Cannot say if this works for everyone, when I get up in the middle of the night and cant sleep, I use the trick I stole from the lucid dreamers, stare at a point constantly, preferably (for me that is) a low lit corner of the room and before I know it I fell a sleep.
This is also one of the quickest ways of learning self hypnosis.
Exactly! I drive through Maine frequently and it isn't uncommon for the flow of traffic to be between 75 and 85 MPH on Rt 95 north of Augusta, with a posted speed limit of 65. On a two lane highway, driving 65 would surely be more dangerous than driving with the flow of traffic. I've also noticed that when the police are out and about they only pull over drivers going significantly faster than other drivers. There is NO WAY a GPS is going to be able to take this into consideration.
Also, even if TomTom is going to be using fixed reference points to decrease the location margin of error, I don't see them being able to deploy these in enough locations where they can guarantee accuracy to under 3 meters. And remember that the 3 meters is the minimal margin of error, the accuracy can be off my much more than that and can result in some odd patterns but I'm sure the software used will be able to exclude any points that seem to deviate from a projected path. I still wouldn't trust one when money or the possibility of me losing my auto insurance is on the line!
Regarding schoolbooks and DRM. Currently, many schoolbook publishers release new versions almost EVERY year, sometimes with little or no actual changes other than chapters or sections re-arranged only to make the new version not compatible with last years' books (forcing many college students to buy new books instead of used books). An industry like that isn't going to go easy on the DRM.
The recycle rules in Nova Scotia are pretty strict, trash must be separated and almost all organic waste must be composted (the exception is animal fats because they attract animals). I travel up there frequently enough that it was initially a major pain in the ass but I've found myself more aware of the trash I generate. I try to buy things that have less packaging and also try to buy commonly used household items more in bulk.
Taxes should be assessed based on the location of the merchant. End of story. This whole "tax based on the assumed final destination" has some interesting corner-cases. Think about the possibilities with phone-in orders over state-lines (delivery vs pickup).
While I agree with you I don't think this is what the states want. If I live in CT and buy something from an online retailer in CA, the state of CT doesn't want that sales tax going to CA they want their 'use' tax.
First, I'm not familiar with car racing so apologies if my observation is idiotic.
The problem I see with having bar codes or RFID measure the time is how the car crosses the finish line. Because the OP mentioned a beam being interrupted I imagine the finish is determined by the front of the car touching the finish line (not unlike any other type of racing) so if the time is measured by a barcode or image on the roof or door then how do you match that with the front of the vehicle. Also, if the time is measured by when a sensor picks up an RFID tag then again you have issues with mat / receiver sensitivity and tolerances in the transponder triggering the sensor.
Because only one car is on the track at a time you do have some wiggle room, I'm sure there would be many ways to accomplish this but it seems like you're already doing what would seem like the 'best' approach: System where both IR beams are hooked up the same time, beam 1 starts the time, beam 2 stops the timer. Before each car, race official 'initialized' the timer system by entering information about the car racing, this would solve two issues, the first is that it would reset the timer back to zero, the other being that if the previous car didn't cross the finish beam to stop the timer, the initialize process would automagically flag the previous car as not finishing (not sure how that would effect the time for that driver though). You could also put in other beams throughout the course that would give you times up to that point in the race. So, if you have a start beam, mid course beam and finish line beam, the start beam would start the time, the mid course beam would just grab the time but keep the timer going, the finish line beam would stop the timer.
Is this feasible, too simplistic or am I overlooking something important?
The problem was that your neighbor, in order to discover whether your fence was broken, tried 600 entry points.
NO, the neighbor went in through the hole in the fence and then took 500 pictures of your property. Hey then gave you the pictures and said he was able to walk through a hole in your fence.
Until just a few months ago I could do everything I needed on my computer running Windows. As I'm a Windows developer that was OK. But I recently had to expand into iOS development for a couple of clients and it's just brutal trying to get a Mac OS VM to run under Windows so I'm now using a Macbook Pro with Windows running under Parallels for all the Windows apps that aren't available or don't have Mac OS alternatives (such as my genealogy software and of course Visual Studio).
Much like a baby bird that once gave me great DVD streaming and rentals, now I have to decide if I should keep my poor bird at double the monthly cost, let it fly away and be devoid of a big part of my media capabilities, or instead cut it in half and have to deal with partial entrails, never quite getting the same experience.
I think this is the first time I would have actually preferred a car analogy.
So, following your logic: If an employee has a contract for total compensation of X dollars which includes $1000 per month in health insurance. When the insurance premiums go up 10% the following year, the union employee should then pay the extra $100 because the contract was for a fixed amount? The article mentioned that the contract had expired, I see NOTHING wrong with a new contract that requires that ALL employees pay a portion of health care costs.
In the real (non union) world you don't negotiate for 'Total Compensation' in dollars, you negotiate for salary (which is usually a fixed amount) and benefits (which are usually not fixed).
Well - obviously not. But should they be denied the ability to play the game? How much further would you take it - if the next generation of Windows required to be on line would it be fair to remove their computers?
How is this significantly different from requiring a certain generation of graphics card? Or a minimum amount of RAM? Or having a PC instead of a Mac?
In order to provide the game experience they want to provide (which is what you're paying for) the developers have decided to place certain requirements on the equipment required to play. If you don't have the required equipment, you will be unable to play.
I really don't understand all the hoo-ha - maybe the people who don't have a reliable net connection should buy one of the MYRIAD of competing products which don't have that requirement?
Because I don't believe that being online can add anything so beneficial to single player mode that it is required. Oh, there is that pesky DRM thing.
if being donated for a child to OWN the system, then i agree. but if it will be used an education environment then i think ubuntu would be a better option. they don't need "most games" in that environment. further, kids shouldn't grow up thinking windows is the only option that exists, and the "educational" software available on linux (for free no less) is vastly more available/abundant than on windows. plus, i would imagine that for most/. readers the first experience they had with computers was DOS, at least having to start everything from it. the idea that a modernized linux distro would be too complicated for them is somewhat ridiculous.
Then again why not just donate the system as close as factory as possible, with the bare bones Win XP install. If the owner doesn't want to use Windows then they can install whatever *nix OS they want.
So, Apple can sue any company that makes a table computer that simply looks similar to an iPad? Thankfully this type of thinking didn't exist when the first desktop or laptop computers were being produced. I had an HP tablet with removable keyboard that wasn't all that dissimilar in looks to an iPad. Apple is crossing a line here.
Saying something malicious that is FALSE and actually harms somebody is a civil offense. However, if no actually harm is done but their feelings are hurt then it's criminal.
Netflix did that to me early in my subscription (sometime around 2000) and I just kept telling them that I don't care if you didn't get it, I sent it. If you're going to rely on the USPS with no real tracking information then you're going to lose stuff, not my problem. Not sure how it works now as I subscribe only to streaming but they wouldn't send out another movie until they received the disc I sent in or paid for it. I also told them that if they kept insisting that I pay for the disc in question I would cancel my account. They stopped asking me to pay for the 'lost' disc. I'm still a customer.
I'm still unclear as to WHY Netflix has to pay licensing fees. There are no licensing fees attached to regular movie rentals so how is Netflix any different? As long as they pay for each copy that is in circulation I would think the studios would have no legal recourse.
Yes, and hasn't something similar been around since the earliest days of Windows applications? I remember downloaded shareware with options to pay for the full version. Why does this only seem to be an issue with mobile platforms, I'm sure there are desktop applications that do the exact same thing, why not use them as prior art?
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Cannot say if this works for everyone, when I get up in the middle of the night and cant sleep, I use the trick I stole from the lucid dreamers, stare at a point constantly, preferably (for me that is) a low lit corner of the room and before I know it I fell a sleep.
This is also one of the quickest ways of learning self hypnosis.
This is EXACTLY what the kiosk mode in Internet Explorer is for.
The IRS has accepted scanned receipts since the late 90's, provided they are identical to the original and legible.
Exactly! I drive through Maine frequently and it isn't uncommon for the flow of traffic to be between 75 and 85 MPH on Rt 95 north of Augusta, with a posted speed limit of 65. On a two lane highway, driving 65 would surely be more dangerous than driving with the flow of traffic. I've also noticed that when the police are out and about they only pull over drivers going significantly faster than other drivers. There is NO WAY a GPS is going to be able to take this into consideration.
Also, even if TomTom is going to be using fixed reference points to decrease the location margin of error, I don't see them being able to deploy these in enough locations where they can guarantee accuracy to under 3 meters. And remember that the 3 meters is the minimal margin of error, the accuracy can be off my much more than that and can result in some odd patterns but I'm sure the software used will be able to exclude any points that seem to deviate from a projected path. I still wouldn't trust one when money or the possibility of me losing my auto insurance is on the line!
ALT-F4 is still easier.
Regarding schoolbooks and DRM. Currently, many schoolbook publishers release new versions almost EVERY year, sometimes with little or no actual changes other than chapters or sections re-arranged only to make the new version not compatible with last years' books (forcing many college students to buy new books instead of used books). An industry like that isn't going to go easy on the DRM.
The recycle rules in Nova Scotia are pretty strict, trash must be separated and almost all organic waste must be composted (the exception is animal fats because they attract animals). I travel up there frequently enough that it was initially a major pain in the ass but I've found myself more aware of the trash I generate. I try to buy things that have less packaging and also try to buy commonly used household items more in bulk.
Garmin has had proximity and location alerts for quite a while.
Taxes should be assessed based on the location of the merchant. End of story. This whole "tax based on the assumed final destination" has some interesting corner-cases. Think about the possibilities with phone-in orders over state-lines (delivery vs pickup).
While I agree with you I don't think this is what the states want. If I live in CT and buy something from an online retailer in CA, the state of CT doesn't want that sales tax going to CA they want their 'use' tax.
First, I'm not familiar with car racing so apologies if my observation is idiotic.
The problem I see with having bar codes or RFID measure the time is how the car crosses the finish line. Because the OP mentioned a beam being interrupted I imagine the finish is determined by the front of the car touching the finish line (not unlike any other type of racing) so if the time is measured by a barcode or image on the roof or door then how do you match that with the front of the vehicle. Also, if the time is measured by when a sensor picks up an RFID tag then again you have issues with mat / receiver sensitivity and tolerances in the transponder triggering the sensor.
Because only one car is on the track at a time you do have some wiggle room, I'm sure there would be many ways to accomplish this but it seems like you're already doing what would seem like the 'best' approach:
System where both IR beams are hooked up the same time, beam 1 starts the time, beam 2 stops the timer. Before each car, race official 'initialized' the timer system by entering information about the car racing, this would solve two issues, the first is that it would reset the timer back to zero, the other being that if the previous car didn't cross the finish beam to stop the timer, the initialize process would automagically flag the previous car as not finishing (not sure how that would effect the time for that driver though). You could also put in other beams throughout the course that would give you times up to that point in the race. So, if you have a start beam, mid course beam and finish line beam, the start beam would start the time, the mid course beam would just grab the time but keep the timer going, the finish line beam would stop the timer.
Is this feasible, too simplistic or am I overlooking something important?
The problem was that your neighbor, in order to discover whether your fence was broken, tried 600 entry points.
NO, the neighbor went in through the hole in the fence and then took 500 pictures of your property. Hey then gave you the pictures and said he was able to walk through a hole in your fence.
Until just a few months ago I could do everything I needed on my computer running Windows. As I'm a Windows developer that was OK. But I recently had to expand into iOS development for a couple of clients and it's just brutal trying to get a Mac OS VM to run under Windows so I'm now using a Macbook Pro with Windows running under Parallels for all the Windows apps that aren't available or don't have Mac OS alternatives (such as my genealogy software and of course Visual Studio).
Much like a baby bird that once gave me great DVD streaming and rentals, now I have to decide if I should keep my poor bird at double the monthly cost, let it fly away and be devoid of a big part of my media capabilities, or instead cut it in half and have to deal with partial entrails, never quite getting the same experience.
I think this is the first time I would have actually preferred a car analogy.
So, following your logic: If an employee has a contract for total compensation of X dollars which includes $1000 per month in health insurance. When the insurance premiums go up 10% the following year, the union employee should then pay the extra $100 because the contract was for a fixed amount? The article mentioned that the contract had expired, I see NOTHING wrong with a new contract that requires that ALL employees pay a portion of health care costs.
In the real (non union) world you don't negotiate for 'Total Compensation' in dollars, you negotiate for salary (which is usually a fixed amount) and benefits (which are usually not fixed).
Gut health care? Making union employees pay for a portion of their health care like every non union employee does is gutting?
How is this significantly different from requiring a certain generation of graphics card? Or a minimum amount of RAM? Or having a PC instead of a Mac?
In order to provide the game experience they want to provide (which is what you're paying for) the developers have decided to place certain requirements on the equipment required to play. If you don't have the required equipment, you will be unable to play.
I really don't understand all the hoo-ha - maybe the people who don't have a reliable net connection should buy one of the MYRIAD of competing products which don't have that requirement?
Because I don't believe that being online can add anything so beneficial to single player mode that it is required. Oh, there is that pesky DRM thing.
if being donated for a child to OWN the system, then i agree. but if it will be used an education environment then i think ubuntu would be a better option. they don't need "most games" in that environment. further, kids shouldn't grow up thinking windows is the only option that exists, and the "educational" software available on linux (for free no less) is vastly more available/abundant than on windows. plus, i would imagine that for most /. readers the first experience they had with computers was DOS, at least having to start everything from it. the idea that a modernized linux distro would be too complicated for them is somewhat ridiculous.
Then again why not just donate the system as close as factory as possible, with the bare bones Win XP install. If the owner doesn't want to use Windows then they can install whatever *nix OS they want.
So, Apple can sue any company that makes a table computer that simply looks similar to an iPad? Thankfully this type of thinking didn't exist when the first desktop or laptop computers were being produced. I had an HP tablet with removable keyboard that wasn't all that dissimilar in looks to an iPad. Apple is crossing a line here.
In other news. General Products press conferences states that visiting Earth could void the warranty on your GP hull.
Bingo!
Saying something malicious that is FALSE and actually harms somebody is a civil offense. However, if no actually harm is done but their feelings are hurt then it's criminal.
Yeah, that makes sense ??
Netflix did that to me early in my subscription (sometime around 2000) and I just kept telling them that I don't care if you didn't get it, I sent it. If you're going to rely on the USPS with no real tracking information then you're going to lose stuff, not my problem. Not sure how it works now as I subscribe only to streaming but they wouldn't send out another movie until they received the disc I sent in or paid for it. I also told them that if they kept insisting that I pay for the disc in question I would cancel my account. They stopped asking me to pay for the 'lost' disc. I'm still a customer.
I'm still unclear as to WHY Netflix has to pay licensing fees. There are no licensing fees attached to regular movie rentals so how is Netflix any different? As long as they pay for each copy that is in circulation I would think the studios would have no legal recourse.
Just because they are well known for something they CREATED 15+ years ago doesn't make them any less creative.
So you're OK with the police confiscating your phone for days or even weeks? How is this not covered under the 4th or 5th amendment?
Yes, and hasn't something similar been around since the earliest days of Windows applications? I remember downloaded shareware with options to pay for the full version. Why does this only seem to be an issue with mobile platforms, I'm sure there are desktop applications that do the exact same thing, why not use them as prior art?