Ironically the lower you go in UK legislative bodies the more callous and heavy handed the disregard for personal liberties is. Councils tend to think that because they're 'closer to the action' they have the unique right to intervene more profoundly than any other group. Don't get me wrong, a good council can work wonders for a borough, but the free reign so many recieve leads to insufferable inconvenience at best and harmful legislation at worst. Councils set their own exhorbitant tax rates and spend them as they see fit on public works and initiatives. My borough of Colchester is a prime example:
We thankfully don't have many cameras, what we do have is a high Council Tax rate and a civic planner with a fetish for roundabouts. We have roundabouts and larger roundabouts and roundabouts that orbit roundabouts with mini roundabouts INSIDE them.
and my radar-technician mates in her Majesty's Royal Airforce report that using the radar array to fry penguins with massive quantities of high frequency EM is a common pasttime there.
Perhaps they've gotten a bit too enthusiastic as of late?
The fact that an iPod has such an impressive volume capacity means that you can ensure a nice hot signal to an auxiliary playback device such as your living room hifi or the car stereo.
Unfortunately it also means that a slip on the trackpad will cause a 'splodey sensation in your ears. Still, I'm thankful that Apple had the foresight to provide that extra bit of juice. Particularly as the large range might cause producers to think twice about some of the idiotic brick-wall limiting mastering techniques that have been all the rage for the past decade or so.
One of the Joys of CDs is that what you hear is almost precisely what the band hears - Vinyl actually has its own sound so really you're not getting a carbon reproduction of the music.
Audiophiles decried the 22khz suggested rate for CDs and what we accept as digitally recorded music played back from a computer. CD audio is instead recorded at 44khz and it's pretty much as faithful a reproduction of what you'd hear 'in the booth' as can be expected.
DVD audio would probably record at 24bit/96khz. To be frank it's faintly ludicrous and almost entirely unnecessary, even for the most vainglorious Audiophile. Consumers can't be lied to and told that there's a difference between the quality because there really isn't. Purists claim they can hear the sizzle on a crash cymbal but since the levels of other tracks are almost always too high for a human to pick that out, it's really just posturing.
99% of music pushed out of the door is Brick Wall Limited anyway so we're not even using 16-bit 44khz sound to its full potential.
The ONLY consumer attraction for Audio DVDs would be the increased storage capacity and hence the ability to include more than one album on a disc and in a world where an MP3 player or iPod holds your entire music collection, short of the Studios making it "good value for money" (don't bet the farm on it) that's unlikely to be a big selling point.
Because the concept of an international law is predicated upon the spurious presumption that a sovereign state can bind itself.
A state can and always will act in what it sees as its best interests and can never so act illegaly. It may act in violation of agreements made, it may act in a way which contradicts the rights of its citizens but it can never act illegally because it can never be bound by the law except by its own acquiescence and that itself cannot be launched into perpetuity.
Maritime Law is nothing more or less than the application of agreements agreed upon by certain treaty signatories within their Domestic courts - it only applies where the states deem it to apply and its only international element comes from the voluntary conformity of courts in those countries. It's only law because the parties believe it to be beneficial and at any point those parties can duck out of their agreements - it may not be practical nor ethical but there is no illegality to the action.
The term "International Law" is objectionable not as a catch all term for law which is applied in multiple countries in a similar manner but as a concept of an enforceable mode of legislation. The law cannot exist without enforcement and since enforcement of International laws is ENTIRELY voluntary within a state (disregarding practicalities here, simply an abstract statement) they cannot exist as the concrete legal entity which they are so often considered to be.
Go Go Massive-Unreadable Block of Legalese! Thank you bad mousing! Here's a better edited one:
Depends on the state/situation. I'll simplify things because you don't really need to know all the law and only weirdos like me find constitutional law interesting.
Some 'international' legislation is enacted immediately (for instance, in France European legislation of a certain type is automatically a part of French law), however for the most part, there is almost no chance that 'International law' (the phrase itself is an anathema and complete and utter crap btw, anyone who mentions it needs their heads examined or their phony law degree torn up) can be relied upon in domestic courts.
There are however situations in which some international agreements would have some legal force. For instance, in the courts of England and Wales there is a presumption at law that Her Majesty's government intends to honour its treaty obligations - a presumption relied upon heavily in the past 20 years as the House of Lords has gone about carving its own Human Right's jurisprudence.
As for this resolution however, any assertion made that it will be applicable or enforceable in domestic courts is laughable. In the United Kingdom, as I presume it would be in US courts which are markedly slow to consider international agreements as having any legal force.
Depends on the state/situation. I'll simplify things because you don't really need to know all the law and only weirdos like me find constitutional law interesting.
Some 'international' legislation is enacted immediately (for instance, in France European legislation of a certain type is automatically a part of French law), however for the most part, there is almost no chance that 'International law' (the phrase itself is an anathema and complete and utter crap btw, anyone who mentions it needs their heads examined or their phony law degree torn up) can be relied upon in domestic courts.
There are however situations in which some international agreements would have some legal force. For instance, in the courts of England and Wales there is a presumption at law that Her Majesty's government intends to honour its treaty obligations - a presumption relied upon heavily in the past 20 years as the House of Lords has gone about carving its own Human Right's jurisprudence.
As for this resolution however, any assertion made that it will be applicable or enforceable in domestic courts is laughable. In the United Kingdom, as I presume it would be in US courts which are markedly slow to consider international agreements as having any legal force.
I'd be interested in seeing what direction he'd take the iPod in if he had the chance. Judging by his involvement in the Danger Inc Hiptop, he's big into small internet communication devices and who wouldn't like a WiFi iPod with a web browser? That screen is becoming bigger all the time.
Right now people seem to be straining to turn the iPod into an Input device, or at least to give it that capability. I'd be very interested to see what the Woz could do with it.
**Outside the Sony Booth being handed fisherman's waders** [Gabe]: What are these waders for? [Tycho]: My guess? All the bullshit
It's not that I don't think this chip might be as fantastic as everyone says but since Sony has basically lied out its ass for its past 3 consoles, I'm not giving it the benefit of the doubt with the PS3 and god save any journalist who gets sucked into their schilling.
Mark 12:41-44 41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything-- all she had to live on."
As much as I understand the necessity of patting people on their back for doing anything at all with their insanely huge wealth - to stop them turning away sneering at the 'ingratitude' of the world, I can think of a lot of "Good Samaritans" who better deserved Person of the Year
Skype is going to have to be pretty insanely phenomenal to come close to iChat AV.
iChat's Audio Conferencing lags behind Skype but its Video Conferencing (4 way no less) is just crazily good. Apple built iChat from the ground up using the powerful Quicktime 7 implementation in 10.4 and it shows.
I'd used plenty of Video Chat products but iChat was the first time I got the feeling that the technology had reached "Batman" standards.
(Oh sure Batman, it takes you a day to decrypt some stupid riddle, you use a massive magnifying glass to spot a buoy on a bit photograph of the ocean and your computer is a selection of flashing lights without a graphical or even command line interface but perfect quality video conferencing? Piece of cake!)
Well, aside from the fact that net penetration in English speaking countries relative to its penetration in India and China might dull your suggestion, English is far more important than you give it credit for.
Hindi is not spoken throughout India - there is only one language which transcends India's cultural and geographical boundaries, one language which you can count on someone to speak whether they're from Punjab or New Deli and it's English.
India could have dropped English years ago, it didn't because it's important to its day-to-day functioning and it's an asset - it provides a uniformity which quite simply wouldn't exist otherwise.
Many Faiths, Many Cultures, Only one language to transcend them all and that language does not share power *cough* err... You get the gist.
Yup, when I wrote that out first time round it was instead of but I figured some people wouldn't get the joke (apparently I was too lax in my quick and dirty editing to change to in the trout slapping). Although, in retrospect, if people on Slashdot don't know that Shawn Fanning was nicknamed Napster then no one does.
<SFanning> Hey.. I'm having a little trouble with these APIs.. Any of you guys willing to lend a hand? <wind00d33> slaps <napster> across the face with a large trout <haxxorman> slaps <napster> across the face with a large trout <carlie79> Heh.. Guys.. I'm so high right now... <Mj> So about my penis... <-- SFanning has quit (screw this...)
Space exploration is the ultimate indulgence, yes I accept that it's probably vital for Humanity's future but when you currently accept international aid it's pretty disgusting to be putting people into space on giant billion dollar rockets.
Once again, the UK gets shafted by Nintendo and 3rd party publishers and has to wait months to get the games which people in the US enjoy.
The DS ran away with the lead in the US because it had a damn good lineup of games (right now both Nintendogs and Advance Wars DS are selling strong). Here in the UK we haven't even had Meteos.
All we're enjoying is a lengthy break before the killer apps get here and I've got to say it doth royally suck. The PSP's launch titles in the US were better than the DS but in subsequent months the DS got its excellent games into circulation and started to pick up momentum.
What we're seeing in the UK is what happens when licensing and bureaucratic publishing houses delay the launch of games in Europe months after their release in the US. It's not normally noticeable for the companies concerned but at a time like this it's the games released soon after launch that are critical to a console's success.
I'm a mac user so I'm kind of used to being treated like a 2nd class citizen for gaming (except for games produced by ID and Blizzard) but if Nintendo would like to know why their arguably superior system with its stellar lineup in the US is getting pounded here, they might want to look at the utter disgrace that passes for cross-continental licensing and distribution.
(The author is currently sitting on his ass waiting for Advance Wars DS, Nintendogs, Meteos and a variety of other games already out in the US to be released in the UK)
Katrina devastated an area larger than Great Britain. Perhaps you need to be a Brit and hear that statistic to really make sense of it.
I don't honestly think the United Kingdom would have dealt much better with such a disaster and as for a 3rd world country it'd be mother nature's genocide.
But there seems to be a glut of excellent Geek Podcasts - I guess that eventually there were so many of us that a few had to end up with some form of charisma.
Monkeys, Typewriters, you know the drill. Imagine if you will that when we reach some 'critical mass' of geeks, one of us will statistically be socially adept and even capable of balancing an active social life with rampant Geeking-out. It's like the Matrix only with less IP theft.
Slashdot Mirror
is if they leeched power from the cables at open nodes in the system and just roamed on a set path at all times.
Autonomous little service droids, keeping everything working - now that's the future.
It's the work of a borough council.
Ironically the lower you go in UK legislative bodies the more callous and heavy handed the disregard for personal liberties is. Councils tend to think that because they're 'closer to the action' they have the unique right to intervene more profoundly than any other group. Don't get me wrong, a good council can work wonders for a borough, but the free reign so many recieve leads to insufferable inconvenience at best and harmful legislation at worst. Councils set their own exhorbitant tax rates and spend them as they see fit on public works and initiatives. My borough of Colchester is a prime example:
We thankfully don't have many cameras, what we do have is a high Council Tax rate and a civic planner with a fetish for roundabouts. We have roundabouts and larger roundabouts and roundabouts that orbit roundabouts with mini roundabouts INSIDE them.
and my radar-technician mates in her Majesty's Royal Airforce report that using the radar array to fry penguins with massive quantities of high frequency EM is a common pasttime there. Perhaps they've gotten a bit too enthusiastic as of late?
The fact that an iPod has such an impressive volume capacity means that you can ensure a nice hot signal to an auxiliary playback device such as your living room hifi or the car stereo.
Unfortunately it also means that a slip on the trackpad will cause a 'splodey sensation in your ears. Still, I'm thankful that Apple had the foresight to provide that extra bit of juice. Particularly as the large range might cause producers to think twice about some of the idiotic brick-wall limiting mastering techniques that have been all the rage for the past decade or so.
That thing looks like Optimus Prime's smartphone.
The Moisture Farms of Tatooine totally won't be able to handle the increased competition.
"I guess, you know, a lot of young frogs experiment. I'm sure its nothing"
One of the Joys of CDs is that what you hear is almost precisely what the band hears - Vinyl actually has its own sound so really you're not getting a carbon reproduction of the music.
Audiophiles decried the 22khz suggested rate for CDs and what we accept as digitally recorded music played back from a computer. CD audio is instead recorded at 44khz and it's pretty much as faithful a reproduction of what you'd hear 'in the booth' as can be expected.
DVD audio would probably record at 24bit/96khz. To be frank it's faintly ludicrous and almost entirely unnecessary, even for the most vainglorious Audiophile. Consumers can't be lied to and told that there's a difference between the quality because there really isn't. Purists claim they can hear the sizzle on a crash cymbal but since the levels of other tracks are almost always too high for a human to pick that out, it's really just posturing.
99% of music pushed out of the door is Brick Wall Limited anyway so we're not even using 16-bit 44khz sound to its full potential.
The ONLY consumer attraction for Audio DVDs would be the increased storage capacity and hence the ability to include more than one album on a disc and in a world where an MP3 player or iPod holds your entire music collection, short of the Studios making it "good value for money" (don't bet the farm on it) that's unlikely to be a big selling point.
but that's no excuse for creating a comic that [i]blows[/i] so profoundly.
Seriously, read "the story of Captain Copyright" in the "for kids" section of the website.
What kind of kid is going to enjoy that pile of crap?
Because the concept of an international law is predicated upon the spurious presumption that a sovereign state can bind itself.
A state can and always will act in what it sees as its best interests and can never so act illegaly. It may act in violation of agreements made, it may act in a way which contradicts the rights of its citizens but it can never act illegally because it can never be bound by the law except by its own acquiescence and that itself cannot be launched into perpetuity.
Maritime Law is nothing more or less than the application of agreements agreed upon by certain treaty signatories within their Domestic courts - it only applies where the states deem it to apply and its only international element comes from the voluntary conformity of courts in those countries. It's only law because the parties believe it to be beneficial and at any point those parties can duck out of their agreements - it may not be practical nor ethical but there is no illegality to the action.
The term "International Law" is objectionable not as a catch all term for law which is applied in multiple countries in a similar manner but as a concept of an enforceable mode of legislation. The law cannot exist without enforcement and since enforcement of International laws is ENTIRELY voluntary within a state (disregarding practicalities here, simply an abstract statement) they cannot exist as the concrete legal entity which they are so often considered to be.
Go Go Massive-Unreadable Block of Legalese! Thank you bad mousing! Here's a better edited one:
Depends on the state/situation. I'll simplify things because you don't really need to know all the law and only weirdos like me find constitutional law interesting.
Some 'international' legislation is enacted immediately (for instance, in France European legislation of a certain type is automatically a part of French law), however for the most part, there is almost no chance that 'International law' (the phrase itself is an anathema and complete and utter crap btw, anyone who mentions it needs their heads examined or their phony law degree torn up) can be relied upon in domestic courts.
There are however situations in which some international agreements would have some legal force. For instance, in the courts of England and Wales there is a presumption at law that Her Majesty's government intends to honour its treaty obligations - a presumption relied upon heavily in the past 20 years as the House of Lords has gone about carving its own Human Right's jurisprudence.
As for this resolution however, any assertion made that it will be applicable or enforceable in domestic courts is laughable. In the United Kingdom, as I presume it would be in US courts which are markedly slow to consider international agreements as having any legal force.
Depends on the state/situation. I'll simplify things because you don't really need to know all the law and only weirdos like me find constitutional law interesting. Some 'international' legislation is enacted immediately (for instance, in France European legislation of a certain type is automatically a part of French law), however for the most part, there is almost no chance that 'International law' (the phrase itself is an anathema and complete and utter crap btw, anyone who mentions it needs their heads examined or their phony law degree torn up) can be relied upon in domestic courts. There are however situations in which some international agreements would have some legal force. For instance, in the courts of England and Wales there is a presumption at law that Her Majesty's government intends to honour its treaty obligations - a presumption relied upon heavily in the past 20 years as the House of Lords has gone about carving its own Human Right's jurisprudence. As for this resolution however, any assertion made that it will be applicable or enforceable in domestic courts is laughable. In the United Kingdom, as I presume it would be in US courts which are markedly slow to consider international agreements as having any legal force.
I'd be interested in seeing what direction he'd take the iPod in if he had the chance. Judging by his involvement in the Danger Inc Hiptop, he's big into small internet communication devices and who wouldn't like a WiFi iPod with a web browser? That screen is becoming bigger all the time.
Right now people seem to be straining to turn the iPod into an Input device, or at least to give it that capability. I'd be very interested to see what the Woz could do with it.
**Outside the Sony Booth being handed fisherman's waders**
[Gabe]: What are these waders for?
[Tycho]: My guess? All the bullshit
It's not that I don't think this chip might be as fantastic as everyone says but since Sony has basically lied out its ass for its past 3 consoles, I'm not giving it the benefit of the doubt with the PS3 and god save any journalist who gets sucked into their schilling.
Mark 12:41-44
41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts.
42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny.
43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others.
44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything-- all she had to live on."
As much as I understand the necessity of patting people on their back for doing anything at all with their insanely huge wealth - to stop them turning away sneering at the 'ingratitude' of the world, I can think of a lot of "Good Samaritans" who better deserved Person of the Year
Skype is going to have to be pretty insanely phenomenal to come close to iChat AV.
iChat's Audio Conferencing lags behind Skype but its Video Conferencing (4 way no less) is just crazily good. Apple built iChat from the ground up using the powerful Quicktime 7 implementation in 10.4 and it shows.
I'd used plenty of Video Chat products but iChat was the first time I got the feeling that the technology had reached "Batman" standards.
(Oh sure Batman, it takes you a day to decrypt some stupid riddle, you use a massive magnifying glass to spot a buoy on a bit photograph of the ocean and your computer is a selection of flashing lights without a graphical or even command line interface but perfect quality video conferencing? Piece of cake!)
Well, aside from the fact that net penetration in English speaking countries relative to its penetration in India and China might dull your suggestion, English is far more important than you give it credit for.
Hindi is not spoken throughout India - there is only one language which transcends India's cultural and geographical boundaries, one language which you can count on someone to speak whether they're from Punjab or New Deli and it's English.
India could have dropped English years ago, it didn't because it's important to its day-to-day functioning and it's an asset - it provides a uniformity which quite simply wouldn't exist otherwise.
Many Faiths, Many Cultures, Only one language to transcend them all and that language does not share power *cough* err... You get the gist.
I posted something like this the last time this topic came up and was modded down as a Troll.
It's fundamentally disgusting for a country to spend an estimated $18 Billion US on a space program when they still receive $20 Billion in aid.
Nice to know we're financing this - now how about upping the standard of living over there? Guangzhou =/= The rest of China.
Yup, when I wrote that out first time round it was instead of but I figured some people wouldn't get the joke (apparently I was too lax in my quick and dirty editing to change to in the trout slapping). Although, in retrospect, if people on Slashdot don't know that Shawn Fanning was nicknamed Napster then no one does.
I can see it now:
<SFanning> Hey.. I'm having a little trouble with these APIs.. Any of you guys willing to lend a hand?
<wind00d33> slaps <napster> across the face with a large trout
<haxxorman> slaps <napster> across the face with a large trout
<carlie79> Heh.. Guys.. I'm so high right now...
<Mj> So about my penis...
<-- SFanning has quit (screw this...)
Troll? Wtf?
You don't spend billions of dollars on a frivolous space mission when you're receiving $8.9bn in aid (last year) for feeding your own people.
can we have our aid money back?
Space exploration is the ultimate indulgence, yes I accept that it's probably vital for Humanity's future but when you currently accept international aid it's pretty disgusting to be putting people into space on giant billion dollar rockets.
Have you SEEN our DS gameslist?
Once again, the UK gets shafted by Nintendo and 3rd party publishers and has to wait months to get the games which people in the US enjoy.
The DS ran away with the lead in the US because it had a damn good lineup of games (right now both Nintendogs and Advance Wars DS are selling strong). Here in the UK we haven't even had Meteos.
All we're enjoying is a lengthy break before the killer apps get here and I've got to say it doth royally suck. The PSP's launch titles in the US were better than the DS but in subsequent months the DS got its excellent games into circulation and started to pick up momentum.
What we're seeing in the UK is what happens when licensing and bureaucratic publishing houses delay the launch of games in Europe months after their release in the US. It's not normally noticeable for the companies concerned but at a time like this it's the games released soon after launch that are critical to a console's success.
I'm a mac user so I'm kind of used to being treated like a 2nd class citizen for gaming (except for games produced by ID and Blizzard) but if Nintendo would like to know why their arguably superior system with its stellar lineup in the US is getting pounded here, they might want to look at the utter disgrace that passes for cross-continental licensing and distribution.
(The author is currently sitting on his ass waiting for Advance Wars DS, Nintendogs, Meteos and a variety of other games already out in the US to be released in the UK)
Katrina devastated an area larger than Great Britain. Perhaps you need to be a Brit and hear that statistic to really make sense of it. I don't honestly think the United Kingdom would have dealt much better with such a disaster and as for a 3rd world country it'd be mother nature's genocide.
But there seems to be a glut of excellent Geek Podcasts - I guess that eventually there were so many of us that a few had to end up with some form of charisma.
Monkeys, Typewriters, you know the drill. Imagine if you will that when we reach some 'critical mass' of geeks, one of us will statistically be socially adept and even capable of balancing an active social life with rampant Geeking-out. It's like the Matrix only with less IP theft.