Each new release of OS X might, at best, be compared to a service pack.
I think the reason for this sentiment is that every release of OS X is a logical development from the last. Same fundamental idea, same feature set, wich a few things tweaked here and there, a few flaws removed, and a few features added.
With Microsoft, on the other hand, the development from OS to OS is more along the lines of: "fully redeveloped, complete with new UI, written from the ground up, extra extra, etc." Or at least that's how it's been since XP came out.
I don't know if it's a programming philosophy or a marketing strategy, but it gives people the impression that these systems are a "whole new OS experience," rather than just the next logical step in OS design. I think that's another reason for why they don't bother naming Windows OSes with incremental version numbers.
In the video, you can see dark and light patches in the exhaust trail of the rocket, which are obviously interference patterns. I'm guessing this is normal and expected behaviour, but I'm curious as to how they're formed, as I see no reason for the expelled fuel to behave like a wave.
Not true. Germany's an entirely secular country. Maybe you were thinking of libel and/or slander?
This means that i.e. burning the flag is illegal.
I don't live in Germany, so I don't know whether this is true or not. Doesn't seem very likely, though I'll be happy to accept this point if you have any references.
Media is censored for "glorification of violence", so i.e. "Manhunt" and "Evil dead" in its original version are banned.
Violent games are rated X/R/NC17, or the EU equivalent thereof. Some particularly violent games are placed "on index", which essentially means they're not allowed to be advertised in the media or in the shop, but are still sold.
So no, while you might have to go slightly out of your way to get some of them, violent games are most definitely not banned. Sorry.
Before I make my point, let me say that I agree with you wholeheartedly. There are, however, two things I would like to address:
Nothing about the Holocaust per se is censored. Open discussion about it is encouraged (albeit still difficult for some people). In fact, if you re-read my original post, you will see that I mentioned Holocaust denial being prosecuted, i.e. presenting it as anything but the entire (gruesome) truth. To me, that sounds almost like a diametric opposite to censorship.
I don't know if I agree with censorship of "Mein Kampf", but I certainly understand it. This, I think, is the part of my post that is most relevant to your comment. To go as far as forbidding distribution and ownership of a book might be seen as going too far by some, but I'd like to note firstly that this censorship is restricted very clearly to just this one book, not some vague reference to "think of the children" that can be bent to include pretty much anything. Secondly, the ban is restricted to the actual physical book, not the information contained within. Nothing stops people from downloading the book online (or even going to the National Library to read it). The ban is there much more to prevent anyone from making money off printing and selling the book, and to publicly label the ideas therein as being "bad".
So while I agree with you in principle, I think your comment is slightly misplaced in this context. All these laws are in place precisely so that the Holocaust is remembered.
Germany and Austria take anything related to the Holocaust very seriously. Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited. It is also considered "taboo" to say anything along the lines of: "Well, Hitler wasn't all bad, y'know..."
Personally, I think this is a good thing, because it helps people realise the seriousness of the whole thing. People in Germany or Austria will probably not laugh at Jew/Nazi jokes, as these are considered tasteless, not funny, etc.
But:
Germany and Austria also take free speech and its place as foundational pillar of democracy very seriously. It is through demonizing our past and disassociating ourselves with it that we recognise the importance of free speech and privacy. It is for this reason that these countries will never have the "slippery slope" problem of privacy loss and censorship (unless, of course, we are dragged kicking and screaming into it through EU lobbying). Governments in the UK and US (and Australia, I guess) have always been the good guys. There has never been any instance of citizens standing up to oppression on a large scale, which is why most people fail to realise where the slippery slope is (or at least might be) going.
People are slowly forgetting about the horrors of the Holocaust, but the memories of the censorship and privacy invasions by the GDR in East Germany are still vivid in people's memories. Watch The Life of Others if you still don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm going to copypasta one of my previous comments, because I never got any replies, and because I feel it is appropriate:
I'm just going to throw this out there...
As a European who's never been to the US, I don't pretend to have any idea of what a "typical American high-school" looks like. The only clues I'm exposed to are the depictions of high-schools in Hollywood movies (bear with me, here).
Now, I know that movies are probably the worst possible source of information for this type of thing, but the fact that high-schools are so consistently portrayed a certain way makes me wonder exactly how much truth is in these plots. Here's what I noticed:
People are stereotyped much more than in my personal high-school experience. You've got the book-smart nerds who are completely socially inept, the athletic jocks who're either either stupid or hide their intelligence, and the girls, who can be anywhere on the spectrum between "nice and smart" and "dumb and mean".
Yes, I know these are stereotypes. Yes, I know movies tend to exaggerate these things to the point of inaccuracy. But all of my limited experience seems to have verified these stereotypes so far, even when talking to US high-school students I know. Feel free to flame, but all I'm really asking is how much these stereotypes really apply to high-school students. Because if they're anywhere close to what they're portrayed to be in the media, then I think I've found a big chunk of the problem.
As a European who's never been to the US, I don't pretend to have any idea of what a "typical American high-school" looks like. The only clues I'm exposed to are the depictions of high-schools in Hollywood movies (bear with me, here).
Now, I know that movies are probably the worst possible source of information for this type of thing, but the fact that high-schools are so consistently portrayed a certain way makes me wonder exactly how much truth is in these plots. Here's what I noticed:
People are stereotyped much more than in my personal high-school experience. You've got the book-smart nerds who are completely socially inept, the athletic jocks who're either either stupid or hide their intelligence, and the girls, who can be anywhere on the spectrum between "nice and smart" and "dumb and mean".
Yes, I know these are stereotypes. Yes, I know movies tend to exaggerate these things to the point of inaccuracy. But all of my limited experience seems to have verified these stereotypes so far, even when talking to US high-school students I know. Feel free to flame, but all I'm really asking is how much these stereotypes really apply to high-school students. Because if they're anywhere close to what they're portrayed to be in the media, then I think I've found a big chunk of the problem.
You're absolutely right, the writing was what made HHGTTG what it is.
The only person I'd trust with writing an additional HHGTTG book would be Stephen Fry, as his style and humour are similar to Adams' own. Colfer would probably end up taking the whole thing too seriously and ruin it.
Excuse my ignorance if there's something I'm missing, here, but both the summary and TFA mention that 1MW is enough to power roughly 2,000 households.
How is this possible? Last time I checked, 1,000,000/2,000 amounts to an average of 500W per household... which is less than the average power consumption of a microwave oven.
All countries do this its their right to refuse what type of people in their country.
O RLY?
Because in all the years I spent travelling most of Europe and southern Africa, this (or, in fact, anything remotely like it) has never happened to me. I get most of my information on the US's policy for citizens' rights from Slashdot YRO, which, I admit, is a fairly one-sided view - but for this to happen anywhere in Continental Europe? It's close to unthinkable, and even if it did, all hell would break loose from people complaining, refusing and standing up to pointless and stupid policy.
Don't pretend that BS like this is the status quo among countries of the world. The US really are a lot worse at civil rights than most other democracies out there.
(Oh, and what's next? Homeland security pairing up with the **AA to check for illegal copyright infringements on your laptop and harddisks? They're already more than halfway there - it's just the logical next step.)
It's easy for most of the non-tech-savvy public to loudly proclaim that they have "nothing to hide", because it doesn't affect them. If the FBI suddenly decided (publicly) that they wanted to open and read all postal mail, or sneak into houses without warrants or prior notification, I'm sure there would be a huge outcry. The only reason people claim they have nothing to hide is because they haven't realised they do yet.
For the rest of us...
on
The DIY Tank
·
· Score: 1
"Panzer": German noun for armour
"Kampfwagen": German noun for assault vehicle
put them together...
"Panzerkampfwagen": German noun for armoured assault vehicle
Though nobody says that in everyday language. The appropriate abbreviation is "Panzer", hence the English meaning of the word.
Addiction is a physiological state with a precise clinical definition. It doesn't apply to WoW [...]
While you may be right with the technical definitions of addiction vs. dependence, I think the GP is using "addiction" in the way that it is generally used in everyday speech: to describe both psychological and physical dependencies.
What makes you think psychological dependencies aren't "real"? Sure, they might not be as serious as physical dependencies in most cases, and the risk of permanent harm to your body is greater, but it can be pretty damn difficult to stop gambling (or, case in point, playing an MMO), too.
Most people are "addicted" to alcohol and tobacco in a psychological sense long before they develop a physical dependency (if ever), so I don't see why you seem to want to dismiss psychological dependencies as not being a serious issue. That said, this whole side-discussion is somewhat off-topic, so let's move along, folks...
Imagine a world where the situation with other media was as insane as it currently is with movies/music.
Imagine pre-school teachers had to pay "broadcasting licenses" to read children's books to their pupils. And school libraries had to invest fortunes into multi-user licenses for their books and magazines ("because, hell, any student could read it!")
Imagine you had to pay a royalty fee everytime you quoted someone else's research paper ("What's that? You want to just be able to quote any research you want and expect to get away with it without million-dollar lawsuits? What kind of utopia are you living in?").
Why aren't stories like these happening when they seem so abundant in the music and movie industries? Because the funding behind scientific research and (arguably) other areas of publishing aren't in the hands of people who have long since stopped seeing any intrinsic merit in what they are doing and run things with the sole intent of squeezing as much money as possible out of it.
We can't blame the MAFIAA, ARIA, or their international counterparts -- these organisations are businesses. They're structured and run like businesses, and, sadly, they seem to be rather good at it. What needs to happen is this: music needs to stop being a business. We need to put a lot of the funding behind artists back into the hands of the public. Subventions for artists by the government (or, on a smaller scale, by local municipalities) is an important cultural stimulant in many countries, and it has the benefit of supporting more independent and emerging artists without focus on factors like "sellability" (i.e. how much money can be squeezed out of it). We have large-scale scientific funding*; why can't we have large-scale artistic funding for artists? Sure, music might not be as important (though I'd rate research for the sake of advancement of knowledge fairly close in importance to cultural evolution), but something needs to fundamentally be changed about the entertainment industry in most countries. We can't just sit and wait until the *AA implodes and another equally unsuitable system takes its place.
* N.B. I'm not USian, so the "we" here refers to all of North America/Australia/Europe
* sits back and watches the -1 Flamebait mods roll in... *
It seems the patents were filed to give the U.S. government an essential monopoly on the burgeoning nuclear industry and protect it against others who might patent similar technologies later.
So the cold war was really just about patent infringement?
User preferences arn't part of the application in the first place. Also the sound loops could be usable by any audio application. Oh come on, that's a pretty paltry "justification" for the piecemeal process there. "Oh, it's as easy as moving the Application to Trash. Any data files, any other files created and used internally by the application, well, you'll have to hunt them down and delete them, and it left those gigabytes of sample files for you to use with other applications! Where's the problem there?"
You may have a point concerning files like Preferences, but thinks like/Library/Audio are indeed for use with all applications.
Suppose you want to de-install GarageBand because you decided to install Logic Express/Pro (or, hell, any non-Apple DAW, too). Would you appreciate the OS automatically removing all your customised loops? What about the stock loops - which you still might want to (and are entitled to) access?
Apple's way of de-installing stuff is, in most cases, way more user-friendly and less likely to screw things up for other apps. In any case, the worst thing that leftover prefs, etc. can do is eat up a few kB of HD space. Big deal.
Or, to name another extremely annoying instance of this sort of thing happening, Microsoft pushing Windows Live Toolbar/Search/Browser Extensions with a simple download of their (bloated) Messenger IM client. This install is an additional system component that changes your default search settings to use their tools over whatever you decided to set.
I'm making this point because there seem to be a lot of the usual "zomg Apple's just as bad as M$, etc, etc." comments being tossed around. Sure, what they're doing here isn't ideal, but it's still a long way away from the kind of crap you have to deal with from Microsoft.
The interesting thing about that is...
The code used in the article the OP linked to features the following lines:
Revision history:
This code has been stripped out of imgana by Hacker Factor Solutions.
(Imgana does much more than quality analysis, but that's all that is
being released right now.) Said program by Hacker Factor is also mentioned in TFA as a more basic approach to checking whether or not an image has been manipulated. I'll leave you to judge what this means.
As an unrelated sidenote, Hacker Factor features a very interesting javascript that guesses the gender of the author of a block of text (>300 words). Thus far, I've found it to be eerily accurate.
Slashdot Mirror
Each new release of OS X might, at best, be compared to a service pack.
I think the reason for this sentiment is that every release of OS X is a logical development from the last. Same fundamental idea, same feature set, wich a few things tweaked here and there, a few flaws removed, and a few features added.
With Microsoft, on the other hand, the development from OS to OS is more along the lines of: "fully redeveloped, complete with new UI, written from the ground up, extra extra, etc." Or at least that's how it's been since XP came out.
I don't know if it's a programming philosophy or a marketing strategy, but it gives people the impression that these systems are a "whole new OS experience," rather than just the next logical step in OS design. I think that's another reason for why they don't bother naming Windows OSes with incremental version numbers.
(just my $.02)
In the video, you can see dark and light patches in the exhaust trail of the rocket, which are obviously interference patterns. I'm guessing this is normal and expected behaviour, but I'm curious as to how they're formed, as I see no reason for the expelled fuel to behave like a wave.
Could someone enlighten me?
Let me fix that for you.
in Germany, there are laws against blasphemy
Not true. Germany's an entirely secular country. Maybe you were thinking of libel and/or slander?
This means that i.e. burning the flag is illegal.
I don't live in Germany, so I don't know whether this is true or not. Doesn't seem very likely, though I'll be happy to accept this point if you have any references.
Media is censored for "glorification of violence", so i.e. "Manhunt" and "Evil dead" in its original version are banned.
Violent games are rated X/R/NC17, or the EU equivalent thereof. Some particularly violent games are placed "on index", which essentially means they're not allowed to be advertised in the media or in the shop, but are still sold.
So no, while you might have to go slightly out of your way to get some of them, violent games are most definitely not banned. Sorry.
Before I make my point, let me say that I agree with you wholeheartedly. There are, however, two things I would like to address:
So while I agree with you in principle, I think your comment is slightly misplaced in this context. All these laws are in place precisely so that the Holocaust is remembered.
The iCart, as it were.
Germany and Austria take anything related to the Holocaust very seriously. Holocaust denial is a felony and will most likely cause you a prison sentence. "Mein Kampf" is the only book that is illegal to own, buy or sell in both countries, and Nazi symbols like swastikas or the Hitler greeting are prohibited. It is also considered "taboo" to say anything along the lines of: "Well, Hitler wasn't all bad, y'know..."
Personally, I think this is a good thing, because it helps people realise the seriousness of the whole thing. People in Germany or Austria will probably not laugh at Jew/Nazi jokes, as these are considered tasteless, not funny, etc.
But:
Germany and Austria also take free speech and its place as foundational pillar of democracy very seriously. It is through demonizing our past and disassociating ourselves with it that we recognise the importance of free speech and privacy. It is for this reason that these countries will never have the "slippery slope" problem of privacy loss and censorship (unless, of course, we are dragged kicking and screaming into it through EU lobbying). Governments in the UK and US (and Australia, I guess) have always been the good guys. There has never been any instance of citizens standing up to oppression on a large scale, which is why most people fail to realise where the slippery slope is (or at least might be) going.
People are slowly forgetting about the horrors of the Holocaust, but the memories of the censorship and privacy invasions by the GDR in East Germany are still vivid in people's memories. Watch The Life of Others if you still don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm going to copypasta one of my previous comments, because I never got any replies, and because I feel it is appropriate:
I'm just going to throw this out there...
As a European who's never been to the US, I don't pretend to have any idea of what a "typical American high-school" looks like. The only clues I'm exposed to are the depictions of high-schools in Hollywood movies (bear with me, here).
Now, I know that movies are probably the worst possible source of information for this type of thing, but the fact that high-schools are so consistently portrayed a certain way makes me wonder exactly how much truth is in these plots. Here's what I noticed:
People are stereotyped much more than in my personal high-school experience. You've got the book-smart nerds who are completely socially inept, the athletic jocks who're either either stupid or hide their intelligence, and the girls, who can be anywhere on the spectrum between "nice and smart" and "dumb and mean".
Yes, I know these are stereotypes. Yes, I know movies tend to exaggerate these things to the point of inaccuracy. But all of my limited experience seems to have verified these stereotypes so far, even when talking to US high-school students I know. Feel free to flame, but all I'm really asking is how much these stereotypes really apply to high-school students. Because if they're anywhere close to what they're portrayed to be in the media, then I think I've found a big chunk of the problem.
Ten years of Jobs keynotes summarised.
I'm just going to throw this out there...
As a European who's never been to the US, I don't pretend to have any idea of what a "typical American high-school" looks like. The only clues I'm exposed to are the depictions of high-schools in Hollywood movies (bear with me, here).
Now, I know that movies are probably the worst possible source of information for this type of thing, but the fact that high-schools are so consistently portrayed a certain way makes me wonder exactly how much truth is in these plots. Here's what I noticed:
People are stereotyped much more than in my personal high-school experience. You've got the book-smart nerds who are completely socially inept, the athletic jocks who're either either stupid or hide their intelligence, and the girls, who can be anywhere on the spectrum between "nice and smart" and "dumb and mean".
Yes, I know these are stereotypes. Yes, I know movies tend to exaggerate these things to the point of inaccuracy. But all of my limited experience seems to have verified these stereotypes so far, even when talking to US high-school students I know. Feel free to flame, but all I'm really asking is how much these stereotypes really apply to high-school students. Because if they're anywhere close to what they're portrayed to be in the media, then I think I've found a big chunk of the problem.
You're absolutely right, the writing was what made HHGTTG what it is.
The only person I'd trust with writing an additional HHGTTG book would be Stephen Fry, as his style and humour are similar to Adams' own. Colfer would probably end up taking the whole thing too seriously and ruin it.
I spent six months walking (sans car) in cali, to and from work.
Must have been a long walk.
Excuse my ignorance if there's something I'm missing, here, but both the summary and TFA mention that 1MW is enough to power roughly 2,000 households.
How is this possible? Last time I checked, 1,000,000/2,000 amounts to an average of 500W per household... which is less than the average power consumption of a microwave oven.
O RLY?
Because in all the years I spent travelling most of Europe and southern Africa, this (or, in fact, anything remotely like it) has never happened to me.
I get most of my information on the US's policy for citizens' rights from Slashdot YRO, which, I admit, is a fairly one-sided view - but for this to happen anywhere in Continental Europe? It's close to unthinkable, and even if it did, all hell would break loose from people complaining, refusing and standing up to pointless and stupid policy.
Don't pretend that BS like this is the status quo among countries of the world. The US really are a lot worse at civil rights than most other democracies out there.
(Oh, and what's next? Homeland security pairing up with the **AA to check for illegal copyright infringements on your laptop and harddisks? They're already more than halfway there - it's just the logical next step.)
It's easy for most of the non-tech-savvy public to loudly proclaim that they have "nothing to hide", because it doesn't affect them.
If the FBI suddenly decided (publicly) that they wanted to open and read all postal mail, or sneak into houses without warrants or prior notification, I'm sure there would be a huge outcry.
The only reason people claim they have nothing to hide is because they haven't realised they do yet.
The rest of us can go ahead and buy the $20k Badonkadonk Land Cruiser mini Star Wars version of this on Amazon(!).
But hey, it has an optional flamethrower! Nice!
To clarify:
"Panzer": German noun for armour "Kampfwagen": German noun for assault vehicle
put them together...
"Panzerkampfwagen": German noun for armoured assault vehicle Though nobody says that in everyday language. The appropriate abbreviation is "Panzer", hence the English meaning of the word.
Hope that helps.
While you may be right with the technical definitions of addiction vs. dependence, I think the GP is using "addiction" in the way that it is generally used in everyday speech: to describe both psychological and physical dependencies.
What makes you think psychological dependencies aren't "real"? Sure, they might not be as serious as physical dependencies in most cases, and the risk of permanent harm to your body is greater, but it can be pretty damn difficult to stop gambling (or, case in point, playing an MMO), too.
Most people are "addicted" to alcohol and tobacco in a psychological sense long before they develop a physical dependency (if ever), so I don't see why you seem to want to dismiss psychological dependencies as not being a serious issue. That said, this whole side-discussion is somewhat off-topic, so let's move along, folks...
Maybe you just need this?
Yes you can.
Nope. They can do it all thanks to the new DX11 raytracing support!
P.S. I have it on good authority that Duke Nukem Forever will make extensive use of this revolutionary new feature.
Imagine a world where the situation with other media was as insane as it currently is with movies/music.
Imagine pre-school teachers had to pay "broadcasting licenses" to read children's books to their pupils. And school libraries had to invest fortunes into multi-user licenses for their books and magazines ("because, hell, any student could read it!")
Imagine you had to pay a royalty fee everytime you quoted someone else's research paper ("What's that? You want to just be able to quote any research you want and expect to get away with it without million-dollar lawsuits? What kind of utopia are you living in?").
Why aren't stories like these happening when they seem so abundant in the music and movie industries? Because the funding behind scientific research and (arguably) other areas of publishing aren't in the hands of people who have long since stopped seeing any intrinsic merit in what they are doing and run things with the sole intent of squeezing as much money as possible out of it.
We can't blame the MAFIAA, ARIA, or their international counterparts -- these organisations are businesses. They're structured and run like businesses, and, sadly, they seem to be rather good at it. What needs to happen is this: music needs to stop being a business. We need to put a lot of the funding behind artists back into the hands of the public. Subventions for artists by the government (or, on a smaller scale, by local municipalities) is an important cultural stimulant in many countries, and it has the benefit of supporting more independent and emerging artists without focus on factors like "sellability" (i.e. how much money can be squeezed out of it). We have large-scale scientific funding*; why can't we have large-scale artistic funding for artists? Sure, music might not be as important (though I'd rate research for the sake of advancement of knowledge fairly close in importance to cultural evolution), but something needs to fundamentally be changed about the entertainment industry in most countries. We can't just sit and wait until the *AA implodes and another equally unsuitable system takes its place.
* N.B. I'm not USian, so the "we" here refers to all of North America/Australia/Europe
* sits back and watches the -1 Flamebait mods roll in... *
So the cold war was really just about patent infringement?
You may have a point concerning files like Preferences, but thinks like
Suppose you want to de-install GarageBand because you decided to install Logic Express/Pro (or, hell, any non-Apple DAW, too). Would you appreciate the OS automatically removing all your customised loops? What about the stock loops - which you still might want to (and are entitled to) access?
Apple's way of de-installing stuff is, in most cases, way more user-friendly and less likely to screw things up for other apps. In any case, the worst thing that leftover prefs, etc. can do is eat up a few kB of HD space. Big deal.
Or, to name another extremely annoying instance of this sort of thing happening, Microsoft pushing Windows Live Toolbar/Search/Browser Extensions with a simple download of their (bloated) Messenger IM client. This install is an additional system component that changes your default search settings to use their tools over whatever you decided to set.
I'm making this point because there seem to be a lot of the usual "zomg Apple's just as bad as M$, etc, etc." comments being tossed around. Sure, what they're doing here isn't ideal, but it's still a long way away from the kind of crap you have to deal with from Microsoft.
As an unrelated sidenote, Hacker Factor features a very interesting javascript that guesses the gender of the author of a block of text (>300 words). Thus far, I've found it to be eerily accurate.