Have fun chasing down those oilfield trucks that are 30 miels in the brush illegally using cell phone boosters!
The FCC used to have great fun chasing down 18 wheelers with their CB radio amplifiers. CB radios are supposed to be capped at four watts, but some people used amplifiers that boosted that to hundreds or thousands of watts. And the FCC would get complaints and would track down the offenders, sometimes as they're driving down the road -- after all, 20 kW is pretty easy to follow. And they'd hit people up with substantial penalties.
That said, cell phone boosters only operate at like a watt or so. As long as they aren't explicitly causing problems, I'd say the odds of any FCC interest whatsoever in an individual unit is next to zero. Though I can certainly see them going after the vendors and making it so that existing units can't be used any more and keeping them from selling any more.
The technique used is almost certainly a form of spread-spectrum transmission, making its interception by an ordinary receiver unable to listen in or conventional triangulation useless.
Um, spread spectrum can still be detected and the location of its source triangulated. It does complicate things somewhat when it's hopping from frequency to frequency, but it hardly makes it impossible.
Ultimately, if a stealth plane wants to remain truly stealthy, it also needs to observe radio silence. There are things they can do to make their transmissions less obvious (including using spread spectrum), but ultimately none of these technique are completely effective.
Neutral nearly caused my engine to jump out of the hood when I had the same thing happen, dangerously high rpms at no load...
You are of course correct (though modern cars usually have a limiter that will stop the engine RPM at redline), but more importantly -- barrelling down the highway at 125 mph is almost certainly more dangerous than having your engine hit redline and beyond until it fails. Even if the engine explodes, that's better than hitting something.
That said, I suspect that wasn't an option for some reason, or it was tried and didn't work. After all, he was on the phone with Renault for a while trying to figure it out, so they would have suggested he do that, even with the risk.
And really, I'm really quite surprised he was able to go at 125 mph for so long without hitting something. Must have been some mighty clear roads.
then fine Jonathan Coulton for stealing the lyrics from Sir Mix A Lot
a cover of a cover is not theft and never will be...
Sir Mix A Lot wrote the song, and Jonathan Coulton probably paid him writer's royalties. If so, that's no more stealing than getting a candy bar at the store and paying for it.
a cover of a cover is not theft and never will be...
Covering a cover could still be stealing from the original song author if they aren't paid, and I suspect that Glee paid Sir Mix A Lot. But Glee didn't just cover the song, they actually used Coulton's performance itself (i.e. actual music from his recording ended up on the show -- not just notes, but part of his recording) -- which could indeed be stealing. I don't know if it was simply sampling or it went beyond that -- but even if it was just sampling, in general royalties are paid for samples too nowadays.
Every so often you see someone driving a '70s F250 Hi Boy, or a mid 80s K20, or an early 90s Dodge Cummins. But hint: they are rare
Cars wear out, and parts become increasingly difficult to find.
I'd still be driving my 81 Rabbit Diesel if it hadn't worn out and cost more to fix than it was worth.
Software doesn't wear out, though occasionally it does benefit from a re-install, which can be done for free.
Your Sun Ultra 60 example isn't even about software -- it's about hardware. And like cars, hardware wears out.
Mostly, I'm just saying that your analogy isn't very apt, as software and hardware are *very* different in this respect.
Of course, software suffers from not keeping up with the world around it. Office 97 is quite functional, but it can't load documents saved by newer versions of Office unless they explicitly saved in an old format, so that keeps people from using it even though it fits all their needs because of the people around them. But if your application doesn't require that you share files with others in incompatible formats, Office 97 may be just what you need.
Personally, I have to say "good for you" for the guy using the old Photoshop under Windows 3.1 under WINE. Though I would probably suggest that if Adobe hadn't been able to help him, the warez (or abandonwarez?) sites probably could.
My guess is people show up initially to accuse him, then get the police involved later when he invariably professes in his innocence; at which time the Police hopefully backup his claim.
Yes, but some people skip the police step entirely and will just assume the guy is lying and beat him up. Or worse. Or wait until he's not home and break in to steal their phone back (after all, it'll say that it's still there.)
It's not just a matter of having to explain to a lot of people -- it's a matter of a lot of people being absolutely convinced that you're lying and you've stolen from them -- the evidence is right there -- and it's a dangerous combination.
The difference between DVDs and Blu-Ray is much less significant than the difference between SDTV and HDTV (even if it's only 720p). The widescreen alone makes a huge difference.
The graphics side of things is pretty drastic between different versions of Windows -- Microsoft DX10 isn't supported under XP, and DX11.1 is only available on Windows 8 if I recall correctly. For Linux, OpenGL is what games probably have to support, and I'm not sure how much it changes from version to version. Not sure how sound support differs from different versions, but that's the other place I'd expect some issues.
That and shared libraries -- I've run into those problems myself with Linux gaming -- but they're simply the result of not building/packaging things properly. Blizzard should be able to get past any issues there easily enough if they cared.
In any event, if you're being forced to use Wine, they don't really support Linux. You may be right about having to tweak some kernel parameters, but you shouldn't have to recompile anything -- just add some command line parameters or add some stuff to/etc/sysctl.conf or whatever your distribution equivalent is.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Supporting multiple versions of one OS does not equate to supporting different Linux distributions. Supporting Windows back to XP is more like supporting Ubuntu going back many versions (pre-4.10 if you want to do it by year, but if you want to normalize for number of OS versions you could go by what Canonical supports and start with 10.04 LTS).
See, this isn't about "normalizing", it's about differences and how difficult they are to write code to work with and support.
A modern (within the last few years) Fedora vs a modern Debian is very roughly about as different as XP vs Windows 7 (at least from the point of view of writing a program to run on them), and really, most of the compatibility problems with Linux distributions can be resolved by simply making a statically linked executable or including all the shared libraries that you need rather than assuming that they're part of the OS. (The Linux version of.dll hell, as it were, but at least they're not installed in a system directory to mess up other programs.)
I guess the problem becomes much larger if Blizzard tries to support Linux distributions going back to when XP was introduced (2001) but considering that they don't even support the original version of XP any more and instead require the most recent service pack even that's not a fair comparison. For the most part, supporting multiple Linux distributions aren't that bad -- the problems come in how 3D acceleration is handled, but even then you can pick a few systems and say you support them and not others. (For example, the open source Nvidia drivers probably don't perform well enough, when the binary blob drivers do, so support the latter but not the former.)
with Linux being "unstandardized" due to the many different distributions."
Of course, Windows has a similar number of different major "distributions" -- XP, 2003, 2008, 7, 8, Vista, etc.
Of course, Blizzard is happy to support all of those because the customer base is so much larger.
Making something that will work on the vast majority of Linux installations if not all is indeed an art -- but it's not *that* difficult, all they need to do is hire *one* guy skilled in the art and he can make it happen. Support is a bigger issue, but even there, the problem isn't really larger than it is in Windows land, it's just different and with fewer potential customers. (After all, most of the people who would use a Linux client would just use a Windows client if a Linux client isn't available -- the number of new customers who will appear because of a Linux client isn't that high.)
I was kind of hoping for something more specific. A Supreme Court decision, for example. Without that, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is remarkably vague and open to interpretation. Which the courts have done, and so far none of these interpretations I'm aware of make mandatory gun registration a violation of the Constitution.
Note that the Declaration of Independence is indeed a fine document, but it's not actually part of the Constitution. It could possibly help the courts decide what the founding fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution, but it doesn't actually set law by itself.
From the Wiki Page you will see the following. * deterring tyrannical government; *...
Nice cut and paste. Problem is, that part isn't about the Constitution at all -- it's about what people felt about arms and militias before the Constitution even existed.
For right or wrong, today, in 2013, the intentions of the founders and other settlers of what would become the USA aren't really what matter any more. What matters is what's written in the Constitution, and how the courts have decided to interpret that. True, the courts do attempt to figure out what the founders really meant and take that into effect, but ultimately, it's the courts that decide. And so far, no courts seem to have decided that mandatory gun registration violates the Constitution, so I do indeed have to file your claim under "I really don't like it, so it must be Unconstitutional".
And just to be clear, I'm not arguing that mandatory gun registration is a good thing. I'm also not arguing that it's a bad thing -- I'm just saying that so far, there have been no rulings to say that it's Unconstitutional, and there's been more than plenty of time and will for such rulings to have been made, so by failing to say otherwise, the courts have basically declared it to be Constitutional. It's possible that they could still change their mind, but I wouldn't suggest holding one's breath.
not all rights are listed in the Constitution -- but denying somebody a right that they get from somewhere else isn't really unconstitutional either. It's wrong, yes, but you'll need to find another word for it.
I agree in principle, but again since the supreme court has repeatedly stated that the constitution implies the right to privacy, it's reasonable to argue that it's a constitutional right. The supremes seem to think so.
Again, the "rights to privacy" that the Supreme Court has stated that we've had has been quite limited so far. They've ruled that we've got privacy in some cases and we don't have privacy in others, so it's not quite so clear that they'd rule that gun registration is Unconstitutional.
Why is it that my name and address must be public information just because I have an amateur radio license, own a house (and yet George Bush's address isn't -- information on his house is hidden and mine isn't) and a car? If requiring that I register a gun is prohibited by the Constitutions out of an inferred right to privacy, why doesn't this supposed right to privacy extend to these other, more innocuous things?
Well, as you know, they don't have to.
No, they don't, and that generally means that they agree with the lower court's ruling, or at least don't disagree strongly enough to rule on it.
Have any cases regarding registration of firearms made it up to the Supreme Court and not been ruled on?
I hope it's because they've chosen to leave this issue to the states. I suspect it's because they're waiting for some state to come up with a good idea they can steal and take credit for.
Well, the decades that have passed since gun registration has been mandated in some places has been plenty of time for people to sue their local city and or state to have the law removed if it's Unconstitutional, plenty of time to have it go all the way up to the Supreme Court if needed. The Supreme Court doesn't really "leave issues to the states" -- they rule on cases put in front of them.
That this has not happened suggests two possible reasons -- 1) nobody really cares enough, or 2) maybe it's not actually Unconstitutional, or 3) maybe it takes more than decades. I don't think it's #1...
the right to keep and bear arms is clearly in there, while the right to drive is not
That's not a bad argument there, however the right to keep and bear arms starts out with talk of a well regulated militia, and perhaps registration is needed as part of the well regulated part?
The Constitution and Supreme Court have said you can have guns, but they have not yet ruled that you are entitled to a large amount of privacy while you do so. Guns are potentially as dangerous as cars, so regulating them like somewhat cars makes some sense. Not that we're really arguing about if it makes sense -- the question is "Is it prohibited by the Constitution?" which is a totally different concept.
And no, not all rights are listed in the Constitution -- but denying somebody a right that they get from somewhere else isn't really unconstitutional either. It's wrong, yes, but you'll need to find another word for it.
I am indeed, though I seem to recall this "right to privacy" being a whole lot more vague than you're suggesting -- the Supreme court decisions have been more about things like medical treatment, what happens in your bedroom, who you can marry and child rearing than regulation of potentially dangerous items.
That said, I don't recall the Supreme Court or the Constitution itself saying that requiring gun registration was unconstitutional, but our friend here seems quite sure that it is, so I'm asking where he got his information. If one claims that X is unconstitutional, one should be ready to cite the section or ruling that makes it so, and if the idea is simply an extrapolation of existing rulings than its not quite so clear that their claim is actually correct.
Personally, I think this claim falls more under the category of "I think it's really bad, so it must be Unconstitutional", but I'm open to other ideas.
And if one really does think that required registration of firearms is prohibited by the Constitution or the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, does this apply to mandatory registration and regulation of other items as well? Such as motor vehicles? (They kill more people than firearms in this country!) Certain types of animals? Drugs? Alcohol and tobacco? If the situations are different, then how are they different?
And considering that there have been places with mandatory firearm registration in this country for at least decades, why hasn't the Supreme Court actually ruled on it it yet? It's not like there aren't powerful, well funded organizations ready to push such a case through to get such laws thrown out if they know how the Supreme Court would rule.
Appropriate retort: not exactly, but close enough. (Heat is a form of energy transfer, and radiation is indeed one form of that. But we were talking about cooling needed (which in general for lights means adding heat sinks and improving air flow), not "heat" in general.)
More detailed retort: if the LED emits light, that means that the energy emitted does not go into heating up the LED, therefore it doesn't directly contribute to the cooling needed itself. (Though it's a little more complicated than that -- if the LED emits some IR or UV, which of course it does, then that doesn't contribute to the cooling needed either, but it doesn't increase the efficiency either, unless you consider these things to be useful for whatever your purpose is.)
As an extreme example, a 100% efficient LED needs no cooling (unless it needs to be cooler than the ambient temperature), because it doesn't warm up, as all it's energy leaves as light. (It also doesn't exist, unfortunately.)
I've got lights like that myself. But XM-L emitters peak at about 100 lumens/watt, not the 200 lumens/watt promised by this new technology.
Also, none of these lights really do put out the amounts of light that the emitters are rated at. For example, this says 1600 lumens, but I'll bet it's more like 800 lumens. Still, not too bad, and yes, good lights make a huge difference, and it's hard to beat the price.
If you double the efficiency, you *more* than half the cooling needed for a given amount of light.
To give an example with some math...
Suppose you need 2000 lumens from a 100 lumen/watt bulb. That means it takes 20 watts of power, and puts out 18 watts of heat.
Replace it with a 200 lumen/watt emitter that has the same light output, and it now needs only 10 watts of power, and only puts out 8 watts of heat.
All that said, I'm looking forward to this being available for bicycle lights. Doubling the efficiency means I can have double the light with the same sized battery pack, or the same amount of light with half the battery pack or some permutation thereof. Cooling isn't a big deal for bicycle lights until you get into the really high powered lights as the airflow is usually quite good.
I don't know why murphtal was voted down -- he is absolutely correct.
US residents are not required to have a social security number. From the link given --
Non-universal status
Social Security was originally a universal tax, but when Medicare was passed in 1965, objecting religious groups in existence prior to 1951 were allowed to opt out of the system. Because of this, not every American is part of the Social Security program, and not everyone has a number. However, a social security number is required for parents to claim their children as dependents for federal income tax purposes, and the Internal Revenue Service requires all corporations to obtain SSNs (or alternative identifying numbers) from their employees, as described below. The Old Order Amish have fought to prevent universal Social Security by overturning rules such as a requirement to provide a Social Security number for a hunting license.
Social Security cards printed from January 1946 until January 1972 expressly stated the number and card were not to be used for identification purposes. Since nearly everyone in the United States now has a number, it became convenient to use it anyway and the message was removed. The SSN card is still not suitable for primary identification as it has no photograph, no physical description and no birth date. All it does is confirm that a particular number has been issued to a particular name.
Since then, Social Security numbers have become de facto national identification numbers. Although some people do not have an SSN assigned to them, it is becoming increasingly difficult to engage in legitimate financial activities such as applying for a loan or a bank account without one] While the government cannot require an individual to disclose his SSN without a legal basis, companies may refuse to provide service to an individual who does not provide a SSN.
... basically, there's no real reason that children need one beyond allowing their parents to deduct them on their taxes (which is enough for most people, since it hits them in the pocketbook), but once they try to leave their parent's house it becomes very difficult to be a part of society without one.
Not sure about a century, but months seems likely on a modern disk.
1) dd without a fairly large block size is very slow at copying hundreds of gigabytes of data.
2)/dev/random (on Linux, anyways) only gives as much random data as it can generate from the entropy available to it -- which isn't much./dev/urandom would be much faster (and more than random enough, especially after seven passes.)
Who knew that could ever come back and bite them in the ass?
Lots of people knew -- it's not like this is anywhere near the first time it's been an issue.
For example, many (most?) states prohibit a felon from owning a liquor license, and when a corporation pleads guilty to a felony -- they lose their license, which can put them out of business if their business is selling liquor.
That said, when Romney made his infamous "corporations are people, my friend" statement, context made it pretty clear that he wasn't talking about the legal status of corporations (even though his statement was fairly correct in that context as well) -- he was pointing out that money made by corporations goes to people.
The full quote was:
"Corporations are people, my friend . . . Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend."
RHEL6 i386 doesn't exist for shits and grins, it doesn't exist due to the plethora of old systems needing to run new software. It exists because ISV's need it.
No, 32 bit software runs fine on 64 bit systems. It's exactly how mr_playboy described it.
64 bit capable cpus are certainly the norm now, but 32 bit cpus aren't quite as rare as you make it sound. What was it, 2007 or 2008 that most of the Intel chips sold for desktop PCs and Macs were finally x86_64 capable? Five years is a long time -- but it's not *that* long. Lots of those older boxes are still in service today.
As for people running 32 bit OSs on 64 bit hardware, there's a few reasons they do this. 1) On Windows, 64 bit can be a big pain, especially if you've got XP or older. 2) if your system has 3 GB or less memory, running a 64 bit OS doesn't really provide that much of a benefit, and can in fact perform more poorly than 32 bit code would (as 64 bit systems require more memory to do the same things, as pointers are twice as large.)
Perhaps there is some software that does work on i386 RHEL6 and not on x86_64 RHEL6 -- but I've never encountered it. You install the appropriate i386 libraries and stuff just works. The only place I'd expect that might have problems would be anything that's really low level -- kernel modules, for example. But even then, x86_64 is so popular now that anything that's still supported should be ported to both and should have been years ago. If you're running really old software that's no longer supported and it requires kernel modules -- then OK. (Though then the odds of it working on RHEL6 of any architecture seems to be quite low as well.)
For the most part, people don't care -- they just want a place to live. They don't even ask if the house they're buying includes the mineral rights, and the lack of mineral rights is one of the zillion things they initial when they sign their paperwork. Of course, if it turns out that there's something of value under the house, then suddenly they care a lot -- but it's too late.
It doesn't change the fact that most land still has its mineral and water rights.
Of course land still has it's mineral rights, it's not like the mineral rights disappear. I suspect that what you really meant to say is that you think that in most cases, the land above and the mineral rights below are owned by the same people. Right?
That might be true for the majority of land, developed and undeveloped, but people tend to live in tightly packed communities, and new communities are built and packaged by developers who almost certainly don't sell the mineral rights with the land (because they can get away with not doing so.) Do most people own the mineral rights of the land they live on? Certainly, the renters do not, but even for the homeowners, it's not so clear. Do you have a citation to support your claim?
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Have fun chasing down those oilfield trucks that are 30 miels in the brush illegally using cell phone boosters!
The FCC used to have great fun chasing down 18 wheelers with their CB radio amplifiers. CB radios are supposed to be capped at four watts, but some people used amplifiers that boosted that to hundreds or thousands of watts. And the FCC would get complaints and would track down the offenders, sometimes as they're driving down the road -- after all, 20 kW is pretty easy to follow. And they'd hit people up with substantial penalties.
That said, cell phone boosters only operate at like a watt or so. As long as they aren't explicitly causing problems, I'd say the odds of any FCC interest whatsoever in an individual unit is next to zero. Though I can certainly see them going after the vendors and making it so that existing units can't be used any more and keeping them from selling any more.
The technique used is almost certainly a form of spread-spectrum transmission, making its interception by an ordinary receiver unable to listen in or conventional triangulation useless.
Um, spread spectrum can still be detected and the location of its source triangulated. It does complicate things somewhat when it's hopping from frequency to frequency, but it hardly makes it impossible.
Ultimately, if a stealth plane wants to remain truly stealthy, it also needs to observe radio silence. There are things they can do to make their transmissions less obvious (including using spread spectrum), but ultimately none of these technique are completely effective.
Neutral nearly caused my engine to jump out of the hood when I had the same thing happen, dangerously high rpms at no load...
You are of course correct (though modern cars usually have a limiter that will stop the engine RPM at redline), but more importantly -- barrelling down the highway at 125 mph is almost certainly more dangerous than having your engine hit redline and beyond until it fails. Even if the engine explodes, that's better than hitting something.
That said, I suspect that wasn't an option for some reason, or it was tried and didn't work. After all, he was on the phone with Renault for a while trying to figure it out, so they would have suggested he do that, even with the risk.
And really, I'm really quite surprised he was able to go at 125 mph for so long without hitting something. Must have been some mighty clear roads.
then fine Jonathan Coulton for stealing the lyrics from Sir Mix A Lot
a cover of a cover is not theft and never will be...
Sir Mix A Lot wrote the song, and Jonathan Coulton probably paid him writer's royalties. If so, that's no more stealing than getting a candy bar at the store and paying for it.
a cover of a cover is not theft and never will be...
Covering a cover could still be stealing from the original song author if they aren't paid, and I suspect that Glee paid Sir Mix A Lot. But Glee didn't just cover the song, they actually used Coulton's performance itself (i.e. actual music from his recording ended up on the show -- not just notes, but part of his recording) -- which could indeed be stealing. I don't know if it was simply sampling or it went beyond that -- but even if it was just sampling, in general royalties are paid for samples too nowadays.
so cry more.
You're not helping your case here.
Every so often you see someone driving a '70s F250 Hi Boy, or a mid 80s K20, or an early 90s Dodge Cummins. But hint: they are rare
Cars wear out, and parts become increasingly difficult to find.
I'd still be driving my 81 Rabbit Diesel if it hadn't worn out and cost more to fix than it was worth.
Software doesn't wear out, though occasionally it does benefit from a re-install, which can be done for free.
Your Sun Ultra 60 example isn't even about software -- it's about hardware. And like cars, hardware wears out.
Mostly, I'm just saying that your analogy isn't very apt, as software and hardware are *very* different in this respect.
Of course, software suffers from not keeping up with the world around it. Office 97 is quite functional, but it can't load documents saved by newer versions of Office unless they explicitly saved in an old format, so that keeps people from using it even though it fits all their needs because of the people around them. But if your application doesn't require that you share files with others in incompatible formats, Office 97 may be just what you need.
Personally, I have to say "good for you" for the guy using the old Photoshop under Windows 3.1 under WINE. Though I would probably suggest that if Adobe hadn't been able to help him, the warez (or abandonwarez?) sites probably could.
thats called BEING A MAN
Women can do it too, you know, so maybe it needs a new name.
My guess is people show up initially to accuse him, then get the police involved later when he invariably professes in his innocence; at which time the Police hopefully backup his claim.
Yes, but some people skip the police step entirely and will just assume the guy is lying and beat him up. Or worse. Or wait until he's not home and break in to steal their phone back (after all, it'll say that it's still there.)
It's not just a matter of having to explain to a lot of people -- it's a matter of a lot of people being absolutely convinced that you're lying and you've stolen from them -- the evidence is right there -- and it's a dangerous combination.
Assuming this is all correct, guy needs to sue.
The difference between DVDs and Blu-Ray is much less significant than the difference between SDTV and HDTV (even if it's only 720p). The widescreen alone makes a huge difference.
The graphics side of things is pretty drastic between different versions of Windows -- Microsoft DX10 isn't supported under XP, and DX11.1 is only available on Windows 8 if I recall correctly. For Linux, OpenGL is what games probably have to support, and I'm not sure how much it changes from version to version. Not sure how sound support differs from different versions, but that's the other place I'd expect some issues.
That and shared libraries -- I've run into those problems myself with Linux gaming -- but they're simply the result of not building/packaging things properly. Blizzard should be able to get past any issues there easily enough if they cared.
In any event, if you're being forced to use Wine, they don't really support Linux. You may be right about having to tweak some kernel parameters, but you shouldn't have to recompile anything -- just add some command line parameters or add some stuff to /etc/sysctl.conf or whatever your distribution equivalent is.
You're comparing apples to oranges. Supporting multiple versions of one OS does not equate to supporting different Linux distributions. Supporting Windows back to XP is more like supporting Ubuntu going back many versions (pre-4.10 if you want to do it by year, but if you want to normalize for number of OS versions you could go by what Canonical supports and start with 10.04 LTS).
See, this isn't about "normalizing", it's about differences and how difficult they are to write code to work with and support.
A modern (within the last few years) Fedora vs a modern Debian is very roughly about as different as XP vs Windows 7 (at least from the point of view of writing a program to run on them), and really, most of the compatibility problems with Linux distributions can be resolved by simply making a statically linked executable or including all the shared libraries that you need rather than assuming that they're part of the OS. (The Linux version of .dll hell, as it were, but at least they're not installed in a system directory to mess up other programs.)
I guess the problem becomes much larger if Blizzard tries to support Linux distributions going back to when XP was introduced (2001) but considering that they don't even support the original version of XP any more and instead require the most recent service pack even that's not a fair comparison. For the most part, supporting multiple Linux distributions aren't that bad -- the problems come in how 3D acceleration is handled, but even then you can pick a few systems and say you support them and not others. (For example, the open source Nvidia drivers probably don't perform well enough, when the binary blob drivers do, so support the latter but not the former.)
with Linux being "unstandardized" due to the many different distributions."
Of course, Windows has a similar number of different major "distributions" -- XP, 2003, 2008, 7, 8, Vista, etc.
Of course, Blizzard is happy to support all of those because the customer base is so much larger.
Making something that will work on the vast majority of Linux installations if not all is indeed an art -- but it's not *that* difficult, all they need to do is hire *one* guy skilled in the art and he can make it happen. Support is a bigger issue, but even there, the problem isn't really larger than it is in Windows land, it's just different and with fewer potential customers. (After all, most of the people who would use a Linux client would just use a Windows client if a Linux client isn't available -- the number of new customers who will appear because of a Linux client isn't that high.)
I was kind of hoping for something more specific. A Supreme Court decision, for example. Without that, "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is remarkably vague and open to interpretation. Which the courts have done, and so far none of these interpretations I'm aware of make mandatory gun registration a violation of the Constitution.
Note that the Declaration of Independence is indeed a fine document, but it's not actually part of the Constitution. It could possibly help the courts decide what the founding fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution, but it doesn't actually set law by itself.
From the Wiki Page you will see the following. ...
* deterring tyrannical government;
*
Nice cut and paste. Problem is, that part isn't about the Constitution at all -- it's about what people felt about arms and militias before the Constitution even existed.
For right or wrong, today, in 2013, the intentions of the founders and other settlers of what would become the USA aren't really what matter any more. What matters is what's written in the Constitution, and how the courts have decided to interpret that. True, the courts do attempt to figure out what the founders really meant and take that into effect, but ultimately, it's the courts that decide. And so far, no courts seem to have decided that mandatory gun registration violates the Constitution, so I do indeed have to file your claim under "I really don't like it, so it must be Unconstitutional".
And just to be clear, I'm not arguing that mandatory gun registration is a good thing. I'm also not arguing that it's a bad thing -- I'm just saying that so far, there have been no rulings to say that it's Unconstitutional, and there's been more than plenty of time and will for such rulings to have been made, so by failing to say otherwise, the courts have basically declared it to be Constitutional. It's possible that they could still change their mind, but I wouldn't suggest holding one's breath.
not all rights are listed in the Constitution -- but denying somebody a right that they get from somewhere else isn't really unconstitutional either. It's wrong, yes, but you'll need to find another word for it.
I agree in principle, but again since the supreme court has repeatedly stated that the constitution implies the right to privacy, it's reasonable to argue that it's a constitutional right. The supremes seem to think so.
Again, the "rights to privacy" that the Supreme Court has stated that we've had has been quite limited so far. They've ruled that we've got privacy in some cases and we don't have privacy in others, so it's not quite so clear that they'd rule that gun registration is Unconstitutional.
Why is it that my name and address must be public information just because I have an amateur radio license, own a house (and yet George Bush's address isn't -- information on his house is hidden and mine isn't) and a car? If requiring that I register a gun is prohibited by the Constitutions out of an inferred right to privacy, why doesn't this supposed right to privacy extend to these other, more innocuous things?
Well, as you know, they don't have to.
No, they don't, and that generally means that they agree with the lower court's ruling, or at least don't disagree strongly enough to rule on it.
Have any cases regarding registration of firearms made it up to the Supreme Court and not been ruled on?
I hope it's because they've chosen to leave this issue to the states. I suspect it's because they're waiting for some state to come up with a good idea they can steal and take credit for.
Well, the decades that have passed since gun registration has been mandated in some places has been plenty of time for people to sue their local city and or state to have the law removed if it's Unconstitutional, plenty of time to have it go all the way up to the Supreme Court if needed. The Supreme Court doesn't really "leave issues to the states" -- they rule on cases put in front of them.
That this has not happened suggests two possible reasons -- 1) nobody really cares enough, or 2) maybe it's not actually Unconstitutional, or 3) maybe it takes more than decades. I don't think it's #1 ...
the right to keep and bear arms is clearly in there, while the right to drive is not
That's not a bad argument there, however the right to keep and bear arms starts out with talk of a well regulated militia, and perhaps registration is needed as part of the well regulated part?
The Constitution and Supreme Court have said you can have guns, but they have not yet ruled that you are entitled to a large amount of privacy while you do so. Guns are potentially as dangerous as cars, so regulating them like somewhat cars makes some sense. Not that we're really arguing about if it makes sense -- the question is "Is it prohibited by the Constitution?" which is a totally different concept.
And no, not all rights are listed in the Constitution -- but denying somebody a right that they get from somewhere else isn't really unconstitutional either. It's wrong, yes, but you'll need to find another word for it.
I am indeed, though I seem to recall this "right to privacy" being a whole lot more vague than you're suggesting -- the Supreme court decisions have been more about things like medical treatment, what happens in your bedroom, who you can marry and child rearing than regulation of potentially dangerous items.
That said, I don't recall the Supreme Court or the Constitution itself saying that requiring gun registration was unconstitutional, but our friend here seems quite sure that it is, so I'm asking where he got his information. If one claims that X is unconstitutional, one should be ready to cite the section or ruling that makes it so, and if the idea is simply an extrapolation of existing rulings than its not quite so clear that their claim is actually correct.
Personally, I think this claim falls more under the category of "I think it's really bad, so it must be Unconstitutional", but I'm open to other ideas.
And if one really does think that required registration of firearms is prohibited by the Constitution or the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution, does this apply to mandatory registration and regulation of other items as well? Such as motor vehicles? (They kill more people than firearms in this country!) Certain types of animals? Drugs? Alcohol and tobacco? If the situations are different, then how are they different?
And considering that there have been places with mandatory firearm registration in this country for at least decades, why hasn't the Supreme Court actually ruled on it it yet? It's not like there aren't powerful, well funded organizations ready to push such a case through to get such laws thrown out if they know how the Supreme Court would rule.
The only reason the State knows legally that you have a gun is by registering, which is frankly unconstitutional in itself.
Can you cite the part of the Constitution that makes this Unconstitutional?
Pro-tip : Light is also heat. :D
Appropriate retort: not exactly, but close enough. (Heat is a form of energy transfer, and radiation is indeed one form of that. But we were talking about cooling needed (which in general for lights means adding heat sinks and improving air flow), not "heat" in general.)
More detailed retort: if the LED emits light, that means that the energy emitted does not go into heating up the LED, therefore it doesn't directly contribute to the cooling needed itself. (Though it's a little more complicated than that -- if the LED emits some IR or UV, which of course it does, then that doesn't contribute to the cooling needed either, but it doesn't increase the efficiency either, unless you consider these things to be useful for whatever your purpose is.)
As an extreme example, a 100% efficient LED needs no cooling (unless it needs to be cooler than the ambient temperature), because it doesn't warm up, as all it's energy leaves as light. (It also doesn't exist, unfortunately.)
I've got lights like that myself. But XM-L emitters peak at about 100 lumens/watt, not the 200 lumens/watt promised by this new technology.
Also, none of these lights really do put out the amounts of light that the emitters are rated at. For example, this says 1600 lumens, but I'll bet it's more like 800 lumens. Still, not too bad, and yes, good lights make a huge difference, and it's hard to beat the price.
If you double the efficiency, you *more* than half the cooling needed for a given amount of light.
To give an example with some math ...
Suppose you need 2000 lumens from a 100 lumen/watt bulb. That means it takes 20 watts of power, and puts out 18 watts of heat.
Replace it with a 200 lumen/watt emitter that has the same light output, and it now needs only 10 watts of power, and only puts out 8 watts of heat.
All that said, I'm looking forward to this being available for bicycle lights. Doubling the efficiency means I can have double the light with the same sized battery pack, or the same amount of light with half the battery pack or some permutation thereof. Cooling isn't a big deal for bicycle lights until you get into the really high powered lights as the airflow is usually quite good.
and all US residents are legally required to have one by the age of one y/o.
I don't know why murphtal was voted down -- he is absolutely correct.
US residents are not required to have a social security number. From the link given --
Will the above take seconds, hours, or a century?
Not sure about a century, but months seems likely on a modern disk.
1) dd without a fairly large block size is very slow at copying hundreds of gigabytes of data.
2) /dev/random (on Linux, anyways) only gives as much random data as it can generate from the entropy available to it -- which isn't much. /dev/urandom would be much faster (and more than random enough, especially after seven passes.)
Who knew that could ever come back and bite them in the ass?
Lots of people knew -- it's not like this is anywhere near the first time it's been an issue.
For example, many (most?) states prohibit a felon from owning a liquor license, and when a corporation pleads guilty to a felony -- they lose their license, which can put them out of business if their business is selling liquor.
That said, when Romney made his infamous "corporations are people, my friend" statement, context made it pretty clear that he wasn't talking about the legal status of corporations (even though his statement was fairly correct in that context as well) -- he was pointing out that money made by corporations goes to people.
The full quote was:
"Corporations are people, my friend . . . Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend."
... overclocking to 450 MHz!
(Now, things are so fast I see little need to even bother with overclocking ...)
Get some real world experience with this.
RHEL6 i386 doesn't exist for shits and grins, it doesn't exist due to the plethora of old systems needing to run new software. It exists because ISV's need it.
No, 32 bit software runs fine on 64 bit systems. It's exactly how mr_playboy described it.
64 bit capable cpus are certainly the norm now, but 32 bit cpus aren't quite as rare as you make it sound. What was it, 2007 or 2008 that most of the Intel chips sold for desktop PCs and Macs were finally x86_64 capable? Five years is a long time -- but it's not *that* long. Lots of those older boxes are still in service today.
As for people running 32 bit OSs on 64 bit hardware, there's a few reasons they do this. 1) On Windows, 64 bit can be a big pain, especially if you've got XP or older. 2) if your system has 3 GB or less memory, running a 64 bit OS doesn't really provide that much of a benefit, and can in fact perform more poorly than 32 bit code would (as 64 bit systems require more memory to do the same things, as pointers are twice as large.)
Perhaps there is some software that does work on i386 RHEL6 and not on x86_64 RHEL6 -- but I've never encountered it. You install the appropriate i386 libraries and stuff just works. The only place I'd expect that might have problems would be anything that's really low level -- kernel modules, for example. But even then, x86_64 is so popular now that anything that's still supported should be ported to both and should have been years ago. If you're running really old software that's no longer supported and it requires kernel modules -- then OK. (Though then the odds of it working on RHEL6 of any architecture seems to be quite low as well.)
For the most part, people don't care -- they just want a place to live. They don't even ask if the house they're buying includes the mineral rights, and the lack of mineral rights is one of the zillion things they initial when they sign their paperwork. Of course, if it turns out that there's something of value under the house, then suddenly they care a lot -- but it's too late.
It doesn't change the fact that most land still has its mineral and water rights.
Of course land still has it's mineral rights, it's not like the mineral rights disappear. I suspect that what you really meant to say is that you think that in most cases, the land above and the mineral rights below are owned by the same people. Right?
That might be true for the majority of land, developed and undeveloped, but people tend to live in tightly packed communities, and new communities are built and packaged by developers who almost certainly don't sell the mineral rights with the land (because they can get away with not doing so.) Do most people own the mineral rights of the land they live on? Certainly, the renters do not, but even for the homeowners, it's not so clear. Do you have a citation to support your claim?