I always thought this "negative pressure" was the result of being in the 3-dimensional surface around the expanding 4-dimensional balloon of space. Remember from astronomy class when you drew little stars and galaxies on a balloon and had to blow it up? WOW! Everything moves apart, regardless of gravity!
1984 when it was written, was meant to shock people out of complacency. Referring to it every time there is a privacy law or violation diminishes this effect. What happens then is that people stop paying attention to these messages and you then have an effect counter to your intent.
If the government has access to our private communications, we must necessarily have right to the government's private communications. The memos re: WMD should therefore be a matter of public record so that the populace may make their own judgements. What your original comment seems to be missing is that this must in all ways be a two way street; either privacy is maintained across the board or it is abolished likewise.
What is perceived as harmful changes from time to time. Civil disobedience is necessary for political reform. Some laws are unjust. Microregulation enables a government to quell this activity between individuals before it can rise to the level of a protest or a rally (guaranteed peaceably by the US Constitution). If the government monitors a phone conversation where you discuss receiving medical marijuana, they may consider that evidence enough to justify a raid your home. They can arrest you, and seize everything you own (that means take it and you don't get it back), even though you are using a drug that makes your life bearable—or even possible. They can't arrest you for protesting, but they can use your phone conversations organizing a pro-marijuana rally to write up a phony warrant and find what little marijuana you may have around your home (or plant some). Maybe you're going to lead an anti-torture rally. I hope you don't have any porn on your computer (even the deleted stuff; they can get that back, you know), because when they raid your apartment or house, they'll use whatever they can to implicate you. The charges don't even have to stick; if there's any media coverage whatsoever, you are branded for life (that perv or that druggie). They can always find something on which to incriminate you; that's the point. We're none of us perfect, and given this level of surveillance the gov't is free to take down anyone labelled as a troublemaker on whatever trumped-up charge they can.
I'd recommend you read about Peter McWilliams, specifically the circumstances of his death. Then you can start reading some of his books. You might want to start with Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do. It's very light and engaging, despite its length. I know I devoured my hardcover edition (now out of print, but available via special order from your local Borders, if you have one) in a week.
This is not an indictment, but a suggestion based on the assumption you would care to expand your knowledge. If you're just trolling, then pay me no mind.
Palm OS 6, according to palminfocenter.com, is basically redesigned from the ground up to embrace wireless networking. Palm OS 5 is staying because, quite honestly, it works. I never owned an earlier generation PDA, but I swear by my T3. I haven't experienced any of the bugs I hear about from OS 3 users.
Plus, it doubles as my mp3 player to take to work in the morning (with the addition of a handy SD Cruzer drive) and it impresses the heck out of people.
Actually, more of a problem is people getting your mail before you do. Those credit card "convenience" checks have a nasty way of disappearing before you ever knew they were sent.
Actually, I'm of a mind counter to what I hear from many of you. I prefer to use passphrases, something longer and easier to remember (because it is a sentence), whether it be something like "Ucantstep2thisF00l", or something from a book. The book system is fairly easy; all you do is go sequentially through the books on your shelf, and if you need to leave yourself a hint, you can write down the page and line number somewhere safe. Only if someone knows what book you're using can they begin to take that little hint (assuming you forget to keep the cheat sheet on your person and someone finds it), and even then with a good scheme (e.g. starting in the middle of the line every other month, ROT13ing it or transcribing it into 1337) you're pretty safe.
I find I have the greatest problem with SHORT passwords, because they have to be something concise yet random and you have to remember it. And the shorter they are, the easier they are to crack. My favorite was one bank's site where your password "cannot be any longer than 7 characters and must not contain any symbols and must otherwise be ludicrously easier to hack, crack, or guess." Sites like that kill me, because I like even my most throwaway passwords to be 8-10 characters long, so I have to come up with a completely new, completely guessable password. THAT's when I get frustrated.
I note there's no link for Moore's Law. Instead of one person putting in one link at composition, now the 10 people who don't know what Moore's Law is have to go search for it.
It's the/. model of efficiency.
They had one of the AAC staff on the Screensavers, and he said that AAC was actually meant to be used at lower bitrates (96 max), where it sounds better. Now I don't know how it's possible for something to sound better at a lower bitrate, but I haven't seen the codec and I haven't heard any AACs. But if that makes sense to anyone, then it's like saying: "Who's better at football, Aikman or Beckham?" Well, it depends on what country you're in, doesn't it? You can't make a real comparison unless you're comparing them at their suggested/optimal bit rates, not the same arbitrary one.
Listen, genius. The question is not to recycle these discs or to throw them out. The idea is not to make them 'disposable' in the first place. It's really a stunning reflection that all of 5 or so comments in a sea of hundreds mention the environmental impact, whereas the rest of you are worrying about rights that will be severely curtailed if the manufacture of plastics becomes regulated, or if, y'know, we become extinct. Regardless of what you actually "think" is going to happen, something will, even if you're just (as one person above put it) throwing out 5-10 discs every week. In one household. Out of one hundred, two hundred, three hundred million.
What bothers me is that proposals like this one have no controls; there is no review where someone says, "Hey, this stuff will have negative environmental impact. You can't do it unless you can show us some numbers quantifying the repercussions."
Now I remember why I used to stay away from/. Right now, I hate you all, and I'll be in my room sulking.
Dell was good to me; it took awhile but was just about on the last day of the 8th week as they promised. ViewSonic took a bit longer than promised to get back to me with their rebate. I only just sent out my Motorola rebate two weeks ago, so we'll see on that.
On the light side, at least it motivated me to find the individual mod settings in my profile. Newbie power! I only hope every young slashdotter will be so responsible.
Another example of why 'funny' responses should not be modded as high as Informative or Insightful ones. I was actually looking for interesting comments on laser physics, but then again, this is slashdot!
It's not that the comments aren't in there, because/. definitely has its intelligent readers, but they'll never be seen because someone decided to reference a no-longer-obscure 80's movie without actually making any kind of 'joke' of their own.
Slashdot Mirror
It's too bad /. doesn't have editors. I'm used to not reading the comments; do I have to stop reading the posts, as well? It may be inevitable.
I always thought this "negative pressure" was the result of being in the 3-dimensional surface around the expanding 4-dimensional balloon of space. Remember from astronomy class when you drew little stars and galaxies on a balloon and had to blow it up? WOW! Everything moves apart, regardless of gravity!
1984 when it was written, was meant to shock people out of complacency. Referring to it every time there is a privacy law or violation diminishes this effect. What happens then is that people stop paying attention to these messages and you then have an effect counter to your intent.
If the government has access to our private communications, we must necessarily have right to the government's private communications. The memos re: WMD should therefore be a matter of public record so that the populace may make their own judgements. What your original comment seems to be missing is that this must in all ways be a two way street; either privacy is maintained across the board or it is abolished likewise.
I'd recommend you read about Peter McWilliams, specifically the circumstances of his death. Then you can start reading some of his books. You might want to start with Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do. It's very light and engaging, despite its length. I know I devoured my hardcover edition (now out of print, but available via special order from your local Borders, if you have one) in a week.
This is not an indictment, but a suggestion based on the assumption you would care to expand your knowledge. If you're just trolling, then pay me no mind.
Kill... or give them superpowers? We can't let the Russi^H^H^H^H^HRed Chinese beat us there!
How about Flash (.swf) with embedded video?
Read more.
If he's smart, he won't use H&R.
Plus, it doubles as my mp3 player to take to work in the morning (with the addition of a handy SD Cruzer drive) and it impresses the heck out of people.
Actually, more of a problem is people getting your mail before you do. Those credit card "convenience" checks have a nasty way of disappearing before you ever knew they were sent.
I find I have the greatest problem with SHORT passwords, because they have to be something concise yet random and you have to remember it. And the shorter they are, the easier they are to crack. My favorite was one bank's site where your password "cannot be any longer than 7 characters and must not contain any symbols and must otherwise be ludicrously easier to hack, crack, or guess." Sites like that kill me, because I like even my most throwaway passwords to be 8-10 characters long, so I have to come up with a completely new, completely guessable password. THAT's when I get frustrated.
I note there's no link for Moore's Law. Instead of one person putting in one link at composition, now the 10 people who don't know what Moore's Law is have to go search for it. It's the /. model of efficiency.
Not to be off-topic, but Google is probably a bit more like Azathoth, all-encompassing but not actually aware of anything.
They had one of the AAC staff on the Screensavers, and he said that AAC was actually meant to be used at lower bitrates (96 max), where it sounds better. Now I don't know how it's possible for something to sound better at a lower bitrate, but I haven't seen the codec and I haven't heard any AACs. But if that makes sense to anyone, then it's like saying: "Who's better at football, Aikman or Beckham?" Well, it depends on what country you're in, doesn't it? You can't make a real comparison unless you're comparing them at their suggested/optimal bit rates, not the same arbitrary one.
It's a free country, but that doesn't mean you don't have to work to get what you want.
What bothers me is that proposals like this one have no controls; there is no review where someone says, "Hey, this stuff will have negative environmental impact. You can't do it unless you can show us some numbers quantifying the repercussions."
Now I remember why I used to stay away from /. Right now, I hate you all, and I'll be in my room sulking.
But you know, the environment is not a probably any more, we fixed that in the 90s.
What I want is a remote-controlled surveillance roach like the kind Tricky used in the Fifth Element.
Dell was good to me; it took awhile but was just about on the last day of the 8th week as they promised. ViewSonic took a bit longer than promised to get back to me with their rebate. I only just sent out my Motorola rebate two weeks ago, so we'll see on that.
Uh, isn't that TIM Allen? Paul Allen is the guy from American Psycho that Pat Bateman killed. Or thought he killed.
On the light side, at least it motivated me to find the individual mod settings in my profile. Newbie power! I only hope every young slashdotter will be so responsible.
It's not that the comments aren't in there, because /. definitely has its intelligent readers, but they'll never be seen because someone decided to reference a no-longer-obscure 80's movie without actually making any kind of 'joke' of their own.
Well, if they'd used WMP, Microsoft would have a complete record of their data already. The hard part would be getting that data from them.