Removable batteries won't happen because that means an extra case and two sets of contacts, both of which can be eliminated by putting the battery permanently inside the case. It also means not having to engineer a battery to fit a laptop, when flat-pack batteries can be bought off the shelf. They wouldn't be safe to leave exposed, but rarely have problems protected by the case.
If replacement batteries were a significant revenue stream, manufacturers would be all over it. But they were undercut by generic batteries ages ago, and that's not going to change unless the chemistry changes.
This makes the whole bit of Cannes not considering streaming-only films a tempest in a teapot. France won't be able to retain its "can't stream for three years" laws in place and remain in alignment with the content portability rules (which I honestly thought already existed).
It should be even easier to carry multiple phones and bend them with your bare hands during the trip. Instead of one large fire, you could set multiple smaller but still very aggressive fires. So where is this going to stop?
I think the real purpose is to dissuade people from flying into or out of the U.S. so we can become more isolationist.
Maybe I've just seen too many spy movies, but I kind of expected something a bit more exotic.
Even hundred-million-dollar robots need the application of $1 screwdrivers now and again. Sometimes it takes a tool that costs as much as a car to service a car, while other times it only requires a $10 cable and a laptop you already have. I'm not surprised that the surveillance state uses both expensive tools and cheap ones, since almost every other endeavor does the same.
The Attorney General prosecutes violations of law (sometimes), but is not supposed to invent law on his/her own. Note that nothing has worked the way it's supposed to for decades at least, but that's the way it's supposed to work on paper.
Yeah, didn't know that before. I suspect it would be trivial to offer content to Belgium and let their French customers figure out how to appear to be coming from Belgium. Hey, isn't that sort of geoblocking supposed to violate EU laws now?
Netflix: "Yeah we don't offer that in France because of your stupid law, but we're also forbidden from inspecting too deeply to see if you're actually in the country we send the bills to. Wink wink."
It's a bit like auto racing. Every class isn't just open to any vehicle you want to enter, there are qualifications for each. This is why so many automakers release limited run production cars -- so that they can then race them in "stock" classes. They may only build 50 for sale, but it's a production vehicle, so they get to enter it.
Similarly, if someone wants their film in consideration for Cannes, they'll have to sneak it into a French theater or two. This hurts pretty much nobody, and is not an immense hoop to jump through. It's just the way the game is played.
So it's a Ponzi scheme, only one that can be floated for years or decades rather than falling apart in months. It's not legal, but due to the secrecy, nobody has yet figured out it's not legal. And now that the people running the scheme are in charge, it will become legal.
I used to use that trick at the poker table. I'd wear large, conspicuous headphones, and from time to time pull out and fidget with the media player. What I didn't tell people was that I never turned it on.
It's amazing what people will say when they don't think you can hear them.
That's what happens when you are told (and believe) your only options are a giant douche or a turd sandwich.
What is needed is to break the mass delusion, all at once. Third parties should be assembling Congressional bids now. Get a couple Representatives willing to call out the two majors on their bullshit. Get noticed. Then maybe those parties will actually be considered players in 2020, if the media doesn't continue to conspire to ignore them.
Let me start by saying that by the time it came out, the Age of Aquarius had already passed. Even the vendor (Mattel) internally called it "the computer of the 70s" even though it came out in 1982.
- Rubber chiclet keys. - Space was where Left Shift should be. Shift was where CapsLock goes now. Ctl was where Tab should be. There was no Tab, and no spacebar. I suppose they did this to save a row on the keyboard. - An absolutely execrable thermal printer that printed only to half-width paper, and in pale blue. Printouts would fade to invisibility in a matter of months, and the paper was nearly impossible to get. - The game controllers were modeled on the Intellivision, only somehow even worse. - Other than commercial game cartridges and a spreadsheet cartridge, any software had to be typed in from books and saved to cassette. Because nobody around me had one, I could not trade tapes with anyone.
It did have a couple things going for it, in my view at the time: + 4K of RAM was actually reasonable, and I had the 16K expansion. It also had a cartridge slot doubler so I could use both the RAM expansion and a program cartridge at the same time. + It had sound that was equivalent to (and may have actually been) an AY-3-8910. Three channels of tone, plus one of noise. It was possible to do some decent music on it, and the games also had decent music and sound effects. + It was mine, and nobody told me what I could or could not do with it. Of course, since it had no means to communicate with other computers, it was pretty irrelevant to anyone else what I did with it.
It was his spare time, and if he had gone trolling other forums instead of ours, nothing would have been done. It's the fact that he forced us to be his audience that made it an abuse of us and our resources. He also got much too personal, and would hijack conversation for hours at a time. Once he argued for hours with me over satellites and whether they were useful for communication with a polar base. He argued they weren't, while I pointed him at links for tundra orbits and Molniya orbits. It wasn't until the next day that he said "Sorry, I had to sober up to read those." Too late bucko, the damage has been done. One evening that could have been used to build our game was spent arguing about a mundane detail like how a facility communicates with the rest of the world. Another night, he chose to argue endlessly over what constitutes proper song lyrics -- despite the fact that none of the music on the project would have any vocals.
Even before I had to fire him, we had named a particularly annoying character (a giant mosquito) after him.
Neither, really. I'm referring to a situation where firing someone over off-duty behavior is justified. His actions were deliberately performed in front of the team as an unwilling audience.
I do think I can mention the straw that broke the camel's back though. This particular guy invited a Serbian Titoist (basically someone who wanted the old communist Yugoslavia back) into our developer chat, to argue politics. Until then, he had managed to hijack the topic for hours at a time all by himself, but that was where I decided the line had been crossed -- when he brought in outside help.
He was a dick, and he was a drunk, and he was a racist. None of those were sufficient cause to fire him. Actively hindering the progress of the project was sufficient cause, especially when we would lose an artist over it. (We eventually lost that artist anyhow, but I did the best I could with the information I had.)
He should put it up to the community to decide -- and if they decide against him, resign -- or say "I did the wrong thing, lesson learned, let's fix it". The one thing he should not do is dig in his heels and refuse to negotiate.
As project lead I had to make a call on a certain repeat offender when his abuse of team resources (our time and our servers, and sometimes our actual team members) became intolerable. I released the logs that led me to do it, and said "if you think I made the wrong call, I will resign and you can have him back." That was a pretty cut-and-dried case though. I had two team members who were going to quit if I didn't fire the one.
Slashdot Mirror
Removable batteries won't happen because that means an extra case and two sets of contacts, both of which can be eliminated by putting the battery permanently inside the case. It also means not having to engineer a battery to fit a laptop, when flat-pack batteries can be bought off the shelf. They wouldn't be safe to leave exposed, but rarely have problems protected by the case.
If replacement batteries were a significant revenue stream, manufacturers would be all over it. But they were undercut by generic batteries ages ago, and that's not going to change unless the chemistry changes.
A 21st century Fight Club?
This makes the whole bit of Cannes not considering streaming-only films a tempest in a teapot. France won't be able to retain its "can't stream for three years" laws in place and remain in alignment with the content portability rules (which I honestly thought already existed).
It should be even easier to carry multiple phones and bend them with your bare hands during the trip. Instead of one large fire, you could set multiple smaller but still very aggressive fires. So where is this going to stop?
I think the real purpose is to dissuade people from flying into or out of the U.S. so we can become more isolationist.
"Microdosing is for pussies," said John McAfee as he prepared to hit the pipe.
(Hint: not serious. But he probably would feel something like this.)
Maybe I've just seen too many spy movies, but I kind of expected something a bit more exotic.
Even hundred-million-dollar robots need the application of $1 screwdrivers now and again. Sometimes it takes a tool that costs as much as a car to service a car, while other times it only requires a $10 cable and a laptop you already have. I'm not surprised that the surveillance state uses both expensive tools and cheap ones, since almost every other endeavor does the same.
The Attorney General prosecutes violations of law (sometimes), but is not supposed to invent law on his/her own. Note that nothing has worked the way it's supposed to for decades at least, but that's the way it's supposed to work on paper.
Since when is the chief of the executive branch responsible for legal prosecutions? Take a civics class.
Or, for that matter, when is the executive branch responsible for writing or repealing regulations on banks? Put this one squarely on Congress.
Yeah, didn't know that before. I suspect it would be trivial to offer content to Belgium and let their French customers figure out how to appear to be coming from Belgium. Hey, isn't that sort of geoblocking supposed to violate EU laws now?
Netflix: "Yeah we don't offer that in France because of your stupid law, but we're also forbidden from inspecting too deeply to see if you're actually in the country we send the bills to. Wink wink."
It's a bit like auto racing. Every class isn't just open to any vehicle you want to enter, there are qualifications for each. This is why so many automakers release limited run production cars -- so that they can then race them in "stock" classes. They may only build 50 for sale, but it's a production vehicle, so they get to enter it.
Similarly, if someone wants their film in consideration for Cannes, they'll have to sneak it into a French theater or two. This hurts pretty much nobody, and is not an immense hoop to jump through. It's just the way the game is played.
Is "get elected so you can make the rules" part of the curriculum? It's Berlusconi in America.
So it's a Ponzi scheme, only one that can be floated for years or decades rather than falling apart in months. It's not legal, but due to the secrecy, nobody has yet figured out it's not legal. And now that the people running the scheme are in charge, it will become legal.
Steal enough, and you can buy legitimacy.
This was probably also true during the Andrew Jackson days.
In other news, Banksy has just declared himself an "urban control pad integrator".
Did you hear the whoosh as that joke went over your head then?
I am disappoint
I used to use that trick at the poker table. I'd wear large, conspicuous headphones, and from time to time pull out and fidget with the media player. What I didn't tell people was that I never turned it on.
It's amazing what people will say when they don't think you can hear them.
Someone evidently saw this talk and decided to try it at home. These vulnerabilities have been public for a couple years now.
That's what happens when you are told (and believe) your only options are a giant douche or a turd sandwich.
What is needed is to break the mass delusion, all at once. Third parties should be assembling Congressional bids now. Get a couple Representatives willing to call out the two majors on their bullshit. Get noticed. Then maybe those parties will actually be considered players in 2020, if the media doesn't continue to conspire to ignore them.
I believe the Eliza derivative was called Dr. Sbaitso.
Let me start by saying that by the time it came out, the Age of Aquarius had already passed. Even the vendor (Mattel) internally called it "the computer of the 70s" even though it came out in 1982.
- Rubber chiclet keys.
- Space was where Left Shift should be. Shift was where CapsLock goes now. Ctl was where Tab should be. There was no Tab, and no spacebar. I suppose they did this to save a row on the keyboard.
- An absolutely execrable thermal printer that printed only to half-width paper, and in pale blue. Printouts would fade to invisibility in a matter of months, and the paper was nearly impossible to get.
- The game controllers were modeled on the Intellivision, only somehow even worse.
- Other than commercial game cartridges and a spreadsheet cartridge, any software had to be typed in from books and saved to cassette. Because nobody around me had one, I could not trade tapes with anyone.
It did have a couple things going for it, in my view at the time:
+ 4K of RAM was actually reasonable, and I had the 16K expansion. It also had a cartridge slot doubler so I could use both the RAM expansion and a program cartridge at the same time.
+ It had sound that was equivalent to (and may have actually been) an AY-3-8910. Three channels of tone, plus one of noise. It was possible to do some decent music on it, and the games also had decent music and sound effects.
+ It was mine, and nobody told me what I could or could not do with it. Of course, since it had no means to communicate with other computers, it was pretty irrelevant to anyone else what I did with it.
It was his spare time, and if he had gone trolling other forums instead of ours, nothing would have been done. It's the fact that he forced us to be his audience that made it an abuse of us and our resources. He also got much too personal, and would hijack conversation for hours at a time. Once he argued for hours with me over satellites and whether they were useful for communication with a polar base. He argued they weren't, while I pointed him at links for tundra orbits and Molniya orbits. It wasn't until the next day that he said "Sorry, I had to sober up to read those." Too late bucko, the damage has been done. One evening that could have been used to build our game was spent arguing about a mundane detail like how a facility communicates with the rest of the world. Another night, he chose to argue endlessly over what constitutes proper song lyrics -- despite the fact that none of the music on the project would have any vocals.
Even before I had to fire him, we had named a particularly annoying character (a giant mosquito) after him.
Neither, really. I'm referring to a situation where firing someone over off-duty behavior is justified. His actions were deliberately performed in front of the team as an unwilling audience.
Been there, done that. You can't win when your peer group has a civil war.
I do think I can mention the straw that broke the camel's back though. This particular guy invited a Serbian Titoist (basically someone who wanted the old communist Yugoslavia back) into our developer chat, to argue politics. Until then, he had managed to hijack the topic for hours at a time all by himself, but that was where I decided the line had been crossed -- when he brought in outside help.
He was a dick, and he was a drunk, and he was a racist. None of those were sufficient cause to fire him. Actively hindering the progress of the project was sufficient cause, especially when we would lose an artist over it. (We eventually lost that artist anyhow, but I did the best I could with the information I had.)
He should put it up to the community to decide -- and if they decide against him, resign -- or say "I did the wrong thing, lesson learned, let's fix it". The one thing he should not do is dig in his heels and refuse to negotiate.
As project lead I had to make a call on a certain repeat offender when his abuse of team resources (our time and our servers, and sometimes our actual team members) became intolerable. I released the logs that led me to do it, and said "if you think I made the wrong call, I will resign and you can have him back." That was a pretty cut-and-dried case though. I had two team members who were going to quit if I didn't fire the one.