Their system will age faster due to the lack of high-end graphics and HD resolution...
The near constant thing I hear people say about the Wii is the game play. So if the key compliment to the Wii is not the graphics then I'm not seeing how the Wii will age faster...because of its lack of HD graphics. Perhaps most notably is that people who aren't gamers are also talking about the game play.
The game play is what will keep the Wii from aging fast.
How exactly could a merger of Sirius and XM Radio keep others out of the market? It's not like they can prevent competitors from launching satellites, or buying bandwidth on someone else's satellite. Consumers will always be free to purchase a new receiver if need be.
Last I knew, the FCC only has granted two 12.5 MHz S-band channels [1] for satellite radio (XM has 2332.5 to 2345.0 MHz; Sirius has 2320 and 2332.5 MHz). If XM & Sirius merge then XM/Sirius would own the whole 25 MHz allotted, thus far, for satellite radio. Unless the FCC licenses off more spectrum for satellite radio...then that's how a merger can keep others out of the market: they wouldn't have a license to broadcast! Maybe they could rent/lease spectrum off another but look for yourself at the PDF below: there's not much allocated for broadcasting satellite.
It's not like Joe can just setup his shop down the road and, bam, you got more sat radio competition. Nevermind that a new company most likely would not get a 25 MHz allotment (prime spectrum is already crowded it would seem) so they would already be at a disadvantage by not being able to have the same bandwidth as XM/Sirius, ergo, at a severe content disadvantage.
Unless, of course, the FCC only permits XM/Sirius to keep one license...then you just gotta up with some $90 million for the license. [2]
Were I one of those fan artists, I'm not at all sure how I'd feel about his use of my work, so perhaps he's just protecting himself from that issue.
No doubt that Paramount would claim they own the fans' work (derivative work) so maybe he's protecting the fans both by not naming them and blurring the images out. Why assume malice when you (and I) don't have a clue?
However, hearing that Sony itself has been pressuring the porn industry away from the Blu-Ray format, it seems they've shot themselves in the foot and mooted their brand from competition.
Along with this point, why does Sony get to ride the moral-high-horse after their rootkit debacle?
"No, we don't want porn released on our products, but secretly installing crippling software on computers -- regardless if people accept the EULA -- we fully support (*ahem* until we get caught and sued *ahem*)."
Just me or is that a big hypocritical? On the other hand, I'm sure there is a "business philosophy" disconnect between the HD DVD and music groups/divisions.
Has "robot rights" achieved critical mass that we'll start seeing more of these studies? (This one even coins/calls for "android rights activists"!!!) Sensing injury is one thing, being sentient & self-aware are completely different (enough that I can hardly see the slippery slope). With two stories on/. in as many weeks and Gates' prediction about robots, this is looking out to be a boy-who-cried-wolf situation.
I believe cats and dogs are sentient, self-aware beings and they should be treated with that much respect. In fact, it is quite easy to see dogs possess mens rea ("guilty mind") which human babies, toddlers, and even some children don't possess (I'm no parent but I do have cousins with a total of over a dozen kids under 6 years of age so I have plenty of observation time). Robots haven't earned anything *near* what cats & dogs possess so all these predictions and calls for rights are way too premature.
It will be a sad day for humanity if more attention is given to robot rights than animal rights or to the environment. We aren't there yet, but it's looking like we will if this trend keeps pace. I'm just as much of a dork/nerd/geek as the next/. reader and I enjoy sci-fi and thinking of such stuff, but come on..."robot rights" is way to premature.
Chances are that less people have lost email through this recent gmail foul-up than who lost their email because their own computer crashed. It's just that now there's someone to point the finger at.
Pointing a finger is great, but it doesn't get your data back. At least when it's my fault I know who needs to rectify things in the future, but when it's google's fault.....I pray I'm not the next target? I can point my finger all I want, but there's nothing I can do to make them be more dilligent in their backups. (IOW, blame only goes so far.)
As a whole, I'm sure less data has been lost but it requires giving up control to do it. It's like carpooling, the aggregate saves on gas but an individual has to give up personal choice to go with the group.
This is all based on the assumption that the would-be host actually does what you hope. If they do grandfather-father schemed tape backups and replicate this in geographically disjoint areas then I'm very certain an individual cannot compete. But if they're backup consists of a single RAID 5 (or worse, RAID 0 or 1) array....then I know *I* can do better than that.
There's certain things I create that I want to keep to myself.
Unless your wife is hot, then do share it with all!:)
...users will be required to keep a copy of the pass-key taped to the bottom of their computers.
I know you are kidding, but the truth isn't that far off. Someone I know's mother (names, exact relationship to me, and organization intentionally withheld) works for the government. The laptop had a BIOS password, which was written on a slip of paper in the laptop case. Her password for the account involved *only* the current month and year. And this was acceptable per policy as of a few months ago.
If I can't trust the government to keep information secret, then why should I trust them to do anything?
how many people do you know who always have their foot flooring the gas or brake? if people learned to use the accelerator and brakes effectively they would probably save 10 mpg on every tank.
What'd be nice is not having a stoplight every 1/10 mile. Rapid acceleration, as you blame, wouldn't be necessary if you were not stopping and starting... A leads to B, mitigate A and B is mitigated (no that's not a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy).
More often than not, I hit lights because people aren't going the speed limit or putz their way up to speed limits. It's a non-straight-forward optimization problem and I think, IMHEG (educated guess), your solution isn't the optimal solution for traffic lights since insufficient acceleration will lead you to hit more lights.
Perhaps if our civil/traffic engineers would better engineer traffic routing then we'd save all the way around. This may require giving up the freedom of spontaneous choice of current-day driving and going the Minority Report way of automated driving, but that's a ways off.
It won't happen tomorrow, but I expect it will happen sooner than many people think.
From the link you posted:
This is part one of a discussion surrounding synthetically created intelligence, mind uploading and the technological singularity. And I am not betting on these phenomenon happening anytime soon.
Sure, might as well start discussing mining rights on Mars. Or why not start the Borg Research Foundation. Best yet, we desperately need to start planning the Milky Way Transit Authority for the intragalactic subway.
Holy crap, talk about putting the cart in front of the horse. We aren't even near robots having a glimmer of sentience or consciousness yet...so why are people putting money behind research on such things as "robo-rights"?
(So if the robots of today don't have sentience and consciousness yet, does that mean the are the future's equivalent of a fetus? Can smashing my Roomba with a hammer constitute abortion?)
The research was commissioned by the UK Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning Centre
Oh, I get it. Government. Nevermind, no rant to read here...just business as usual.
Instead of trying to spin existing articles, I personally think that it's time for Slashdot editors to just start making shit up. This attempt at spin is pretty sad. Why not just make up an article that says, "Bill Gates went on a shooting spree today, killing 100 orphan children, before turning the weapon on himself".
In other news, ESR to release The Cathedral and the Bazaar as a film on October 31, 2007 staring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt and Jessica Alba. Brad Pitt rallies the locals at the bazaar to go around town to burn down all the cathedrals. Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises his role as Terminator sent back in time by the GNU Project to elimiate Pitt. Alba is rumored to have a shower scene...just cuz.
As a PHP user, I have attempted to better the thing by reporting what I think are bugs. I can't name a single one that wasn't closed with a WONTFIX and a terse, non-thankful "that is a feature, not a bug." I honestly have zero disbelief that those same programmers would turn against Esser when he blamed the language, not the user, for the security problem.
In particular, the late static binding issue (if B extends A then A::staticFunc() ran as B::staticFunc() is ran under class A not B). It's like how it took MySQL took a decade to get stored procedures and views despite many people asking for it. Many people complain about the late static binding issue but last I knew it was still "it's a feature, not a bug."
College teaches you how to learn. Once you realize that, your education truly begins.
College doesn't teach you anything but how to follow directions at a higher level. Seriously. If you didn't do what your instructor wants, what kind of grades do you get? Learning and learning how to learn are side effects that you have to take as your own initiative to accomplish. I would heartily agree that learning the material and, better yet, learning how to learn definitely make things easier but college (school, in general, actually) is about following instructions. If your prof expects you to know X and Y then you better know X and Y, but knowing Z is only of benefit to you.
Coincidentally: work is the same.:) If you don't do what your boss wants, what kind of "grade" do you get? If you can do more (read: extra-curricular) and take initiatives (read: learning) then you're better off and a more valued employee.
There are exceptions, of course.
Independent study is where those learning skills come to fruition (this is more of a response to the thread than the parent post). No one to tell you what to do. No one to guide you. No one to test you. No one to make sure you aren't screwing up. Except yourself that is.
Re:If you've ever seen how fast a fire moves...
on
Arson Science Rewritten
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Experts are only right until some new piece of knowledge comes along and changes the field.
What you didn't mention is that new evidence can come along and solidify a field. Just because the scientific method can disprove preconceived theories doesn't negate the power of science, which is what I read that you are implying. At least toward evidence for a death penalty, but if you believe that you cannot rely on science then what can you rely upon?
Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners.
Kudos to the poster for providing Kim's "holiday" wish list. But, what? No PS3, Xbox 360, or Wii? I guess who needs a video game console when you have a whole country to play with.
Seriously, I like doubled my knowledge about Kim by reading that list.
When shall we have a video in an Open Source format like.ogg? If slashdot could transform the videos to open source formats before posting the stories, this could be a very welcome development.
When? Likely never. Why? That video is copyrighted by someone and you can't just legally copy it, transcode it, and serve it up yourself.
Now if a slashsdot editor went to the trouble of requesting permission to host the video (the benefit to the video owner is to stave off/. effect) with the condition they can transcode into an open source format...then maybe. But when was the last time you saw a/. editor willing to validate, proofread, or desensationalize a story let alone contact someone, ask for permission, download, transcode, and host a video? Back to never again.:)
I thought this was about wireless technology not about IT staff...
Seriously though, that's an encyclopedia? Neither ZigBee nor WiMax nor Bluetooth "articles" mentioned IEEE. Better opt for a real encyclopedia and relabel this as a bunch of marketing abstracts.
the wavelength of 405nm is right on the edge of the visible spectrum. i'm not even sure you can display that color on a typical RGB monitor.
This depends on your monitor and exactly what frequency "blue" is.
Perhaps it is sufficient to say that neither the sRGB color space and the Adobe RGB color space support 405 nm (it is outside the superimposed triangle on the CIE 1931 image).
It's a pretty safe bet that the Wikimedia foundation won't all of a sudden charge mandatory access fees...
The very content they'd lock up under fees is currently downloadable so if what you "propose" happens then things boil down to two questions: who's got the latest dump and who's gonna host it? It's all GFDL (ignore the whole image/fair use thing) so there's nothing legally there for wikimedia foundation to stop this from happening. Heck, places like answers.com already take the dumps and use them.
The whole pass by value thing was what drove me away permanently from PHP years ago, but I thought PHP fixed that behavior in PHP5. Am I mistaken?
No, everything still defaults to pass by value. You have to declare your function like "function & foo(& $a)" to pass by reference and return by reference and assign the return value like "$bar =& foo($object);" to make sure $bar is by reference to what foo returns. If you miss any one of those three ampresands then you get pass by value.
This is why PHP's DOM functionality does not rely on a PHP object storing actual data (do a var_dump and you see nothing) because it is *much* easier keeping a single, global registry of the actual data and pass objects will-nilly around that just reference an entry in said global registry.
As repeated time after time by the PHP developers: this is a "feature" not a bug. But if they listened to the masses then it would produce a version not backward compatible and I do not forsee this system ever changing...
poorly designed, not powerful, and encouraging bad coding practices.
Despite your sarcasm, I would actually have to agree to some degree.
PHP is a hodge-podge of functions that lack much consistency (compare in_array(needle, haystack) with, say, strpos(haystack, needle)) and when coding a real site with classes and such you still have to code within the confines of "we're escaping out of HTML into PHP mode" with the <? and ?> tags in *every* file. This promotes and encourages combining display with logic which many would argue is a bad coding practice.
Then there's the *many* "oh, that's a feature not a bug" like why there's a need for a late static binding patch. I run into these somewhat often and have given up interaction with the developers because they're cranky and refuse to listen to constructive criticism.
As for performance: you can't "compile" them like you can in python to avoid the reparsing time which can be quite extensive if you get up into tens of thousands of lines of code which happens on *every* page load.
IMHO, "aliasing" is the worst thing to happen to PHP because you have to go *out of your way* to pass an object by reference instead of by copy and if you forget an ampresand in one of three places (function argument, function return, or assigment with =&) then PHP silently makes a copy of your object. And in some places it is *impossible* to pass by reference (e.g., the magic methods). Then aliasing has its other side-effects like in foreach loops.
Then there's the lack of a good, free profiler and debugger (granted I haven't looked in a while so please share if you know of some).
That said, I'm not railing against PHP (in fact, it currently pays my bills) but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its negatives and doesn't have areas where improvment is the only way things can go. I hope this parternship has at least some tricklebacks to non-Windows performance.
The color calibration target that is on the corner of the rover (designed by a group including Bill Nye the Science Guy, if I recall) helps the scientists recreate the colors that entered the camera lens accurately, or to recreate the colors of the materials when ignoring the differences in Martian lighting conditions.
This is an approximately true-color, red-green-blue composite panorama generated from images taken through the Pancam's 600-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 480-nanometer filters. This "natural color" view is the rover team's best estimate of what the scene would look like if we were there and able to see it with our own eyes.
Those images are combined from three separate color channels or known frequency therefore no calibration is needed. In other words, they did not take a grey-scale image and add false color to make it appear true color but took three separate grey-scale images of known wavelength and combined them.
And for what it's worth, the wikipedia article on color vision says the three types of cones in our eyes are most sensitive to 420 nm, 534 nm, and 564 nm.
I just think you're being a little pedantic about all this.
The original claim was that AJAX was the "ultimate client-side technology" and if I have to be pedantic to explain why it's not then so be it. Is AJAX an improvement over the absence of it? Sure, I never claimed to the contrary, but this also not the line of discussion.
I described a couple attributes of what would be "more ultimate" since AJAX clearly is being used (or is trending that way) for things it can't do and is based entirely on non-standardly implemented languages.
And for that my post gets labeled as FUD... If down-playing a buzzword "technology" that gets pawned as "the killer app" gets me labeled as a pedanticist and a FUD-spreader, well, then I'll take one for the team to do so.
Slashdot Mirror
The game play is what will keep the Wii from aging fast.
It's not like Joe can just setup his shop down the road and, bam, you got more sat radio competition. Nevermind that a new company most likely would not get a 25 MHz allotment (prime spectrum is already crowded it would seem) so they would already be at a disadvantage by not being able to have the same bandwidth as XM/Sirius, ergo, at a severe content disadvantage.
Unless, of course, the FCC only permits XM/Sirius to keep one license...then you just gotta up with some $90 million for the license. [2]
[1] -- http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf Note the 2310 to 2360 allocation for broadcast satellite.
[2] -- http://www.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Wireless/News_Releases
"No, we don't want porn released on our products, but secretly installing crippling software on computers -- regardless if people accept the EULA -- we fully support (*ahem* until we get caught and sued *ahem*)."
Just me or is that a big hypocritical? On the other hand, I'm sure there is a "business philosophy" disconnect between the HD DVD and music groups/divisions.
Has "robot rights" achieved critical mass that we'll start seeing more of these studies? (This one even coins/calls for "android rights activists"!!!) Sensing injury is one thing, being sentient & self-aware are completely different (enough that I can hardly see the slippery slope). With two stories on /. in as many weeks and Gates' prediction about robots, this is looking out to be a boy-who-cried-wolf situation.
/. reader and I enjoy sci-fi and thinking of such stuff, but come on..."robot rights" is way to premature.
I believe cats and dogs are sentient, self-aware beings and they should be treated with that much respect. In fact, it is quite easy to see dogs possess mens rea ("guilty mind") which human babies, toddlers, and even some children don't possess (I'm no parent but I do have cousins with a total of over a dozen kids under 6 years of age so I have plenty of observation time). Robots haven't earned anything *near* what cats & dogs possess so all these predictions and calls for rights are way too premature.
It will be a sad day for humanity if more attention is given to robot rights than animal rights or to the environment. We aren't there yet, but it's looking like we will if this trend keeps pace. I'm just as much of a dork/nerd/geek as the next
As a whole, I'm sure less data has been lost but it requires giving up control to do it. It's like carpooling, the aggregate saves on gas but an individual has to give up personal choice to go with the group.
This is all based on the assumption that the would-be host actually does what you hope. If they do grandfather-father schemed tape backups and replicate this in geographically disjoint areas then I'm very certain an individual cannot compete. But if they're backup consists of a single RAID 5 (or worse, RAID 0 or 1) array....then I know *I* can do better than that.
Unless your wife is hot, then do share it with all!
If I can't trust the government to keep information secret, then why should I trust them to do anything?
More often than not, I hit lights because people aren't going the speed limit or putz their way up to speed limits. It's a non-straight-forward optimization problem and I think, IMHEG (educated guess), your solution isn't the optimal solution for traffic lights since insufficient acceleration will lead you to hit more lights.
Perhaps if our civil/traffic engineers would better engineer traffic routing then we'd save all the way around. This may require giving up the freedom of spontaneous choice of current-day driving and going the Minority Report way of automated driving, but that's a ways off.
Holy crap, talk about putting the cart in front of the horse. We aren't even near robots having a glimmer of sentience or consciousness yet...so why are people putting money behind research on such things as "robo-rights"?
(So if the robots of today don't have sentience and consciousness yet, does that mean the are the future's equivalent of a fetus? Can smashing my Roomba with a hammer constitute abortion?)
Oh, I get it. Government. Nevermind, no rant to read here...just business as usual.
That could be fun!
In other news, ESR to release The Cathedral and the Bazaar as a film on October 31, 2007 staring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brad Pitt and Jessica Alba. Brad Pitt rallies the locals at the bazaar to go around town to burn down all the cathedrals. Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises his role as Terminator sent back in time by the GNU Project to elimiate Pitt. Alba is rumored to have a shower scene...just cuz.
As a PHP user, I have attempted to better the thing by reporting what I think are bugs. I can't name a single one that wasn't closed with a WONTFIX and a terse, non-thankful "that is a feature, not a bug." I honestly have zero disbelief that those same programmers would turn against Esser when he blamed the language, not the user, for the security problem.
In particular, the late static binding issue (if B extends A then A::staticFunc() ran as B::staticFunc() is ran under class A not B). It's like how it took MySQL took a decade to get stored procedures and views despite many people asking for it. Many people complain about the late static binding issue but last I knew it was still "it's a feature, not a bug."
Regardless, thanks for your work Mr. Esser...
Coincidentally: work is the same.
There are exceptions, of course.
Independent study is where those learning skills come to fruition (this is more of a response to the thread than the parent post). No one to tell you what to do. No one to guide you. No one to test you. No one to make sure you aren't screwing up. Except yourself that is.
What you didn't mention is that new evidence can come along and solidify a field. Just because the scientific method can disprove preconceived theories doesn't negate the power of science, which is what I read that you are implying. At least toward evidence for a death penalty, but if you believe that you cannot rely on science then what can you rely upon?
Seriously, I like doubled my knowledge about Kim by reading that list.
Now if a slashsdot editor went to the trouble of requesting permission to host the video (the benefit to the video owner is to stave off
I thought this was about wireless technology not about IT staff...
Seriously though, that's an encyclopedia? Neither ZigBee nor WiMax nor Bluetooth "articles" mentioned IEEE. Better opt for a real encyclopedia and relabel this as a bunch of marketing abstracts.
Perhaps it is sufficient to say that neither the sRGB color space and the Adobe RGB color space support 405 nm (it is outside the superimposed triangle on the CIE 1931 image).
follow the links or
http://download.wikimedia.org/
The very content they'd lock up under fees is currently downloadable so if what you "propose" happens then things boil down to two questions: who's got the latest dump and who's gonna host it? It's all GFDL (ignore the whole image/fair use thing) so there's nothing legally there for wikimedia foundation to stop this from happening. Heck, places like answers.com already take the dumps and use them.
This is why PHP's DOM functionality does not rely on a PHP object storing actual data (do a var_dump and you see nothing) because it is *much* easier keeping a single, global registry of the actual data and pass objects will-nilly around that just reference an entry in said global registry.
As repeated time after time by the PHP developers: this is a "feature" not a bug. But if they listened to the masses then it would produce a version not backward compatible and I do not forsee this system ever changing...
PHP is a hodge-podge of functions that lack much consistency (compare in_array(needle, haystack) with, say, strpos(haystack, needle)) and when coding a real site with classes and such you still have to code within the confines of "we're escaping out of HTML into PHP mode" with the <? and ?> tags in *every* file. This promotes and encourages combining display with logic which many would argue is a bad coding practice.
Then there's the *many* "oh, that's a feature not a bug" like why there's a need for a late static binding patch. I run into these somewhat often and have given up interaction with the developers because they're cranky and refuse to listen to constructive criticism.
As for performance: you can't "compile" them like you can in python to avoid the reparsing time which can be quite extensive if you get up into tens of thousands of lines of code which happens on *every* page load.
IMHO, "aliasing" is the worst thing to happen to PHP because you have to go *out of your way* to pass an object by reference instead of by copy and if you forget an ampresand in one of three places (function argument, function return, or assigment with =&) then PHP silently makes a copy of your object. And in some places it is *impossible* to pass by reference (e.g., the magic methods). Then aliasing has its other side-effects like in foreach loops.
Then there's the lack of a good, free profiler and debugger (granted I haven't looked in a while so please share if you know of some).
That said, I'm not railing against PHP (in fact, it currently pays my bills) but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its negatives and doesn't have areas where improvment is the only way things can go. I hope this parternship has at least some tricklebacks to non-Windows performance.
Those images are combined from three separate color channels or known frequency therefore no calibration is needed. In other words, they did not take a grey-scale image and add false color to make it appear true color but took three separate grey-scale images of known wavelength and combined them.
And for what it's worth, the wikipedia article on color vision says the three types of cones in our eyes are most sensitive to 420 nm, 534 nm, and 564 nm.
The original claim was that AJAX was the "ultimate client-side technology" and if I have to be pedantic to explain why it's not then so be it. Is AJAX an improvement over the absence of it? Sure, I never claimed to the contrary, but this also not the line of discussion.
I described a couple attributes of what would be "more ultimate" since AJAX clearly is being used (or is trending that way) for things it can't do and is based entirely on non-standardly implemented languages.
And for that my post gets labeled as FUD... If down-playing a buzzword "technology" that gets pawned as "the killer app" gets me labeled as a pedanticist and a FUD-spreader, well, then I'll take one for the team to do so.
Long live vim and "position:fixed".