I just don't get it. What is the real problem here. If you are over 18, then this law DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU. If you are a parent, and want your kid playing Doom 3, then you get off of your lazy but and go buy it for him.
He is not censoring anything, unless you call not letting a 13-year-old into a hard-core porn store censoring.
In this society, we try to protect children. Children cannot vote, drink, buy guns, buy porn, etc. The fact that you might consider it to be OK does not mean that you get to make that choice for the whole country. With this law, if a parent wants to buy it for their children, they can. But at least they will be aware of what their children are doing.
I bet that most of the people flaming this law do not have kids.
As far as the image recognition, that is a VERY difficult thing to get right. Perhaps a mini-ITX woudl suffice, but the software is far from trivial.
And turning off GPS does make the job a lot harder. It is sort of like saying "A person with a blowtorch and some dynamite can break into our safe, so let's just leave it open."
You are right, though. It is not a panacea. Nothing is. But this is one of those thing that might just make a difference in some circumstances.
Since this does not trample on anybody's privacy, this is one of those few "security measures" which might actually make a difference without throwing out the S Bill of Rights along the way.
In practice -- a GPS is available for less than $100 from Wal-Mart. And it works anywhere. It will also spit out the exact latitude, longitude, and altitude over a convenient built-in serial port.
A VOR has to be tuned to a beacon in the same general area that you are located in. What is returned is a bearng, and maybe a distance to the beacon. You have to know where the beacon is. You then have to calculate your location. And you will also need a separate barometric altimiter for height. So, it IS possible, but it is a lot more expensive, and it is a lot more work.
Inertial guidance is not that accurate. Errors accumulate in any sort of inertial system. This is what the Germans tried in their original V2 during WW2. It was woefully inaccurate.
And as for an optical system, if you can do it for under $10,000 and fit it into a space smaller than a shoebox, I know some people who would love to give you lots of money.
Not really. If you launch a self-controlled small plane from 10 miles away, no GPS = you could be off by a mile or more. If your target was a football stadium, that is the difference between the 50-yard line and the bar down the street.
Selective Availabilty was turned off some time ago -- that was the "military" thing.
WAAS is a GPS augmentation that is relatively new. WAAS satellites were launched AFTER SA was turned off. According to the link that you provided, this is something desired by the FAA. I don't think that it was ever designed for the military.
Here's the scoop. Selective availibility put a large error in the position. WAAS attempts to compensatee for the small error due to ionospheric effects. Correcting for a small error (5 feet) does no good if there is a large error (100 feet) that you cannot fix. So WAAS only does any good after SA has been turned off.
Let's put this in perspective. What is YOUR family was about to be blown away by a home-made cruise missile. Would your thoughts be:
1) Gee, I sure hope that the EU cooperates. Dying is not convenient right now. I have concert tickets for next Tuesday.
2) Somebody save my ass right now! I love my wife and kids, and I don't want me or them to die!
(of course, this assumes that you have a wife and kids, but let's just pretend for now). Be honest here.
It is not arrogance. It is simply doing what HAS to be done. When disaster strikes, it would be nice if Superman decides to swoop down and rescue you, but you don't bet your life on it.
I am sure that blowing up EU birds is not something that would be done lightly. Asking nicely would be the first option.
1st rule of designing airplanes: systems can fail -- have backups.
Do you really think that if GPS were turned off that planes would just fall out of the sky? Sure, GPS is a great convenience. But 30 years ago, no planes had GPS, and they flew just fine. There is still an extensive network of radio beacons to aid in navigation. There is a type of beacon called VOR which can let the plane know exactly which direction the beacon is. If you get a lock on two beacons, you can know your exact location. Use your altimiter, and you then know how high you are. Instant 3D fix. It might not be quite as accurate, but it would work. The only time that you need accuracy to within 10 feet is when landing, and there are entirely separate system to cover that.
If GPS were turned off, I would expect massive delays and canceled flights. But I doubt that it would cause any crashes.
It is likely that GPS service would ONLY be interrupted in the event that the government believes that GPS is being used in some significant manner by the terrorists. Let's assume that they take a bunch of model airplanes and load them down with sarin, a GPS, and a microcontroller to drive the thing. In this instance, shutting down GPS for a day or so makes sense.
On the other hand, bombs placed on railroad tracks would not be bothered in the least by a loss of GPS, so why bother doing in.
Everything must be looked at in terms of cost/benefit. The cost of turning off GPS is quite high, since it is critical to soooo many things from cell phones to commercial aviation. Did you know that cell phone towers use GPS to synchronize their clocks? Don't forget that the economy reflects on the president also. Turning off GPS for no good reason is sure to collect a lot of criticism. So, turning off GPS would only be done if the cost of NOT doing it is greater than the cost of doing it.
Well, some people (me, for instance) don't leave my machine on 24/7. I turn it on when I need it, and turn it off when I am done. That saves electricity, heat, and noise.
They are NOT alreday doing this on Open Office. I bet that you could install and run the first verion of Star Office on XP without any problems (not that I have tried).
Think about it. Blades became the rage a while ago. Blade = sharp. Bluetooth. Tooth=sharp. I always liked firewire just because of the name. IEEE1394 is just not the same.
ZigBee. Well, I guess Bee=stinger=sharp, but that is stretching it. Especially with a nonsensical "Zig" thrown in.
This might sound funny, but the name is the thing, especially in corporations.
And we can replace your aging web servers with our new "FuzzyBunny" servers, with exclusive "Zibble-Snuggle" technology. Our "Snookie" processor runs circles around the competition.
If Vegas is a mirage, a lot of people are going to be pissed when they find out that they just stupidly left their money lying in the middle of the desert.
There's always the perennial objection that Wikipedia lacks credibility, but stories like this should show the skeptics how an open system like this actually works. In time, the thousands of eyes approach weeds out questionable content, leaving only publication quality articles.
OK. I know that this is slightly off-topic, but I have to respond to this comment. This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable. It could be 100% accurate today, but somebody will screw with it tomorrow and mess it up. Yes, I know that it can be changed back. But then you can get into silly little wars like this. Also, the many eyes theory works great for simple stuff. If sombody missed the date of birth of George Washington, it would likely be caught. If somebody missed the mass of Tungsten by 2%, it might slip by.
In my opinion, Wikipedia needs cement. A new article would be like wet cement. You can change it any way that you want. But, as it ages, it becomes harder and harder to change.
One possible solution would be to have a "trustability" number associated with each article. As the article ages, or gets read, the "trustability" increases. Then, only people who have a high enough trustability rating themselves can change it.
Sounds like a neat idea, right? Maybe not. People can be experts in a very narrow field. A PhD student might be studying molecular biology, and perfectly qualified to change an entery on chemistry. But he might not (and probably would not) know jack about Russian Literature.
So, in short, the system is subtly broken in a sense that will always allow people to question its content. How do you allow only qualified people to make changes? The "many-eyes" has only produced an article that changes every five minutes, at least in this case.
I RTFA, and I liked it. Don't bash IE too much. At the time that IE was designed, it was OK as far as the user interface goes. Security is (as always) crappy, but that is a separate issue.
The problem with IE (from a UI perspective) is simply that it has not kept up. Micro$haft decided to rest on its laurels. Once upon a time, Netscape did not have tabbed browsing either.
And the article did mention that the author fought with other people trying to get cool features implemented (and he was smacked down for it).
To summarize: IE does have a lot of problems, but that is no reason for an ad hominem attack of the author.
Did you read the article? You are in the minority. You would be the person who writes their own browser for their own needs, and it would be unsuitable for almost everybody else on the planet.
You are looking for a custom-fit in an off-the-shelf computer world. It is similar to demanding that your girlfriend be a rich, nymphomaniac supermodel who models lingerie in Paris and Milan during the week, but plays Doom3 and mods cases on the weekend. Doesn't exist.
Look at your list: No tabs. This is considered by most to be basic functionality. No bookmarks! Come one here. Nobody is forcing you to use them, but bookmark code might take up 10K, if that. I would hardly consider bookmarks to be consideree bloat. The only solution for you is to become your own tailor. You will need to get down'n'dirty with a compiler and write your own (or hack something that already exists, but you don't like firefox, so I am assuming that anything Mozilla is out also).
I can agree with you on themes, skins, and mouse gestures though.
Maybe or maybe not. The original Z80 probably takes very few transistors. And in order to make a new ASIC, it will cost at least $100K. If the processor is actual custom silicon, and not just an ASIC, then the cost of the new processor will be much higher! I know that they will make a million of these things, but it might just be cheaper to keep what you have, rather than re-spin in order to save $0.05 per unit.
Also, if they expect to build the GBA-SP for a while, it also makes sense to have one inventory item rather than splitting it into two. This just makes inventory control more complicated.
Try getting aunt Bertha to stand still for 5 minutes outside the mexican restaurant. Tripod/long exposure is good for cities, landscapes, and astronomical picutres. People? Nope.
Do they even make prime lenses any more? This is not a troll, I am serious.
The only prime lenses made anymore are generally geared towards pro use. The days of a SLR coming stock with a 50mm are long gone. And if you can justify the kind of money that modern prime lenses command, then you are a professional photographer (or at least an advanced amateur).
I would beg to differ a little on the quality of lenses, though. Even the worst lenses made now are generally better than the average lenses made 20 or 30 years ago. Image quality is generally very good, even for consumer-level SLR lenses -- as long as you keep to the middle of the aperature and zoom ranges. The one thing that you DO loose by going for a consumer-grade lens is the aperature, but that is an understandable trade-off in order to keep the size/weight/cost down.
Slashdot Mirror
I just don't get it. What is the real problem here. If you are over 18, then this law DOES NOT APPLY TO YOU. If you are a parent, and want your kid playing Doom 3, then you get off of your lazy but and go buy it for him.
He is not censoring anything, unless you call not letting a 13-year-old into a hard-core porn store censoring.
In this society, we try to protect children. Children cannot vote, drink, buy guns, buy porn, etc. The fact that you might consider it to be OK does not mean that you get to make that choice for the whole country. With this law, if a parent wants to buy it for their children, they can. But at least they will be aware of what their children are doing.
I bet that most of the people flaming this law do not have kids.
Note EVERY genre.
Ewoc-Mon (or Poke-Ewok) -- Gotta catch'em all!
Light sabers vs. Phasers set on "stun."
And how can you even compare Darth Vader to John DeLancy?
I tend to disagree on one small point...
X-Wing Alliance is the BEST SW Game Ever. I believe that it was released in 2000.
KOTOR wins 2nd best.
As far as the image recognition, that is a VERY difficult thing to get right. Perhaps a mini-ITX woudl suffice, but the software is far from trivial.
And turning off GPS does make the job a lot harder. It is sort of like saying "A person with a blowtorch and some dynamite can break into our safe, so let's just leave it open."
You are right, though. It is not a panacea. Nothing is. But this is one of those thing that might just make a difference in some circumstances.
Since this does not trample on anybody's privacy, this is one of those few "security measures" which might actually make a difference without throwing out the S Bill of Rights along the way.
In that specific instance, men were the ones who could swing a sword.
In theory, yes.
In practice -- a GPS is available for less than $100 from Wal-Mart. And it works anywhere. It will also spit out the exact latitude, longitude, and altitude over a convenient built-in serial port.
A VOR has to be tuned to a beacon in the same general area that you are located in. What is returned is a bearng, and maybe a distance to the beacon. You have to know where the beacon is. You then have to calculate your location. And you will also need a separate barometric altimiter for height. So, it IS possible, but it is a lot more expensive, and it is a lot more work.
Inertial guidance is not that accurate. Errors accumulate in any sort of inertial system. This is what the Germans tried in their original V2 during WW2. It was woefully inaccurate.
And as for an optical system, if you can do it for under $10,000 and fit it into a space smaller than a shoebox, I know some people who would love to give you lots of money.
Soooooo.... If the enemy has 100 ways to attack us, it is foolish to prepare a defense for one of them??
You could die by having a piano fall on your head. So you should not bother to wear your seatbelt and get exercise or avoid fatty food.
It is a shame when the basic rules of logic break down.
Not really. If you launch a self-controlled small plane from 10 miles away, no GPS = you could be off by a mile or more. If your target was a football stadium, that is the difference between the 50-yard line and the bar down the street.
AFAIK, WAAS was never militarized.
Selective Availabilty was turned off some time ago -- that was the "military" thing.
WAAS is a GPS augmentation that is relatively new. WAAS satellites were launched AFTER SA was turned off. According to the link that you provided, this is something desired by the FAA. I don't think that it was ever designed for the military.
Here's the scoop. Selective availibility put a large error in the position. WAAS attempts to compensatee for the small error due to ionospheric effects. Correcting for a small error (5 feet) does no good if there is a large error (100 feet) that you cannot fix. So WAAS only does any good after SA has been turned off.
Small Diameter Bomb uses GPS for guidance. Also, how about the Joint Direct Attack Munition
Let's put this in perspective. What is YOUR family was about to be blown away by a home-made cruise missile. Would your thoughts be:
1) Gee, I sure hope that the EU cooperates. Dying is not convenient right now. I have concert tickets for next Tuesday.
2) Somebody save my ass right now! I love my wife and kids, and I don't want me or them to die!
(of course, this assumes that you have a wife and kids, but let's just pretend for now). Be honest here.
It is not arrogance. It is simply doing what HAS to be done. When disaster strikes, it would be nice if Superman decides to swoop down and rescue you, but you don't bet your life on it.
I am sure that blowing up EU birds is not something that would be done lightly. Asking nicely would be the first option.
1st rule of designing airplanes: systems can fail -- have backups.
Do you really think that if GPS were turned off that planes would just fall out of the sky? Sure, GPS is a great convenience. But 30 years ago, no planes had GPS, and they flew just fine. There is still an extensive network of radio beacons to aid in navigation. There is a type of beacon called VOR which can let the plane know exactly which direction the beacon is. If you get a lock on two beacons, you can know your exact location. Use your altimiter, and you then know how high you are. Instant 3D fix. It might not be quite as accurate, but it would work. The only time that you need accuracy to within 10 feet is when landing, and there are entirely separate system to cover that.
If GPS were turned off, I would expect massive delays and canceled flights. But I doubt that it would cause any crashes.
Duhhhh.
It is likely that GPS service would ONLY be interrupted in the event that the government believes that GPS is being used in some significant manner by the terrorists. Let's assume that they take a bunch of model airplanes and load them down with sarin, a GPS, and a microcontroller to drive the thing. In this instance, shutting down GPS for a day or so makes sense.
On the other hand, bombs placed on railroad tracks would not be bothered in the least by a loss of GPS, so why bother doing in.
Everything must be looked at in terms of cost/benefit. The cost of turning off GPS is quite high, since it is critical to soooo many things from cell phones to commercial aviation. Did you know that cell phone towers use GPS to synchronize their clocks? Don't forget that the economy reflects on the president also. Turning off GPS for no good reason is sure to collect a lot of criticism. So, turning off GPS would only be done if the cost of NOT doing it is greater than the cost of doing it.
Well, some people (me, for instance) don't leave my machine on 24/7. I turn it on when I need it, and turn it off when I am done. That saves electricity, heat, and noise.
They are NOT alreday doing this on Open Office. I bet that you could install and run the first verion of Star Office on XP without any problems (not that I have tried).
Think about it. Blades became the rage a while ago. Blade = sharp. Bluetooth. Tooth=sharp. I always liked firewire just because of the name. IEEE1394 is just not the same.
ZigBee. Well, I guess Bee=stinger=sharp, but that is stretching it. Especially with a nonsensical "Zig" thrown in.
This might sound funny, but the name is the thing, especially in corporations.
Yeah, right!
If Vegas is a mirage, a lot of people are going to be pissed when they find out that they just stupidly left their money lying in the middle of the desert.
OK. I know that this is slightly off-topic, but I have to respond to this comment. This whole fiasco is a demonstration of why Wikipedia is NOT reliable. It could be 100% accurate today, but somebody will screw with it tomorrow and mess it up. Yes, I know that it can be changed back. But then you can get into silly little wars like this. Also, the many eyes theory works great for simple stuff. If sombody missed the date of birth of George Washington, it would likely be caught. If somebody missed the mass of Tungsten by 2%, it might slip by.
In my opinion, Wikipedia needs cement. A new article would be like wet cement. You can change it any way that you want. But, as it ages, it becomes harder and harder to change.
One possible solution would be to have a "trustability" number associated with each article. As the article ages, or gets read, the "trustability" increases. Then, only people who have a high enough trustability rating themselves can change it.
Sounds like a neat idea, right? Maybe not. People can be experts in a very narrow field. A PhD student might be studying molecular biology, and perfectly qualified to change an entery on chemistry. But he might not (and probably would not) know jack about Russian Literature.
So, in short, the system is subtly broken in a sense that will always allow people to question its content. How do you allow only qualified people to make changes? The "many-eyes" has only produced an article that changes every five minutes, at least in this case.
I RTFA, and I liked it. Don't bash IE too much. At the time that IE was designed, it was OK as far as the user interface goes. Security is (as always) crappy, but that is a separate issue.
The problem with IE (from a UI perspective) is simply that it has not kept up. Micro$haft decided to rest on its laurels. Once upon a time, Netscape did not have tabbed browsing either.
And the article did mention that the author fought with other people trying to get cool features implemented (and he was smacked down for it).
To summarize: IE does have a lot of problems, but that is no reason for an ad hominem attack of the author.
Did you read the article? You are in the minority. You would be the person who writes their own browser for their own needs, and it would be unsuitable for almost everybody else on the planet.
You are looking for a custom-fit in an off-the-shelf computer world. It is similar to demanding that your girlfriend be a rich, nymphomaniac supermodel who models lingerie in Paris and Milan during the week, but plays Doom3 and mods cases on the weekend. Doesn't exist.
Look at your list: No tabs. This is considered by most to be basic functionality. No bookmarks! Come one here. Nobody is forcing you to use them, but bookmark code might take up 10K, if that. I would hardly consider bookmarks to be consideree bloat. The only solution for you is to become your own tailor. You will need to get down'n'dirty with a compiler and write your own (or hack something that already exists, but you don't like firefox, so I am assuming that anything Mozilla is out also).
I can agree with you on themes, skins, and mouse gestures though.
Maybe or maybe not. The original Z80 probably takes very few transistors. And in order to make a new ASIC, it will cost at least $100K. If the processor is actual custom silicon, and not just an ASIC, then the cost of the new processor will be much higher! I know that they will make a million of these things, but it might just be cheaper to keep what you have, rather than re-spin in order to save $0.05 per unit.
Also, if they expect to build the GBA-SP for a while, it also makes sense to have one inventory item rather than splitting it into two. This just makes inventory control more complicated.
Try getting aunt Bertha to stand still for 5 minutes outside the mexican restaurant. Tripod/long exposure is good for cities, landscapes, and astronomical picutres. People? Nope.
Do they even make prime lenses any more? This is not a troll, I am serious.
The only prime lenses made anymore are generally geared towards pro use. The days of a SLR coming stock with a 50mm are long gone. And if you can justify the kind of money that modern prime lenses command, then you are a professional photographer (or at least an advanced amateur).
I would beg to differ a little on the quality of lenses, though. Even the worst lenses made now are generally better than the average lenses made 20 or 30 years ago. Image quality is generally very good, even for consumer-level SLR lenses -- as long as you keep to the middle of the aperature and zoom ranges. The one thing that you DO loose by going for a consumer-grade lens is the aperature, but that is an understandable trade-off in order to keep the size/weight/cost down.