When I first saw the post, I though it said how Facebook RUINS its LAMP stack.
I think that has to do with my experience with the apps and how often things timeout in that regard. It's a little frustrating and I'm sure it has nothing to do with the guys at Facebook, but it is interesting to find how that third-party experience affects my subconscious.
I haven't watched much of Sci Fi in a while. I used to watch Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, but they're done. I would have continued watching Battlestar Galactica, but it kept jumping around, so now I'm waiting and just getting it on DVD.
Nothing else had really jumped out at me lately. But then again, ever since the whole Farscape fiasco, it's been clear that the management doesn't have a clue how to run a channel that is targeted towards a particular interest group and then use that for better advertising prices.
The more this crap goes on, the more likely I am to stop watching a lot of TV and just buy stuff on DVD or watch it on the Internet.
As a libertarian, I'd be more inclined to simply sue you for polluting.
Just because it is 41 does not mean that an average temp for January indicates a lack of global warming. You look like someone who knows little about the weather and are mathematically ignorant.
To make a realistic argument, you have to look at the data, the source of the data, etc. A real analysis would be nice. I'm currently in a place where some winters are colder than others. Sometimes we get snow only once, and other times we get dumped on. Back in 1994, we hit around 20 below Fahrenheit.
Yeah, the medication issue sucks, but it's not just the laws, but the laziness of pharmaceutical companies. I take a ton of meds, and they piss me off too.
So, again, as much as I never wanted to live in FL for the hurricanes, it's going to be interesting.
The problem with trying to find the right place to live within the concept of global warming is that while the average global temperature goes up, the temperature swings in some places should increase. Summers may well be hotter and winters cooler.
Since I want to live in Scotland, my concern is regarding any shift to the Gulf Stream and the effects that would have.
Having written, albeit small bits, in the gaming industry, we often talk about crunch, the real rules and meat that you can really grip onto and take and run with. I mean, the backstory is nice on some products, but the crunch is the stuff I can use as a player or gamemaster.
Gleemax never had much in crunch. It was all fluff and drove me crazy. It had a crappy name. (Seriously, the concept of maximum glee brings up either the image of a hyperactive 5-year-old or a massive of singing sweater vest people - either way, not attractive.)
It also seemed to try to be everything to everybody, which is a failure.
They SHOULD have tried a scaled back thing oriented towards a product line and then expanded slowly to guarantee enough content and interaction. The way it was, when I first checked it out, was that I couldn't do anything, and there was rarely enough new to see, so I stopped coming back.
And seriously, if I play an MMORPG, then I already HAVE a community. I don't need a second. I play a few single/multiplayer games (Civ IV, NWN2, etc.) and one MMORPG (EVE).
The surreptitious placement of scripts on machines by the United States Government (USAF included), is a violation of the 4th Amendment, which states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
And anyone who enlisted in the USAF had to take an oath:
"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
Executing an order that violates the Constitution is punishable under the UCMJ. And yes, that would apply to all those illegal warrantless taps performed by NSA, and UCMJ would apply to any enlisted who performed those activities. No federal law or executive order can circumvent the 4th amendment. Only another amendment can do that.
Netsol squatted on a domain after I searched for it on their site. Oops. My bad. Next day they'd registered it so that they were the only ones to sell it.
The reason I separated individual points of your posting was to point out how each of your assumptions was flawed. Each of your responses are also baseless, unsubstantiated nonsense. Where is your cite for your magical 40-50% acceptance rate for HD capable tuners, and even if the rate is 50% how does that become classified as "early adopter phase"?
The reality is that most people don't have full HD, which is 1080p. I do, and it's fantastic, when I can get full HD content, but I live with neighbours who are massively impressed with 720p, and then there are those who are just thrilled with 480p on their old progressive scan TVs. The definition of HD capable is such BS that it bothers me.
From the sounds of things you're in a lower to lower-middle class of income and you simply can't justify or afford to upgrade your television sets on even a semi-regular basis. That's well and good; for a lot of people things like televisions, nee home theatres are considered luxury items and aren't a priority, but your ideas that the rest of the world (or the rest of American households) works the same as your household is absurd at best and shows a definite lack of understanding of current trends.
I'm always amazed by those who have no concept of what it's like for the average joe. I'm definitely in the middle-class on my salary, my parents have tons of expendable cash, and I've lived in the ghetto before. It's like when the Today show says that we should pick up our favourtie chutney at the local store. Those who live in serious comfort in large cities or those who live elsewhere in the upper class do not realise how small a percentage they are or how, despite setting trends, they do not represent reality for most. Adoption by those in the mass market is what sets the norm, not the early adopters. Satellite TV did not take off in the UK because of the rich, but because of the punters who thought it made them feel rich.
Re-read my posts. I never said anything like that. My point was, now that BR has no competition to drive the price down, it will stagnate, as most don't see the point. Based on this response, you've done nothing but reinforce my opinion.
Then you really have no understanding of market forces. What competition did DVD have when it came out? None. I think you'll agree it became a raging success. The notion that HD-DVD was the competition that was going to drive down the prices is a complete strawman. Totally fictional. Bullshit from the start. Manufacturers are going to compete on the player market and soon we'll be seeing combination TVs that include BluRay players built-in which will help to further componentize the market and drive prices further down. Studios and distributors will compete on the media level. Prices are high right now because the market will bear it. The products are not at a majority saturation therefore the only people purchasing BluRay discs are the early adopters and slowly the middle class looking to upgrade and future proof their home theatres and these people are willing to pay a premium to get the better content now rather than pay to replace their content a few years down the road.
DVD had no competition, but then again, the vast majority of televisions did not support it. The question will be whether Blu-Ray, with it's broken system of lacking firmware updates for players, will provide enough incentive on it's own. With DVD, for the average person, they hooked that up and the picture clarity compared to VHS was fantastic (of course, so was Betamax). Now, unless you need the extra features, in all reality, with a good upconverting DVD player, you can barely see a difference for most things. (I hate to say it, but I have the Bourne Identity in HD and DVD, and I can barely see a change.) Unless they're not on cable or satellite, most people won't need a new TV with the digital TV standard. If they d
I personally hate Blu-Ray about as much as I hate DVD. I can't stand the region encoding, primarily because I have travelled a lot and I'm a linguist. I like to be able to buy foreign films, or foreign releases of films so that I can have subtitles in languages I want or be able to see the films I want. I don't know many places that will release Finnish films in a US region format.
That's one of the beauties about HD television, in that we use the same standards. So I love HD-DVD. If I buy an HD-DVD in the UK, Finland, China, or Australia, I can watch it in the US. Yeah, that sucks for the studios who want control, but the reality of the DVD region-coding was that it increased piracy. Every cent they try to recoup from creating the encryption raises the price and the market will not tolerate it. It's just like with music, where the market thinks $10 is a good price for a CD and Wal-Mart sells out of CDs priced like that for their release, but too many companies try to get $15-$20 for CDs with maybe two good songs. Well, the market reacts, and piracy abounds.
Most of my region 1 DVDs I reward the idiot consortium by buying them at Blockbuster for $5, instead of buying them brand new. If I have no region-locking, I will pay more, as when I get tired of a movie, or think it's not so great, I can trade it with a friend for another film. I will pay for good product, but not for product that fails me when I move again.
Perhaps it has something to do with our IT staff generally being older and more used to e-mail than IM. Or perhaps it's because we hate looking in our e-mail, because we get too much anyway.
Anyway, we rarely have lots of people in the TO: line. We have mailing lists creating, so you send to a single address and it reaches everyone on it. Now, sometimes this hits everyone because we don't have a functional intranet, and so HR posts all internal job posts to the whole company by e-mail. But mailing lists are rarely used except for a wide announcement.
If someone decides to a wide mailing list, well, that tends to result in a fair amount of ridicule for that person. New employees do it occasionally, but that usually only happens once then.
If you want to have a discussion, we either get on the phone or have a meeting.
Wrong. Termination does not require cause in an at-will employment jurisdiction. Your employer is fully within their rights to terminate you for any reason whatsoever, or no stated reason. If you do manage to get them in front of an unemployment board hearing, there's really nothing to keep them from using a minor (or fictional) infraction to justify your termination. Even if they're flat-out lying, how are you going to prove it? They're not giving sworn testimony, and they don't have the weight of perjury hanging over them. At least in this state, if you lose your hearing, your only recourse is through the courts, and who has money for that when you're out of work? Of course, if you have other circumstances, even at-will can be difficult for an employer to enforce, if it makes the appearance of discrimination. Being disabled, as I am, attempting to fire me without cause can easily be seen as discriminating against me due to disability. Now, for a small employer, that may not really matter, because you don't necessarily have the ability to go after them. But working for a publicly traded company, as I do, with not the greatest PR as of late, well, there are reasons we typically follow procedure to remove people, than simply engage in at-will firings, even though it is in the contract.
The worst thing that an employer can do with an at-will firing is by trying to avoid firing and pushing you towards quitting. It becomes easy to sue them that because they will claim to have fired you for lack of efficiency, etc, and you can claim that was because they created a hostile environment. Not going to work in every jurisdiction, but if you sense it coming, document, document, document, and a good lawyer will be able to cover you at least until you get a new job.
But again, never sign a document that ever gives away your ability to earn income. Some places will invalidate that, but the court hassles are still a pain.
My key interest is that I can play the games I want to play when I want to play them, but when I've got my system on doing file sharing, or sitting idle, I don't want to be raising my electric bill.
It still strikes me that Intel chips suck more power on idle, cost more, and run hotter when they run at capacity. So, since I don't do high-end processing, I don't need one. And my SQL servers benefit more from better bandwidth to the processor that high processing power.
So far, I have yet to see anything from Intel that will make me want to buy from them. And every time I hear another Intel jingle on the TV, I resent them even more.
(I also refuse to get a PS3, for the same energy concerns, plus Sony is so damn arrogant.)
Totally understandable. I live in state with Republican senators who seem to be in line with a lot of people here, but my local Congressman is literally a 'do-nothing' Democrat. Unfortunately, the cost to register to run is beyond my means at this point, otherwise, I'd run and probably win without too much difficulty.
Of course, I remember my parents complaining about how in Pennsylvania, there was a campaign to run a neocon Democrat against Arlen Specter. I don't always agree with him, but the attempt to hijack the vote with the straight-party voters was interesting.
I just wish more politicians would realise what precedent is. I think if it does pass, the challenge in the Supreme Court will be interesting.
Mostly because, well, then we have the government pursuing civil litigation on behalf of corporations. Are we then going to have the copyright holders pay for the cost, or will this be another free federal benefit on behalf of lobbyists?
Moreover, is the DoJ going to do this fairly? Will they contact the copyright holder to make sure that there isn't a license and that there is a desire to go after the person? Moreover, if someone steals my work as an individual, will the DoJ treat it equal with Microsoft, the RIAA, or the MPAA?
If not, then, well, please vote Leahy, etc. out of office.
I honestly don't really care about model releases. Why? If you're publishing stuff on Flickr, well, if you NEED a model release to publish, then you should have a model release to publish. People need to really understand the difference between file-sharing and publishing. It would be limited to simply being file-sharing, IF, it was only possible to access the files by having a subscription and it were limited down instead of world+dog having access.
Personally, I think if you PUBLISH and then allow for commercial use, then we're at a point where a model release would be inferred if required in your jurisdiction.
More likely, it's a matter of stupid sheep using the Internet, feeling embarrassed and then having some lousy legal advice that says they can get a lot of money. I hope they aren't actually paying a lawyer anything up front. Texting 'virgin to virgin' with Virgin Mobile means, um... texting with their network? But we're talking about Baptists in Texas, and being that I live in Georgia, home of the Baptists, I can tell you that they get indignant and there are way too many who swallow what they hear and don't think. This is the same church group that has decided to go back and restrict the rights of women. Add to that the teaching standards of Texas (which I think may actually be better than Georgia these days, but not by much), and I don't expect these people to be bright.
If they were to show up on Judge Judy, she'd be telling the plaintiffs that their problem is with each other, most likely.
Of course, now they won't back out of this suit. (Pride seems to be a big issue for a lot of people.) Well, it's a great way to add to the publicity and show off how dumb they are. I would think this suit would be worse for the girl's reputation than the 'virgin to virgin' text, which didn't mean anything. (And if she's Baptist, should not insult her reputation at all - hypocrites.)
If you go by the things the Cato Institute says, well, it starts to come down to the concept of being on your own, and individual freedom is everything, and it almost gets to the point of let the other guy fend for himself. Right, guv'ner, I want to live in the early 18th century with all it's fabulous social features. Uh, no.
A large number of intelligent, technologically-oriented people I know grew up being bullied around by society. They have little care for the sheep as a whole. Some of them (some of the best programmer's I've met) have Aspberger's syndrome, so that emotional connection to others isn't very strong, and hence creates another barrier, and more support of the idea of politics of 'leave me alone and go away'. Of course, that's all good until some tragedy happens and you find yourself totally screwed.
I believe in a libertarian philosophy of minimal government and minimal legislation. On the flip-side, I believe that government needs to provide, directly or indirectly, infrastructure. I want a level playing field for people, not to level the grass growing on the playing field (that's the so-called 'liberal' view, or moreover, the socialist view). Laws should prevent harm to others, not legislate morality.
Now, in this global economy, what is infrastructure? Aside from something we neglect (bridges, power grids, etc.), it needs to encompass what we need in the aggregate to compete globally. We want a system that encourages innovation and development, and makes it less financially viable to engage in crime. We need the roads, rails, power, and such to be encouraged. We also need to keep the air and water clean so we aren't developing 20 different kinds of cancer. But, moreover, in a world where my job can be taken anywhere and a person can travel globally before symptoms develop for disease, education and health care are now vital parts of the infrastructure.
As someone who believes in entrepreneurship, the current situation of property tax-based education in much of this country, and people being beholden to their employer for health care insurance at anything approaching a reasonable rate (and still often unreasonable), I find that equal opportunity to education, removal of social progression in education, perhaps orientation towards outcome based education is vitally important to develop entrepreneurs, and that the ability to move from job to job ot strike out on your own without losing health benefits is vital.
Sadly enough, so many models proposed by so many who claim to be libertarian are based on a vision of the United States that is outdated by 20+ years (often 50+), and hence nearly as ridiculous as the Republican party. Reactionary policies don't work. As the Republicans can't reset morality, as much as they seem to want to, the Libertarians cannot change us back into a simple world of laissez-faire that ignores other countries, or the simple fact that corporations, as legal persons with no soul, have only profit as their motive, and in a system where they report short-term results constantly, will often pursue short-term gains, at the cost of the economy as a whole.
How many libraries do you know of that make digital copies of music readily available to anyone with an internet connection? Every single one that has CDs available for borrowing. Maybe your library has had its funding cut to the point that it doesn't, but I know that I have borrowed well over 100 albums from a library.
I don't need anything fancy to rip the music when I bring it home. iTunes will work.
The moron is the one who fails to understand that many libraries offer CDs for loan.
And the last I checked, CDs are in digital format, and every time I pop one I own into iTunes, it rips it into AAC automagically. Nevermind the number of programs I can can rip it into MP3.
So, umm, yeah.
I don't recall claiming that libraries only had books.
Wonderful precedent set. We seriously need a pro bono group to aid people being sued by the RIAA and MPAA, because they have seriously overreached their bounds.
If 'making available' is now tantamount to theft, then basically all libraries are now engaged in stealing. I'm sorry, but the additional thought is that people are stupid, people don't secure things, and so at what point is something considered making available?
Yes, of course, I believe that setting up file sharing for others to download is a bit more than accidentally leaving windows file sharing on without a firewall, but then again, I'm not familiar with all software, and I can't be certain that the software itself doesn't seek out files to share. Was that shown in court?
At any rate, again, 'making available' is a bad precedent. I mean, if I borrow a DVD and rip it, or a CD and copy it, will the MPAA and RIAA be able to go after the library?
Reality is, if these people didn't download the files, and created them under 'fair use' (which I know the MPAA and RIAA don't believe in, and will lobby until that aspect of copyright law is removed), then under most jurisdictions, they did not commit a crime, as they were not distributing.
This, of course, would change if they were operating a program by which they were rewarded for the number of downloads they made available. But then, there is a compensation being received.
Seriously... I mean, my credit card has been out of whack lately. Hmm, maybe it's that I don't buy crap based on flashy ads or stupid keywords. Perhaps Firefox users actually spend more time on the Internet and are less susceptible to ad influence anyway.
Simply put, though, if you have a site for which I find the content interesting, I will likely whitelist your site in AdBlock. If the ads get too intrusive or annoying, I'll take you off the whitelist.
Ok, seriously, if you're a pen and paper gamer, who has a good group that plays well together, then honestly, you don't likely need to buy a new version of the rules. I mean, we had a group of people who had all gotten 3.0, whined about a few things, and many just looked at the SRD when 3.5 came out to see some class fixes and so on. No big deal.
But let's say we're not just looking at my home campaign playing with my friends. Let's say we're looking at the Living Campaigns, in which broken rules are important. Or we're looking at computer games and MMORPGs. Now fixing the rules is really important. I loved Neverwinter Nights, and I've enjoyed NWN2, but so much has felt limited at times. Well, you can't go into certain areas of gaming so well when the rules break down.
I know a LOT of people are upset at the end of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. I honestly would love to see a release on DVD of the whole series of Dungeon, and again, I could dare say I would like to see an updated release of Dragon. But I also know people in publishing, and I know it's gotten a lot tougher to stay competitive. I am happy to see the idea that when I buy a hardcover, which I enjoy to read, that I will be able to get digital access to it. I'm much happier when I go to a gaming session and can take my laptop with me and grab the information that way. I've got a copy of the SRD on my machine for that reason.
A lot of people seem to be really upset about the whole DRM issues, and I can't say I blame them. DRM is frustrating. Nothing like the fun and joy if I happen to have three different machines that I use, and let's say my two laptops I might take for gaming are running OSX and Ubuntu. I much prefer, as seen in another Slashdot article today, the idea of watermarking. Hey, come, contact me about my watermarked copy, and I can show you my license. No worries.
People get pissy when they feel they are being taken advantage of. Well, seriously, no one forced you to buy Magic of Incarnum at full retail price. I certainly didn't. (It's peripherally interesting, but I'm glad I only paid five buck for it.) In many ways, the jump from 3.0 to 3.5 was a little silly, but I didn't need to buy all new books. I have a feeling that 4.0 will result in some good changes, and some of my rules-lawyers friends will have to rethink their min-max strategies again, but it won't be anything earth-shattering. As long as nobody sends up back to THAC0 and negative ACs, I think we'll survive.
If WotC sends me some preview copies, I'll be sure to review and let you know what's goofy and what's not.
I would push for more diesel vehicles, anyway. When I was in California, I drove on biodiesel all the time. No need to pay carbon offset credits for that. Of course, without enough diesel vehicles, biodiesel doesn't get everywhere, which is a shame, especially since itout 75 costs so little to produce, and there are a number of methods being developed which will allow producing ethanol and biodiesel from the same crops (whee! cracking a plant instead of a barrel).
What really cracks me up is that my 99 Jetta TDI with over 200k miles gets about the EPA estimates, even on biodiesel. Driving about 80 mph with the AC on, I still got about 42-43 mpg.
No, I would say.NET is not crap due to bad coders. Mostly it's crap due to an awful IDE. Most of the bad code written by people who have been considered real programmers in whatever language it is, happen to suck primarily because they have a simple IDE that lets them get far without really knowing anything.
I have seen lots of crap in lots of languages. The difference I've found with.NET (not so different from VB6) is too many Microsoft-dedicated companies that feel they HAVE to use Microsoft platforms for everything, and then end up hiring people with limited real programming experience to work with Visual Studio to create everything. Which, in my experience, has created plenty of bugs all over the place.
Unfortunately, my current position doesn't allow me to make those programming decisions. In a previous life I had banned VB6 from anywhere, and I didn't allow contractors to write code in Perl (just because if they didn't bother to comment, then it could be a pain to decipher - write it one way, write it a thousand).
Slashdot Mirror
When I first saw the post, I though it said how Facebook RUINS its LAMP stack.
I think that has to do with my experience with the apps and how often things timeout in that regard. It's a little frustrating and I'm sure it has nothing to do with the guys at Facebook, but it is interesting to find how that third-party experience affects my subconscious.
I haven't watched much of Sci Fi in a while. I used to watch Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, but they're done. I would have continued watching Battlestar Galactica, but it kept jumping around, so now I'm waiting and just getting it on DVD.
Nothing else had really jumped out at me lately. But then again, ever since the whole Farscape fiasco, it's been clear that the management doesn't have a clue how to run a channel that is targeted towards a particular interest group and then use that for better advertising prices.
The more this crap goes on, the more likely I am to stop watching a lot of TV and just buy stuff on DVD or watch it on the Internet.
As a libertarian, I'd be more inclined to simply sue you for polluting.
Just because it is 41 does not mean that an average temp for January indicates a lack of global warming. You look like someone who knows little about the weather and are mathematically ignorant.
To make a realistic argument, you have to look at the data, the source of the data, etc. A real analysis would be nice. I'm currently in a place where some winters are colder than others. Sometimes we get snow only once, and other times we get dumped on. Back in 1994, we hit around 20 below Fahrenheit.
Yeah, the medication issue sucks, but it's not just the laws, but the laziness of pharmaceutical companies. I take a ton of meds, and they piss me off too.
So, again, as much as I never wanted to live in FL for the hurricanes, it's going to be interesting.
The problem with trying to find the right place to live within the concept of global warming is that while the average global temperature goes up, the temperature swings in some places should increase. Summers may well be hotter and winters cooler.
Since I want to live in Scotland, my concern is regarding any shift to the Gulf Stream and the effects that would have.
Belkin is one of those companies that managed to piss me off years ago. They offshored their customer service and then provided crap equipment.
I lost well over $50 on Belkin hardware for which they never reimbursed me after I sent the defective crap back.
So, like most companies with no ethics, I'm not surprised they'd pay people to write reviews that are worthless.
Having written, albeit small bits, in the gaming industry, we often talk about crunch, the real rules and meat that you can really grip onto and take and run with. I mean, the backstory is nice on some products, but the crunch is the stuff I can use as a player or gamemaster.
Gleemax never had much in crunch. It was all fluff and drove me crazy. It had a crappy name. (Seriously, the concept of maximum glee brings up either the image of a hyperactive 5-year-old or a massive of singing sweater vest people - either way, not attractive.)
It also seemed to try to be everything to everybody, which is a failure.
They SHOULD have tried a scaled back thing oriented towards a product line and then expanded slowly to guarantee enough content and interaction. The way it was, when I first checked it out, was that I couldn't do anything, and there was rarely enough new to see, so I stopped coming back.
And seriously, if I play an MMORPG, then I already HAVE a community. I don't need a second. I play a few single/multiplayer games (Civ IV, NWN2, etc.) and one MMORPG (EVE).
The surreptitious placement of scripts on machines by the United States Government (USAF included), is a violation of the 4th Amendment, which states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
And anyone who enlisted in the USAF had to take an oath:
"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice."
Executing an order that violates the Constitution is punishable under the UCMJ. And yes, that would apply to all those illegal warrantless taps performed by NSA, and UCMJ would apply to any enlisted who performed those activities. No federal law or executive order can circumvent the 4th amendment. Only another amendment can do that.
Netsol squatted on a domain after I searched for it on their site. Oops. My bad. Next day they'd registered it so that they were the only ones to sell it.
Ok, I find this amusing.
The reason I separated individual points of your posting was to point out how each of your assumptions was flawed. Each of your responses are also baseless, unsubstantiated nonsense. Where is your cite for your magical 40-50% acceptance rate for HD capable tuners, and even if the rate is 50% how does that become classified as "early adopter phase"?
The reality is that most people don't have full HD, which is 1080p. I do, and it's fantastic, when I can get full HD content, but I live with neighbours who are massively impressed with 720p, and then there are those who are just thrilled with 480p on their old progressive scan TVs. The definition of HD capable is such BS that it bothers me.
From the sounds of things you're in a lower to lower-middle class of income and you simply can't justify or afford to upgrade your television sets on even a semi-regular basis. That's well and good; for a lot of people things like televisions, nee home theatres are considered luxury items and aren't a priority, but your ideas that the rest of the world (or the rest of American households) works the same as your household is absurd at best and shows a definite lack of understanding of current trends.
I'm always amazed by those who have no concept of what it's like for the average joe. I'm definitely in the middle-class on my salary, my parents have tons of expendable cash, and I've lived in the ghetto before. It's like when the Today show says that we should pick up our favourtie chutney at the local store. Those who live in serious comfort in large cities or those who live elsewhere in the upper class do not realise how small a percentage they are or how, despite setting trends, they do not represent reality for most. Adoption by those in the mass market is what sets the norm, not the early adopters. Satellite TV did not take off in the UK because of the rich, but because of the punters who thought it made them feel rich.
Re-read my posts. I never said anything like that. My point was, now that BR has no competition to drive the price down, it will stagnate, as most don't see the point. Based on this response, you've done nothing but reinforce my opinion.
Then you really have no understanding of market forces. What competition did DVD have when it came out? None. I think you'll agree it became a raging success. The notion that HD-DVD was the competition that was going to drive down the prices is a complete strawman. Totally fictional. Bullshit from the start. Manufacturers are going to compete on the player market and soon we'll be seeing combination TVs that include BluRay players built-in which will help to further componentize the market and drive prices further down. Studios and distributors will compete on the media level. Prices are high right now because the market will bear it. The products are not at a majority saturation therefore the only people purchasing BluRay discs are the early adopters and slowly the middle class looking to upgrade and future proof their home theatres and these people are willing to pay a premium to get the better content now rather than pay to replace their content a few years down the road.
DVD had no competition, but then again, the vast majority of televisions did not support it. The question will be whether Blu-Ray, with it's broken system of lacking firmware updates for players, will provide enough incentive on it's own. With DVD, for the average person, they hooked that up and the picture clarity compared to VHS was fantastic (of course, so was Betamax). Now, unless you need the extra features, in all reality, with a good upconverting DVD player, you can barely see a difference for most things. (I hate to say it, but I have the Bourne Identity in HD and DVD, and I can barely see a change.) Unless they're not on cable or satellite, most people won't need a new TV with the digital TV standard. If they d
I personally hate Blu-Ray about as much as I hate DVD. I can't stand the region encoding, primarily because I have travelled a lot and I'm a linguist. I like to be able to buy foreign films, or foreign releases of films so that I can have subtitles in languages I want or be able to see the films I want. I don't know many places that will release Finnish films in a US region format.
That's one of the beauties about HD television, in that we use the same standards. So I love HD-DVD. If I buy an HD-DVD in the UK, Finland, China, or Australia, I can watch it in the US. Yeah, that sucks for the studios who want control, but the reality of the DVD region-coding was that it increased piracy. Every cent they try to recoup from creating the encryption raises the price and the market will not tolerate it. It's just like with music, where the market thinks $10 is a good price for a CD and Wal-Mart sells out of CDs priced like that for their release, but too many companies try to get $15-$20 for CDs with maybe two good songs. Well, the market reacts, and piracy abounds.
Most of my region 1 DVDs I reward the idiot consortium by buying them at Blockbuster for $5, instead of buying them brand new. If I have no region-locking, I will pay more, as when I get tired of a movie, or think it's not so great, I can trade it with a friend for another film. I will pay for good product, but not for product that fails me when I move again.
Perhaps it has something to do with our IT staff generally being older and more used to e-mail than IM. Or perhaps it's because we hate looking in our e-mail, because we get too much anyway.
Anyway, we rarely have lots of people in the TO: line. We have mailing lists creating, so you send to a single address and it reaches everyone on it. Now, sometimes this hits everyone because we don't have a functional intranet, and so HR posts all internal job posts to the whole company by e-mail. But mailing lists are rarely used except for a wide announcement.
If someone decides to a wide mailing list, well, that tends to result in a fair amount of ridicule for that person. New employees do it occasionally, but that usually only happens once then.
If you want to have a discussion, we either get on the phone or have a meeting.
The worst thing that an employer can do with an at-will firing is by trying to avoid firing and pushing you towards quitting. It becomes easy to sue them that because they will claim to have fired you for lack of efficiency, etc, and you can claim that was because they created a hostile environment. Not going to work in every jurisdiction, but if you sense it coming, document, document, document, and a good lawyer will be able to cover you at least until you get a new job.
But again, never sign a document that ever gives away your ability to earn income. Some places will invalidate that, but the court hassles are still a pain.
My key interest is that I can play the games I want to play when I want to play them, but when I've got my system on doing file sharing, or sitting idle, I don't want to be raising my electric bill.
It still strikes me that Intel chips suck more power on idle, cost more, and run hotter when they run at capacity. So, since I don't do high-end processing, I don't need one. And my SQL servers benefit more from better bandwidth to the processor that high processing power.
So far, I have yet to see anything from Intel that will make me want to buy from them. And every time I hear another Intel jingle on the TV, I resent them even more.
(I also refuse to get a PS3, for the same energy concerns, plus Sony is so damn arrogant.)
Totally understandable. I live in state with Republican senators who seem to be in line with a lot of people here, but my local Congressman is literally a 'do-nothing' Democrat. Unfortunately, the cost to register to run is beyond my means at this point, otherwise, I'd run and probably win without too much difficulty.
Of course, I remember my parents complaining about how in Pennsylvania, there was a campaign to run a neocon Democrat against Arlen Specter. I don't always agree with him, but the attempt to hijack the vote with the straight-party voters was interesting.
I just wish more politicians would realise what precedent is. I think if it does pass, the challenge in the Supreme Court will be interesting.
I guess we'll see how independent the new AG is, huh?
Well, this is a bad idea....
Mostly because, well, then we have the government pursuing civil litigation on behalf of corporations. Are we then going to have the copyright holders pay for the cost, or will this be another free federal benefit on behalf of lobbyists?
Moreover, is the DoJ going to do this fairly? Will they contact the copyright holder to make sure that there isn't a license and that there is a desire to go after the person? Moreover, if someone steals my work as an individual, will the DoJ treat it equal with Microsoft, the RIAA, or the MPAA?
If not, then, well, please vote Leahy, etc. out of office.
I honestly don't really care about model releases. Why? If you're publishing stuff on Flickr, well, if you NEED a model release to publish, then you should have a model release to publish. People need to really understand the difference between file-sharing and publishing. It would be limited to simply being file-sharing, IF, it was only possible to access the files by having a subscription and it were limited down instead of world+dog having access.
Personally, I think if you PUBLISH and then allow for commercial use, then we're at a point where a model release would be inferred if required in your jurisdiction.
More likely, it's a matter of stupid sheep using the Internet, feeling embarrassed and then having some lousy legal advice that says they can get a lot of money. I hope they aren't actually paying a lawyer anything up front. Texting 'virgin to virgin' with Virgin Mobile means, um... texting with their network? But we're talking about Baptists in Texas, and being that I live in Georgia, home of the Baptists, I can tell you that they get indignant and there are way too many who swallow what they hear and don't think. This is the same church group that has decided to go back and restrict the rights of women. Add to that the teaching standards of Texas (which I think may actually be better than Georgia these days, but not by much), and I don't expect these people to be bright.
If they were to show up on Judge Judy, she'd be telling the plaintiffs that their problem is with each other, most likely.
Of course, now they won't back out of this suit. (Pride seems to be a big issue for a lot of people.) Well, it's a great way to add to the publicity and show off how dumb they are. I would think this suit would be worse for the girl's reputation than the 'virgin to virgin' text, which didn't mean anything. (And if she's Baptist, should not insult her reputation at all - hypocrites.)
That's the tricky part these days.
If you go by the things the Cato Institute says, well, it starts to come down to the concept of being on your own, and individual freedom is everything, and it almost gets to the point of let the other guy fend for himself. Right, guv'ner, I want to live in the early 18th century with all it's fabulous social features. Uh, no.
A large number of intelligent, technologically-oriented people I know grew up being bullied around by society. They have little care for the sheep as a whole. Some of them (some of the best programmer's I've met) have Aspberger's syndrome, so that emotional connection to others isn't very strong, and hence creates another barrier, and more support of the idea of politics of 'leave me alone and go away'. Of course, that's all good until some tragedy happens and you find yourself totally screwed.
I believe in a libertarian philosophy of minimal government and minimal legislation. On the flip-side, I believe that government needs to provide, directly or indirectly, infrastructure. I want a level playing field for people, not to level the grass growing on the playing field (that's the so-called 'liberal' view, or moreover, the socialist view). Laws should prevent harm to others, not legislate morality.
Now, in this global economy, what is infrastructure? Aside from something we neglect (bridges, power grids, etc.), it needs to encompass what we need in the aggregate to compete globally. We want a system that encourages innovation and development, and makes it less financially viable to engage in crime. We need the roads, rails, power, and such to be encouraged. We also need to keep the air and water clean so we aren't developing 20 different kinds of cancer. But, moreover, in a world where my job can be taken anywhere and a person can travel globally before symptoms develop for disease, education and health care are now vital parts of the infrastructure.
As someone who believes in entrepreneurship, the current situation of property tax-based education in much of this country, and people being beholden to their employer for health care insurance at anything approaching a reasonable rate (and still often unreasonable), I find that equal opportunity to education, removal of social progression in education, perhaps orientation towards outcome based education is vitally important to develop entrepreneurs, and that the ability to move from job to job ot strike out on your own without losing health benefits is vital.
Sadly enough, so many models proposed by so many who claim to be libertarian are based on a vision of the United States that is outdated by 20+ years (often 50+), and hence nearly as ridiculous as the Republican party. Reactionary policies don't work. As the Republicans can't reset morality, as much as they seem to want to, the Libertarians cannot change us back into a simple world of laissez-faire that ignores other countries, or the simple fact that corporations, as legal persons with no soul, have only profit as their motive, and in a system where they report short-term results constantly, will often pursue short-term gains, at the cost of the economy as a whole.
I don't need anything fancy to rip the music when I bring it home. iTunes will work.
The moron is the one who fails to understand that many libraries offer CDs for loan.
And the last I checked, CDs are in digital format, and every time I pop one I own into iTunes, it rips it into AAC automagically. Nevermind the number of programs I can can rip it into MP3.
So, umm, yeah.
I don't recall claiming that libraries only had books.
Wonderful precedent set. We seriously need a pro bono group to aid people being sued by the RIAA and MPAA, because they have seriously overreached their bounds.
If 'making available' is now tantamount to theft, then basically all libraries are now engaged in stealing. I'm sorry, but the additional thought is that people are stupid, people don't secure things, and so at what point is something considered making available?
Yes, of course, I believe that setting up file sharing for others to download is a bit more than accidentally leaving windows file sharing on without a firewall, but then again, I'm not familiar with all software, and I can't be certain that the software itself doesn't seek out files to share. Was that shown in court?
At any rate, again, 'making available' is a bad precedent. I mean, if I borrow a DVD and rip it, or a CD and copy it, will the MPAA and RIAA be able to go after the library?
Reality is, if these people didn't download the files, and created them under 'fair use' (which I know the MPAA and RIAA don't believe in, and will lobby until that aspect of copyright law is removed), then under most jurisdictions, they did not commit a crime, as they were not distributing.
This, of course, would change if they were operating a program by which they were rewarded for the number of downloads they made available. But then, there is a compensation being received.
Really?
Seriously... I mean, my credit card has been out of whack lately. Hmm, maybe it's that I don't buy crap based on flashy ads or stupid keywords. Perhaps Firefox users actually spend more time on the Internet and are less susceptible to ad influence anyway.
Simply put, though, if you have a site for which I find the content interesting, I will likely whitelist your site in AdBlock. If the ads get too intrusive or annoying, I'll take you off the whitelist.
Ok, seriously, if you're a pen and paper gamer, who has a good group that plays well together, then honestly, you don't likely need to buy a new version of the rules. I mean, we had a group of people who had all gotten 3.0, whined about a few things, and many just looked at the SRD when 3.5 came out to see some class fixes and so on. No big deal.
But let's say we're not just looking at my home campaign playing with my friends. Let's say we're looking at the Living Campaigns, in which broken rules are important. Or we're looking at computer games and MMORPGs. Now fixing the rules is really important. I loved Neverwinter Nights, and I've enjoyed NWN2, but so much has felt limited at times. Well, you can't go into certain areas of gaming so well when the rules break down.
I know a LOT of people are upset at the end of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. I honestly would love to see a release on DVD of the whole series of Dungeon, and again, I could dare say I would like to see an updated release of Dragon. But I also know people in publishing, and I know it's gotten a lot tougher to stay competitive. I am happy to see the idea that when I buy a hardcover, which I enjoy to read, that I will be able to get digital access to it. I'm much happier when I go to a gaming session and can take my laptop with me and grab the information that way. I've got a copy of the SRD on my machine for that reason.
A lot of people seem to be really upset about the whole DRM issues, and I can't say I blame them. DRM is frustrating. Nothing like the fun and joy if I happen to have three different machines that I use, and let's say my two laptops I might take for gaming are running OSX and Ubuntu. I much prefer, as seen in another Slashdot article today, the idea of watermarking. Hey, come, contact me about my watermarked copy, and I can show you my license. No worries.
People get pissy when they feel they are being taken advantage of. Well, seriously, no one forced you to buy Magic of Incarnum at full retail price. I certainly didn't. (It's peripherally interesting, but I'm glad I only paid five buck for it.) In many ways, the jump from 3.0 to 3.5 was a little silly, but I didn't need to buy all new books. I have a feeling that 4.0 will result in some good changes, and some of my rules-lawyers friends will have to rethink their min-max strategies again, but it won't be anything earth-shattering. As long as nobody sends up back to THAC0 and negative ACs, I think we'll survive.
If WotC sends me some preview copies, I'll be sure to review and let you know what's goofy and what's not.
I would push for more diesel vehicles, anyway. When I was in California, I drove on biodiesel all the time. No need to pay carbon offset credits for that. Of course, without enough diesel vehicles, biodiesel doesn't get everywhere, which is a shame, especially since itout 75 costs so little to produce, and there are a number of methods being developed which will allow producing ethanol and biodiesel from the same crops (whee! cracking a plant instead of a barrel).
What really cracks me up is that my 99 Jetta TDI with over 200k miles gets about the EPA estimates, even on biodiesel. Driving about 80 mph with the AC on, I still got about 42-43 mpg.
Best thing is that my POS only cost about $6k.
No, I would say .NET is not crap due to bad coders. Mostly it's crap due to an awful IDE. Most of the bad code written by people who have been considered real programmers in whatever language it is, happen to suck primarily because they have a simple IDE that lets them get far without really knowing anything.
I have seen lots of crap in lots of languages. The difference I've found with .NET (not so different from VB6) is too many Microsoft-dedicated companies that feel they HAVE to use Microsoft platforms for everything, and then end up hiring people with limited real programming experience to work with Visual Studio to create everything. Which, in my experience, has created plenty of bugs all over the place.
Unfortunately, my current position doesn't allow me to make those programming decisions. In a previous life I had banned VB6 from anywhere, and I didn't allow contractors to write code in Perl (just because if they didn't bother to comment, then it could be a pain to decipher - write it one way, write it a thousand).