I download music from the internet quite frequently, if I like the song I have downloaded I will usually buy the album if I don't like it I delete it, does this mean I am commiting a crime? In my case p2p has caused my to buy more cds than I usually would have if I hadn't of been exposed to certain artists and songs. Is this common I really don't know perhaps other people don't purchase cds by artists they like personally I like to support musicians I like.
It seems that everyone who downloads music from the net claims that they buy more albums because of it. Yet, as more people download free music off the internet, less music is sold in stores. How is that possible? Shouldn't people be buying so many CDs that the stores couldn't keep them in stock? Or, are the people who are dishonest enough to download a copy of a song they have no legal right to own also dishonest enough to lie about buying more music because of it?
It's been a while since a film warranted spending the money to watch it in a room full of strangers.
There has been a few films that I wanted to see, but I didn't. I simply cannot enjoy a film when people are talking on their phones all the way through the film. I really wanted to see a movie last weekend, so I broke down and went to see that Bruce Willis/Mos Def thing. Before the movie started, two people were talking on their phone. By the time the movie was half over, three others had decided it was a good time to talk - one complaining loudly that the movie was too loud for her to hear her phone. Until they allow immediate capital punishment for talking on a cell phone in the movie, I just can't go. Also - it is *not* OK to check your cell phone for messages either. The phone lights up and distracts everyone else. Imagine if someone kept turning a flashlight on and off in the movie - it is the same thing.
This is also news for another reason. Not in TFA is the RSPCA fiasco. The RSPCA is worried that clubbing the toads to death is inhumane. So, stories are running around Australian papers that the RSPCA has pushed through a law making it illegal to club a toad - offenders will get a huge fine. The legal way to kill a toad is to smear it with hemorroid cream (to numb it) and then freeze it to death. I do not know if this story is actually true, but it is becoming a popular joke.
I've been working on clinical research for a long time now. The issue isn't quantity, it is quality. I can quickly produce a database of a couple million patients for you, but it would be crap data. When I verify the data, I get far less (around 300k). But, I've just hit a problem that I see in clinical research. If, for example, I refuse to consider a person with a blood pressure below 70/30, I have just skewed the results. On the other hand, if I accept typos from the millions of medical clerks who, in my opinion, are not required to understand basic spelling or typing techniques, I skew the data. There is no way to get truly valid results. I just get estimates and comment on trends. I let the doctors make assumptions about the trends. It could be that a new employee is typing in the weights and she keeps hitting '2' instead of '1' - then suddenly the patients started weighing more. A doctor will attribute the weight gain to McDonalds. I'm sorry, but there's no real point here. I just wanted to explain a bit of what is really going on in these clinical research areas.
If your IQ is still 190, the chances are you aren't going to fit in... whatever your skin colour.
Especially since the Guinness World Record holder for the highest IQ, Marilyn vos Savant, has an IQ of 186. You'd think that someone with a score of 190 would be smart enough to use a number lower than the world record holder so it wouldn't be so obvious that they are just making it up.
Re:"Ma Bell" should be called "Big Brother" instea
on
Ma Bell is Back
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Sounds like a great idea! We don't want Big Brother spying on us, so lets run out and get cell phones that will allow Big Brother to track where we are every second of the day since we will always have the phone with us. That will show those Big Brothers!!!
This reminds me a lot of a research project I worked on years ago... Evolutionary Music and the Zipf-Mandlebrot Law. Our conclusion back then was that a computer can tell you if music is "pleasant". We didn't want to use 'good' or 'bad' because that would lead to a lot of arguments based on taste, not music.
Have you actually performed side-by-side comparisons using your own data? I have on many projects. Some are faster in Postgres. Some are faster in MySQL. Guess which one I use? Both. I use Postgres when it is faster. I use MySQL when it is faster. I refuse to be a blind moron like so many on Slashdot: Postgres is best. No, MySQL is best. Who cares - does it run Linux? No, Debian. That is Linux. I use BSD! Who cares, we're here to bash Windows!!!
is there really a serious threat of people hax0ring other workers' accounts and taking their online sexual harassment training for them?
Funny you should ask... I found the web-based Sexual Harassment training a stupid waste of time and energy. I tried to get it stopped, but management wouldn't listen. So, I wrote a script that pulled everyone's username from LDAP and completed the training for them on the first day it was available. Everyone got a "thank you" email and nobody wasted any time (except me - but then I spend my day reading slashdot).
Given that the performance differential (which was always overstated) has been overcome
Do a side-by-side comparison on your own data. For me, the performance differential has not been overcome. In MySQL, my reports take about 10 minutes to run. In Postgres, they take 3-4 days. When I mentioned this to our local Pg-fanboys, they came in, gave Postgres its own dual-processor server, extra ram, changed my column datatypes, made a slew of indexes, and reduced the report time from 3-4 days to 3-4 hours. I agree that optimizing Postgres will speed it up a great deal, but without spending a couple weeks optimizing MySQL, I had an acceptable report generation time.
However, on a separate project, I required features that were not in MySQL. So, I used Postgres. Speed was not an issue. In my opinion, this all has to do with the purpose. In the project I mentioned first, we have a data warehouse - shove junk in and make massive reports on it. In the second, we are working with the data on a daily basis. I am not surprised that one database engine works better for one purpose and another works better for another purpose.
I've tried this setup twice in the past. It always feels like you are walking up an incline. To make it feel flat, the sphere has to be huge. As it is, the weight of the sphere is difficult to start moving and difficult to stop moving. What is required for a real-life VR environment is a flexible sphere that allows a flat surface for the user to walk on and power-assisted rotation to make it start and stop easily.
These apps are truly dinosaurs and we need a new killer app word processor suitable for writing books, html and pdf documentation including table of contents, indexes, appendices and normal stuff you find in documents.
That is what docbook does, right? I mean, I haven't ever got docbook to do anything worthwhile, but I've been told that if it did work, that is what it would do.
but I really don't think it competes with fact-checked and edited encyclopediae yet in accuracy
You can have a large staff of writers and still have problems. A simple typo can cause factual issues, such as the Household Cyclopedia article on hedgehogs: "If it ever has been found eating poultry or fame, as has by some been asserted, they must previously have been killed by rats, weasels, or some more ferocious animal than the hedgehog." Eating "fame"? How dare those hedgehogs eat our fame!
Moustrap used to be better. It was wood and metal - very sturdy. We played it hundreds of times. Then, it changed into a cardboard and plastic pile of crap that breaks before you complete one game.
I read this as Technocrati and assumed the editor was making a poor attempt to pluralize Technocrat. It made no sense at all that a technical expert would fear a blog search engine.
Well, when you realice that the 'c' is missing, you can ask, "What the hell is Technorati?" It is a blog search engine. Am I the only person on slashdot who doesn't know about Technorati?
I have looked into those as a primary file storage device. I haven't figured out how to setup Linux to force all disk writes immediately. I have written to a little 16MB stick, let it sit for a couple hours, pulled the stick, and then put in another computer. The stick was empty because I didn't do a "safe removal". Obviously, the old write was sitting in a buffer somewhere.
Can this be put in an unpowered thumb drive? I feel it would be nice to have large, easily removable, USB storage that does not require external power. Right now, I store my accounting files on a 64MB stick that I can remove and take with me in an emergency much easier than taking my whole computer. The more room for backup, the better.
not all life has to be carbon-based, mostly water, and oxygen-breathing.
That is true, but you also have to take into account the fact that solid water (ice) is less dense then liquid water. We take it for granted, but think about how it affects our planet. The bottom of the ocean is not solid like the bottom of a methane ocean. They are liquid and at a controlled temperature (4 degrees celcius). How much of a role does this little oddity of water play into our planet's evolution?
Lemme see... Page Not Found. Damn Chinese! They're deleting the entire web!!!
Your point is misguided, as your lack of interest and/or knowledge regarding China's current human rights violations is grossly lacking.
My point is based on over 10 years of studying the Chinese government and society. I have never claimed that China has a great human rights record. I simply do not believe that Iraq was a hell of a lot better.
No, I'm referring to the human rights violations under the current regime
I had to assume you were referring to Mao because the current Chinese regime has not murdered thousands of its own citizens, as the Iraqi regime did. The current Chinese regime doesn't force a single political party in all government positions, as the Iraqi regime did. The current Chinese regime does not murder anyone who questions government authority, as the Iraqi regime did. Of course, you can get your statistics from a website that considers censorship of a single website the same as the mass murder of an entire township. I personally feel that one is a little worse than the other.
Why not, the Chinese have more human rights violations than Iraq ever did. Less oil though...
I have to assume you are referring to human rights violations under Mao. So, by your reasoning, a government is responsible for any and all actions of the governments that ruled the land before them. So, our current government is at this time responsible to segregation. It is at this time responsible for refusing to allow blacks and women to vote. It is currently responsible for slavery. It is currently responsible for the mass genocide of the Native Americans. I don't think I really like your idea of judging current governments by the actions of previous ones.
Slashdot Mirror
I download music from the internet quite frequently, if I like the song I have downloaded I will usually buy the album if I don't like it I delete it, does this mean I am commiting a crime? In my case p2p has caused my to buy more cds than I usually would have if I hadn't of been exposed to certain artists and songs. Is this common I really don't know perhaps other people don't purchase cds by artists they like personally I like to support musicians I like.
It seems that everyone who downloads music from the net claims that they buy more albums because of it. Yet, as more people download free music off the internet, less music is sold in stores. How is that possible? Shouldn't people be buying so many CDs that the stores couldn't keep them in stock? Or, are the people who are dishonest enough to download a copy of a song they have no legal right to own also dishonest enough to lie about buying more music because of it?
It's been a while since a film warranted spending the money to watch it in a room full of strangers.
There has been a few films that I wanted to see, but I didn't. I simply cannot enjoy a film when people are talking on their phones all the way through the film. I really wanted to see a movie last weekend, so I broke down and went to see that Bruce Willis/Mos Def thing. Before the movie started, two people were talking on their phone. By the time the movie was half over, three others had decided it was a good time to talk - one complaining loudly that the movie was too loud for her to hear her phone. Until they allow immediate capital punishment for talking on a cell phone in the movie, I just can't go. Also - it is *not* OK to check your cell phone for messages either. The phone lights up and distracts everyone else. Imagine if someone kept turning a flashlight on and off in the movie - it is the same thing.
This is also news for another reason. Not in TFA is the RSPCA fiasco. The RSPCA is worried that clubbing the toads to death is inhumane. So, stories are running around Australian papers that the RSPCA has pushed through a law making it illegal to club a toad - offenders will get a huge fine. The legal way to kill a toad is to smear it with hemorroid cream (to numb it) and then freeze it to death. I do not know if this story is actually true, but it is becoming a popular joke.
I just went to Google News and the top has a pretty logo that says "Google News Beta".
I've been working on clinical research for a long time now. The issue isn't quantity, it is quality. I can quickly produce a database of a couple million patients for you, but it would be crap data. When I verify the data, I get far less (around 300k). But, I've just hit a problem that I see in clinical research. If, for example, I refuse to consider a person with a blood pressure below 70/30, I have just skewed the results. On the other hand, if I accept typos from the millions of medical clerks who, in my opinion, are not required to understand basic spelling or typing techniques, I skew the data. There is no way to get truly valid results. I just get estimates and comment on trends. I let the doctors make assumptions about the trends. It could be that a new employee is typing in the weights and she keeps hitting '2' instead of '1' - then suddenly the patients started weighing more. A doctor will attribute the weight gain to McDonalds. I'm sorry, but there's no real point here. I just wanted to explain a bit of what is really going on in these clinical research areas.
If your IQ is still 190, the chances are you aren't going to fit in... whatever your skin colour.
Especially since the Guinness World Record holder for the highest IQ, Marilyn vos Savant, has an IQ of 186. You'd think that someone with a score of 190 would be smart enough to use a number lower than the world record holder so it wouldn't be so obvious that they are just making it up.
Sounds like a great idea! We don't want Big Brother spying on us, so lets run out and get cell phones that will allow Big Brother to track where we are every second of the day since we will always have the phone with us. That will show those Big Brothers!!!
the lawyers are getting $275mil and then everyone else gets a buck. ;)
What makes you think you're going to get a buck? The people who suffered from the overpriced memory won't get a single penny.
This reminds me a lot of a research project I worked on years ago... Evolutionary Music and the Zipf-Mandlebrot Law. Our conclusion back then was that a computer can tell you if music is "pleasant". We didn't want to use 'good' or 'bad' because that would lead to a lot of arguments based on taste, not music.
Have you actually performed side-by-side comparisons using your own data? I have on many projects. Some are faster in Postgres. Some are faster in MySQL. Guess which one I use? Both. I use Postgres when it is faster. I use MySQL when it is faster. I refuse to be a blind moron like so many on Slashdot: Postgres is best. No, MySQL is best. Who cares - does it run Linux? No, Debian. That is Linux. I use BSD! Who cares, we're here to bash Windows!!!
is there really a serious threat of people hax0ring other workers' accounts and taking their online sexual harassment training for them?
Funny you should ask... I found the web-based Sexual Harassment training a stupid waste of time and energy. I tried to get it stopped, but management wouldn't listen. So, I wrote a script that pulled everyone's username from LDAP and completed the training for them on the first day it was available. Everyone got a "thank you" email and nobody wasted any time (except me - but then I spend my day reading slashdot).
Given that the performance differential (which was always overstated) has been overcome
Do a side-by-side comparison on your own data. For me, the performance differential has not been overcome. In MySQL, my reports take about 10 minutes to run. In Postgres, they take 3-4 days. When I mentioned this to our local Pg-fanboys, they came in, gave Postgres its own dual-processor server, extra ram, changed my column datatypes, made a slew of indexes, and reduced the report time from 3-4 days to 3-4 hours. I agree that optimizing Postgres will speed it up a great deal, but without spending a couple weeks optimizing MySQL, I had an acceptable report generation time.
However, on a separate project, I required features that were not in MySQL. So, I used Postgres. Speed was not an issue. In my opinion, this all has to do with the purpose. In the project I mentioned first, we have a data warehouse - shove junk in and make massive reports on it. In the second, we are working with the data on a daily basis. I am not surprised that one database engine works better for one purpose and another works better for another purpose.
Give me flying!
Have you tried "Dream Glider"? It is rather rudimentary, but it feels sort of like flying around in a hang glider.
I've tried this setup twice in the past. It always feels like you are walking up an incline. To make it feel flat, the sphere has to be huge. As it is, the weight of the sphere is difficult to start moving and difficult to stop moving. What is required for a real-life VR environment is a flexible sphere that allows a flat surface for the user to walk on and power-assisted rotation to make it start and stop easily.
These apps are truly dinosaurs and we need a new killer app word processor suitable for writing books, html and pdf documentation including table of contents, indexes, appendices and normal stuff you find in documents.
That is what docbook does, right? I mean, I haven't ever got docbook to do anything worthwhile, but I've been told that if it did work, that is what it would do.
I was told to never use a goto...
Are you sure that wasn't a "gosub"? Goto is rather useful in conjunction with conditional statements.
but I really don't think it competes with fact-checked and edited encyclopediae yet in accuracy
You can have a large staff of writers and still have problems. A simple typo can cause factual issues, such as the Household Cyclopedia article on hedgehogs: "If it ever has been found eating poultry or fame, as has by some been asserted, they must previously have been killed by rats, weasels, or some more ferocious animal than the hedgehog." Eating "fame"? How dare those hedgehogs eat our fame!
Someone to build a better mousetrap!
Moustrap used to be better. It was wood and metal - very sturdy. We played it hundreds of times. Then, it changed into a cardboard and plastic pile of crap that breaks before you complete one game.
I read this as Technocrati and assumed the editor was making a poor attempt to pluralize Technocrat. It made no sense at all that a technical expert would fear a blog search engine.
Well, when you realice that the 'c' is missing, you can ask, "What the hell is Technorati?" It is a blog search engine. Am I the only person on slashdot who doesn't know about Technorati?
You need a 2.5" USB (2.0) external hard drive.
I have looked into those as a primary file storage device. I haven't figured out how to setup Linux to force all disk writes immediately. I have written to a little 16MB stick, let it sit for a couple hours, pulled the stick, and then put in another computer. The stick was empty because I didn't do a "safe removal". Obviously, the old write was sitting in a buffer somewhere.
Can this be put in an unpowered thumb drive? I feel it would be nice to have large, easily removable, USB storage that does not require external power. Right now, I store my accounting files on a 64MB stick that I can remove and take with me in an emergency much easier than taking my whole computer. The more room for backup, the better.
not all life has to be carbon-based, mostly water, and oxygen-breathing.
That is true, but you also have to take into account the fact that solid water (ice) is less dense then liquid water. We take it for granted, but think about how it affects our planet. The bottom of the ocean is not solid like the bottom of a methane ocean. They are liquid and at a controlled temperature (4 degrees celcius). How much of a role does this little oddity of water play into our planet's evolution?
Here is what the US State Department has to say about China's MODERN record:t m/
3 _175406.html/
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2003/27768.h
Lemme see... Page Not Available. Ooooh - China is so evil that they've deleted the page!
Oh and many ppl will be interested in a little ditty about the USA FROM CHINA:
http://english.people.com.cn/200503/03/eng2005030
Lemme see... Page Not Found. Damn Chinese! They're deleting the entire web!!!
Your point is misguided, as your lack of interest and/or knowledge regarding China's current human rights violations is grossly lacking.
My point is based on over 10 years of studying the Chinese government and society. I have never claimed that China has a great human rights record. I simply do not believe that Iraq was a hell of a lot better.
No, I'm referring to the human rights violations under the current regime
I had to assume you were referring to Mao because the current Chinese regime has not murdered thousands of its own citizens, as the Iraqi regime did. The current Chinese regime doesn't force a single political party in all government positions, as the Iraqi regime did. The current Chinese regime does not murder anyone who questions government authority, as the Iraqi regime did. Of course, you can get your statistics from a website that considers censorship of a single website the same as the mass murder of an entire township. I personally feel that one is a little worse than the other.
Why not, the Chinese have more human rights violations than Iraq ever did. Less oil though...
I have to assume you are referring to human rights violations under Mao. So, by your reasoning, a government is responsible for any and all actions of the governments that ruled the land before them. So, our current government is at this time responsible to segregation. It is at this time responsible for refusing to allow blacks and women to vote. It is currently responsible for slavery. It is currently responsible for the mass genocide of the Native Americans. I don't think I really like your idea of judging current governments by the actions of previous ones.