. . . but there's also the quality of communication between blackberry owners and everyone else. At first I was offended when I'd get these short and terse emails from my family and friends with blackberries, but then I realized they have to type on that tiny keyboard.
Even when people are at work during work hours, I get a little concerned when I see my boss head into the men's room still typing on his.
I'm with you on this one, but then what if you didn't notice, either? You'd swipe your card, grab your stuff, walk out of the store, and go home, open it up and start using it then, maybe, at some point, you'd look at your statement and realize their mistake. *Their* mistake. If it's a store nearby you might go back and notify them and work something out, but if it's an online business--particularly when Amazon has these orders passing through so many different peoples' hands, any one of whom could've caught the mistake--there's not that personal contact. I think that people are much more likely to take advantage, and the argument that they're okay in doing so (legally; we're not talking morally here) becomes a lot stronger.
It has nothing to do with frames of reference. One of the conclusions of the special theory of relativity is that light's speed in a vacuum (c) is a constant in all frames of reference. The rule here is that you can't move faster than light does in a vacuum.
This is because as you approach the speed of light, various physical properties of your frame start to break down as viewed from other frames (in your frame of reference you're not moving at all; it's everyone else who sees you blazing by at light speed). At the speed of light, these values (mass, passage of time, the dimensions of your body or spacecraft or whatever) approach a singularity and their values become undefined. This happens regardless of your frame of reference; it's happening in other peoples' frames of reference because you're not moving in yours.
I'm not a physicist either. If I were, that explanation would've been better. I'm gonna go lie down now.
What I find interesting is that now the price of pressing vinyl is equal or greater to the cost of pressing CDs for precisely the reason that CD technology has progressed so much and vinyl pressing technology hasn't changed really since the 1970s. If you're just going on straight-up inflation of currency, EVERYTHING is "supposed" to be more expensive in dollars than it is, but the fact of the matter is that so many other things change with time than just the value of currency.
To be *even more* nit-picky about it, epicycles were an attempt to explain the motion of planets given the assumption that they were all orbiting the Earth rather than the Sun. That's what he's talking about there.
Even saying that a law followed your definition, the burden would still be on the plaintiff in a case to prove that a defendant was, in fact, "day trading" and not "investing in the short term". I don't think your definition is bad as a definition, but it could become very bad as a law. When codified by lawmakers, these things have a tendency to become more volatile than originally intended.
While we're on the topic, who would bring day-trading charges on someone? Maybe that's what you just asked in your post....
As with pretty much any cryptographic system, the exact details of how the system works are usually well known by attackers and can still be extremely difficult to exploit. On the other hand, DES became "easily" breakable despite the U.S. government's decision to keep the exact details of the algorithm a secret.
The way we're usually creating new algorithms today is to, for one, start with a problem whose complexity increases exponentially with problem size, then as computing power increases just increase the size of the problem. Everybody talks about SHA-1 like it's broken completely just because someone can do it 2000 times faster than brute force guesswork. Starting near 2^256, 2^256/2000 is still remarkably close to 2^256. Fudging slightly (it was an estimate after all) and saying a method is 2048 times faster, that's still only 2^11th, and it will still take 2^245 guesses or so on average. SHA-1 isn't obscure at all; the method by which hashes are generated is freely available to anyone who wants to know. It's still a bitch and a half to break.
I sincerely doubt the grandparent post was implying that custom work like creating a personalized avatar should follow a FOSS model. That's not even how it works in the OSS world (I'm an OSS developer). Custom open-source development happens all the time *and* people (myself included) get paid to do it, because we wouldn't do it otherwise.
I think what the grandparent post was saying, actually, is that there exists no scarcity in Second Life except for artificially-imposed scarcity (land, custom items, etc.). Were I to sit down and make some object in SL, I could duplicate it millions of times at no extra cost to myself or those who purchase (or simply pick up) a copy of it. The effort required to produce an item in SL could be said to have value, but that value decreases with every copy made, because each copy doesn't require any more effort or material to produce. So, only by artificially creating scarcity (say, by only producing 100 of your item) can you have a supply/demand relationship that makes any sense at all.
You're writing under the assumption that a legal distinction between ordinary short-term investment and "day trading" can easily be made. I'm not so sure that's reasonable.
This is actually something that I brought up to a friend of mine--though we weren't talking about pr0n--earlier this week. Will HD become something like when all the stars from radio tried to make it in film but they were too ugly? Will there be any stars (pr0n or otherwise) whose careers take a serious downturn when viewers can now see every single detail of them? Or even actors/actresses that got left behind in the transition from 16mm to 35mm to 70mm film stock.... Something to think about.
It would be more like the cops planting a fake car and then someone copying the design of the fake car, so they could catch people copying their design.
Spent a couple of years locked up for just that. Thought I could get away with it, too, but my drawing table, chair, and all my drafting supplies were too heavy for me to run away with quickly enough. Next time. . . next time I'll use CAD on my laptop instead! muahahahaha!!!
Honestly, I still don't think that games is valid as the sole reason to cling to the battered remains of Windows.
An earlier post makes mention of FPS games. Why not just hook a keyboard/mouse up to your gaming console? Or better yet, if more users start using their consoles for FPS games and there is a demand for it, why not nudge the gaming industry into making more effective controls? The Wii is a start.
You mention cramming more information on-screen. Won't this be extremely feasible with HD gaming? You can cram a shocking amount of visual information onto one of those things.
I'm not saying that the FPS-on-console thing is here now. It really isn't and frankly I hate using my console for it (compared to my *mac*, btw). What I'm saying is that it won't be long now before you can't point to games as your only reason for staying locked into Windows. Consoles are rising up, if slowly. So are WINE/Cedega.
If you remove the incentive to spam then it will start to dry up. Corporate sabotage is still a concern but it's not a deal breaker and it could be addressed.
Absolutely. That spam even exists today is clear evidence that it makes somebody somewhere a great deal of money. Somewhere, there have to be people who are purchasing penis enlargement pills and penny stocks, keeping the whole thing afloat. Unfortunately, taking the economics of spam away isn't so easy as it sounds....
Doesn't flash have a finite read/write limit? Isn't that kind of important to know if you're using it as a hard drive that *might* contain swap space, might contain files that are read and written a lot? What about the fact that flash can only be erased in blocks?
Hard drives are cheap, reasonably robust (it's been a long time since I've broken one), and for the time being can hold a tremendous amount of data in a small-ish package. Why not work on making the more immediately sensitive parts more "robust", like someone mentioned above with the screen?
What the grandparent post was saying, but I guess a typo got in the way of the message coming across, is that at least in America it's *really* difficult to get objective information about how the war in Iraq is going. Each news source might have a different idea about it, might be talking to different officials that, yes, are ordered to stay on message, or might have ulteriour motives that prevent it from delivering unbiased information. In addition, yes, soldiers and media are extremely limited in what photographs they're permitted to send back home.
Where do you get this shit from?
Why do you think it is that all the *retired* generals in the US army seem critical of the war in Iraq? Once they're retired they're no longer under orders to stay on message, and the message that the administration has chosen is that everything's under control. It isn't, and I think most people accept that there's little possibility of it getting under control the way things are going now. I've talked to soldiers, I've read blogs, I've done enough research to satisfy myself that the "quagmire" of Iraq has turned into a "shitstorm" and it's time to get out.
Slashdot Mirror
. . . but there's also the quality of communication between blackberry owners and everyone else. At first I was offended when I'd get these short and terse emails from my family and friends with blackberries, but then I realized they have to type on that tiny keyboard.
Even when people are at work during work hours, I get a little concerned when I see my boss head into the men's room still typing on his.
I'm with you on this one, but then what if you didn't notice, either? You'd swipe your card, grab your stuff, walk out of the store, and go home, open it up and start using it then, maybe, at some point, you'd look at your statement and realize their mistake. *Their* mistake. If it's a store nearby you might go back and notify them and work something out, but if it's an online business--particularly when Amazon has these orders passing through so many different peoples' hands, any one of whom could've caught the mistake--there's not that personal contact. I think that people are much more likely to take advantage, and the argument that they're okay in doing so (legally; we're not talking morally here) becomes a lot stronger.
Chrono Trigger?
You actually invoked Zardoz in a slashdot comment. My hat's off to you.
Right on! I mean, this *is* Canada we're talking about here.
If that's true, how come all the rich neighbourhoods in New Orleans are fine now but all the poor ones are still in ruins to this day?
Judging by your post, the "IANAP" label applies best to you.
It has nothing to do with frames of reference. One of the conclusions of the special theory of relativity is that light's speed in a vacuum (c) is a constant in all frames of reference. The rule here is that you can't move faster than light does in a vacuum.
This is because as you approach the speed of light, various physical properties of your frame start to break down as viewed from other frames (in your frame of reference you're not moving at all; it's everyone else who sees you blazing by at light speed). At the speed of light, these values (mass, passage of time, the dimensions of your body or spacecraft or whatever) approach a singularity and their values become undefined. This happens regardless of your frame of reference; it's happening in other peoples' frames of reference because you're not moving in yours.
I'm not a physicist either. If I were, that explanation would've been better. I'm gonna go lie down now.
What I find interesting is that now the price of pressing vinyl is equal or greater to the cost of pressing CDs for precisely the reason that CD technology has progressed so much and vinyl pressing technology hasn't changed really since the 1970s. If you're just going on straight-up inflation of currency, EVERYTHING is "supposed" to be more expensive in dollars than it is, but the fact of the matter is that so many other things change with time than just the value of currency.
That means someone's gotta take one for the team and own that copyright. Any takers? Didn't think so.
*whoosh!!*
To be *even more* nit-picky about it, epicycles were an attempt to explain the motion of planets given the assumption that they were all orbiting the Earth rather than the Sun. That's what he's talking about there.
See? It's hard to do.
Even saying that a law followed your definition, the burden would still be on the plaintiff in a case to prove that a defendant was, in fact, "day trading" and not "investing in the short term". I don't think your definition is bad as a definition, but it could become very bad as a law. When codified by lawmakers, these things have a tendency to become more volatile than originally intended.
While we're on the topic, who would bring day-trading charges on someone? Maybe that's what you just asked in your post....
As with pretty much any cryptographic system, the exact details of how the system works are usually well known by attackers and can still be extremely difficult to exploit. On the other hand, DES became "easily" breakable despite the U.S. government's decision to keep the exact details of the algorithm a secret. The way we're usually creating new algorithms today is to, for one, start with a problem whose complexity increases exponentially with problem size, then as computing power increases just increase the size of the problem. Everybody talks about SHA-1 like it's broken completely just because someone can do it 2000 times faster than brute force guesswork. Starting near 2^256, 2^256/2000 is still remarkably close to 2^256. Fudging slightly (it was an estimate after all) and saying a method is 2048 times faster, that's still only 2^11th, and it will still take 2^245 guesses or so on average. SHA-1 isn't obscure at all; the method by which hashes are generated is freely available to anyone who wants to know. It's still a bitch and a half to break.
I sincerely doubt the grandparent post was implying that custom work like creating a personalized avatar should follow a FOSS model. That's not even how it works in the OSS world (I'm an OSS developer). Custom open-source development happens all the time *and* people (myself included) get paid to do it, because we wouldn't do it otherwise.
I think what the grandparent post was saying, actually, is that there exists no scarcity in Second Life except for artificially-imposed scarcity (land, custom items, etc.). Were I to sit down and make some object in SL, I could duplicate it millions of times at no extra cost to myself or those who purchase (or simply pick up) a copy of it. The effort required to produce an item in SL could be said to have value, but that value decreases with every copy made, because each copy doesn't require any more effort or material to produce. So, only by artificially creating scarcity (say, by only producing 100 of your item) can you have a supply/demand relationship that makes any sense at all.
You're writing under the assumption that a legal distinction between ordinary short-term investment and "day trading" can easily be made. I'm not so sure that's reasonable.
2 and 5?
This is actually something that I brought up to a friend of mine--though we weren't talking about pr0n--earlier this week. Will HD become something like when all the stars from radio tried to make it in film but they were too ugly? Will there be any stars (pr0n or otherwise) whose careers take a serious downturn when viewers can now see every single detail of them? Or even actors/actresses that got left behind in the transition from 16mm to 35mm to 70mm film stock.... Something to think about.
Spent a couple of years locked up for just that. Thought I could get away with it, too, but my drawing table, chair, and all my drafting supplies were too heavy for me to run away with quickly enough. Next time. . . next time I'll use CAD on my laptop instead! muahahahaha!!!
Honestly, I still don't think that games is valid as the sole reason to cling to the battered remains of Windows.
An earlier post makes mention of FPS games. Why not just hook a keyboard/mouse up to your gaming console? Or better yet, if more users start using their consoles for FPS games and there is a demand for it, why not nudge the gaming industry into making more effective controls? The Wii is a start.
You mention cramming more information on-screen. Won't this be extremely feasible with HD gaming? You can cram a shocking amount of visual information onto one of those things.
I'm not saying that the FPS-on-console thing is here now. It really isn't and frankly I hate using my console for it (compared to my *mac*, btw). What I'm saying is that it won't be long now before you can't point to games as your only reason for staying locked into Windows. Consoles are rising up, if slowly. So are WINE/Cedega.
Absolutely. That spam even exists today is clear evidence that it makes somebody somewhere a great deal of money. Somewhere, there have to be people who are purchasing penis enlargement pills and penny stocks, keeping the whole thing afloat. Unfortunately, taking the economics of spam away isn't so easy as it sounds....
Doesn't flash have a finite read/write limit? Isn't that kind of important to know if you're using it as a hard drive that *might* contain swap space, might contain files that are read and written a lot? What about the fact that flash can only be erased in blocks? Hard drives are cheap, reasonably robust (it's been a long time since I've broken one), and for the time being can hold a tremendous amount of data in a small-ish package. Why not work on making the more immediately sensitive parts more "robust", like someone mentioned above with the screen?
What the grandparent post was saying, but I guess a typo got in the way of the message coming across, is that at least in America it's *really* difficult to get objective information about how the war in Iraq is going. Each news source might have a different idea about it, might be talking to different officials that, yes, are ordered to stay on message, or might have ulteriour motives that prevent it from delivering unbiased information. In addition, yes, soldiers and media are extremely limited in what photographs they're permitted to send back home.
Why do you think it is that all the *retired* generals in the US army seem critical of the war in Iraq? Once they're retired they're no longer under orders to stay on message, and the message that the administration has chosen is that everything's under control. It isn't, and I think most people accept that there's little possibility of it getting under control the way things are going now. I've talked to soldiers, I've read blogs, I've done enough research to satisfy myself that the "quagmire" of Iraq has turned into a "shitstorm" and it's time to get out.
Ask a sherpa.
Ask a zombie.