Well, it all depends on what you're using it for, right? From the same benchmark, the floating point performance still isn't all that good - in ScienceMark an Athlon64 at 2.2GHz still beats a Dothan OC-ed to 2.3GHz. OK, you're going to say Dothan is not about FP, but you have:
1. a (marginally) higher clock on the Dothan 2. 4 times more cache on the Dothan (2M vs. 512k) 3. A64 running in 32bit mode, which means 8 SSE2 registers instead of 16 (which would have given its top performance if optimized for that) 4. OC possibilities (apparently the 90nm A64 is a hell of an OC-er too, as people have had it jacked up to 2.4-2.6GHz on stock cooling)
Still, nobody is going to deny that Dothan has a heck of a strong performance on average. For many things it could well be the best tool for the job, if only Intel would drop the price and maybe someone else (nVidia? ATi?) would make a cheaper desktop chipset for it.
What's your trouble, mate? Most of those who have a closer look at them black holes reckon they're quite attractive. You must be one of them foreigners who don't know how to really see our local beauties.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe Apple is more friendly exactly because they don't have MS' level of influence? Remember, power corrupts. And, when all is said and done, corporations live for money.
I believe that China has entered the second stage transition phase under the leadership of Hu Jintao, that it will take the transition from provisional revolutionary government into a socialist nation that, eventually, will become Communist fully and have the beneficent characteristics of the intellectual Communism from the models of Marx and Engles adapted to the Chinese socio-political situation..
Where to even start? maybe with a question - are yoy Chinese? This is so reminiscent of the internal propaganda in the former Eastern European block it could be amusing if it weren't sad.
Intellectual Communism will never exist. All the 'Communist Republics' were openly classifying themselves as belonging to the 'second stage' - socialist nations. None was even pretending to try to change that. Communism was (and will always be with the remaining states) the goal never to be attained.
Looking back at the former Communist states, most of the non-Soviet ones are moving to some form of Socialism where the State controls only few key economic aspects (and even those loosely) and needs to balance social measures against economic growth. None is going for the Communist ideal, even though the Soviet boot is no longer crushing them. Even in the former Soviet states Communism is no longer a point (it's either democracy or plain power struggles). Seeing that Communists more often than not listed Socialists among their ennemies, this makes for a rather obvious hint.
Here's a short list of what's wrong with 'intellectual communism':
1. the old meme "Power corrupts." 2. even if masses have the power (which they never do) the result is stagnation, as in "the good is the ennemy of the better". One needs some motivation outside the 'state' to move on - for instance, maintaining that 'we must fight the capitalist oppressors throughout the world'. Stagnation is never permanent, as it gives rise to internal tensions. 3. Technological progress is something Communism never really takes into account properly (nor could it, as it's quite impredictable on a large scale) As this is an example of the "better" displacing the "good", the natural reaction in Communist states was always to control and/or suppress it - and in general regard it at most as a necessary evil and always as a source of destabilisation. In particular, communication progress means easier access to information, which is one thing ALL communist regimes (including nowadays China) firmly opposed. 4. Common property works for some things and does not work for others. How do you like it going to work in an old, stuffed bus while the local Party undersecretary drives his shiny new car to some 'party meeting' in a resort where you'll never afford the tickets? Greed is always a factor that Communists tried to purge... from others. Much like the Church (ever heard of the saying "do as the priest says, not as he does?") Double standards was the thing Communism was allegedly meant to eliminate and it never happened.
The sad thing is always throughout the history when social 'thought experiments' tried to be put in practice real people got hurt or died. Too many of them.
Funny, you seem to have read thar wrong. From your post:
The Inquisitions, also contrary to popular belief, did not kill people. It was the authority of Kings who didn't know theology who killed people.
From your link:
Some traditional Catholic apologetics about the Inquisition is untenable, for example, the claim that the Church did not put heretics to death, the state did. Yes, but the Church urged the state to do so, and churchmen hardly escaped responsibility through this legal maneuver.
The inquisitorial statements on the Cathars also make for an interesting read... high-minded and enlightened indeed.
Also, about your assumption on the first Crusade being retaliatory. Of course, the Pope could claim all the way to Heaven's gate (see the speech of Urban II) that it was the plea brought forth by Peter the Hermit from Jerusalem that was the sole motive (and for some of those who fought the preachers actually had been the reason for enrolling) but that does not make it true. The Byzantyne Empire seemed unable to stop the Turks and, once it fell, what was next? Towards the West, Hungary, Germany, Italy? Heck, the Ottoman Empire eventually sieged Wien at one point, so any fears would have been founded. By this argument, it was more of a preemptive strike. Not to mention economical reasons (trade routes anyone?) and political ones. The Byzantine Empire itself asked for help - how often is it that your opponent, in this case the Eastern Church, asks you for help? Remember, this was immediately after the Eastern and Roman Churches excomunicated and anathemaed each other in 1054 (under Patriarch Caerularius and Pope Leo IX) So a move to delay the Turks and expand the political and economical influence of the Pope in the East is hardly a retaliatory strike.
You left Brejnev off. Remember Soljenitsin's exile? Saharov's? Heck, just think of how he got the power - by ousting Khrushchev who was beginning some level of reform in USSR and its satellites, making himself unpopular with the Party in the process.
History does not prove anything, but what do you think all those failed attempts hint at? Every time someone tried a reform, we were left with a 'what if this wasn't killed?' question.
I don't see your point for government subsidies leading to communism, unless you're arguing that they will enable the state to own the subsidized corporations later on. I doubt that would happen, as it will send the stock market tumbling and this is too important a part in the US economy to throw away.
They also believed in a cashless society, where personal capital and general capital were not the basis of competition but that competition was such that it was the basis in and of itself.
Heh, I would love some direct quotes in that. Then I could point to them as proof Marx was an idiot (kidding)
Anyway, for a student of 'social forces', Marx surely didn't understand them. Competition will never exist by itself - one has to have a motive to climb a mountain, either as an individual (and this, in capitalism, is money) or as a nation (war, cold war, religion, mass manipulation in a form or another). As the history showed in former communist countries, 'people' (as in the 'labor class') will not make any effort unless there's something to gain or to fear. Masses have lots of inertia, which is an opposite to competition.
And this still does not address the political aspect of communism. MASSES DON'T LEAD, DON'T KNOW AND CAN'T MAKE CHOICES ON THEIR OWN. Meaning, there's a need for a power structure that would at least (in the utopian way) study the problems, select the few favorable choices and present them with their arguments to the masses. And even then, 'people' won't have enough information to choose the best answer (even assuming they all have the same interest - not true in general - and would see the same solution as optimal given all the information - again, not true for a limited amount of time to choose, different intelligence, education, etc. levels) so why let them choose at all? Herein lies the problem - if 'people' would follow all the problems in order to make pertinent choices on them (making the unlikely assumption that they would want to and would have the resources for all the issues) then who will work? And the people acting on the economical level will have no time for the details of the political one. Hence no more 'will of the people', as the informed and uninformed are not equivalent. Then, as the power structure (aka state) will be made of the political class, what's to prevent them from controlling the labor class altogether? Human kindness?
Also, concerning education - Communist states had free education up to and including University level, with some 10-12 grades more or less compulsory. Yet enough people didn't have the resources and/or interest to learn. How would you then give equal political power to college graduates and people having only 4 or 8 classes? and if the average individual investment in learning is low, presenting choices to the 'will of the people' is the same as gambling it on a die unless you have a well-oiled propaganda machine to 'suggest' the outcome. And that (plus the ability of controlling the available choices, through mass media for instance) is just another hidden dictatorship. This is actually more of a general failure path for democracy.
I know, pointing to 'Animal Farm' as an example of why Communism was really just a dialectic exercise is not an answer, but it does single out some aspects of it that Marx simply glossed over. The foremost one is that Communism does NOT happen in a vacuum and it does NOT change the mentality of the population or the human nature.
Heh, looks like I forgot something:
The elimination of cash (as is becoming apparent) and the establishment of large credit lines have created an environment where if you work, you can get what ever you want, regardless of what you do or your skill level.
Do you truly believe this? ok, to back up, what's your definition of 'whatever you want'? Commodization of, say, TVs and cars has nothing to do with Communism. You can as well say "if you work, you eat'. There was no arbitrary redefinition of what 'standards of living'
Communist economic system must be brought about by the will of the people.... and this is where the Utopia shows. There's no such thing as the 'will of the people' - this works under the false assumption that people have the knowledge and will 'see' the same solution, false on both accounts. Communism dealt with it by enforcing what was postulated as the will of the people.
In fact, it's a power game, and 'the people' do not have any active power, as even in theory it's supposed to be delegated to elected representatives. Of course, there can be popular referendums to ask of people's opinion, but even in current 'democracies' that is a rare occurence. And don't argue 'elections' - communists had elections too, it was supposed to look as much a pure-breed Democratic process as possible; of course, when all you had to choose from was two party members if not only one, there goes your freedom of choice. And communists knew about manipulating election results since day one, after all this is how it started in many countries of the Eastern European block.
The original system of Lenin was a dictatorship, yes, but I dare you to prove a way of even starting to apply communist principles completely without that. And there are no benevolent dictators.
It just pisses me off to see ATI try to pass this off as id's problem
Actually, they are a little right - in the 'wrong' way, so it's embarrasing to say it straight on. Something along the lines:
We know out OpenGL drivers and kernel module really have a looooong way to go on Linux and Id knows it, too. They didn't provide feedback for us to start finding/fixing the showstopper bugs early enough (should have started a few years ago maybe?) so there you are - it doesn't work.
Botomline - ATi Linux drivers suck(*). Nothing to see here.
(*) and fixing specific code paths for specific games is not going to make them suck less.
This is more than just a pack-in. OS monopoly + bundled WMP = too many media offers just assume you have WPM available and offer little or no other formats to choose from. Especially if it's about DRM that can be digested by WMP only. Take music stores, for example - Napster and co offer WMP DRM. Or do you think that the inclusion of the WM codec in the next DVD standard is completely uncorrelated with the assumption that the users will have WMP to play the movies with? (especially since apparently MS expected a 'nod through' for it and can't seem able to even provide enough information to be compliant with the selection process)
Or (as/. has so many Mac fans lately) - how happy would you be when in some not-too-distant-future MS declares that the DRM-aware version of WMP needs Palladium to guarantee secure playback, which would not be available on the Apple platform so no DRM-ed WMP high-def video content for you unless you buy Windows? Of course, they won't be a monopoly, since they'll be quick to point that a non-DRM-aware OSX version of WMP would still exist... right? Of course, as Holywood loves DRM, they might just elect to release about 1 in 3 movies as WMP-only... to 'test the market'. After all, recording companies don't seem to worried about releasing DRM-ed CDs that won't even play in 'players with recorder technology'
Too far-fetched? Maybe for today. Don't underestimate the power of human greed.
Enlarging will then be about pixel pitch. A 8M 20D has a slightly larger pixel density than a 8M 1D Mk2 so the same object (meaning, for the same lens, distance, aperture, etc. same size in the focal plane) will be slightly more accurately recorded under ideal conditions. On the other hand, you'll get slightly less light per pixel, too, so it's a trade-off (less light means less detail in the higher spatial frequencies, thus less detail). Overall, it looks a lot like the trade-off that you get with ISO numbers on film due to grain size.
If firefox wants to sell security, they need to appear secure.
That was his argument, alright. Appear secure. Sell security. Yep, that's what MS is doing, too - selling products that appear secure. They'll be selling Palladium next, too. Not that it would be a lot of help, but that's not the point, as it's pretty much meant to help their bottom line.
This is by now already redundant, but a signed binary is nothing to the average user. Heck, Verisign means nothing to the average user, either. They will happily check the "always trust" option for self-signed AX controls without wondering what it means.
On the other hand, if you do understand a little about security, you have the option of getting the (in this case win32) binary together with the.asc signature from ftp.mozilla.org, then get gpg, import the appropriate key from a public server, verify the signature and, if matching, run "Firefox Setup 1.0.exe" to install a verified, trusted version of the program.
I agree, however, that unsigned extensions don't seem trustworthy. However, until some peer review mechanism is adopted for "official extensions", this is again a rather moot point. Do you trust an extension that's signed by foo@bar.com? even if this is somehow endorsed by mozilla.org (key signing, etc.) how do you know that foo does follow at least minimal security practices? and so on. It all depends on your paranoia level. Luckily, with javascript extensions, at least some people have the time/interest to unpack it and pore over the code to make sure it isn't trojaned. For stuff like flash, you have to trust the vendor, which makes it about on the same level of 'security' as claria et al.
There's more to it, too. The effective-aperture-to-effective-pixel-size ratio actually tells you the average intensity of incident light. Less light means less detail so what you gain in depth of field you lose in illumination-constrained detail. Also, with smaller sensors (and 'affordable' versions of P&S) usually comes more noise, so DoF is balanced off again.
And don't even start on how a shallow DoF works in conjunction to TTL metering and the associated goodies (focus points, flash metering and so on)
There's always a trade-off; buy what fits your need.
I'd say you're confused about the meaning of the cropping factor (a.k.a. multiplier factor). Same lens, same aperture, you get the same picture in the focal plane; larger sensor means you record more of it (larger cropping) f/2 on a 50mm lens gives the same focal plane image on both 1Ds and 300D; the full-frame sensor will catch a 35mm-size crop of it, the '1.6x' one will crop more (1/1.6 of the full-frame size) and get hence less of the off-axis distortion.
Larger sensor also means you're getting further away from the optical axis, so out-of-focus elements will be more... umm... out-of-focus;-) Has to do with the lens not being actually Gaussian and the focal plane not really being a plane, etc. This is usually corrected a lot for the in-focus region (aspherical elements, index of refraction mixes, etc.) but gets worse the further out-of-focus (and off-axis) you go. Try it with a wide angle lens sometime and see for yourself.[*]
Anyway, this is just a narrow part of it, you have to discuss the whole "smaller sensor with smaller lens aperture and smaller pixel pitch, etc" combo to see overall effects.
[*] or look up some info on how tilt/shift lenses work.
Online music stores will play a big role in what the format war will bring. As currently DRM exists only for WindowsMedia and iTunes, meaning wma and aac, these are the starting contenders. And mp3 is (still) around due to its past huge success, but unless Fraunhofer adds a way to stick DRM on top of it, it won't be adopted by online stores. Love it or hate it, DRM is what vendors like. They will keep on pushing it.
Another factor will be players. Major player support is mp3, wma and aac these days. Some noises about ogg vorbis support happen here and there, but unless it catches on more it's going to stay insignificant. Maybe we should pray for some music retailer to start using vorbis in DRM-ed ogg files just to show the non-geek world that it's possible to have a free and good digital audio format? After all, not having to pay royalties for encoding/decoding the music should mean more profits, right?
Last time I checked (which is about a month ago), Opera would choke on xml documents using xslt transforms that both Mozilla and IE (duh!) rendered just fine. Maybe I'm just a corner case, but that's one 'less compliant' instance for Opera.
You have to remember that this was early 2000 also, everything was still e-this and i-that, it is very possible that this guy came up with the name independent of any knowledge of Apple's music service.
RTFA - there was no Apple music service at the time.
As a press release put out by Cohen makes clear,
he registered the domain "itunes.co.uk" on 7 November 2000, and two days later made use of it by forwarding it to a music search engine service at his CyberBritain site.
Apple, on the other hand, only had trademark for "iTunes" published in the Trade Marks Journal on 6 December 2000. It was granted a limited trademark that did not cover music products on 23 March 2001, and eventually went live with its iTunes offering in June this year - four years after Ben Cohen first registered iTunes.co.uk.
What you fail to see is the "what will I do with it?" factor. For small things (net surfing/mail/ripping CDs for the iPod/etc.) $800 is WAY too expensive, especially when a $200+monitor PC would do just fine. Or, still for about $800 or less, you can get a notebook with the associated mobility as a bonus.
It all depends on what you intend to use the computer for - and for quite some uses a $800 eMac is too expensive. Of course, if what you really want is OSX, then it's rather cheap:-)
Seeing that MS is not willing to backport SP2 security enhancements to win2k, which is what lots of corporate setups still have for workstations, it might not be such a hard fight. In the red corner, an invoice for upgrading all the workstations to XP-SP2 plus the cost of the related work downtime. In the blue corner, the cost of installing firefox on all machines and setting up outside access to only allow Gecko-based browsers. Winner?
Also, what if you CAN'T upgrade to SP2, due to it breaking some legacy app that your company uses?
Abusing "IE + XP-SP2 combo is secure" line makes you sound like some MS drone trying to sell the "Upgrades! Upgrades! Upgrades!" company line to a clueless mark.
Yeah, I guess world peace is rather impossible - or rather there are elements of the human nature not quite compatible to it at this point. Also, war is kind of important to survival of the species (in one form or another) - quoting Heinlein:
Nevertheless, let's assume that the human race manages to balance birth and death, just right to fit its own planets, and becomes peaceful. What happens?
Soon (about next Wednesday) the Bugs move in, kill off this breed which ain't gonna study war no more" and the universe forgets us.
Well, maybe not that radical:-) But you get the idea - stagnation is death and aggressivity is what characterizes life. Look at it this way, we kill (plants, animals, fish) just to eat and stay alive. However, I wouldn't mind redirecting most of this aggressivity that goes into killing each other into going out in the unknown and finding what else would be in store for us. Unfortunately, it looks like we need something quite strong to pull enough resources in the right direction and jump over several roadblocks that keep us stuck on Earth. Besides, there would be plenty of fighting afterwards, for those interested - a side effect of an unstable (expanding) human 'universe' that would soon become a lot less controllable than it is now. And I guess this can scare some 'guiding heads'.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it all depends on what you're using it for, right? From the same benchmark, the floating point performance still isn't all that good - in ScienceMark an Athlon64 at 2.2GHz still beats a Dothan OC-ed to 2.3GHz. OK, you're going to say Dothan is not about FP, but you have:
1. a (marginally) higher clock on the Dothan
2. 4 times more cache on the Dothan (2M vs. 512k)
3. A64 running in 32bit mode, which means 8 SSE2 registers instead of 16 (which would have given its top performance if optimized for that)
4. OC possibilities (apparently the 90nm A64 is a hell of an OC-er too, as people have had it jacked up to 2.4-2.6GHz on stock cooling)
Still, nobody is going to deny that Dothan has a heck of a strong performance on average. For many things it could well be the best tool for the job, if only Intel would drop the price and maybe someone else (nVidia? ATi?) would make a cheaper desktop chipset for it.
What's your trouble, mate? Most of those who have a closer look at them black holes reckon they're quite attractive. You must be one of them foreigners who don't know how to really see our local beauties.
what if the parallel universe you pop out through the wormhole into is made completely of antimatter.
No problem, it will just be an escape towards a really bright future.
Actually, 20D has the 1.6x crop. The !D MkII has the new (and slightly awkward sometimes[*]) 1.3x crop factor.
[*] as some 'standard' focal lenghts have no equivalent primes for 1.3x crop in Canon's line-up yet.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe Apple is more friendly exactly because they don't have MS' level of influence? Remember, power corrupts. And, when all is said and done, corporations live for money.
I believe that China has entered the second stage transition phase under the leadership of Hu Jintao, that it will take the transition from provisional revolutionary government into a socialist nation that, eventually, will become Communist fully and have the beneficent characteristics of the intellectual Communism from the models of Marx and Engles adapted to the Chinese socio-political situation..
... from others. Much like the Church (ever heard of the saying "do as the priest says, not as he does?") Double standards was the thing Communism was allegedly meant to eliminate and it never happened.
Where to even start? maybe with a question - are yoy Chinese? This is so reminiscent of the internal propaganda in the former Eastern European block it could be amusing if it weren't sad.
Intellectual Communism will never exist. All the 'Communist Republics' were openly classifying themselves as belonging to the 'second stage' - socialist nations. None was even pretending to try to change that. Communism was (and will always be with the remaining states) the goal never to be attained.
Looking back at the former Communist states, most of the non-Soviet ones are moving to some form of Socialism where the State controls only few key economic aspects (and even those loosely) and needs to balance social measures against economic growth. None is going for the Communist ideal, even though the Soviet boot is no longer crushing them. Even in the former Soviet states Communism is no longer a point (it's either democracy or plain power struggles). Seeing that Communists more often than not listed Socialists among their ennemies, this makes for a rather obvious hint.
Here's a short list of what's wrong with 'intellectual communism':
1. the old meme "Power corrupts."
2. even if masses have the power (which they never do) the result is stagnation, as in "the good is the ennemy of the better". One needs some motivation outside the 'state' to move on - for instance, maintaining that 'we must fight the capitalist oppressors throughout the world'. Stagnation is never permanent, as it gives rise to internal tensions.
3. Technological progress is something Communism never really takes into account properly (nor could it, as it's quite impredictable on a large scale) As this is an example of the "better" displacing the "good", the natural reaction in Communist states was always to control and/or suppress it - and in general regard it at most as a necessary evil and always as a source of destabilisation. In particular, communication progress means easier access to information, which is one thing ALL communist regimes (including nowadays China) firmly opposed.
4. Common property works for some things and does not work for others. How do you like it going to work in an old, stuffed bus while the local Party undersecretary drives his shiny new car to some 'party meeting' in a resort where you'll never afford the tickets? Greed is always a factor that Communists tried to purge
The sad thing is always throughout the history when social 'thought experiments' tried to be put in practice real people got hurt or died. Too many of them.
Funny, you seem to have read thar wrong. From your post:
... high-minded and enlightened indeed.
The Inquisitions, also contrary to popular belief, did not kill people. It was the authority of Kings who didn't know theology who killed people.
From your link:
Some traditional Catholic apologetics about the Inquisition is untenable, for example, the claim that the Church did not put heretics to death, the state did. Yes, but the Church urged the state to do so, and churchmen hardly escaped responsibility through this legal maneuver.
The inquisitorial statements on the Cathars also make for an interesting read
Also, about your assumption on the first Crusade being retaliatory. Of course, the Pope could claim all the way to Heaven's gate (see the speech of Urban II) that it was the plea brought forth by Peter the Hermit from Jerusalem that was the sole motive (and for some of those who fought the preachers actually had been the reason for enrolling) but that does not make it true. The Byzantyne Empire seemed unable to stop the Turks and, once it fell, what was next? Towards the West, Hungary, Germany, Italy? Heck, the Ottoman Empire eventually sieged Wien at one point, so any fears would have been founded. By this argument, it was more of a preemptive strike. Not to mention economical reasons (trade routes anyone?) and political ones. The Byzantine Empire itself asked for help - how often is it that your opponent, in this case the Eastern Church, asks you for help? Remember, this was immediately after the Eastern and Roman Churches excomunicated and anathemaed each other in 1054 (under Patriarch Caerularius and Pope Leo IX) So a move to delay the Turks and expand the political and economical influence of the Pope in the East is hardly a retaliatory strike.
You left Brejnev off. Remember Soljenitsin's exile? Saharov's? Heck, just think of how he got the power - by ousting Khrushchev who was beginning some level of reform in USSR and its satellites, making himself unpopular with the Party in the process.
History does not prove anything, but what do you think all those failed attempts hint at? Every time someone tried a reform, we were left with a 'what if this wasn't killed?' question.
I don't see your point for government subsidies leading to communism, unless you're arguing that they will enable the state to own the subsidized corporations later on. I doubt that would happen, as it will send the stock market tumbling and this is too important a part in the US economy to throw away.
They also believed in a cashless society, where personal capital and general capital were not the basis of competition but that competition was such that it was the basis in and of itself.
Heh, I would love some direct quotes in that. Then I could point to them as proof Marx was an idiot (kidding)
Anyway, for a student of 'social forces', Marx surely didn't understand them. Competition will never exist by itself - one has to have a motive to climb a mountain, either as an individual (and this, in capitalism, is money) or as a nation (war, cold war, religion, mass manipulation in a form or another). As the history showed in former communist countries, 'people' (as in the 'labor class') will not make any effort unless there's something to gain or to fear. Masses have lots of inertia, which is an opposite to competition.
And this still does not address the political aspect of communism. MASSES DON'T LEAD, DON'T KNOW AND CAN'T MAKE CHOICES ON THEIR OWN. Meaning, there's a need for a power structure that would at least (in the utopian way) study the problems, select the few favorable choices and present them with their arguments to the masses. And even then, 'people' won't have enough information to choose the best answer (even assuming they all have the same interest - not true in general - and would see the same solution as optimal given all the information - again, not true for a limited amount of time to choose, different intelligence, education, etc. levels) so why let them choose at all? Herein lies the problem - if 'people' would follow all the problems in order to make pertinent choices on them (making the unlikely assumption that they would want to and would have the resources for all the issues) then who will work? And the people acting on the economical level will have no time for the details of the political one. Hence no more 'will of the people', as the informed and uninformed are not equivalent. Then, as the power structure (aka state) will be made of the political class, what's to prevent them from controlling the labor class altogether? Human kindness?
Also, concerning education - Communist states had free education up to and including University level, with some 10-12 grades more or less compulsory. Yet enough people didn't have the resources and/or interest to learn. How would you then give equal political power to college graduates and people having only 4 or 8 classes? and if the average individual investment in learning is low, presenting choices to the 'will of the people' is the same as gambling it on a die unless you have a well-oiled propaganda machine to 'suggest' the outcome. And that (plus the ability of controlling the available choices, through mass media for instance) is just another hidden dictatorship. This is actually more of a general failure path for democracy.
I know, pointing to 'Animal Farm' as an example of why Communism was really just a dialectic exercise is not an answer, but it does single out some aspects of it that Marx simply glossed over. The foremost one is that Communism does NOT happen in a vacuum and it does NOT change the mentality of the population or the human nature.
Heh, looks like I forgot something:
The elimination of cash (as is becoming apparent) and the establishment of large credit lines have created an environment where if you work, you can get what ever you want, regardless of what you do or your skill level.
Do you truly believe this? ok, to back up, what's your definition of 'whatever you want'? Commodization of, say, TVs and cars has nothing to do with Communism. You can as well say "if you work, you eat'. There was no arbitrary redefinition of what 'standards of living'
Communist economic system must be brought about by the will of the people. ... and this is where the Utopia shows. There's no such thing as the 'will of the people' - this works under the false assumption that people have the knowledge and will 'see' the same solution, false on both accounts. Communism dealt with it by enforcing what was postulated as the will of the people.
In fact, it's a power game, and 'the people' do not have any active power, as even in theory it's supposed to be delegated to elected representatives. Of course, there can be popular referendums to ask of people's opinion, but even in current 'democracies' that is a rare occurence. And don't argue 'elections' - communists had elections too, it was supposed to look as much a pure-breed Democratic process as possible; of course, when all you had to choose from was two party members if not only one, there goes your freedom of choice. And communists knew about manipulating election results since day one, after all this is how it started in many countries of the Eastern European block.
The original system of Lenin was a dictatorship, yes, but I dare you to prove a way of even starting to apply communist principles completely without that. And there are no benevolent dictators.
Actually, they are a little right - in the 'wrong' way, so it's embarrasing to say it straight on. Something along the lines:
Botomline - ATi Linux drivers suck(*). Nothing to see here.
(*) and fixing specific code paths for specific games is not going to make them suck less.
Hah! that's thinking small - I'm waiting for a rocket that will launch Earth into ...
...
Oh, wait
This is more than just a pack-in. OS monopoly + bundled WMP = too many media offers just assume you have WPM available and offer little or no other formats to choose from. Especially if it's about DRM that can be digested by WMP only. Take music stores, for example - Napster and co offer WMP DRM. Or do you think that the inclusion of the WM codec in the next DVD standard is completely uncorrelated with the assumption that the users will have WMP to play the movies with? (especially since apparently MS expected a 'nod through' for it and can't seem able to even provide enough information to be compliant with the selection process)
/. has so many Mac fans lately) - how happy would you be when in some not-too-distant-future MS declares that the DRM-aware version of WMP needs Palladium to guarantee secure playback, which would not be available on the Apple platform so no DRM-ed WMP high-def video content for you unless you buy Windows? Of course, they won't be a monopoly, since they'll be quick to point that a non-DRM-aware OSX version of WMP would still exist ... right? Of course, as Holywood loves DRM, they might just elect to release about 1 in 3 movies as WMP-only ... to 'test the market'. After all, recording companies don't seem to worried about releasing DRM-ed CDs that won't even play in 'players with recorder technology'
Or (as
Too far-fetched? Maybe for today. Don't underestimate the power of human greed.
Enlarging will then be about pixel pitch. A 8M 20D has a slightly larger pixel density than a 8M 1D Mk2 so the same object (meaning, for the same lens, distance, aperture, etc. same size in the focal plane) will be slightly more accurately recorded under ideal conditions. On the other hand, you'll get slightly less light per pixel, too, so it's a trade-off (less light means less detail in the higher spatial frequencies, thus less detail). Overall, it looks a lot like the trade-off that you get with ISO numbers on film due to grain size.
If firefox wants to sell security, they need to appear secure.
.asc signature from ftp.mozilla.org, then get gpg, import the appropriate key from a public server, verify the signature and, if matching, run "Firefox Setup 1.0.exe" to install a verified, trusted version of the program.
That was his argument, alright. Appear secure. Sell security. Yep, that's what MS is doing, too - selling products that appear secure. They'll be selling Palladium next, too. Not that it would be a lot of help, but that's not the point, as it's pretty much meant to help their bottom line.
This is by now already redundant, but a signed binary is nothing to the average user. Heck, Verisign means nothing to the average user, either. They will happily check the "always trust" option for self-signed AX controls without wondering what it means.
On the other hand, if you do understand a little about security, you have the option of getting the (in this case win32) binary together with the
I agree, however, that unsigned extensions don't seem trustworthy. However, until some peer review mechanism is adopted for "official extensions", this is again a rather moot point. Do you trust an extension that's signed by foo@bar.com? even if this is somehow endorsed by mozilla.org (key signing, etc.) how do you know that foo does follow at least minimal security practices? and so on. It all depends on your paranoia level. Luckily, with javascript extensions, at least some people have the time/interest to unpack it and pore over the code to make sure it isn't trojaned. For stuff like flash, you have to trust the vendor, which makes it about on the same level of 'security' as claria et al.
People into photography HAVE to use flash. If you don't use flash at night, everything is dark!
;-)
Wanna place a small wager on it? Really small one too, as long as you pay for the lighting equipment
There's more to it, too. The effective-aperture-to-effective-pixel-size ratio actually tells you the average intensity of incident light. Less light means less detail so what you gain in depth of field you lose in illumination-constrained detail. Also, with smaller sensors (and 'affordable' versions of P&S) usually comes more noise, so DoF is balanced off again.
And don't even start on how a shallow DoF works in conjunction to TTL metering and the associated goodies (focus points, flash metering and so on)
There's always a trade-off; buy what fits your need.
I'd say you're confused about the meaning of the cropping factor (a.k.a. multiplier factor). Same lens, same aperture, you get the same picture in the focal plane; larger sensor means you record more of it (larger cropping) f/2 on a 50mm lens gives the same focal plane image on both 1Ds and 300D; the full-frame sensor will catch a 35mm-size crop of it, the '1.6x' one will crop more (1/1.6 of the full-frame size) and get hence less of the off-axis distortion.
... umm ... out-of-focus ;-) Has to do with the lens not being actually Gaussian and the focal plane not really being a plane, etc. This is usually corrected a lot for the in-focus region (aspherical elements, index of refraction mixes, etc.) but gets worse the further out-of-focus (and off-axis) you go. Try it with a wide angle lens sometime and see for yourself.[*]
Larger sensor also means you're getting further away from the optical axis, so out-of-focus elements will be more
Anyway, this is just a narrow part of it, you have to discuss the whole "smaller sensor with smaller lens aperture and smaller pixel pitch, etc" combo to see overall effects.
[*] or look up some info on how tilt/shift lenses work.
Exactly - in particular unchecking the "allow scripts to change images" option 'fixes' the problem (firefox 1.0)
Online music stores will play a big role in what the format war will bring. As currently DRM exists only for WindowsMedia and iTunes, meaning wma and aac, these are the starting contenders. And mp3 is (still) around due to its past huge success, but unless Fraunhofer adds a way to stick DRM on top of it, it won't be adopted by online stores. Love it or hate it, DRM is what vendors like. They will keep on pushing it.
Another factor will be players. Major player support is mp3, wma and aac these days. Some noises about ogg vorbis support happen here and there, but unless it catches on more it's going to stay insignificant. Maybe we should pray for some music retailer to start using vorbis in DRM-ed ogg files just to show the non-geek world that it's possible to have a free and good digital audio format? After all, not having to pay royalties for encoding/decoding the music should mean more profits, right?
Last time I checked (which is about a month ago), Opera would choke on xml documents using xslt transforms that both Mozilla and IE (duh!) rendered just fine. Maybe I'm just a corner case, but that's one 'less compliant' instance for Opera.
RTFA - there was no Apple music service at the time.
What you fail to see is the "what will I do with it?" factor. For small things (net surfing/mail/ripping CDs for the iPod/etc.) $800 is WAY too expensive, especially when a $200+monitor PC would do just fine. Or, still for about $800 or less, you can get a notebook with the associated mobility as a bonus.
:-)
It all depends on what you intend to use the computer for - and for quite some uses a $800 eMac is too expensive. Of course, if what you really want is OSX, then it's rather cheap
Seeing that MS is not willing to backport SP2 security enhancements to win2k, which is what lots of corporate setups still have for workstations, it might not be such a hard fight. In the red corner, an invoice for upgrading all the workstations to XP-SP2 plus the cost of the related work downtime. In the blue corner, the cost of installing firefox on all machines and setting up outside access to only allow Gecko-based browsers. Winner?
Also, what if you CAN'T upgrade to SP2, due to it breaking some legacy app that your company uses?
Abusing "IE + XP-SP2 combo is secure" line makes you sound like some MS drone trying to sell the "Upgrades! Upgrades! Upgrades!" company line to a clueless mark.
Well, maybe not that radical