The actual detonation is probably handled by a MagicFire [magicfire.com] device.
Lovely- another poster was talking about how Disney's going for non-toxic fireworks components. Too bad the MagicFire devices have two nicely sized electrolytic capacitors onboard...probably lead solder, too.
The biggest obstacle to using credit cards for micropayments is the cost of transaction processing
Ah, which ignores the two biggest obstacles to using micropayments:
a)People HATE getting nickled and dimed- hence the very origin of the term!
b)For websites and the like, people will simply seek out free content which is available in quantity. Bob starts charging micropayments for his webcomic. Bob witnesses most of his readers disappearing into the woodwork. Jane, Sally, and Joe notice little bumps in their traffic logs.
People just can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that some stuff just isn't considered by the public worth paying for, at any price.
Oh, not to mention, the micropayment guys seem to like charging as much or more than the credit card companies, the money is not very accessible, and so on.
However, The most important lesson is that we should all make everything out of Aluminium. take a look at Lian Li [lianli.com] cases, which are also very attractive;)
There's nothing about a Lian Li case that is either unique or attractive. All they did was take a PC case design, and make it out of aluminum.
Apple did not exactly forge new territory with their thermal zone concept- one need only look at a Sun Ultra to see the CPU's air intake is ducted, for example. Digital also used some interesting arrangements with the Alphas, in part because they -had- to thanks to enormous power consumption.
Still, Apple did a great job of executing it, and like the Blue and White G3 case, it was fresh, new, innovative, and a drastic step up from both the old mac cases(which were a BITCH to get apart, the 8500 being a prime example, requiring TOTAL disassembly to get to the memory) and PC cases. Cables are hidden away, the finish of materials are perfect, and so on. Lian Li cases are just welded aluminum cases with all the panels having the same boring finish...only recently have they done something different, and the best they can manage is to imitate the G5- look at the website you linked to, that case was clearly designed to imitate the G5...rather poorly, too.
In a former career I spent time mixing cement. One day I was mixing a small amount in a 5 gallon bucket. At the time I had nothing to mix it with so I used my hand. After mixing I washed my hand and it was amazingly smooth. I didn't think much more about it. I looked at it and noticed that the mixing had worn down the top layes of skin on my hand.
Uh, that's because calcium hydroxide -burned- it off, not "wore it down". It's actually quite common, because there is a delay between exposure and reaction. Well, that and people think "hey, it's just rocks and dirt and stuff, i don't have to wear gloves..."
This whole idea of putting methanol inside my laptop and then firing the whole thing up makes me a little uncomfortable.
Then don't think about the lithium ion cells in your laptop/cell phone right now, because they have extremely high energy densities(the battery pack in my Powerbook 17" is probably the same volume as a CD jewel case, and yet contains 61 Watt-hours of power), and require careful management by the device to keep from entering thermal runaway mode, where the battery gets hotter and hotter until it explodes- and I do mean -explodes-. Rather violently.
For several years(possibly still) battery companies wouldn't sell Lithium Ion batteries to anyone except certified "solution providers" to assure the batteries had proper charging and monitoring.
That said, I saw Ghost in the Shell 1 and never was as bored in all my life. [snip] And I got halfway through the film and still hadn't figured out what the hell they meant by a 'ghost.'
Ghost in the Shell does not pander to MTV attention spans, and like the Patlabor movies, there's a complex plot. And a "ghost", while a vague concept, is quite obviously(if you pay attention) "what makes a person a person and not a machine". It's your personality, memories, etc. Part of it is that nobody seems to quite be able to put their finger on what a 'ghost' really is; hence the scene where Motoko wonders with Batou whether or not she's really human anymore. Are her memories manufactured, she wonders?
Watch Cowboy Bebop instead. It's a lot more fun, the animated cityscapes are stunning, and it doesn't take itself very seriously.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the all-time greats, but there are those of us who do enjoy serious anime.
There were a lot of complaints about Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex too- a lot of immature people complained there wasn't enough "action" and there was "too much talking". Well, guess what- that's -exactly- what GITS has always been about, right down to the manga, which sometimes has -paragraphs- of narration.
If you don't like philosophical anime, fine- go watch mindless shit like [shivers] Dragon Ball Z, [gets sick] Naruto, or [throws up] One Piece. But don't try to make every anime fit your tastes and complain when something doesn't.
The slashdot crowd might really enjoy PlanetES, about a young girl full of ideals who goes into space to work in a debris collection department- and finds space isn't quite as romantic, and astronauts not quite as valiant- as she thought.
Last Exile is about two kids serve as couriers, piloting a flying machine in the midst of a war and hoping to some day find their father(s) who were lost delivering a vital message.
Read or Die(watch the OVA first) is a fun series about three detective-sisters(named after martial arts starts, incidentally- Anita, Maggie, Michelle; there's also a Lee, a dove named Woo, etc:-) who are "paper-users" like the famous bibliomaniac Yoriko "The Paper" Readman, who worked for (heh) the British Library Special Forces. The OVA is particularly strange in a fun way. Kinda girly and -very- moving towards the end.
Oh, and lastly, Spirited Away is fantastic. Not nearly as preachy as Ghibli's earlier stuff(which is also excellent, but extremely heavy-handed in environmentalist ways. Princess Mononoke, Nausicca Valley of the Wind, etc).
this is off-topic, but you could ask the neighbours kids, they usually will do it for a couple of quid.
Here in America, you tell them how cool it is to mow the lawn- and they can't do it, they're not cool enough. But, maybe- just maybe- if they pay you, you'll let them do it.
As I understand it, SETI has made leaps not only in the search for extra-terrestrial life, but also in the area of distributed computing.
They also lied to users by feeding them the same data blocks over and over- for purely selfish reasons. They figured that if they announced they'd temporarily run out of data, they'd loose a lot of systems.
Why did they run out of data? Because they lost time on the radio dishes, because- surprise- the other scientists had more justifiable uses than looking for intelligent life.
Someone put two and two together, and figured out that they must have run out of data, and publicized it. Only then did someone at SETI fess up that the same blocks were being assigned repeatedly.
Sorry folks, but that's outright lying, and all the SETI supporters have very selective memory on this front. It makes you question their integrity when they lie to tens of thousands of people, making them waste electricity etc.
She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"
The difference is that computer science has applications. SETI doesn't- this is the same excuse argument used by spacephiles who say "oh, but look at all the things that were invented for use in space that we have!" It is arrogant to assume those devices/technologies would not have been developed if it were not for the space program; the logic simply doesn't follow.
If SETI discovers alien life tomorrow- the signal will be at least several hundred, if not several thousand, years old. The chances of the civilization that sent the signal still existing are slim; the chances of them being around by the time they get our reply are non-existent. Hell, we'll be lucky if we survive another 50 years, by my count. We're doing a fine job at fucking up our planet.
Nevermind the astronomical (pardon the pun) chances that we'll be listening in the right place (remember, it's not just angle in the sky, it's also our position in the solar system etc), at the right time, on the right frequencies- AND we actually recognize the signal as being something other than background noise; remember, all their theories about what constitutes signals from intelligent life are just that- theories, based on preconceptions from our own radio technology. Just look at recent advancements in radio technology, such as spread-spectrum.
But let's assume we do hear their signal, they hear ours. It will be the world's longest bar-room flirt session.
Earth, 2004: "uh.....hi?"
Mweebzle, 2104: "hi."
Earth, 2204: "so...uh...transmit radio frequencies often?"
Use djbdns for a little while. BIND stars to look very sendmail-esque after that.
...and djbdns starts to look very non-standards-compliant.
then put the damn phone on VIBRATE and call back
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I'm a parent.
That's nice. Put your phone on vibrate. When it rings and says "Home" (or worse, the sitter's cell phone #) get up, go into the hallway, and answer it. If you're not fast enough, witness the wonder of using the "missed calls" list. This is also why god invented text messaging, which we Americans just haven't seemed to figure out quite yet. "Nick is screaming for his ba-wa-na, what/where is that?" "Joey ran into the wall, at e-room, hes ok but need med insurance info". Etc.
Incidentally, for well over half a decade people went to the cinema, dinner, etc and left their kids behind with a sitter...with no cell phone. Don't give me this "I'm a parent, I simply must be within seconds contact of my children at all times" bullshit.
You know, this actually has a chance of being effective, unlike the anti-spam laws.
Why? Malware companies will avoid prosecution exactly the way spammers do- by operating out of a country which doesn't give a flying fuck about US laws.
Microsoft Office with a crack and a hacked translation into a new language is, while a labor of love, still outright theft.
Please don't misrepresent the manga/anime fansubbing/scanlation community to those who won't recognize just how ignorant you are. I know you think in black and white because of the way the movie and music studios have treated "piracy", but the difference between anime/manga studios and western movie/music studios could not possibly be any different with how they treat p2p distribution of their work.
Fansubbers and now BitTorrent link sites(at least, the ones run by fans, not p2p-kiddies) usually have policies about licensed content; stuff disappears when it gets licensed for distribution in a country where the translated language is spoken. AnimeSuki for example, does not list a single licensed series, even if groups are making torrents available. Anime[mircx] has actually shut down until they are technically able to honor a request from ADV (a distributor) to not list ADV series, regardless of licensing. Many IRC Fserve operators delete series if their fansub group has a policy for doing so.
Only one group, to my knowledge, has publicly gone against the requests of a studio or distributor, and that would be AnimeJunkies, who had an extremely poor reputation already (mention "mass naked child events" to anyone who was a fan of Ghost in The Shell: SAC and watch them giggle- it was one of their more famous mistranslations). AJ is, consequently, now almost dead- fansubbing very little, and shunned by most. I can't begin to describe the amount of hate that many anime fans had for AJ after a studio employee posted on a board the conversation she had with an AJ leader.
Fansub groups also STRONGLY discourage selling of their work by putting in "NOT FOR EBAY, SALE OR RENT, FAN TRANSLATION" randomly into their works(ebaying CD-R/DVD-R copies of group's works was particularly popular at one point among sleazy individuals- profit margins are quite good), and they often include a message urging people to buy the DVDs when they come out- and from being on IRC channels a decent amount, a lot of people DO buy the DVDs, soundtracks, etc when they come out.
The studios and distributors respect what the fansubbing community has done for them; they're fully aware they exist and they have zero desire to "do" something about them. You simply wouldn't have seen films like Spirited Away, and much of the stuff on Adult Swim come into the US if fansub groups hadn't slowly been building a market (or at least appreciation) for Anime. Further- the fansubs actually create more of a market for the DVDs and trinkets...not less.
So, pardon me when I take serious umbrage at you stating that fansub and scanlation groups are thieves, because it's one of the most ignorant statements I've heard in quite some time.
I open the fridge, I see I'm low on milk(high tech translucent bottle). I walk over to the grocery list, put on "milk". If I have Peapod (I don't- shocking, I know, but I still drive to the store) I trundle over to the computer and order some milk.
Now, why is this such a stunning, critical problem that companies seem to be obsessed with solving for me?
journalistic credibility?
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If there were any real legitimate journalists left in the world Bloggers wouldn't matter, but in lieu of the mainstream media and news networks no longer having any journalistic credibility, someone has to do a little research.
Are you seriously suggesting that bloggers have more journalistic "credibility"? Many (not all) blogs I've read tend to be unabashedly biased rants and take extreme positions- or do nothing more than mindlessly link to other stories.
While a few news outlets have credibility problems, they're far from worthless, and there are tens of thousands of excellent reporters who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of reporting, and actually have degrees in journalism. It is almost sickening to hear you equate them with bloggers, who have so little dedication, 95% of them stop blogging after a month or so.
Just because you watch FOX news and read USA Today doesn't mean journalism is dead, and it certainly doesn't mean that we should be turning to bloggers.
I am not disagreeing with you, but it also proves just how transient our influence truly is. Shut them down, problem begins abating immediately and to a remarkable degree.
What's kind of scary is how abating the "problem" suddenly probably has unforseen consequences.
For example, shutting down all air travel means a lot less CO2 generated/O2 used. For a short period of time, oxygen levels rise ever so slightly-which can mean an increase in forest fires and such. Think butterfly-flaps-its-wings kinda deal...
One thing missing from this device is a real optical out. I'm sorry but going analog mini jack -> digi optical doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, and AAC/MP3 -> digi optical does...? You're not going to be playing audio CDs in your powerbook if you care about this sort of thing, because after all, you've got a $1k CD player, right?
There seems to be either a huge heatsink or some kind of cover over it in this image
It doesn't have fins, so it's not a heatsink. Apple's long-stated goal with the thermal design of the G5 was to compartmentalize heat sources; the extension of the box(which appears to be one piece of formed metal) seems purely to help compartmentalize the CPU area more. Wouldn't it be interesting if this was done because the heatsinks are taller? Taller but thinner heatsinks would let you put(ahem) more CPUs into that space. I honestly can't say I think they bumped processor speeds; wasn't IBM at a brick wall in that regard with the G5? Seems like we'd be more likely to see a quad box, although for 90% of even high end users, 4 processors wouldn't be terribly useful.
What is also interesting is that the motherboard has shrunk by a few inches, hence the longer connecting cable in one set of photos; it's a few inches back from the front of the case instead of nearly abutting it.
In an Open Source app, it can stop someone who don't know C from doing something, but if you know C you can simply remove the added code...
How did this get modded 5, Insightful?
Which part of "black box" didn't you understand? Didn't you pick up on the fact that the legislation may require it be impossible to remove, thus making it impossible to have an open-source graphics program hosted or written by anyone in the EU? Those issues aside, how about the technical difficulties behind trying to provide a working pre-compiled module for a zillion different platforms...
"Another interesting tidbit : he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google." Really now, who these days hasn't thought about that?:D
Um, most people? Google may be a Big Thing, but they're not exactly working on the forefront of technology, and like every other search engine, have demonstrated increasing incompetence and problems as they grow. Yes, they have a lot of servers. Yes, they index a lot of the web. Neither is exactly mind-bendingly complex, and Google has demonstrated an utter lack of ability to keep up with the search result manipulation efforts. One really does wonder what all those bright PhDs are doing at google these days- perhaps if they worried less about their IPO, things would be better.
Google indexes a mailing list site I help run, and all out archives from about december 2003 simply disappeared from google's search function. An email to customer support was answered with a form letter than basically told me to fuck off, that they couldn't control how sites were indexed. Except our site never changed, and it is quite popular; we have a google search on our front page that probably gets thousands of hits a day. Small potatoes, but we are driving -some- traffic to them via our content, and it'd be nice if they indexed our stuff competently.
These days I'm finding google searches to be increasingly worthless as most results returned are pure garbage, usually some mix of referral, porno, or "directory" sites. Teoma is increasingly becoming my favorite search engine(among other things, it doesn't seem heavily biased towards commercial sites like google is), but it's probably a matter of time until they're down the tubes too.
Lesson learned: "Get new sensors that can distinguish between bush and rock."
This all sounds pretty pathetic, but having just completed a master-level course in artificial intelligence, I suddenly understand just how difficult some of these issues are to solve.
Watch a rally. Rally drivers have codrivers w/notes, and prior knowledge of the course...but I believe with Baja it's mostly seat of the pants; Paris-Dakar has got to be since it's so damn long, but I could be mistaken. They average well over 60mph on a course that's got to be much worse than anything DARPA came up with. Of course, they have astronomical component failure and driver error rates (as well as the occasional wildlife incident- one rally team hit a cow at well over 60mph, it was NOT pretty- I think they also got arrested, because it was a serious crime in the host country, akin to murder, to kill a cow), and at 60mph, rocks look like bushes and bushes like rocks, until it's way too late to do anything about it. Rally teams just bolt up more plating on the important stuff, and hope for the best.
What went wrong: "On-off switch located on side of vehicle. Bumped into a wall on way out of start area. Turned self off." Lesson learned: "Put the on-off switch somewhere else."
While not defending them, it was probably an emergency disconnect switch, which you do want to be highly accessible for those times when, say, it starts driving away (or towards something) and shouldn't have. Yes, DARPA required radio safety switches, but do you really want to trust your life to just a radio disconnect?
Honestly, some teams were just stupid in their use of money and priorities- I got a huge kick out the team that had a giant plasma display TV in the passenger side of the cabin. What the -fuck- was that for, watching the Superbowl while the car drives you to the next checkpoint?
Writers and layout people use cap lock all the time. Most will use it from time to time in standard word processing
Most serious page layout and word processing programs have a "convert case" function which handles most forms of capitalization. Title style, all caps, all lower, start only.
That said, I think gamers(run/walk control) are probably more common. Well, and WebTV users(the "new" AOL users)
So let's get this straight- one "photographer from the UK" installed Google popup blocker, and then it stopped working(probably, if anything, because her machine got infected with spyware/adware). What about Mozilla's blocking functionality? Opera? Safari? Oops, that'd be asking too much of our dear news.com.com.com.com.com reporter(and folks- remember why they use "news.com.com"; so their tracking cookies work across all their sites).
I use Safari's popup blocking setting and it works fantastically. All of the time. Since the day I started using Safari- ie, the day it was publicly beta'd.
What I really want, however, is a "turn off flash" quick menu item, same for animated gifs; Opera had that, and it was great. Disabling all plugins actually works pretty well too, and kills off many rather annoying ads.
Slashdot Mirror
Lovely- another poster was talking about how Disney's going for non-toxic fireworks components. Too bad the MagicFire devices have two nicely sized electrolytic capacitors onboard...probably lead solder, too.
Oh well...
Ah, which ignores the two biggest obstacles to using micropayments:
a)People HATE getting nickled and dimed- hence the very origin of the term!
b)For websites and the like, people will simply seek out free content which is available in quantity. Bob starts charging micropayments for his webcomic. Bob witnesses most of his readers disappearing into the woodwork. Jane, Sally, and Joe notice little bumps in their traffic logs.
People just can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that some stuff just isn't considered by the public worth paying for, at any price.
Oh, not to mention, the micropayment guys seem to like charging as much or more than the credit card companies, the money is not very accessible, and so on.
There's nothing about a Lian Li case that is either unique or attractive. All they did was take a PC case design, and make it out of aluminum.
Apple did not exactly forge new territory with their thermal zone concept- one need only look at a Sun Ultra to see the CPU's air intake is ducted, for example. Digital also used some interesting arrangements with the Alphas, in part because they -had- to thanks to enormous power consumption.
Still, Apple did a great job of executing it, and like the Blue and White G3 case, it was fresh, new, innovative, and a drastic step up from both the old mac cases(which were a BITCH to get apart, the 8500 being a prime example, requiring TOTAL disassembly to get to the memory) and PC cases. Cables are hidden away, the finish of materials are perfect, and so on. Lian Li cases are just welded aluminum cases with all the panels having the same boring finish...only recently have they done something different, and the best they can manage is to imitate the G5- look at the website you linked to, that case was clearly designed to imitate the G5...rather poorly, too.
Uh, that's because calcium hydroxide -burned- it off, not "wore it down". It's actually quite common, because there is a delay between exposure and reaction. Well, that and people think "hey, it's just rocks and dirt and stuff, i don't have to wear gloves..."
Then don't think about the lithium ion cells in your laptop/cell phone right now, because they have extremely high energy densities(the battery pack in my Powerbook 17" is probably the same volume as a CD jewel case, and yet contains 61 Watt-hours of power), and require careful management by the device to keep from entering thermal runaway mode, where the battery gets hotter and hotter until it explodes- and I do mean -explodes-. Rather violently.
For several years(possibly still) battery companies wouldn't sell Lithium Ion batteries to anyone except certified "solution providers" to assure the batteries had proper charging and monitoring.
[snip]
And I got halfway through the film and still hadn't figured out what the hell they meant by a 'ghost.'
Ghost in the Shell does not pander to MTV attention spans, and like the Patlabor movies, there's a complex plot. And a "ghost", while a vague concept, is quite obviously(if you pay attention) "what makes a person a person and not a machine". It's your personality, memories, etc. Part of it is that nobody seems to quite be able to put their finger on what a 'ghost' really is; hence the scene where Motoko wonders with Batou whether or not she's really human anymore. Are her memories manufactured, she wonders?
Watch Cowboy Bebop instead. It's a lot more fun, the animated cityscapes are stunning, and it doesn't take itself very seriously.
Cowboy Bebop is one of the all-time greats, but there are those of us who do enjoy serious anime.
There were a lot of complaints about Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex too- a lot of immature people complained there wasn't enough "action" and there was "too much talking". Well, guess what- that's -exactly- what GITS has always been about, right down to the manga, which sometimes has -paragraphs- of narration.
If you don't like philosophical anime, fine- go watch mindless shit like [shivers] Dragon Ball Z, [gets sick] Naruto, or [throws up] One Piece. But don't try to make every anime fit your tastes and complain when something doesn't.
The slashdot crowd might really enjoy PlanetES, about a young girl full of ideals who goes into space to work in a debris collection department- and finds space isn't quite as romantic, and astronauts not quite as valiant- as she thought.
Last Exile is about two kids serve as couriers, piloting a flying machine in the midst of a war and hoping to some day find their father(s) who were lost delivering a vital message.
Read or Die(watch the OVA first) is a fun series about three detective-sisters(named after martial arts starts, incidentally- Anita, Maggie, Michelle; there's also a Lee, a dove named Woo, etc :-) who are "paper-users" like the famous bibliomaniac Yoriko "The Paper" Readman, who worked for (heh) the British Library Special Forces. The OVA is particularly strange in a fun way. Kinda girly and -very- moving towards the end.
Oh, and lastly, Spirited Away is fantastic. Not nearly as preachy as Ghibli's earlier stuff(which is also excellent, but extremely heavy-handed in environmentalist ways. Princess Mononoke, Nausicca Valley of the Wind, etc).
Here in America, you tell them how cool it is to mow the lawn- and they can't do it, they're not cool enough. But, maybe- just maybe- if they pay you, you'll let them do it.
Now whitewash, that's a whole other story.
They also lied to users by feeding them the same data blocks over and over- for purely selfish reasons. They figured that if they announced they'd temporarily run out of data, they'd loose a lot of systems.
Why did they run out of data? Because they lost time on the radio dishes, because- surprise- the other scientists had more justifiable uses than looking for intelligent life.
Someone put two and two together, and figured out that they must have run out of data, and publicized it. Only then did someone at SETI fess up that the same blocks were being assigned repeatedly.
Sorry folks, but that's outright lying, and all the SETI supporters have very selective memory on this front. It makes you question their integrity when they lie to tens of thousands of people, making them waste electricity etc.
She asked me, "How can you study computer science when there are children out there being abused, and women out there being raped?"
The difference is that computer science has applications. SETI doesn't- this is the same excuse argument used by spacephiles who say "oh, but look at all the things that were invented for use in space that we have!" It is arrogant to assume those devices/technologies would not have been developed if it were not for the space program; the logic simply doesn't follow.
If SETI discovers alien life tomorrow- the signal will be at least several hundred, if not several thousand, years old. The chances of the civilization that sent the signal still existing are slim; the chances of them being around by the time they get our reply are non-existent. Hell, we'll be lucky if we survive another 50 years, by my count. We're doing a fine job at fucking up our planet.
Nevermind the astronomical (pardon the pun) chances that we'll be listening in the right place (remember, it's not just angle in the sky, it's also our position in the solar system etc), at the right time, on the right frequencies- AND we actually recognize the signal as being something other than background noise; remember, all their theories about what constitutes signals from intelligent life are just that- theories, based on preconceptions from our own radio technology. Just look at recent advancements in radio technology, such as spread-spectrum.
But let's assume we do hear their signal, they hear ours. It will be the world's longest bar-room flirt session.
Earth, 2004: "uh.....hi?"
Mweebzle, 2104: "hi."
Earth, 2204: "so...uh...transmit radio frequencies often?"
Well, if you can ssh to your home system (say from work), you can have IM conversations that are private, without the hassle of setting up a terminal.
I also used to check mail via pine remotely for similar reasons.
...and djbdns starts to look very non-standards-compliant.
That's nice. Put your phone on vibrate. When it rings and says "Home" (or worse, the sitter's cell phone #) get up, go into the hallway, and answer it. If you're not fast enough, witness the wonder of using the "missed calls" list. This is also why god invented text messaging, which we Americans just haven't seemed to figure out quite yet. "Nick is screaming for his ba-wa-na, what/where is that?" "Joey ran into the wall, at e-room, hes ok but need med insurance info". Etc.
Incidentally, for well over half a decade people went to the cinema, dinner, etc and left their kids behind with a sitter...with no cell phone. Don't give me this "I'm a parent, I simply must be within seconds contact of my children at all times" bullshit.
Why? Malware companies will avoid prosecution exactly the way spammers do- by operating out of a country which doesn't give a flying fuck about US laws.
Please don't misrepresent the manga/anime fansubbing/scanlation community to those who won't recognize just how ignorant you are. I know you think in black and white because of the way the movie and music studios have treated "piracy", but the difference between anime/manga studios and western movie/music studios could not possibly be any different with how they treat p2p distribution of their work.
Fansubbers and now BitTorrent link sites(at least, the ones run by fans, not p2p-kiddies) usually have policies about licensed content; stuff disappears when it gets licensed for distribution in a country where the translated language is spoken. AnimeSuki for example, does not list a single licensed series, even if groups are making torrents available. Anime[mircx] has actually shut down until they are technically able to honor a request from ADV (a distributor) to not list ADV series, regardless of licensing. Many IRC Fserve operators delete series if their fansub group has a policy for doing so.
Only one group, to my knowledge, has publicly gone against the requests of a studio or distributor, and that would be AnimeJunkies, who had an extremely poor reputation already (mention "mass naked child events" to anyone who was a fan of Ghost in The Shell: SAC and watch them giggle- it was one of their more famous mistranslations). AJ is, consequently, now almost dead- fansubbing very little, and shunned by most. I can't begin to describe the amount of hate that many anime fans had for AJ after a studio employee posted on a board the conversation she had with an AJ leader.
Fansub groups also STRONGLY discourage selling of their work by putting in "NOT FOR EBAY, SALE OR RENT, FAN TRANSLATION" randomly into their works(ebaying CD-R/DVD-R copies of group's works was particularly popular at one point among sleazy individuals- profit margins are quite good), and they often include a message urging people to buy the DVDs when they come out- and from being on IRC channels a decent amount, a lot of people DO buy the DVDs, soundtracks, etc when they come out.
The studios and distributors respect what the fansubbing community has done for them; they're fully aware they exist and they have zero desire to "do" something about them. You simply wouldn't have seen films like Spirited Away, and much of the stuff on Adult Swim come into the US if fansub groups hadn't slowly been building a market (or at least appreciation) for Anime. Further- the fansubs actually create more of a market for the DVDs and trinkets...not less.
So, pardon me when I take serious umbrage at you stating that fansub and scanlation groups are thieves, because it's one of the most ignorant statements I've heard in quite some time.
...and it's called the human brain.
I open the fridge, I see I'm low on milk(high tech translucent bottle). I walk over to the grocery list, put on "milk". If I have Peapod (I don't- shocking, I know, but I still drive to the store) I trundle over to the computer and order some milk.
Now, why is this such a stunning, critical problem that companies seem to be obsessed with solving for me?
Are you seriously suggesting that bloggers have more journalistic "credibility"? Many (not all) blogs I've read tend to be unabashedly biased rants and take extreme positions- or do nothing more than mindlessly link to other stories.
While a few news outlets have credibility problems, they're far from worthless, and there are tens of thousands of excellent reporters who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of reporting, and actually have degrees in journalism. It is almost sickening to hear you equate them with bloggers, who have so little dedication, 95% of them stop blogging after a month or so.
Just because you watch FOX news and read USA Today doesn't mean journalism is dead, and it certainly doesn't mean that we should be turning to bloggers.
What's kind of scary is how abating the "problem" suddenly probably has unforseen consequences.
For example, shutting down all air travel means a lot less CO2 generated/O2 used. For a short period of time, oxygen levels rise ever so slightly-which can mean an increase in forest fires and such. Think butterfly-flaps-its-wings kinda deal...
Yeah, and AAC/MP3 -> digi optical does...? You're not going to be playing audio CDs in your powerbook if you care about this sort of thing, because after all, you've got a $1k CD player, right?
Yeesh, you audio weirdoes...
Hey, I think you misspelled "Linux"...
It doesn't have fins, so it's not a heatsink. Apple's long-stated goal with the thermal design of the G5 was to compartmentalize heat sources; the extension of the box(which appears to be one piece of formed metal) seems purely to help compartmentalize the CPU area more. Wouldn't it be interesting if this was done because the heatsinks are taller? Taller but thinner heatsinks would let you put(ahem) more CPUs into that space. I honestly can't say I think they bumped processor speeds; wasn't IBM at a brick wall in that regard with the G5? Seems like we'd be more likely to see a quad box, although for 90% of even high end users, 4 processors wouldn't be terribly useful.
What is also interesting is that the motherboard has shrunk by a few inches, hence the longer connecting cable in one set of photos; it's a few inches back from the front of the case instead of nearly abutting it.
How did this get modded 5, Insightful?
Which part of "black box" didn't you understand? Didn't you pick up on the fact that the legislation may require it be impossible to remove, thus making it impossible to have an open-source graphics program hosted or written by anyone in the EU? Those issues aside, how about the technical difficulties behind trying to provide a working pre-compiled module for a zillion different platforms...
Really now, who these days hasn't thought about that?
Um, most people? Google may be a Big Thing, but they're not exactly working on the forefront of technology, and like every other search engine, have demonstrated increasing incompetence and problems as they grow. Yes, they have a lot of servers. Yes, they index a lot of the web. Neither is exactly mind-bendingly complex, and Google has demonstrated an utter lack of ability to keep up with the search result manipulation efforts. One really does wonder what all those bright PhDs are doing at google these days- perhaps if they worried less about their IPO, things would be better.
Google indexes a mailing list site I help run, and all out archives from about december 2003 simply disappeared from google's search function. An email to customer support was answered with a form letter than basically told me to fuck off, that they couldn't control how sites were indexed. Except our site never changed, and it is quite popular; we have a google search on our front page that probably gets thousands of hits a day. Small potatoes, but we are driving -some- traffic to them via our content, and it'd be nice if they indexed our stuff competently.
These days I'm finding google searches to be increasingly worthless as most results returned are pure garbage, usually some mix of referral, porno, or "directory" sites. Teoma is increasingly becoming my favorite search engine(among other things, it doesn't seem heavily biased towards commercial sites like google is), but it's probably a matter of time until they're down the tubes too.
Watch a rally. Rally drivers have codrivers w/notes, and prior knowledge of the course...but I believe with Baja it's mostly seat of the pants; Paris-Dakar has got to be since it's so damn long, but I could be mistaken. They average well over 60mph on a course that's got to be much worse than anything DARPA came up with. Of course, they have astronomical component failure and driver error rates (as well as the occasional wildlife incident- one rally team hit a cow at well over 60mph, it was NOT pretty- I think they also got arrested, because it was a serious crime in the host country, akin to murder, to kill a cow), and at 60mph, rocks look like bushes and bushes like rocks, until it's way too late to do anything about it. Rally teams just bolt up more plating on the important stuff, and hope for the best.
What went wrong: "On-off switch located on side of vehicle. Bumped into a wall on way out of start area. Turned self off." Lesson learned: "Put the on-off switch somewhere else."
While not defending them, it was probably an emergency disconnect switch, which you do want to be highly accessible for those times when, say, it starts driving away (or towards something) and shouldn't have. Yes, DARPA required radio safety switches, but do you really want to trust your life to just a radio disconnect?
Honestly, some teams were just stupid in their use of money and priorities- I got a huge kick out the team that had a giant plasma display TV in the passenger side of the cabin. What the -fuck- was that for, watching the Superbowl while the car drives you to the next checkpoint?
Most serious page layout and word processing programs have a "convert case" function which handles most forms of capitalization. Title style, all caps, all lower, start only.
That said, I think gamers(run/walk control) are probably more common. Well, and WebTV users(the "new" AOL users)
So let's get this straight- one "photographer from the UK" installed Google popup blocker, and then it stopped working(probably, if anything, because her machine got infected with spyware/adware). What about Mozilla's blocking functionality? Opera? Safari? Oops, that'd be asking too much of our dear news.com.com.com.com.com reporter(and folks- remember why they use "news.com.com"; so their tracking cookies work across all their sites).
I use Safari's popup blocking setting and it works fantastically. All of the time. Since the day I started using Safari- ie, the day it was publicly beta'd.
What I really want, however, is a "turn off flash" quick menu item, same for animated gifs; Opera had that, and it was great. Disabling all plugins actually works pretty well too, and kills off many rather annoying ads.
Then metamoderate...