The Progressives in America are running plays (updated for current times) from the 1960s radical revolutionary manifesto titled; "You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows" [archive.org].
Holy shit!!! I started to read that and had to take a break because that shit is *SO* what's happening now that it creeped me right out. Combine that with Cloward & Piven's strategies and that's the Obama agenda.
Fuck the Democrats, they no longer exist. They've been assimilated by the Progressives like the Borg assimilate civilizations. The Republicans are on the way to full Progressive assimilation, too.
"This is Obamus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your freedoms, values, wealth, and culture will be assimilated. You will be Borg...or be destroyed."
If I start hearing Q laughing, I'm gonna start screaming.
This, considered in light of the immediate flat denials from both companies and many of the NYT's columnists known predilection for allowing their ideological/political leanings to influence the truthfulness and/or accuracy of their stories & articles, leads me to suspect this is an attempt to put forth misinformation aimed at scaring/angering people and legislators with the aim to push them toward accepting FCC regulation of the internet.
I may be wrong here, but history has taught me not to take such things from the NYT at face value without more factual corroboration.
There is a mechanism for protesting these laws - appeals, lawsuits, higher courts, legislation, etc.
What happens when these break down and/or are corrupted in such a way as to eliminate or reduce to meaninglessness the will of the people and/or the rule of law?
Precisely what we have now; people largely ignore copyright law (or any other laws similarly perceived to be unjust and easily circumvented/ignored like sodomy laws) in their personal lives.
That's another reason why current copyright law is a bad thing. It cheapens the perceived validity and value of all laws in a population's general mindset, along with the legitimacy of the government that passes them. If a government engages in passing unjust legislation too often and to too great a degree, the government will cease to be legitimate in anything but it's own opinion and imagination.
Ultimately, the people themselves do. Governments can pass any laws they like, but if the overwhelming majority of the population chooses to ignore it/them, there is no possible way for a government to enforce said law in any effective way.
"An unjust law, is no law at all." -Martin Luther King Jr.
The part about "..is no law at all" is both a moral and practical description when the general population decides to ignore such unjust laws.
-Encourage your children to tell their children to study hard in school, learn a useful trade-
-Without some source of income, the kids won't have the money to go to a good school in order to study hard.-
That involves a different and separate societal arrangement between two parties; employment. It works for everyone else that doesn't hold copyrights on valuable works. Why should the descendants of copyright holders be the exception?
In other words, tell the lazy kids to get a job or hope that grand-dad left them wealth in the common forms everyone else uses like cash, stocks, bonds, etc. Locking down a societies' culture is a poor replacement for a life insurance policy.
I agree with the notion posted elsewhere in this thread that copyright in its current "Disney Wish-List" form should be largely ignored.
"An unjust law is no law at all." -Martin Luther King.
The topic under discussion is not machines taking over the free-styler or the composition. It is a machine that in certain circumstances can replace the work of several back-row fiddle-fiddlers in low-art, high paycheck situations.
I'm not disagreeing. Read my posts. I specifically stated that this has been and will continue to happen. I was simply pointing out that software cannot as yet replicate the ability of a talented musician. It can only mimic the measurable & quantifiable portions of that performed by a human.
How, for example, can a machine have stage presence? How would one even go about measuring and quantifying it in a way understandable and reproducible by software? Now multiply that task by the number of other equally-hard-to-quantify-and-reproduce factors that go into an inspired performance.
>> So, software is going to deliver an inspired performance, breaking new musical territory ala Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, BB King, etc?
NBope. But anyone in a broadway musical pit, or anyone in the regular crowd in an orchestra who tries to do so is going to get some nasty looks from the conductor, and fired.
I think you may be confusing an inspired performance with improvisational playing of that not in a musical score, and differences in musical performance structure between genres that demand group-performance playing to a score, and others in which musicians are expected to improvise.
An inspired performance by an orchestra chair musician would involve more nuanced details such as the perfect vibrato applied to a critical sustained note in a passage, applying just the right intonation and feel to the notes played that enhances further the emotions the music is intended by the composer and conductor to convey, and a myriad of other small details that together differentiate the performance of a first-chair at your local community orchestra from the first-chair for the NY Philharmonic or Boston Symphony for example playing the exact same piece of music.
f you are going to play the authenticity card, then I ask you to stick to only singing and body percussion, as everything else is inauthentic.
So, software is going to deliver an inspired performance, breaking new musical territory ala Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, BB King, etc?
Part of the live musical experience, particularly in blues, rock, jazz and more, is the "connection" that occurs between the artists and the audience and the feedback into the performance which can turn yet-another-replaying of an old standard into a spiritual experience and bring out truly inspired performances that can far surpass the typical level of performance that can be achieved even by the same artists sitting in a studio or achieved with any yet-conceived set of algorithms. No two live musical performances are ever exactly the same.
Star Trek-TNG actually had an episode or two that tried to deal a bit with the topic of AI & creativity/inspiration concerning Cmdr. Data's musical performances, as well as acting, comedy, and other areas.
It would seem logical that it would take not only intelligence/processing power/sophisticated algorithms, but an ability to experience the emotional range of a human, for that is where inspiration and the creative spark originates that leads to leaps in the level of artistic endeavor far exceeding normal limits and logical expectations.
Not to say that this trend won't affect job & career prospects for many artists and musicians, as it obviously already is. Heck, I know because I play in a blues band and gigs have been getting much harder to come by, and with more competing for them and paying much less over the last 25 years as opposed to the 10 years previous to that in relative terms (I've been gigging on and off for ~35 years).
This sort of thing is not new, however. When "talkies" (movies with sound) came out, for example, many silent-movie accompaniment musicians lost their jobs. Many saloon piano players were replaced by the player-piano. Live bands at bars and nightclubs are replaced by DJs and karaoke. Fewer people will pursue a musical career, the skill pool shrinks to better-match demand, and those left are able to then demand better compensation. Rinse & repeat.
If its cost is cheaper than building levees around New York, Miami, and all the other coastal cities that'll be underwater in a few decades, then yes, it's wise!
What will it matter what happens in a few decades to the sea level if the US goes into economic collapse in the next 3-10 years or even sooner, which we are in danger of currently even without adding more stress to our economy? If that happens, there won't be any government enforcement of environmental protections...or much of anything else, for that matter.
Of course, the mass starvation and chaos & violence on the streets that would follow such a collapse *would* serve to reduce population pressures on the environment. Between mass exodus from urban centers as food distribution collapses and the death tolls from starvation & unchecked violence there might be so few left in large US coastal cities like NYC that it won't matter.
The article ignores taxes on fossil fuels, which I'm sure would dwarf any subsidies.
It appears the article shares this blind spot with many pushing the "green economy" both in and out of government.
Pushing adoption of non-fossil fuels & renewable energy tech before costs and efficiencies have reached a rough parity with our current methods & sources adds a crippling cost penalty to the economy and society in myriad ways from transportation and healthcare costs to food costs, interest rates, and tax revenues...pretty much touching everything to a greater or lesser degree.
When non-fossil fuels & renewable energy tech gets developed to the point that it's cost efficient enough to compete in our economy, business will invest and people will buy just as happened with the automobile and many others. This is what drove the US into an economic & trade superpower and gave it's people the world's highest standard of living. The push for non-fossil fuels and renewable energy tech dumps crippling extra costs on the economy (and ultimately on individuals) in many forms as the necessary trade-off for forcing adoption before it is actually economically viable.
It will require a reduction in everyone's standard of living in rough parallel with how much extra burden it puts on the economy which is related to how fast/how early the adoption occurs, and the health of the economy at the outset. Looking at current economic conditions, is this wise?
I'd love to zip around in an electric or hydrogen (oops, that got scrapped) car recharged from solar and/or wind generation, but the tech and the infrastructure just isn't "there" yet. I particularly don't want to finance them at such high relative costs on the backs of current and following generations' standard of living.
>i>I refuse to own any HD-enabled TVs & etc. HD is simply the shiny bauble to get people to adopt a system that is controlled by those other than the consumer purchasers of the equipment in order to plug the "analog hole"
Then I'd say that you have a problem. Because Walmart has nothing but HDTV to sell you.
Good thing I don't shop for home entertainment equipment at Walmart.:)
Seriously though, I have no problem obtaining older TVs cheap. I currently have a nice Sanyo 27-inch TV that serves me admirably, along with a matching DVD player and even a matching 4-head VCR (I know, but it got thrown in for $5). I paid $75 for it all with a 7-day cash-back guarantee from the local Goodwill store. I often score CRT monitors for free from friends, family, and acquaintances, and failing that, the same Goodwill also regularly sells good quality CRT monitors for around $20 with the same 7-day cash-back policy.
This PC is about 6 years old. It uses an Intel D845EBG2 mobo & P4 with 2gb RAM and two internal HDDs, an 80gb and a 250gb along with a 320gb external drive. I have internal CDROM and DVD-burning drives. I'm currently running a BFG brand Nvidia 7300GT 512mb AGP GPU. That card *does* have an HD-out, but I doubt I'll ever use it.
It runs all the software apps and games I want to use and looks perfectly good enough to me. Linux and FreeBSD have no problems with the hardware and run faster than XP-SP3. People that have sat down and used my PC have remarked that it seems to be nearly as fast (in normal desktop use, opening/closing apps & windows, etc) as their much newer and more expensive machines.
I've seen other peoples' HDTVs and HD-capable/compatible PCs & monitors, and I'm not impressed enough with the increased resolution to justify the difference in trouble & expense.
I know that eventually I'll have to upgrade, but the longer I can hold off the cheaper it should be as HD-compatible hardware drops in retail cost as the tech ages. Hopefully there will also be ways discovered around some of the annoyances and limitations by that time, too.
Currently though my take is; if it ain't "broke", I won't spend money, time, and frustration "fixing" it. I couldn't care less if anybody looks down their nose at my TV or computer because they aren't the "latest-and-greatest". I'd rather spend my money and time on designing & building vacuum-tube guitar amplifiers and other electro-musical gadgets.
I'm guessing you are too young to have any idea about this, but you do know that computer monitors have been exceeding the HD spec since years before there was an HD spec? Furthermore the GP is right, HD isn't a video spec. It's a marketing term.
Don't be too hard on the young ones. It's kinda fun watching them flame & down-mod me, as most young people go through that stage of knowing everything before they discover how smart the old people they ignored in their youth really were as they mature.
It's almost like having millions of grand-kids, many with ADD, except no drama over holiday family dinners.:D
I refuse to own any HD-enabled TVs & etc. HD is simply the shiny bauble to get people to adopt a system that is controlled by those other than the consumer purchasers of the equipment in order to plug the "analog hole", further raise barriers to entry for non-corporate/non-approved content & equipment producers, and overall extract more money from consumers.
It's not a video/audio standard so much as a revenue and business model protection & expansion scheme.
...in fascistopia, where those who publicly expose gratuitous brutality and illegal behavior committed by agents of the State are worse than murderers.
There has been much confusion regarding "Net Neutrality". Much of it, I contend, deliberate on the part of politicians and government bureaucrats.
I'm all for "Net Neutrality" if it's defined as fair practices in traffic shaping, throttling, routing & etc, PERIOD. A bill to accomplish that would only need to be a few pages long at most.
The problem (and the reason I oppose the current iterations) is that what Congress is contemplating is a (relatively) huge piece of legislation that expands government control over the internet using "Net Neutrality" as cover for a power grab.
Those like Franken are hoping people are stupid enough to not look past the title to see what is actually in the bill and what it actually accomplishes.
Don't be as stupid as those in Congress think you are. There's too much at stake.
If the UN had been around they could have written a strongly worded letter to Berlin and asked them very nicely to cease and desist.
I think that's being far too optimistic. If *today's* UN had been around, Hitler would have been the chairman of the human rights commission and the general assembly would have recommended the IMF give the Nazis funds to build/expand the concen^W^W^Wwork camps, while decrying Jewish "aggression".
If you vote for a third party fruitlessly you have wasted your chance to vote for your second choice party, and as a result your last choice party may get in.
And, as everyone knows, we can't have the wrong lizards in charge!
As has already been pointed out in another post in this thread, I think it's the "fruitlessly" and "wasted" parts of the above quoted that don't quite fit the reality. Even if the independent candidate doesn't win, if there is significant support the political pressure on the other parties will swing the debate and over time tend to limit political extremes better than what we have now.
It's not an all-or-nothing exercise. The more votes a third party candidate gets, the more pressure that is exerted on the two major parties to consider and take a stance on issues & policies they normally would not address without this pressure.
To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about. Not that they might get a patent for it.
Does Microsoft know something we don't?
Maybe Microsoft actually got to find out what was in the bill before it passed, rather than Pelosi's insistence that regular citizens would find out what was in it after it passed.
Regardless of precisely when MS knew what was in the healthcare act, they probably sat some creative software people down with a bullet-point list of items from the act and brainstormed some possible niche software applications based on things actually in the bill.
What's creepy isn't the software apps that MS is trying to patent, it's that they have to have had some reason to think that at least some of this stuff may actually make them some coin from the federal government by being used in some twisted government healthcare initiatives based on what's in the government healthcare plan.
' -- into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.'"
How about having those Jews start wearing yellow Stars of David too, while we're at it?
I'd post further, but being the July 4th weekend, I've got to get started deep-frying those Twinkies and balls of butter rolled in cinnamon and powdered sugar for the neighborhood cookout. The kids love 'em! The first batch should be ready right after the deepfried-lard-eating contest.
They're like the Glenn Beck of Democrats. Seriously creepy people.
Meh. Glenn Beck doesn't creep me out.
Now, the policies and the politics...and the people behind them...that he reveals (typically using clips of their own words) on his show on a daily basis? *That's* some seriously creepy stuff.
As far as the whole "climate-gate" thing, the damage is done. No amount of authoritative-sounding panel reviews will bring this back from the dead for most people. Their BS alarms typically drown out anything these panels have to say.
Just something about the fact that even if the US abandoned industrial civilization completely, going back to candles and horses, the net effect would be about *one tenth* of a degree in global temps after 100 years.
After the US dollar first goes through the massive deflation cycle that's coming in the very near future, hyper-inflation will follow. Your pesos will probably end up being worth thousands of US dollars each. That's assuming that anyone will even be willing to accept US currency after the failed Keynsian chickens come home to roost.
Slashdot Mirror
The Progressives in America are running plays (updated for current times) from the 1960s radical revolutionary manifesto titled; "You Don't Need A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows" [archive.org].
Holy shit!!! I started to read that and had to take a break because that shit is *SO* what's happening now that it creeped me right out. Combine that with Cloward & Piven's strategies and that's the Obama agenda.
Fuck the Democrats, they no longer exist. They've been assimilated by the Progressives like the Borg assimilate civilizations. The Republicans are on the way to full Progressive assimilation, too.
"This is Obamus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your freedoms, values, wealth, and culture will be assimilated. You will be Borg...or be destroyed."
If I start hearing Q laughing, I'm gonna start screaming.
This, considered in light of the immediate flat denials from both companies and many of the NYT's columnists known predilection for allowing their ideological/political leanings to influence the truthfulness and/or accuracy of their stories & articles, leads me to suspect this is an attempt to put forth misinformation aimed at scaring/angering people and legislators with the aim to push them toward accepting FCC regulation of the internet.
I may be wrong here, but history has taught me not to take such things from the NYT at face value without more factual corroboration.
Strat
There is a mechanism for protesting these laws - appeals, lawsuits, higher courts, legislation, etc.
What happens when these break down and/or are corrupted in such a way as to eliminate or reduce to meaninglessness the will of the people and/or the rule of law?
Precisely what we have now; people largely ignore copyright law (or any other laws similarly perceived to be unjust and easily circumvented/ignored like sodomy laws) in their personal lives.
That's another reason why current copyright law is a bad thing. It cheapens the perceived validity and value of all laws in a population's general mindset, along with the legitimacy of the government that passes them. If a government engages in passing unjust legislation too often and to too great a degree, the government will cease to be legitimate in anything but it's own opinion and imagination.
Strat
Who gets to decide what the unjust laws are?
Ultimately, the people themselves do. Governments can pass any laws they like, but if the overwhelming majority of the population chooses to ignore it/them, there is no possible way for a government to enforce said law in any effective way.
"An unjust law, is no law at all." -Martin Luther King Jr.
The part about "..is no law at all" is both a moral and practical description when the general population decides to ignore such unjust laws.
Strat
-Encourage your children to tell their children to study hard in school, learn a useful trade-
-Without some source of income, the kids won't have the money to go to a good school in order to study hard.-
That involves a different and separate societal arrangement between two parties; employment. It works for everyone else that doesn't hold copyrights on valuable works. Why should the descendants of copyright holders be the exception?
In other words, tell the lazy kids to get a job or hope that grand-dad left them wealth in the common forms everyone else uses like cash, stocks, bonds, etc. Locking down a societies' culture is a poor replacement for a life insurance policy.
I agree with the notion posted elsewhere in this thread that copyright in its current "Disney Wish-List" form should be largely ignored.
"An unjust law is no law at all." -Martin Luther King.
Strat
Cgenman, nice work!
Thanks for the chuckle. :)
Strat
The topic under discussion is not machines taking over the free-styler or the composition.
It is a machine that in certain circumstances can replace the work of several back-row fiddle-fiddlers in low-art, high paycheck situations.
I'm not disagreeing. Read my posts. I specifically stated that this has been and will continue to happen. I was simply pointing out that software cannot as yet replicate the ability of a talented musician. It can only mimic the measurable & quantifiable portions of that performed by a human.
How, for example, can a machine have stage presence? How would one even go about measuring and quantifying it in a way understandable and reproducible by software? Now multiply that task by the number of other equally-hard-to-quantify-and-reproduce factors that go into an inspired performance.
Strat
>> So, software is going to deliver an inspired performance, breaking new musical territory ala Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, BB King, etc?
NBope. But anyone in a broadway musical pit, or anyone in the regular crowd in an orchestra who tries to do so is going to get some nasty looks from the conductor, and fired.
I think you may be confusing an inspired performance with improvisational playing of that not in a musical score, and differences in musical performance structure between genres that demand group-performance playing to a score, and others in which musicians are expected to improvise.
An inspired performance by an orchestra chair musician would involve more nuanced details such as the perfect vibrato applied to a critical sustained note in a passage, applying just the right intonation and feel to the notes played that enhances further the emotions the music is intended by the composer and conductor to convey, and a myriad of other small details that together differentiate the performance of a first-chair at your local community orchestra from the first-chair for the NY Philharmonic or Boston Symphony for example playing the exact same piece of music.
Strat
f you are going to play the authenticity card, then I ask you to stick to only singing and body percussion, as everything else is inauthentic.
So, software is going to deliver an inspired performance, breaking new musical territory ala Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert Collins, BB King, etc?
Part of the live musical experience, particularly in blues, rock, jazz and more, is the "connection" that occurs between the artists and the audience and the feedback into the performance which can turn yet-another-replaying of an old standard into a spiritual experience and bring out truly inspired performances that can far surpass the typical level of performance that can be achieved even by the same artists sitting in a studio or achieved with any yet-conceived set of algorithms. No two live musical performances are ever exactly the same.
Star Trek-TNG actually had an episode or two that tried to deal a bit with the topic of AI & creativity/inspiration concerning Cmdr. Data's musical performances, as well as acting, comedy, and other areas.
It would seem logical that it would take not only intelligence/processing power/sophisticated algorithms, but an ability to experience the emotional range of a human, for that is where inspiration and the creative spark originates that leads to leaps in the level of artistic endeavor far exceeding normal limits and logical expectations.
Not to say that this trend won't affect job & career prospects for many artists and musicians, as it obviously already is. Heck, I know because I play in a blues band and gigs have been getting much harder to come by, and with more competing for them and paying much less over the last 25 years as opposed to the 10 years previous to that in relative terms (I've been gigging on and off for ~35 years).
This sort of thing is not new, however. When "talkies" (movies with sound) came out, for example, many silent-movie accompaniment musicians lost their jobs. Many saloon piano players were replaced by the player-piano. Live bands at bars and nightclubs are replaced by DJs and karaoke. Fewer people will pursue a musical career, the skill pool shrinks to better-match demand, and those left are able to then demand better compensation. Rinse & repeat.
Strat
If its cost is cheaper than building levees around New York, Miami, and all the other coastal cities that'll be underwater in a few decades, then yes, it's wise!
What will it matter what happens in a few decades to the sea level if the US goes into economic collapse in the next 3-10 years or even sooner, which we are in danger of currently even without adding more stress to our economy? If that happens, there won't be any government enforcement of environmental protections...or much of anything else, for that matter.
Of course, the mass starvation and chaos & violence on the streets that would follow such a collapse *would* serve to reduce population pressures on the environment. Between mass exodus from urban centers as food distribution collapses and the death tolls from starvation & unchecked violence there might be so few left in large US coastal cities like NYC that it won't matter.
Strat
The article ignores taxes on fossil fuels, which I'm sure would dwarf any subsidies.
It appears the article shares this blind spot with many pushing the "green economy" both in and out of government.
Pushing adoption of non-fossil fuels & renewable energy tech before costs and efficiencies have reached a rough parity with our current methods & sources adds a crippling cost penalty to the economy and society in myriad ways from transportation and healthcare costs to food costs, interest rates, and tax revenues...pretty much touching everything to a greater or lesser degree.
When non-fossil fuels & renewable energy tech gets developed to the point that it's cost efficient enough to compete in our economy, business will invest and people will buy just as happened with the automobile and many others. This is what drove the US into an economic & trade superpower and gave it's people the world's highest standard of living. The push for non-fossil fuels and renewable energy tech dumps crippling extra costs on the economy (and ultimately on individuals) in many forms as the necessary trade-off for forcing adoption before it is actually economically viable.
It will require a reduction in everyone's standard of living in rough parallel with how much extra burden it puts on the economy which is related to how fast/how early the adoption occurs, and the health of the economy at the outset. Looking at current economic conditions, is this wise?
I'd love to zip around in an electric or hydrogen (oops, that got scrapped) car recharged from solar and/or wind generation, but the tech and the infrastructure just isn't "there" yet. I particularly don't want to finance them at such high relative costs on the backs of current and following generations' standard of living.
Strat
Besides being a front for collectivist indoctrination?
[sarcasm] Why do you hate freedom? [/sarcasm]
Strat
>i>I refuse to own any HD-enabled TVs & etc. HD is simply the shiny bauble to get people to adopt a system that is controlled by those other than the consumer purchasers of the equipment in order to plug the "analog hole"
Then I'd say that you have a problem. Because Walmart has nothing but HDTV to sell you.
Good thing I don't shop for home entertainment equipment at Walmart. :)
Seriously though, I have no problem obtaining older TVs cheap. I currently have a nice Sanyo 27-inch TV that serves me admirably, along with a matching DVD player and even a matching 4-head VCR (I know, but it got thrown in for $5). I paid $75 for it all with a 7-day cash-back guarantee from the local Goodwill store. I often score CRT monitors for free from friends, family, and acquaintances, and failing that, the same Goodwill also regularly sells good quality CRT monitors for around $20 with the same 7-day cash-back policy.
This PC is about 6 years old. It uses an Intel D845EBG2 mobo & P4 with 2gb RAM and two internal HDDs, an 80gb and a 250gb along with a 320gb external drive. I have internal CDROM and DVD-burning drives. I'm currently running a BFG brand Nvidia 7300GT 512mb AGP GPU. That card *does* have an HD-out, but I doubt I'll ever use it.
It runs all the software apps and games I want to use and looks perfectly good enough to me. Linux and FreeBSD have no problems with the hardware and run faster than XP-SP3. People that have sat down and used my PC have remarked that it seems to be nearly as fast (in normal desktop use, opening/closing apps & windows, etc) as their much newer and more expensive machines.
I've seen other peoples' HDTVs and HD-capable/compatible PCs & monitors, and I'm not impressed enough with the increased resolution to justify the difference in trouble & expense.
I know that eventually I'll have to upgrade, but the longer I can hold off the cheaper it should be as HD-compatible hardware drops in retail cost as the tech ages. Hopefully there will also be ways discovered around some of the annoyances and limitations by that time, too.
Currently though my take is; if it ain't "broke", I won't spend money, time, and frustration "fixing" it. I couldn't care less if anybody looks down their nose at my TV or computer because they aren't the "latest-and-greatest". I'd rather spend my money and time on designing & building vacuum-tube guitar amplifiers and other electro-musical gadgets.
Strat
I'm guessing you are too young to have any idea about this, but you do know that computer monitors have been exceeding the HD spec since years before there was an HD spec? Furthermore the GP is right, HD isn't a video spec. It's a marketing term.
Don't be too hard on the young ones. It's kinda fun watching them flame & down-mod me, as most young people go through that stage of knowing everything before they discover how smart the old people they ignored in their youth really were as they mature.
It's almost like having millions of grand-kids, many with ADD, except no drama over holiday family dinners. :D
Strat
I refuse to own any HD-enabled TVs & etc. HD is simply the shiny bauble to get people to adopt a system that is controlled by those other than the consumer purchasers of the equipment in order to plug the "analog hole", further raise barriers to entry for non-corporate/non-approved content & equipment producers, and overall extract more money from consumers.
It's not a video/audio standard so much as a revenue and business model protection & expansion scheme.
Strat
...in fascistopia, where those who publicly expose gratuitous brutality and illegal behavior committed by agents of the State are worse than murderers.
FTFY
Strat
There has been much confusion regarding "Net Neutrality". Much of it, I contend, deliberate on the part of politicians and government bureaucrats.
I'm all for "Net Neutrality" if it's defined as fair practices in traffic shaping, throttling, routing & etc, PERIOD. A bill to accomplish that would only need to be a few pages long at most.
The problem (and the reason I oppose the current iterations) is that what Congress is contemplating is a (relatively) huge piece of legislation that expands government control over the internet using "Net Neutrality" as cover for a power grab.
Those like Franken are hoping people are stupid enough to not look past the title to see what is actually in the bill and what it actually accomplishes.
Don't be as stupid as those in Congress think you are. There's too much at stake.
Strat
If the UN had been around they could have written a strongly worded letter to Berlin and asked them very nicely to cease and desist.
I think that's being far too optimistic. If *today's* UN had been around, Hitler would have been the chairman of the human rights commission and the general assembly would have recommended the IMF give the Nazis funds to build/expand the concen^W^W^Wwork camps, while decrying Jewish "aggression".
Strat
"...neither patients nor their doctors are permitted to access their IMD's source code or test its security.'"
"Aww Thufir, don't feel badly...everyone gets a heart-plug here..."
Let's hope any vulnerabilities aren't wirelessly-exploitable!
Strat
No, Glenn Beck is to Progressives what bright lights are to cockroaches.
FTFY
Strat
Posting to correct an accidental mis-moderation. Parent is NOT overrated! Meant to give an "Insightful".
If you vote for a third party fruitlessly you have wasted your chance to vote for your second choice party, and as a result your last choice party may get in.
And, as everyone knows, we can't have the wrong lizards in charge!
As has already been pointed out in another post in this thread, I think it's the "fruitlessly" and "wasted" parts of the above quoted that don't quite fit the reality. Even if the independent candidate doesn't win, if there is significant support the political pressure on the other parties will swing the debate and over time tend to limit political extremes better than what we have now.
It's not an all-or-nothing exercise. The more votes a third party candidate gets, the more pressure that is exerted on the two major parties to consider and take a stance on issues & policies they normally would not address without this pressure.
Strat
To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about. Not that they might get a patent for it.
Does Microsoft know something we don't?
Maybe Microsoft actually got to find out what was in the bill before it passed, rather than Pelosi's insistence that regular citizens would find out what was in it after it passed.
Regardless of precisely when MS knew what was in the healthcare act, they probably sat some creative software people down with a bullet-point list of items from the act and brainstormed some possible niche software applications based on things actually in the bill.
What's creepy isn't the software apps that MS is trying to patent, it's that they have to have had some reason to think that at least some of this stuff may actually make them some coin from the federal government by being used in some twisted government healthcare initiatives based on what's in the government healthcare plan.
' -- into a visual form so that others can see the data 'on mechanisms such as a mood ring, watch, badge, on a website etc.'"
How about having those Jews start wearing yellow Stars of David too, while we're at it?
I'd post further, but being the July 4th weekend, I've got to get started deep-frying those Twinkies and balls of butter rolled in cinnamon and powdered sugar for the neighborhood cookout. The kids love 'em! The first batch should be ready right after the deepfried-lard-eating contest.
Strat
They're like the Glenn Beck of Democrats. Seriously creepy people.
Meh. Glenn Beck doesn't creep me out.
Now, the policies and the politics...and the people behind them...that he reveals (typically using clips of their own words) on his show on a daily basis? *That's* some seriously creepy stuff.
As far as the whole "climate-gate" thing, the damage is done. No amount of authoritative-sounding panel reviews will bring this back from the dead for most people. Their BS alarms typically drown out anything these panels have to say.
Just something about the fact that even if the US abandoned industrial civilization completely, going back to candles and horses, the net effect would be about *one tenth* of a degree in global temps after 100 years.
Strat
I don't have any shekels - all I have are pesos.
Smart.
After the US dollar first goes through the massive deflation cycle that's coming in the very near future, hyper-inflation will follow. Your pesos will probably end up being worth thousands of US dollars each. That's assuming that anyone will even be willing to accept US currency after the failed Keynsian chickens come home to roost.
Strat