Re:Where have we heard this before
on
ICANN Meets Annan
·
· Score: 1
Most believed an international body had no right to regulate the content of Web sites, a concern for countries like China and North Korea
And not the US? Oh wait, they have DMCA [blackboxvoting.com]
There's a minor difference between an overzealous copyright act and a government which wishes to suppress any inkling of free speech or communication to/from its citizens it cannot control and watch for information contrary to its policies(or that it considers subversive, such as "let's have elections").
They're mostly just desperate to keep their peasants in line because they think their peasants don't know what the rest of the world is like. Why we are even listening to North Korea on anything, after they essentially tried to take the world hostage with nuclear weapons, is beyond me.
The idea of having a second person "double-check" is nice in theory, but I will wager that the second person will let errors through too.
You're missing one vital point- according to the article, the technician was working on a bank's lines. The problem was he typed in the wrong line numbers and essentially accidentally wound up working on 911 lines instead.
The Verizon policy change will "require a second technician when the changes involve the 911 system". That policy does NOTHING to address the problem, because the tech wasn't supposed to be working on the 911 system in the first place, so he wouldn't have asked a second guy to check over his work!
A proper solution, as many have pointed out, would have been restricting changes to any component of the system involving 911- or even just a "line part of 911, change?(y/N)" would have done the trick.
This is a spy plane, however. So maybe it will be used for intelligence to prevent violence. Or perhaps it will be used for intelligence to make waging war more effective.
Ah, yes. From the people who invented the Uzi, an indiscriminate killing machine- the closest you can get to the gun equivalent of a nuclear weapon- you don't pick your targets with an Uzi, you pick your areas. Just like rocket missiles fired into ghettos with some of the highest population densities in the world. I think you're extremely naive in thinking that intelligence isn't used to kill people, or that said drone will only be used for intelligence. What do you think follows the drone through the window? Answer: a rocket, from a helicopter gunship.
It's be nice if people stopped and remembered a few basic facts. #1, Palestinians were there first. #2, Palestinians have rocks; Israelis have gunship helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, RPGs, and nuclear weapons; compare the body counts from the palestinian bombings with the multiple retaliation strikes and note that the ratio is just a tad imbalanced. #3, you see terrorists- I see people fenced into ghetto prisons, whose basic resources(such as water) have been redirected out of the land they've been squeezed into, so desperate to protect their homes they're willing to strap bombs to themselves because they have no other means left to defend themselves.
Whereas most Palestinians would probably be happy to have their land back and move on to living- Israel won't be satisfied until they've pushed Palestinians completely out of the way, or exterminated them. They're doing a damn fine job at both. They've stripped land, resources, and property to satisfy the needs of their own population, who are somehow better than the people that were there already.
Which of the following people used the following argument to justify their actions:
"Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't know any better"
a)Martha Stewart
b)Ken Lay
c)Dennis Kozlowski
d)George Bush
e)all of the above
Executive officers of companies take no end of credit for their brilliance when their business does well(despite it being almost entirely out of their hands) but the second something bad happens, will say "shucks, it wasn't me" or "I dunno" or "oops". Folks- he should be fired by their board, or(gasp) take a pay cut, for the damage he's done by ignoring clearly obvious publicity problems the deal would generate.
It's interesting to note that in Japan, if a high-ranking company official makes a major blunder or is incompetent, they resign with a public apology(taking responsibility) or take a voluntary pay cut. American CEOs and execs can demonstrate no end of incompetence and take pay raises, huge stock deals...or get enormous golden parachutes. They commit massive fraud and get away with a fine that is barely 10% of the profits they made, or maybe a few weeks in some state-run all-inclusive country club.
WHY CAN'T I HAVE MY DISCOUNT WITHOUT YOU KNOWING WHO I AM?
Because, sherlock, they're paying you for marketing information. It's NOT a "discount".
It's called capitalism. Businesses don't do anything unless it makes or saves them money. You expect them to give you a discount for free? Coupons are designed to move product by getting you to buy in bulk; they're not distributed out of the goodness of the hearts of management.
5, insightful? 0, Ignorant Of Economics And Business Marketing is more like it.
This should render all of the personalized collected data pretty useless
...and the second a supermarket/pharmacy involves a "points" system for savings based on how much you buy(and a few do already), nobody will want to swap cards with anyone else; it'd be like giving money to someone.
nearly-live preview of the adjustments with zooming? A preview at all?
eyedropper measurement for color spot checking?(for example, SI uses this extensively since they know the colors of the team jerseys. It is used by many to get the white balance correct if there's a white object in the picture, etc.)
direct importing into Photoshop, so you don't have to save an intermediary file every time you want to re-convert an image?
What takes me about 10-20 seconds in Photoshop's RAW plugin takes someone with dcraw about 10 minutes of endless "try these settings, save the file, check in GIMP" cycles; god forbid you should try and do any color-correction. I change any parameter, I see it 1-2 seconds later.
web designers...siiigh.
on
Gimp Hits 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Um, I'm a web designer. How is that invaluable?
You're wasting your time when you could be doing more productive things which would help you create your websites more quickly instead of worrying about 1k or so in a jpeg
Variable compression(controlled by a mask) allows you to crank up the compression on low detail areas and use much finer compression at important parts, such as the edges of UI elements where compression artifacts would be noticed immediately. It can yield enormous savings, much greater than 1kB, and solves the #1 problem with JPEG- it's not dynamic and does NOT handle edges well.
Furthermore, even 1kB can have substantial cost savings for a client. If they get 1 million hits a day, they most certainly care about 1kB, because that's roughly $2-3/day in bandwidth charges. That's a thousand bucks a year, which pays for a whole lot of time for a graphics designer to squeek every last kilobyte out of an entire site's worth of images. Why do you think people install mod_gzip on servers to compress HTML? Why do you think many sites strip down the headers Apache sends in requests?
It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).
a)most people do NOT have broadband, b)56k modems typically get around 33.6kbps at best(22kbps is not uncommon for some folks out in the middle of nowhere), which works out to around 4.2kB/sec. If I knock 5kB off an image, you'll see it a second faster.
Re:Fantastic!
on
Gimp Hits 2.0
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Photoshop is great for printing based people, but has some major miss-features for computer graphics use.
You obviously haven't used a recent version. Photoshop CS(8.0) works very nicely for computer graphics, including stuff Gimp doesn't do, like channel/layer based JPEG compression control, which is invaluable for web designers. Adobe has been improving the integration between all their apps, and I'm a big fan; I've posted about it before.
Photoshop also supports color management through and through- GIMP never has out of the box and never will, because there's no such thing as color management under linux; it's not builtin to X, there are zero calibration devices for linux, etc. Even gamma is something of a mess under Linux.
Last but not least, Photoshop CS includes a RAW decoder for most of the pro digital cameras and many prosumer units. It is nothing short of amazing and almost worth the price tag alone; you gain quite a bit more color depth with RAW images(depends on the camera- without getting into digital medium/large format backs, the best you can get right now is 12 bit per channel) and the plugin lets you tweak many, many parameters- with nearly instant preview. Nothing compares, even on the Macintosh or PC side...only Capture One could be considered better. dcraw is a joke...
Um...since when did "video games from Russia" become a new thing? Tetris anyone?(although I seem to recall the original programmer got screwed somehow out of most of the profits).
And Asia? Has anyone forgotten that true jem, "all your base are belong to us"?
Oh, and since nobody else has said it, I might as well get it over with:
This sounds like a great new resource to use for complaining about the fact that Rackspace hosts no end of spammers.
"Hi, can I help you?"
"Sure, I'd like to report some spam."
It'd also be kind of fun to feed 'em Eliza, and see how long it takes them to figure things out.
Ok, to become a betatester, do I have to poke my eyes out ??
No. Push the power button on the monitor;-)
Or for iMac users and the like, you can buy the iSheet from Dr. Bott...a piece of super-thin semi-opaque fiberous wood material(made from only the best wood, mind you) complete with space-age fasteners(strips of plastic with adhesive on them!)
RAW? What about PNG? Use some compression at the very least, guys...
Understand what you're talking about, at the very least. RAW images ARE compressed- they're 10-12bit per channel files. My 10D's raw files are anywhere from 5 to 6.5MB depending upon how much detail is in the image(higher ISO settings will generate bigger files due to noise in the image), and uncompress to well over 30MB in Photoshop(part of that bloat is because photoshop does 8 or 16 bit per channel, not anything inbetween). I can do extensive color and exposure correction, as well as tweak noise reduction and sharpening functions(all cameras sharpen the image to compensate for the antialiasing filter that sits over the CCD and spreads the light across the 3 color sensors).
Further, the true pro cameras(1D, 1Ds, 1D Mark II, etc) can save both a JPEG and a RAW file and even allow you to control exactly how the JPEG is saved- resolution and such. My 10D saves a preview thumbnail in the RAW file, and you get a little control over what resolution it is, so it's similar, but not quite the same. The 1D mark II can save the images onto two different media cards at the same time.
JPEGs are ideal because decompression is very, very fast- and the camera has already saved a lower-resolution preview JPEG for you so there's less data to push around. RAW files require a large amount of processing, since it's raw CCD information. That includes interpolation(the R,G,B pixels are in different places!), color balance determination, etc...all the stuff the camera has a dedicated chip to handle.
Honestly, if you read the article, the guy's problem is that he has shit for photographers- "11 guys, 11 shots of the same touchdown out of focus!" who are sloppy and too loose with their shutters simply because they can be. Digital has shifted the work from the photographer(who had to be careful since he only had so much film) to the editor, who's now swamped with the most unbelievable crap because these guys are shutter happy.
Why it took CERT so long to send the advisory I don't know.
You're joking, right? A day is flat-out amazing. CERT used to take months to announce stuff. It was a joke; I unsubscribed because at the time, I found out about stuff in updated RPM changelogs well ahead of when I read it in one of CERT's email alerts. They'd often take over a week to send an email out about a virus that had already thoroughly spread.
Really? I read both quickly, I couldn't find the supposed "stolen" review. To be honest, it seems like you're just trying to promote securityworm, especially since you're posting anonymously.
Have you wondered about how the magic of wireless networks for PC's happens?
Well there's this plug for the cable(with eight pins instead of 4 for much more speed!), a radio thingy, and lots of little electronical chip things, and they make the wire talk to the air using the antenna. I heard some of them have a little penguin inside to help move the webpages around and deliver my email. Not that complicated, really.
Macupdate: 2 ads per page. Versus somewhere between 8 and 10 for Versiontracker's main page.
The bloody links actually make sense. Ie, instead of Versiontracker's "developer info" taking you do the DOWNLOAD page(which then auto-downloads!), with Macupdate, you click on the author's name or "more info" which takes you to the software developer's site or the product-specific section of their site, respectively.
Download doesn't force you to see another page full of ads to increase their hitcount. It just starts downloading.
Page loads in about 1-2 seconds, not 10(mostly thanks to, say, only two advertisements per page).
Sorry, but versiontracker blows goats. Switch to MacUpdate, and don't look back- it's just so much friendlier to deal with.
As to Macintouch, it's turned from a useful news site with intelligently written, objective blurbs about new software releases and interesting news items, to Non Stop Press Releases And Whining Users Chock Full Of Ads. I go to MacFixit forums for whining users(or when I need to whine), and MacUpdate for software update news(well, actually- I don't. I use their "notify me of new updates" email service most of the time save when I'm curious as to what new programs are out there). Don't get me started about the incessant reminders of how we should buy everything from Amazon through his affiliate links, or the text ads at the bottom of the page designed to trick users into thinking they're MacinTouch content and not paid-for ads. Ric, old boy, you've gone from doing what you do best(Mac news analysis) to competing with people who are years ahead of you and selling out in the process.
If you want slightly more interesting daily mac news and only 1-2 ads, MacResource has usually played second fiddle to Macintouch, but I have always preferred it. Just seemed more...down to earth.
moreover, it looks like the 2 issues they picked for their pilot are both things that don't require much foresight to envision, not to mention that the clone thing should happen alot sooner then 25 yrs..
Certainly the first issue has been hashed over six ways from Sunday. It's not even remotely original, which is about par for the course these days. Didn't Enterprise have some ep with a clone of one of the crew, and use the clone for spare parts? In fact, I'd be flat out amazed if The Outer Limits hadn't done something on this years ago(naturally with some twist where the copy kills the original or something far more interesting than a legal battle).
The second case is a decent example of the entertainment industry's infatuation with itself...
This new governmental policy of letting the corporations dictate public policy has just got to stop
Then get off your ass and VOTE, or run for office. These days the political climate is overwhelmingly in favor of the little guy, because people are so disenfranchised. If some 80 year old farmer from Vermont can get elected to congress for being a "regular hard working guy", why can't you? There's something like less than a 20% turnover of elected officials these days; our government is chock full of career politicians more interested in getting reelected than actually representing the people or working for good government.
People whine about corporate involvement in government, then do nothing when it comes time to do the one thing corporations can't- actually place a vote, or run for office. Voter turnout in this country is pathetic; 3rd world countries have better turnout than us, and they have to deal with gunslinging "supporters" and whatnot. In Russia, Putin's opponents simply disappear.
His premise being that a rouge government or terrorist organization could use technology like this to turn a "near miss" into a direct hit. Which could be potentially far more destructive than a nuke
An absurd premise. You'd have to be colossally stupid to do it. Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too. If they're severely mentally ill and hence willing to try, they're going to find themselves hard pressed to come up with people willing to give them weapons, supplies, money and know how to wipe out most life on the planet(not just humans); an awful lot of people will be freaked out and run to various intelligence agencies("Look man, this guy's giving us terrorists a bad name, you know?"). Who will promptly blow you to little itty bitty bite sized pieces.
Terrorists aim to change policy via terror...not to wipe everyone out, and just because they're terrorists willing to die for a cause doesn't mean they want to die for YOUR cause.
I agree, but you're missing most of the point- it's not the hardware, it's the concept; low-tech is best.
framing a picture means it was good enough to warrant said treatment. The whole point of putting up a picture frame is lost if all you show are crap photos of your dog or whatnot. Further, if I have a great photo, I want it to always be there, or at least be instantly accessible. No easy way to do that here...
the LCD panel won't last very long being on all day, every day; the backlights are rated for a few thousand hours tops.
they're horrible for viewing at anything other than dead-on; gamma and contrast change drastically from side to side or above/below
they need a power cord, which is fugly
they have vastly inferior resolution; high-resolution LCD panels aren't available anywhere except in laptops. A standard print from even, say, Walmart's digital photo lab machine...is at least 300dpi, more like 600dpi.
Archival photo paper, with UV-blocking glass, mounted with acid-free materials, will last decades. This toy will last about 2-3 years if it's lucky. Maybe 5.
at the temperatures involved (the mini-itx site lists a figure around 44C) none of the components will last very long. Hard drives especially don't like heat...
Manufacturer's demanding content changes is nothing new in the tech site community.
Grammar checks, perhaps?
Ah, quality site. Under the heatsink review section, "blow, suck" are used in the charts to describe positioning of fans. Apparently "exhaust" and "intake" are Big Words.
The article on HardOCP is hilarious:
Nobody likes a site that lies about a product just to suck up, right?
These guys have become masters of doublespeak. Read any review and they consider "balanced" reviewing to mean "come up with some numbers to sell it, but whine about looks or included mounting hardware to seem balanced." Then there's the "whine about something, but then tell readers it isn't a big deal".
Further- you can't have any "integrity" if you accept advertising dollars from companies who are selling the very product you're reviewing. Journalism 101- a course none of these bozos have ever attended.
Then the spam wouldn't even be transported over the net, saving vast amounts of traffic on the internet backbones. This action could also potentially kill spam overnight.
Ever read the FAQs for the anti-spam listsnewsgroups? Virtually top of the list is "I have some magic bullet solution that'll end spam tomorrow!"
You are -truly- naive to think this kind of solution would even be possible to implement; there are literally dozens of reasons why this would be a horrifically stupid idea; how this post ever got to +5 is way beyond me. Time to start meta-moderating more, as apparently positive mod points are getting handed out a little too easily these days.
The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Would this include women?
Years ago in high school, a female friend once angrily declared the draft "sucked". I looked her straight in the face and said "What do you care?" "Huh?" "You' can't be drafted, only men can be." This was apparently a major revelation, and shockingly, the draft was forgotten about almost immediately.
Main theories I've heard are that a)"our nation's daughters" coming home in body bags during a war would be political suicide, and b)"women aren't as [strong/smart/whatever] as men". Oh, then there's c)"women would use their feminine wiles to distract the men busy fighting!"
Ever notice how feminists just really aren't torn up about any of that, even though most of it is deeply sexist? Also notice how Jessica Lynch was supposedly(according to the Army) beaten, raped, tortured, etc- when all evidence(and her own comments, before she developed permanent amnesia of events) point to all her injuries coming from the car accident she was in, and that Iraqi doctors took exemplary care of her? It's like the Army was saying "look, this is why you don't want women in the military! They're brave but helpless, and can get RAPED! Isn't she cute? She could be YOUR daughter!"
Slashdot Mirror
And not the US? Oh wait, they have DMCA [blackboxvoting.com]
There's a minor difference between an overzealous copyright act and a government which wishes to suppress any inkling of free speech or communication to/from its citizens it cannot control and watch for information contrary to its policies(or that it considers subversive, such as "let's have elections").
They're mostly just desperate to keep their peasants in line because they think their peasants don't know what the rest of the world is like. Why we are even listening to North Korea on anything, after they essentially tried to take the world hostage with nuclear weapons, is beyond me.
You're missing one vital point- according to the article, the technician was working on a bank's lines. The problem was he typed in the wrong line numbers and essentially accidentally wound up working on 911 lines instead.
The Verizon policy change will "require a second technician when the changes involve the 911 system". That policy does NOTHING to address the problem, because the tech wasn't supposed to be working on the 911 system in the first place, so he wouldn't have asked a second guy to check over his work!
A proper solution, as many have pointed out, would have been restricting changes to any component of the system involving 911- or even just a "line part of 911, change?(y/N)" would have done the trick.
Ah, yes. From the people who invented the Uzi, an indiscriminate killing machine- the closest you can get to the gun equivalent of a nuclear weapon- you don't pick your targets with an Uzi, you pick your areas. Just like rocket missiles fired into ghettos with some of the highest population densities in the world. I think you're extremely naive in thinking that intelligence isn't used to kill people, or that said drone will only be used for intelligence. What do you think follows the drone through the window? Answer: a rocket, from a helicopter gunship.
It's be nice if people stopped and remembered a few basic facts. #1, Palestinians were there first. #2, Palestinians have rocks; Israelis have gunship helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, RPGs, and nuclear weapons; compare the body counts from the palestinian bombings with the multiple retaliation strikes and note that the ratio is just a tad imbalanced. #3, you see terrorists- I see people fenced into ghetto prisons, whose basic resources(such as water) have been redirected out of the land they've been squeezed into, so desperate to protect their homes they're willing to strap bombs to themselves because they have no other means left to defend themselves.
Whereas most Palestinians would probably be happy to have their land back and move on to living- Israel won't be satisfied until they've pushed Palestinians completely out of the way, or exterminated them. They're doing a damn fine job at both. They've stripped land, resources, and property to satisfy the needs of their own population, who are somehow better than the people that were there already.
Ring any late-1930's, early 1940's bells?
Which of the following people used the following argument to justify their actions:
"Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't know any better"
Executive officers of companies take no end of credit for their brilliance when their business does well(despite it being almost entirely out of their hands) but the second something bad happens, will say "shucks, it wasn't me" or "I dunno" or "oops". Folks- he should be fired by their board, or(gasp) take a pay cut, for the damage he's done by ignoring clearly obvious publicity problems the deal would generate.
It's interesting to note that in Japan, if a high-ranking company official makes a major blunder or is incompetent, they resign with a public apology(taking responsibility) or take a voluntary pay cut. American CEOs and execs can demonstrate no end of incompetence and take pay raises, huge stock deals...or get enormous golden parachutes. They commit massive fraud and get away with a fine that is barely 10% of the profits they made, or maybe a few weeks in some state-run all-inclusive country club.
Because, sherlock, they're paying you for marketing information. It's NOT a "discount".
It's called capitalism. Businesses don't do anything unless it makes or saves them money. You expect them to give you a discount for free? Coupons are designed to move product by getting you to buy in bulk; they're not distributed out of the goodness of the hearts of management.
5, insightful? 0, Ignorant Of Economics And Business Marketing is more like it.
...and the second a supermarket/pharmacy involves a "points" system for savings based on how much you buy(and a few do already), nobody will want to swap cards with anyone else; it'd be like giving money to someone.
And that somehow makes it equal? Does it have:
What takes me about 10-20 seconds in Photoshop's RAW plugin takes someone with dcraw about 10 minutes of endless "try these settings, save the file, check in GIMP" cycles; god forbid you should try and do any color-correction. I change any parameter, I see it 1-2 seconds later.
You're wasting your time when you could be doing more productive things which would help you create your websites more quickly instead of worrying about 1k or so in a jpeg
Variable compression(controlled by a mask) allows you to crank up the compression on low detail areas and use much finer compression at important parts, such as the edges of UI elements where compression artifacts would be noticed immediately. It can yield enormous savings, much greater than 1kB, and solves the #1 problem with JPEG- it's not dynamic and does NOT handle edges well.
Furthermore, even 1kB can have substantial cost savings for a client. If they get 1 million hits a day, they most certainly care about 1kB, because that's roughly $2-3/day in bandwidth charges. That's a thousand bucks a year, which pays for a whole lot of time for a graphics designer to squeek every last kilobyte out of an entire site's worth of images. Why do you think people install mod_gzip on servers to compress HTML? Why do you think many sites strip down the headers Apache sends in requests?
It's ok, we have broadband (or 56k modems at the very worst).
a)most people do NOT have broadband, b)56k modems typically get around 33.6kbps at best(22kbps is not uncommon for some folks out in the middle of nowhere), which works out to around 4.2kB/sec. If I knock 5kB off an image, you'll see it a second faster.
You obviously haven't used a recent version. Photoshop CS(8.0) works very nicely for computer graphics, including stuff Gimp doesn't do, like channel/layer based JPEG compression control, which is invaluable for web designers. Adobe has been improving the integration between all their apps, and I'm a big fan; I've posted about it before.
Photoshop also supports color management through and through- GIMP never has out of the box and never will, because there's no such thing as color management under linux; it's not builtin to X, there are zero calibration devices for linux, etc. Even gamma is something of a mess under Linux.
Last but not least, Photoshop CS includes a RAW decoder for most of the pro digital cameras and many prosumer units. It is nothing short of amazing and almost worth the price tag alone; you gain quite a bit more color depth with RAW images(depends on the camera- without getting into digital medium/large format backs, the best you can get right now is 12 bit per channel) and the plugin lets you tweak many, many parameters- with nearly instant preview. Nothing compares, even on the Macintosh or PC side...only Capture One could be considered better. dcraw is a joke...
Hmm, the site spell chequer must bee down to.
Um...since when did "video games from Russia" become a new thing? Tetris anyone?(although I seem to recall the original programmer got screwed somehow out of most of the profits).
And Asia? Has anyone forgotten that true jem, "all your base are belong to us"?
Oh, and since nobody else has said it, I might as well get it over with:
"In Soviet Russia, video game PLAYS YOU!"
This sounds like a great new resource to use for complaining about the fact that Rackspace hosts no end of spammers. "Hi, can I help you?" "Sure, I'd like to report some spam." It'd also be kind of fun to feed 'em Eliza, and see how long it takes them to figure things out.
No. Push the power button on the monitor ;-)
Or for iMac users and the like, you can buy the iSheet from Dr. Bott...a piece of super-thin semi-opaque fiberous wood material(made from only the best wood, mind you) complete with space-age fasteners(strips of plastic with adhesive on them!)
Understand what you're talking about, at the very least. RAW images ARE compressed- they're 10-12bit per channel files. My 10D's raw files are anywhere from 5 to 6.5MB depending upon how much detail is in the image(higher ISO settings will generate bigger files due to noise in the image), and uncompress to well over 30MB in Photoshop(part of that bloat is because photoshop does 8 or 16 bit per channel, not anything inbetween). I can do extensive color and exposure correction, as well as tweak noise reduction and sharpening functions(all cameras sharpen the image to compensate for the antialiasing filter that sits over the CCD and spreads the light across the 3 color sensors).
Further, the true pro cameras(1D, 1Ds, 1D Mark II, etc) can save both a JPEG and a RAW file and even allow you to control exactly how the JPEG is saved- resolution and such. My 10D saves a preview thumbnail in the RAW file, and you get a little control over what resolution it is, so it's similar, but not quite the same. The 1D mark II can save the images onto two different media cards at the same time.
JPEGs are ideal because decompression is very, very fast- and the camera has already saved a lower-resolution preview JPEG for you so there's less data to push around. RAW files require a large amount of processing, since it's raw CCD information. That includes interpolation(the R,G,B pixels are in different places!), color balance determination, etc...all the stuff the camera has a dedicated chip to handle.
Honestly, if you read the article, the guy's problem is that he has shit for photographers- "11 guys, 11 shots of the same touchdown out of focus!" who are sloppy and too loose with their shutters simply because they can be. Digital has shifted the work from the photographer(who had to be careful since he only had so much film) to the editor, who's now swamped with the most unbelievable crap because these guys are shutter happy.
You're joking, right? A day is flat-out amazing. CERT used to take months to announce stuff. It was a joke; I unsubscribed because at the time, I found out about stuff in updated RPM changelogs well ahead of when I read it in one of CERT's email alerts. They'd often take over a week to send an email out about a virus that had already thoroughly spread.
Really? I read both quickly, I couldn't find the supposed "stolen" review. To be honest, it seems like you're just trying to promote securityworm, especially since you're posting anonymously.
Well there's this plug for the cable(with eight pins instead of 4 for much more speed!), a radio thingy, and lots of little electronical chip things, and they make the wire talk to the air using the antenna. I heard some of them have a little penguin inside to help move the webpages around and deliver my email. Not that complicated, really.
Actually, no. It's not. MacUpdate is far superior. Why?
Sorry, but versiontracker blows goats. Switch to MacUpdate, and don't look back- it's just so much friendlier to deal with.
As to Macintouch, it's turned from a useful news site with intelligently written, objective blurbs about new software releases and interesting news items, to Non Stop Press Releases And Whining Users Chock Full Of Ads. I go to MacFixit forums for whining users(or when I need to whine), and MacUpdate for software update news(well, actually- I don't. I use their "notify me of new updates" email service most of the time save when I'm curious as to what new programs are out there). Don't get me started about the incessant reminders of how we should buy everything from Amazon through his affiliate links, or the text ads at the bottom of the page designed to trick users into thinking they're MacinTouch content and not paid-for ads. Ric, old boy, you've gone from doing what you do best(Mac news analysis) to competing with people who are years ahead of you and selling out in the process.
If you want slightly more interesting daily mac news and only 1-2 ads, MacResource has usually played second fiddle to Macintouch, but I have always preferred it. Just seemed more...down to earth.
Certainly the first issue has been hashed over six ways from Sunday. It's not even remotely original, which is about par for the course these days. Didn't Enterprise have some ep with a clone of one of the crew, and use the clone for spare parts? In fact, I'd be flat out amazed if The Outer Limits hadn't done something on this years ago(naturally with some twist where the copy kills the original or something far more interesting than a legal battle).
The second case is a decent example of the entertainment industry's infatuation with itself...
Then get off your ass and VOTE, or run for office. These days the political climate is overwhelmingly in favor of the little guy, because people are so disenfranchised. If some 80 year old farmer from Vermont can get elected to congress for being a "regular hard working guy", why can't you? There's something like less than a 20% turnover of elected officials these days; our government is chock full of career politicians more interested in getting reelected than actually representing the people or working for good government.
People whine about corporate involvement in government, then do nothing when it comes time to do the one thing corporations can't- actually place a vote, or run for office. Voter turnout in this country is pathetic; 3rd world countries have better turnout than us, and they have to deal with gunslinging "supporters" and whatnot. In Russia, Putin's opponents simply disappear.
What's your excuse?
An absurd premise. You'd have to be colossally stupid to do it. Anyone smart enough to carry it out would understand that they'd be wiping themselves out too. If they're severely mentally ill and hence willing to try, they're going to find themselves hard pressed to come up with people willing to give them weapons, supplies, money and know how to wipe out most life on the planet(not just humans); an awful lot of people will be freaked out and run to various intelligence agencies("Look man, this guy's giving us terrorists a bad name, you know?"). Who will promptly blow you to little itty bitty bite sized pieces.
Terrorists aim to change policy via terror...not to wipe everyone out, and just because they're terrorists willing to die for a cause doesn't mean they want to die for YOUR cause.
I agree, but you're missing most of the point- it's not the hardware, it's the concept; low-tech is best.
Grammar checks, perhaps?
Ah, quality site. Under the heatsink review section, "blow, suck" are used in the charts to describe positioning of fans. Apparently "exhaust" and "intake" are Big Words.
The article on HardOCP is hilarious:
Nobody likes a site that lies about a product just to suck up, right?
These guys have become masters of doublespeak. Read any review and they consider "balanced" reviewing to mean "come up with some numbers to sell it, but whine about looks or included mounting hardware to seem balanced." Then there's the "whine about something, but then tell readers it isn't a big deal".
Further- you can't have any "integrity" if you accept advertising dollars from companies who are selling the very product you're reviewing. Journalism 101- a course none of these bozos have ever attended.
Then the spam wouldn't even be transported over the net, saving vast amounts of traffic on the internet backbones. This action could also potentially kill spam overnight.
Ever read the FAQs for the anti-spam listsnewsgroups? Virtually top of the list is "I have some magic bullet solution that'll end spam tomorrow!"
You are -truly- naive to think this kind of solution would even be possible to implement; there are literally dozens of reasons why this would be a horrifically stupid idea; how this post ever got to +5 is way beyond me. Time to start meta-moderating more, as apparently positive mod points are getting handed out a little too easily these days.
The US Selective Service System is drawing up plans for a 'special skills draft'.
Would this include women?
Years ago in high school, a female friend once angrily declared the draft "sucked". I looked her straight in the face and said "What do you care?" "Huh?" "You' can't be drafted, only men can be." This was apparently a major revelation, and shockingly, the draft was forgotten about almost immediately.
Main theories I've heard are that a)"our nation's daughters" coming home in body bags during a war would be political suicide, and b)"women aren't as [strong/smart/whatever] as men". Oh, then there's c)"women would use their feminine wiles to distract the men busy fighting!"
Ever notice how feminists just really aren't torn up about any of that, even though most of it is deeply sexist? Also notice how Jessica Lynch was supposedly(according to the Army) beaten, raped, tortured, etc- when all evidence(and her own comments, before she developed permanent amnesia of events) point to all her injuries coming from the car accident she was in, and that Iraqi doctors took exemplary care of her? It's like the Army was saying "look, this is why you don't want women in the military! They're brave but helpless, and can get RAPED! Isn't she cute? She could be YOUR daughter!"