally get a phone call or something to let you know it's coming, so you can retrieve the guy's key and give it elevated trust.
What needs to happen is PGP/GPG getting a higher level of familiarity, easy to install (i like the Thunderbird client's way of doing it, but I use evolution still...) and a simple document educating people on trustlevels.
We're not going to stop direct-mail and spam. All we can do is make it less visible, or rather make our important mail more visible, so that it can rise above the rest.
Just please, use Mime encoded messages, keys over text sucks big time. =) Oh yeah, and someone fix OE's problem with MIME, please!
This got moderated funny? Seriously, he's right! In Finland, city centre is "Keskusta" in Finnish while in Swedish the same word is "Centrum". Goto Sweden and you won't think they're so alike.
I should know, I'm sitting at a demo party with pretty much every European nation covered here...
Ok, why do i seem to be the ONLY person in the world that does back up my media??? How many times have we had damaged products because of misuse or lending? I backup my media, so should you!
If it's anything like the UK, that's $50 for the modem, $75 for the guy to come and plug it in and install the driver cd (not the latest internet drivers) and leave it untested.
Come to the UK:) When asked to produce documents (including ID) you have a week or more to have them checked at a police station - no need for ID over here, and that's the way I likes it;)
I thought the particulate matter thing was ages old? With low-sulphur fuels being developed etc, I thought the particulate masses were nearly eliminated, or at least reduced to standard petroleum based fuels...
Just to clear one thing up, I meant that Ethanol has to be processed, by allowing the ethanol to be converted from the sugar in the plant, whereas BioDiesel only needs a small amount of additive, and next to no processing time (I believe White Spirit does it as a continuois process, not batch processing needed)
But ethanol is a crappy idea - it's got a lot of drawbacks, and it essentially needs to be "grown". A much better alternative is the old Vegetable oil way of doing things - BioDiesel. Almost every filling station in Europe stocks Diesel and BioDiesel works in most if not all Diesel engines. The enormous benefit is the turnaround time, as it is a continuous, rather than a batch process (for those Chemists out there).
Let's not go changing most of the mechanical parts if all we need to change is the fuel...
BioDiesel, grown from Rape Seed etc, would give not only American's reason to get the farms up and running again, but also third world countries - a lot of farmers will grow this stuff and sell it very cheaply, to be refined elsewhere. BioDiesel _will_ revolutionise the European lorry (sorry, truck) market, such a shame that the USA won't be able to partake - you're far too reliant on petrol (the stuff you normally fill up with). 10 years, and you may be ready, Europe is ready NOW. Let us be your Guinea pig. Do you hear that [insert current UK Home Secretary]???
Except for the obvious of course - before it gets digitised at the point of recording. Out of interest, does anyone know what sampling rate they use and at what size bit sample? I'm talking typically here.
Doesn't mean i wouldn't prefer it;) Seriously, if it were possible to have an analogue version that you could convert yourself, it'd mean you could convert it to 44.1kHz for CD, 48kHz for DVD, 96kHz for SACD (or whatever it uses) and a variety of bit sampling...
But that uses digital sampling, forcing you to use 44.1kHz or whatever they use these days... I'd prefer a pristine analogue copy that I could convert myself...
Of course, that'd be ridiculously expensive and stoopid. A losslessly compressed non-DRM'd RAW/WAV file suits me...
Slashdot Mirror
What people don't know is that the UK, although it uses UTC for half of the year, and that the line of 0 longitude goes through Grenwich, it has no actual bearing on time. Britain's don't care that we have a control over GMT/UTC - we honestly don't give a crap - it's just people assume that we do because we standardised time to our meridian.
What I personally want is what most of the posters here want, I want a universal time, so it is the same time everywhere - no time zones. However, I'd also like to adopt the "Beat" system that Swatch invented (as long as it's not patented, and accepted as a free standard). The weeks/months idea needs aboloshing as well - I'd prefer having 365/366 days in a year, no divisions. People will abbreviate it by themselves, so they'll say "see you in a (week)" and mean in 10 days, so it's easy to change.
The advantage of this system is that you can easily see that 10,000 beats is 10 days, and saying that you are releasing data in 4 weeks is easily convertable.
I have no respect for National institutions such as the US congress that think they can mess with standard weights and measures - scientists know what they're talking about, and something like this should be consulted upon at something like the UN. It's fairly major!
The most interesting thing about Apple's adverts are that without Microsoft perceiving them as a threat - people would have only thought of the iPod/iTunes as a Windows app, there have now been Apple computer adverts, and people are starting to research... The Apple move to Intel may actually make things seem like there is a credible alternative. Linux will not be an alternative until _everything_ in both Word and Excel works in OO.o, or Crossover office becomes cheaper and on the software shelves.
This has already started to happen... For the first time EVER, I saw a Windows advert on the TV (I live in the UK) that's WINDOWS, not those irritating "Get Microsoft, or your kids will be 'tards" adverts that play, and in the past week or so, about 10 people have asked me why Microsoft have put an advert for Windows - and all have asked me what the alternative is, if they're so scared to be advertising over here. Every single person who has asked me that question, I have showed them Ubuntu, and every single one has been impressed, up to the point when you show them that OpenOffice.org doesn't do drawing diagrams correctly...
Microsoft may not be threatened by Linux in the home market, but by advertising their products, they are in fact telling people that they have to advertise because they are either making so much money they can burn some, or that they are losing market share to competitors...
I think you've hit the nail on the head - the US is the laughing stock of the world when it comes to "rights", where everything is geared towards the corporation as opposed to what's fair to all (although that does sound a little commie...)
Put simply, what I think a lot of people are thinking in the US and over here in the EU is that Patent law needs to be scrapped, and that Copyright law needs to be changed slightly to allow a maximum licence period of say 10 years. After those 10 years, you don't have the rights to your product anymore, unless you file a claim with the (let's call it copyright office) requesting an extention, the only circumstances for extention being part of the 10 years was research, and you want the full 10 years of retail.
The only problem I see is certain US senators hi-jacking the bill with items to increase the power of corporations in media - for example making IP crime a criminal offence.
Either way, the patent experiment has failed. Copyright has been hi-jacked by corporations like Disney. Things need winding back 150 years and going back to then - sure, there was trade secrets then, but there are trade secrets such as the alleged formula for Coka Cola anyway...
Do the MATHS, not math... Bah, re-educating the bloody colonials... I dunno =)
But that quote doesn't make sense. Sure, you theoretically would not be able to see something until you've passed it, but that's ignoring the fact that the light has already been emitted. If anything, you would see exactly the same as if you were standing still - negating brain activity of course. Think about it, what you are seeing on your screen is what happened a few picoseconds ago - if you move closer to it, you're seeing things sooner, and you saw the update faster while you moved closer, but you won't lose sight of it, even if you're travelling at light speed!
Also, if you WERE travelling faster than light, it's more likely that in fact the planet you were hurtling towards wouldn't see you until you hit them, then they would see you retreating backwards at a very fast speed - the stories are backwards - the standing still observer sees things backwards - you would see everything speeded up (negating dilation)
You know what, you've got something there...
How about a Klingon series? How would a Vulcan do in a Klingon culture?
I personally would like to see a Trek series where each Season bore no resemblance to the past - Short Stories if you will...
For instance, how about a series, where for season one, the story follows the Klingons from the point of view of Gowron, and the Duras element, with occasional battles between the Sisters followers and the Council at the end of it? It could unearth some really interesting elements, I think.
Then, Season Two goes into the Romulan empire, pre-Nemesis era, with the struggle of the Remans, maybe starting with how the situation got to be that way.
Season Three would follow the beginnings of Vulcan emotion suppresion, moving from a war-like race to a culture of peace (supposedly).
I think it could work well, with each Season lasting just a half-season length (12 episodes?) and telling the stories with the knowledge that you're not going to please everyone with one concept, so why not have many?
Oh, and get rid of Brannon/Braga, get the cast in on the writing (Blalock seems to know what she's talking about...) and generally think about situations that people can relate to, rather than doing a piss-poor job of "nine-elevening" everything in sight...
My God, Wogan on Slashdot, what next... CowboyNeal becoming a TOG?
The one thing I don't get about Vint Cerf is... What does he think of the phrase "Surfing the web"? Because ever since I found out he invented TCP/IP, I call it "Cerfing the internet" =)
Maybe this is a really stupid question, but is there an Open Source Software Foundation? Because I really do hate the name Free Software Foundation, as you immiediately have to explain the usage of the word free, as in freedom. I don't want free software as in monetary terms, I want free software as in "do what the hell you want with it, within reason" and a an OSS Foundation would be far more attractive in a corporate environment, methinks.
You? Running the remains of our empire? [rolls head back and laughs]
Canada - a British Colony, generally happier, less crime, less zealots.
Britain didn't give you the empire - it gave the people whose country they resided in the power to control themselves - and they're better for it, mostly. India, Australia and Canada being prime examples.
British people aren't "Bamboozled" by PC's - they just don't understand all the jargon associated with it - the same people probably don't know what an encephelocardiogram is, or a head gasket, or fiscal policy - all they care about is - does it work for them?
If you think we're stupid - go look at your own country, you kill people for killing people!
I'm probably going to be modded seriously down for being a troll on this one, but I think that GPG/PGP is the answer to most of our problems with email.
If someone wants to send you an email, they encode it with their private key. If you know them, you'll have given them a low trust level, at least. That's effectively a whitelist. All the zero-trust email is automatically low-priority. If you're expecting an important email, you would normally get a phone call or something to let you know it's coming, so you can retrieve the guy's key and give it elevated trust.
What needs to happen is PGP/GPG getting a higher level of familiarity, easy to install (i like the Thunderbird client's way of doing it, but I use evolution still...) and a simple document educating people on trustlevels.
We're not going to stop direct-mail and spam. All we can do is make it less visible, or rather make our important mail more visible, so that it can rise above the rest.
Just please, use Mime encoded messages, keys over text sucks big time. =) Oh yeah, and someone fix OE's problem with MIME, please!
This got moderated funny? Seriously, he's right! In Finland, city centre is "Keskusta" in Finnish while in Swedish the same word is "Centrum". Goto Sweden and you won't think they're so alike.
I should know, I'm sitting at a demo party with pretty much every European nation covered here...
breakpoint.untergrund.net
Ok, why do i seem to be the ONLY person in the world that does back up my media??? How many times have we had damaged products because of misuse or lending? I backup my media, so should you!
And it seems you listen to Terry Wogan on BBC Radio 2 :) Hey, I listened to that on my way to school every morning - it's not just for TOG's :)
If it's anything like the UK, that's $50 for the modem, $75 for the guy to come and plug it in and install the driver cd (not the latest internet drivers) and leave it untested.
Come to the UK :) When asked to produce documents (including ID) you have a week or more to have them checked at a police station - no need for ID over here, and that's the way I likes it ;)
I thought the particulate matter thing was ages old? With low-sulphur fuels being developed etc, I thought the particulate masses were nearly eliminated, or at least reduced to standard petroleum based fuels...
Sorry, I'm not an American - I thought the subsidies were to grow not to not grow!
Just to clear one thing up, I meant that Ethanol has to be processed, by allowing the ethanol to be converted from the sugar in the plant, whereas BioDiesel only needs a small amount of additive, and next to no processing time (I believe White Spirit does it as a continuois process, not batch processing needed)
But ethanol is a crappy idea - it's got a lot of drawbacks, and it essentially needs to be "grown". A much better alternative is the old Vegetable oil way of doing things - BioDiesel. Almost every filling station in Europe stocks Diesel and BioDiesel works in most if not all Diesel engines. The enormous benefit is the turnaround time, as it is a continuous, rather than a batch process (for those Chemists out there).
Let's not go changing most of the mechanical parts if all we need to change is the fuel...
BioDiesel, grown from Rape Seed etc, would give not only American's reason to get the farms up and running again, but also third world countries - a lot of farmers will grow this stuff and sell it very cheaply, to be refined elsewhere. BioDiesel _will_ revolutionise the European lorry (sorry, truck) market, such a shame that the USA won't be able to partake - you're far too reliant on petrol (the stuff you normally fill up with). 10 years, and you may be ready, Europe is ready NOW. Let us be your Guinea pig. Do you hear that [insert current UK Home Secretary]???
Errr... to have a monopoly by forcing out competition...
Stupidest. Response. Ever.
Except for the obvious of course - before it gets digitised at the point of recording. Out of interest, does anyone know what sampling rate they use and at what size bit sample? I'm talking typically here.
Doesn't mean i wouldn't prefer it ;) Seriously, if it were possible to have an analogue version that you could convert yourself, it'd mean you could convert it to 44.1kHz for CD, 48kHz for DVD, 96kHz for SACD (or whatever it uses) and a variety of bit sampling...
But that uses digital sampling, forcing you to use 44.1kHz or whatever they use these days... I'd prefer a pristine analogue copy that I could convert myself...
Of course, that'd be ridiculously expensive and stoopid. A losslessly compressed non-DRM'd RAW/WAV file suits me...