Given the ubiquity of MP3, moving to OGG is probably not going to happen. 4 years is nowhere near as long as it would take an entire technogeneration to migrate away from MP3, and as MP3 becomes public domain in 4 years, just wait until then and MP3 will be just as or more "free" than OGG (public domain is "more free" than GPL, sort of).
MP3 quality is fine, and with flash memory prices in freefall, squeezing an extra 13.8% off the track size at a given quality level is going to be moot very soon, if it is not already.
We're pretty off topic here, but meh, it's Slashdot.
Lets get a few things out of the way first: I don't deny that 9/11 happened, I just contest it's root causes and suggest that the response has been not even remotely intelligent or rational. Kinda like the Red Scare, really. Oh thomse commies, they're just waiting for you to take your eye of the ball to come in and steal all your stuff and give it to the poor! Like those terrorists, they want your freedoms and are biding their time to come in and take them away. Little do they know GW Bush beat them to it.
It's rather false to say that there were no US interests in Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Haiti etc. Lets start by saying that the worst of these internal conflicts, Rwanda, where over one million people were massacred by two very small belligerent parties, was completely ignored, because in *that* instance, there were no US interests. Somalia and Sudan are part of a very oil and resource rich part of Africa, a place many American corporations would like to "develop". Furthermore, they are full of towelheaded Islamofascist crazies, so stepping on them is good for publicity.
Haiti is of huge strategic importance to the US as it is a central location from which to force-project over the entire Central American region using short to medium range military assets. Furthermore, there were huge economic interests in the coutry, large engineering projects were of massive financial benefit to American corporations.
"American Interests" are wide and varied, and I doubt you even know what they are. If you want examples where it is blatantly obvious what the interests are and that they are completely contrary to the stated interests, look at the invasion of Panama, Chile, Iraq (either time), Afghanistan and Vietnam. If you believe the official lines on these military actions, then you're a certifiable idiot.
Re:Why do Australians hate the US so?
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 1
Agreed, but Americans more so. Spend an evening in a Canadian pub with one American and you'll see what I mean.
A mage threw a fireball that was created in his hands from thin air. He is currently serving time on back to back offences against the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
In related news, a druid violated the law of conservation of mass by morphing into a 300lb bear and gryphon rider violated the laws of gravity by actually making some big fat retarded looking rat with no hair fly. These two individuals remain at large, and should be regarded as dangerous. If you see them please call the "I'm an idiot for applying the rules of reality to necessarily fictional games" hotline.
Down with in-game violators of the law!
Re:Why do Australians hate the US so?
on
Steve Irwin Dead
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well I've met my fair share of Americans and I can say that they come across as a little self-absorbed. I have met some great ones, and some of the best travel buddies I have made were American, but in general the view that they are concerned only with their own gratification and possess a smug sense of superiority seems to be the general view held by Australians. Perhaps its rooted in general ignorance of issues outside the US border, or perhaps its that attitude of "we're the best nation on Earth" or perhaps its even a little jealousy that America gets all the limelight.
While I believe American foreign policy is at the root of many of the world's social ills, and is long overdue for a hard, honest review, I don't hate Americans. I find them to be loud at times, but generally friendly people who are easy to get along with, if one is willing to put up some eccentricies.
America kills willingly and deliberately. Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Chile etc etc and that's only Latin America. Once you're finished down there ask yourself what exactly you were fighting for in Vietnam. And then ask yourself what you're really fighting about in Afghanistan and Iraq. Freedom? Safety? Anti-terrorism? Right, freedom from Saddam's rule? He wasn't stopping you from buying widgets from Wal-Mart. Safety from the Taleban? They had trouble finding a car that could travel from town to town, forget having the logistical capability to mount an attack outside their own borders. Anti-terrorism? You mean like Waco, Ruby Ridge and the LA Police? The purpetrators of 9/11 aren'tevencertain.
Questions of culpability aside, 9/11 is a pretext. Its repeated coverage is despicable, relegating the families of the dead to poster children for the "War on Terror" and destriction of civil rights.
Oh yea, and "these Islamic death cultists" really don't give two shits about Americans in America. Its the Americans outside America raping foreign coutries for oil, copper and manufactured goods. Try reading something that isn't state run propaganda before commenting on politics. If you think you have freedom of the press, you're fooling yourself. If you think that there really are "Islamic Crazy Cultists" out there who are sitting in a dark corner plotting to take away your freedoms, then you're missing the fact that your freedoms are actually being taken away by your own government. Wake up. For your own sake, I beg you to wake up.
By second year law you should be familiar with the long-term ramifications of legal actions that are analogous to the proverbial "slippery slope". Back to first year with you.
First of all, it's a civil registry. I don't see an automatic due process issue because the state isn't meting out any punishment to those who are listed (i.e. there's no state-led deprivation of life, liberty, or property). You might argue that being listed is enough of a black mark that it effectively bars finding employment or housing, thereby creating a due process issue, but that hasn't been borne out in practice yet.
It hasn't? Tell that to Michael Jackson and Woody Allen.
If the accused can attend the hearing and present evidence in his defense before the judge, due process is satisfied so the above argument will be moot. Off the top of my head I can't think of any other part of the constitution this law would violate, but I haven't take con law yet so it's possible.
The new law will allow authorities to list people without a conviction. I.e., if someone says he's guilty, in theory, even if he can prove that he's never met that person, is happily married and was on vacation in Jamaica at the time of the alleged assault, he can still be listed.
While I'm not in favor of this law, it's not nearly as bad as the knee-jerk reaction indicates. Tossing around any old accusation won't cut it; a judge will be weighing the evidence and making the decision.
Fantastic! Americans can now rest assured that their judiciary's fine tradition of independence will protect them. Did you ever think of the use of this law to strike down political opponents? Opponents to a party to which the judge is a member? Oh deary me, how the nice neat walls of second year law are crumbling under the bulldozer of reality.
I can see where this law could be useful in cases where we know someone has committed a heinous act but the state can't punish him. Maybe the key evidence linking him is inadmissible in court (but still reliable).
If it is inadmissable, it is because a greater interest elsewhere (upholding of civil rights, anyone?) is deemed more important.
Maybe what the person did is despicable but not criminal, e.g. someone with HIV who knowingly refuses to use protection or inform his/her partners.
Despicable but not criminal? I think J-Lo making movies is despicable. Throw her in jail! (The point is that the word "despicable" is highly subjective and cannot be used as a measure when assigning criminal culpability). Oh yea, and knowingly infecting someone with HIV is a crime.
We can't always establish criminal conduct beyond a reasonable doubt even though we know for certain the person has done very bad things. Not saying I think this is the right approach, but it's not as harebrained as many here have suggested.
I'd like to deconstruct this, but I won't. Any discerning reader already knows by now everything that I'm likely to say in response. So all I will say is that I hope you never set foot in a court, at least not until you've gained about a decade in real world general knowledge.
Sir David Attenborough was my childhood hero for about a decade. I grew up on a steady diet of the Living Planet, Life in the Freezer, The Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals, his various Nat. Geo. works etc. I must have watched every one of his works twice.
If you want a good balance between information and entertainment, one of my all-time favorites is Animals are Beautiful People.
Other notables who I really enjoyed watching docs from were Ron and Valerie Taylor. They did a great series on life on the Great Barrier Reef.
I'm all for perspective in addressing tragedy and agree that the ridiculous coverage 9/11 gets cf the millions that die annually in the third word is farcical, but seriously, "this whack off" was a fairly higly regarded and popular figure especially among children. His death is at least noteworthy and if you think it is not, a respectful silence would be appreciated by those who will miss his informative and entertaining documentaries.
Wow I don't think I've has as uniformly constructive reponses to any post I've made on Slashdot to date. I can only read all of them and nod in concession. Thanks guys, we need more of you and less flamers.
I disagree with this developer's comments, and suggest that perhaps his way of thinking is perhaps not suited to a meritocracy. Perhaps he needs an authority to appeal to in situations of disagreement.
While having one point of authority is good if you are looking to conduct a project under corporate type structures, it is undesirable if you are looking to adhere to principles of community involvement and community focused agendas.
I agree that it must be acknowledged that not all developers are equal, but disagree that this must be explicitly stated somewhere. In an open, meritocratic forum, relative skill levels become apparent fairly quickly, and if you need full and formal recognition of your work, then you are out of place in the open source community.
I have found the Debian mailing lists to be quite helpful, and if there genuinely is a lack of an appropriate forum for technical discussions, then this is a minor administrative problem (i.e., get a moderator to keep discussions on topic in the developer lists), not an intractable structural problem.
In any case, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I find it difficult to accept that the "Debian Way" is broken when the project is so old, so well regarded, and so successful.
Garrett: If you are unable to work in the Debian project becuase your ideas conflict with it, then don't be blaming the Debian project. It may simply be the case, as with many relationship breakdowns, that your ideals and theirs are simply incompatible.
PLEASE DONT TALK IN CAPS IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A SCHMUCK.
Oh...
Anyway: a) You were talking about energy storage, I brought up H2 as storage. I.e., a battery, storing energy in the same place it is to be generated and used. Not distributed to end users b) So what if nuclear has been around for 50 odd years? How is age a relevant thing? Oil and coal have been around over a century that doesn't make them any more worthy of respect.
The energy cycle going from source -> H2 generation -> energy extracted is highly efficient, and is an answer to your storage problem. Storing large amounts of H2 on site at the same place as your solar / wind / hydro facility would be safe, at least as safe as storing large amounts of any other flamable gas fuel such as butane, propane or methane.
Nuclear is only good if you're a business invested in the technology. There are no advantages to anyone else. As for cost effectiveness, coal beats nuclear. But its the externalities that make it undesirable, just as with nuclear. Having radioactive waste sitting around on the Earth for 50,000 years is NOT cool, no matter where you put it. I don't care what you say about safety precautions. Disposal and maintenance companies go broke, forget about the landfil, steel vats rust releasing waste into groundwater. It only has to happen once and radioactive material enters the food chain. One child with leukemia as a result is one child too many.
Renewable sources of energy are feasilble. You're swallowing the big business line if you argue otherwise.
WRT Energy storage and retrieval in the form of hydrogen gas is highly efficient. Even if you rule out fuel cells, the H2 can be burned in a more or less standard engine powering a generator. Mazda has a pure hydrogen burned version of their wankel engine which would be perfect for this.
Solar panels are expensive, but wind is very cheap to deploy in farms as long as dumbass politicians don't whine about birds getting killed, like huge smoke stacks never bothered them.
Oil and coal could be replaced with TODAY's technology, no need to wait for some new thing that may or may not materialize.
Probably only by a few cents per unit, but when you're making something that is manufactured by the million, then a few cents per unit works out to a new Ferrari for the fat guy at the top.
Nuclear is expensive. It creates waste that will likely outlive humanity. It has nasty side products. It requires massive investments in capital. It puts control of the energy generation into the hands of Mr. Burns type monopolists (I'm not joking around on that point, Mr. Burns' character was designed to parody and illustrate the behavior of such monopolistic organisations). It requires massive mining to get the raw materials, which itself is environmentally damaging. It centralises generation creating single points of failure. Accidents do happen, and I don't give a rats ass what newfangled safety devices they come up with, I'd rather deal with a broken rotor on a wind turbine then a broken seal on a coolant conduit.
Can you tell me whats wrong with solar, wind, tidal, hydro or geothermal power? In fact, if we put every stupid person on a big hamster wheel that would be pretty much our energy needs solved.
Umm... are you really concerned by humanity's impact on total entropy in the universe? That's like worrying that the sand stuck in your bum crack after a trip to the beach causes the beach to get smaller.
So rather than have it in a sealed glass tube where it can be contained and reclaimed rather safely, you'd rather it be released into the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. Furthermore, a broken bulb is unlikely to result in a measurable intake, as most of it will waft into the atmosphere, unless you're deliberately inhaling the gas as the bulb breaks, in which case inhaling tiny fragments of glass are probably your biggest concern.
Slashdot Mirror
Look up there. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's my point, flying far above your head.
Given the ubiquity of MP3, moving to OGG is probably not going to happen. 4 years is nowhere near as long as it would take an entire technogeneration to migrate away from MP3, and as MP3 becomes public domain in 4 years, just wait until then and MP3 will be just as or more "free" than OGG (public domain is "more free" than GPL, sort of).
MP3 quality is fine, and with flash memory prices in freefall, squeezing an extra 13.8% off the track size at a given quality level is going to be moot very soon, if it is not already.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. Reality Check.
We're pretty off topic here, but meh, it's Slashdot.
Lets get a few things out of the way first: I don't deny that 9/11 happened, I just contest it's root causes and suggest that the response has been not even remotely intelligent or rational. Kinda like the Red Scare, really. Oh thomse commies, they're just waiting for you to take your eye of the ball to come in and steal all your stuff and give it to the poor! Like those terrorists, they want your freedoms and are biding their time to come in and take them away. Little do they know GW Bush beat them to it.
It's rather false to say that there were no US interests in Somalia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Haiti etc. Lets start by saying that the worst of these internal conflicts, Rwanda, where over one million people were massacred by two very small belligerent parties, was completely ignored, because in *that* instance, there were no US interests. Somalia and Sudan are part of a very oil and resource rich part of Africa, a place many American corporations would like to "develop". Furthermore, they are full of towelheaded Islamofascist crazies, so stepping on them is good for publicity.
Haiti is of huge strategic importance to the US as it is a central location from which to force-project over the entire Central American region using short to medium range military assets. Furthermore, there were huge economic interests in the coutry, large engineering projects were of massive financial benefit to American corporations.
"American Interests" are wide and varied, and I doubt you even know what they are. If you want examples where it is blatantly obvious what the interests are and that they are completely contrary to the stated interests, look at the invasion of Panama, Chile, Iraq (either time), Afghanistan and Vietnam. If you believe the official lines on these military actions, then you're a certifiable idiot.
Agreed, but Americans more so. Spend an evening in a Canadian pub with one American and you'll see what I mean.
A mage threw a fireball that was created in his hands from thin air. He is currently serving time on back to back offences against the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
In related news, a druid violated the law of conservation of mass by morphing into a 300lb bear and gryphon rider violated the laws of gravity by actually making some big fat retarded looking rat with no hair fly. These two individuals remain at large, and should be regarded as dangerous. If you see them please call the "I'm an idiot for applying the rules of reality to necessarily fictional games" hotline.
Down with in-game violators of the law!
Well I've met my fair share of Americans and I can say that they come across as a little self-absorbed. I have met some great ones, and some of the best travel buddies I have made were American, but in general the view that they are concerned only with their own gratification and possess a smug sense of superiority seems to be the general view held by Australians. Perhaps its rooted in general ignorance of issues outside the US border, or perhaps its that attitude of "we're the best nation on Earth" or perhaps its even a little jealousy that America gets all the limelight.
While I believe American foreign policy is at the root of many of the world's social ills, and is long overdue for a hard, honest review, I don't hate Americans. I find them to be loud at times, but generally friendly people who are easy to get along with, if one is willing to put up some eccentricies.
Dude, get a grip and watch less Republican TV.
America kills willingly and deliberately. Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Chile etc etc and that's only Latin America. Once you're finished down there ask yourself what exactly you were fighting for in Vietnam. And then ask yourself what you're really fighting about in Afghanistan and Iraq. Freedom? Safety? Anti-terrorism? Right, freedom from Saddam's rule? He wasn't stopping you from buying widgets from Wal-Mart. Safety from the Taleban? They had trouble finding a car that could travel from town to town, forget having the logistical capability to mount an attack outside their own borders. Anti-terrorism? You mean like Waco, Ruby Ridge and the LA Police? The purpetrators of 9/11 aren't even certain.
Questions of culpability aside, 9/11 is a pretext. Its repeated coverage is despicable, relegating the families of the dead to poster children for the "War on Terror" and destriction of civil rights.
Oh yea, and "these Islamic death cultists" really don't give two shits about Americans in America. Its the Americans outside America raping foreign coutries for oil, copper and manufactured goods. Try reading something that isn't state run propaganda before commenting on politics. If you think you have freedom of the press, you're fooling yourself. If you think that there really are "Islamic Crazy Cultists" out there who are sitting in a dark corner plotting to take away your freedoms, then you're missing the fact that your freedoms are actually being taken away by your own government. Wake up. For your own sake, I beg you to wake up.
Umm... Where's the citation? How are we Slashdotters supposed to know who we're DDoSing next?
By second year law you should be familiar with the long-term ramifications of legal actions that are analogous to the proverbial "slippery slope". Back to first year with you.
It hasn't? Tell that to Michael Jackson and Woody Allen.
The new law will allow authorities to list people without a conviction. I.e., if someone says he's guilty, in theory, even if he can prove that he's never met that person, is happily married and was on vacation in Jamaica at the time of the alleged assault, he can still be listed.
Fantastic! Americans can now rest assured that their judiciary's fine tradition of independence will protect them. Did you ever think of the use of this law to strike down political opponents? Opponents to a party to which the judge is a member? Oh deary me, how the nice neat walls of second year law are crumbling under the bulldozer of reality.
If it is inadmissable, it is because a greater interest elsewhere (upholding of civil rights, anyone?) is deemed more important.
Despicable but not criminal? I think J-Lo making movies is despicable. Throw her in jail! (The point is that the word "despicable" is highly subjective and cannot be used as a measure when assigning criminal culpability). Oh yea, and knowingly infecting someone with HIV is a crime.
I'd like to deconstruct this, but I won't. Any discerning reader already knows by now everything that I'm likely to say in response. So all I will say is that I hope you never set foot in a court, at least not until you've gained about a decade in real world general knowledge.
Sir David Attenborough was my childhood hero for about a decade. I grew up on a steady diet of the Living Planet, Life in the Freezer, The Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals, his various Nat. Geo. works etc. I must have watched every one of his works twice.
If you want a good balance between information and entertainment, one of my all-time favorites is Animals are Beautiful People.
Other notables who I really enjoyed watching docs from were Ron and Valerie Taylor. They did a great series on life on the Great Barrier Reef.
I'm all for perspective in addressing tragedy and agree that the ridiculous coverage 9/11 gets cf the millions that die annually in the third word is farcical, but seriously, "this whack off" was a fairly higly regarded and popular figure especially among children. His death is at least noteworthy and if you think it is not, a respectful silence would be appreciated by those who will miss his informative and entertaining documentaries.
Wow I don't think I've has as uniformly constructive reponses to any post I've made on Slashdot to date. I can only read all of them and nod in concession. Thanks guys, we need more of you and less flamers.
I disagree with this developer's comments, and suggest that perhaps his way of thinking is perhaps not suited to a meritocracy. Perhaps he needs an authority to appeal to in situations of disagreement.
While having one point of authority is good if you are looking to conduct a project under corporate type structures, it is undesirable if you are looking to adhere to principles of community involvement and community focused agendas.
I agree that it must be acknowledged that not all developers are equal, but disagree that this must be explicitly stated somewhere. In an open, meritocratic forum, relative skill levels become apparent fairly quickly, and if you need full and formal recognition of your work, then you are out of place in the open source community.
I have found the Debian mailing lists to be quite helpful, and if there genuinely is a lack of an appropriate forum for technical discussions, then this is a minor administrative problem (i.e., get a moderator to keep discussions on topic in the developer lists), not an intractable structural problem.
In any case, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I find it difficult to accept that the "Debian Way" is broken when the project is so old, so well regarded, and so successful.
Garrett: If you are unable to work in the Debian project becuase your ideas conflict with it, then don't be blaming the Debian project. It may simply be the case, as with many relationship breakdowns, that your ideals and theirs are simply incompatible.
I'm with you. That stupid land analogy has all the brains of... umm... hold on, we just banned stupid analogies didn't we?
You didn't use tags! How the hell do you expect your document to parse correctly if you don't adhere to the standards of Web2.0 ?!
PLEASE DONT TALK IN CAPS IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A SCHMUCK.
Oh...
Anyway: a) You were talking about energy storage, I brought up H2 as storage. I.e., a battery, storing energy in the same place it is to be generated and used. Not distributed to end users b) So what if nuclear has been around for 50 odd years? How is age a relevant thing? Oil and coal have been around over a century that doesn't make them any more worthy of respect.
The energy cycle going from source -> H2 generation -> energy extracted is highly efficient, and is an answer to your storage problem. Storing large amounts of H2 on site at the same place as your solar / wind / hydro facility would be safe, at least as safe as storing large amounts of any other flamable gas fuel such as butane, propane or methane.
Nuclear is only good if you're a business invested in the technology. There are no advantages to anyone else. As for cost effectiveness, coal beats nuclear. But its the externalities that make it undesirable, just as with nuclear. Having radioactive waste sitting around on the Earth for 50,000 years is NOT cool, no matter where you put it. I don't care what you say about safety precautions. Disposal and maintenance companies go broke, forget about the landfil, steel vats rust releasing waste into groundwater. It only has to happen once and radioactive material enters the food chain. One child with leukemia as a result is one child too many.
Renewable sources of energy are feasilble. You're swallowing the big business line if you argue otherwise.
WRT Energy storage and retrieval in the form of hydrogen gas is highly efficient. Even if you rule out fuel cells, the H2 can be burned in a more or less standard engine powering a generator. Mazda has a pure hydrogen burned version of their wankel engine which would be perfect for this.
Solar panels are expensive, but wind is very cheap to deploy in farms as long as dumbass politicians don't whine about birds getting killed, like huge smoke stacks never bothered them.
Oil and coal could be replaced with TODAY's technology, no need to wait for some new thing that may or may not materialize.
Probably only by a few cents per unit, but when you're making something that is manufactured by the million, then a few cents per unit works out to a new Ferrari for the fat guy at the top.
Lets not, and say we did.
Nuclear is expensive. It creates waste that will likely outlive humanity. It has nasty side products. It requires massive investments in capital. It puts control of the energy generation into the hands of Mr. Burns type monopolists (I'm not joking around on that point, Mr. Burns' character was designed to parody and illustrate the behavior of such monopolistic organisations). It requires massive mining to get the raw materials, which itself is environmentally damaging. It centralises generation creating single points of failure. Accidents do happen, and I don't give a rats ass what newfangled safety devices they come up with, I'd rather deal with a broken rotor on a wind turbine then a broken seal on a coolant conduit.
Can you tell me whats wrong with solar, wind, tidal, hydro or geothermal power? In fact, if we put every stupid person on a big hamster wheel that would be pretty much our energy needs solved.
Only 10,000 sq miles hey?
Umm... are you really concerned by humanity's impact on total entropy in the universe? That's like worrying that the sand stuck in your bum crack after a trip to the beach causes the beach to get smaller.
So rather than have it in a sealed glass tube where it can be contained and reclaimed rather safely, you'd rather it be released into the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat. Furthermore, a broken bulb is unlikely to result in a measurable intake, as most of it will waft into the atmosphere, unless you're deliberately inhaling the gas as the bulb breaks, in which case inhaling tiny fragments of glass are probably your biggest concern.
Get edumacated, or stop posting on Slashdot.
Oh...
Ahmadinajad? Is that you?
If only you turned 80 soon, the sooner your attitude leaves this world, the better off humanity will be.
They flicker because they are still getting voltage chirp from the AC/DC conversion. If you feed a LED nice clean DC it will not flicker at all.